Written and Directed by George A. Romero, 2007
I cringe thinking it. I cringe. And yet the thought is no longer figurative, but empirical. A chain of words that have lost their requirement for a question mark at the end: George A. Romero is no longer relevant.
Cringe. I don’t think it is […]

Written and Directed by Xavier Gens, 2007
Perfect timing for me to appear hypocritical over two superficially similar French flicks. I lauded the shallow film INSIDE despite being a gore show with nary a story to tell and I am now going to proceed to, um, non-laud FRONTIER(S) for being a gore show with nary […]

Written and Directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007
It took three years for the world over to generate a peer to Edgar Wright’s unassailable masterpiece SHAUN OF THE DEAD. The time is finally upon us and it is with a wave of relief that I am honored to declare a heroic cohort in the horror comedy […]

Directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, 2007
Written by Alexandre Bustillo
Centerfold to French horror nu-waver-cum-2007-fest-favorite INSIDE is, well, a festival of gore the crimson of which you’ve likely not seen in a while. I am normally not wont to praise a film whose visual brutality takes precedent over story, but there is an adventurous […]

Directed by Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza, 2007
Written by Jaume Balagueró, Luis Berdejo, Paco Plaza
There is a cold efficiency to [REC] that I never imagined I would admire from a film. It has no character development. None whatsoever. Zip. Zero. Nunca. [REC] is a conveyor belt horror film, a […]

Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, 2008Written by Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
I am writing this review on my cellphone*.  Why?  Well, because my computer is upstairs and I am downstairs, but I also find no evidence to believe the screenwriters of SAW IV used a real word processor, either, so it seems an appropriate fit.  For […]

Directed by Jamie Blanks, 2007Written by Everett De Roche
I’ve been circling STORM WARNING for weeks now, always suggesting to watch it, always finding an excuse not to, often landing on the knowledge it was made by the guy who did URBAN LEGEND. The IMDb plot description did little more to muster interest, "A yuppie […]

Written and Directed by Eli Roth, 2007
Are you or have you ever been a dog owner?  Has said dog ever had problems with diarrhea?  Were you relieved when he or she returned to depositing firm mounds?  If yes, Congratulations, you can now relate to what HOSTEL: PART 2 is!
Is it appropriate to commend someone for […]

Written and Directed by Chris Gorak, 2007
I’ve always lamented that we Americans have no iconic cultural fears. Asian countries have cornered the market on ghost films because of genuine, widespread reservations about the after life and trapped spirits. Saying the word Chupacabra out loud in select Latin American countries is akin to inviting […]

Directed by Stewart Raffill, 2007Written by Ken Solarz
Put a bullet in the brain pan of any standing objectives planned for today. Obtain Croc. Netflix it. Blockbuster it. Go to Best Buy and steal it. Obtain Croc. Also obtain a platitude of alcohol of choice as well as […]

Directed by Jim Mickle, 2007Written by Nick Damici and Jim Mickle
Hand picked for last year’s After Dark Horrorfest, Mulberry Street - the epileptic feature film debut of  Jim Mickle - features rats in Manhattan biting people and, by process of an unaccountable plot, turning the infected into ‘roided up rat-esque creatures. Set in and […]

I introduce to you, intrepid and sexy reader, the Mini-Review!  We pour through quite the volume of film each week and while I’d love to write a lengthy review for everything, truth is a lot of the time the magic don’t muster.  Times it be the dreaded block of the writer, other times I can’t […]

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007Written by Sergio G. Sánchez

I lost a lot of money today. For me a hitherto unprecedented amount of money. Not quite, “I’ll put that in my mouth for $5 so I can eat tonight” kind of money, rather “Fuck Apple stock, shots all around!” kind of money. […]

Directed by Francis LawrenceWritten by Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Richard Matheson

The most offensive thing about the newest adaptation of Richard Matheson’s indelible classic is that it has the temerity to call itself I Am Legend. Maybe the producers considered the age of the original novel and thought no […]

Directed and Adapted for the Screen by Frank Darabont from Stephen King’s Novella, 2007

I have a tendency to be hyperbolic in immediate praise of any movie that really does something for me. As a type of critic, this is a sure flaw, but please understand that I am making a conscious effort to tone […]

Written and Directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom, 2007

I imported Shutter on a whim nearly three years ago.  This was when I was going to FSU, living by myself in a one-bedroom.  More specifically, it was during a period when I was watching Asian films almost exclusively — somewhere in the neighborhood of 12+ per […]

Directed by David Arquette, 2006*Written by David Arquette & Joe Harris

The ingredients for The Tripper are indeed peculiar.  Peace loving hippies at a music festival in the deep woods, a man in a Ronald Reagan mask slaying festival goers, Thomas Jane as a police office, Paul Ruebens as the festival promoter, Jason Mewes as one […]

Directed by David Slade, 2007Written by Steve Niles and Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson

Despite all of the sub-genres, all the crossovers and all the remakes, there are only two kinds of horror films, each defined within five minutes of its run time; 1) that which opens with a brutal slaying of a character unimportant to […]

Directed by Víctor García, 2007Written by William Massa

The second viewer choice to be made during this experiment in story delivery comes when an Asian woman is trapped in a room with two nude female ghosts who stroke and surround her as if the decaying operating room they are in were nothing more than the VIP […]

Directed by Stephen Hopkins, 2007Written by Carey Hayes & Chad Hayes, Story by Brian Rousso

Remember when The Reaping kept having its release pushed farther and farther back, the studio omen that they don’t have faith in what they just bank rolled?  And then when it finally came out, everyone hated it?  Well, technically not everyone, […]

Directed by Tibor Takács, 2007Written by Eric Miller

Remember Patrick Muldoon, the douchebaggy pilot who tried to break up the star crossed love of Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards in Starship Troopers?  Ever wondered what he was up to these days?  Ice Spiders.  Yes, Ice Spiders.  Ice Fucking Spiders is what he is up to.
I […]

Directed by Scott Glosserman, 2007Written by Scott Glosserman, David J. Stieve

The horror genre can easily be imagined as a toy crane machine.  Optimists high on past successes slide in dollar bill after dollar bill in wishful attempts to grab hold of something once again worth time and money.  Anyone controlling that seductive tri-claw of fate […]

Directed by Rob Zombie, 2007Written by Rob Zombie; original screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill

"Give them nothing!  But take from them everything!"
That line from 300 kept running through my sporadically idle mind while watching Rob Zombie’s Halloween.  Zombie took everything that makes Halloween work and gave nothing back.  He gave nothing to the fans […]

Written by Joe Hill, 2007

The only reason Heart-Shaped Box caught my eye was because I know Joe Hill is Stephen King’s eldest son.  This is exactly why Joesph Hillstrom King writes under a pseudonym, but this is inevitably a burden he’ll just have to deal with.  I can think of far worse weights to shoulder.
I […]

Directed by D.J. Caruso, 2007Written by Christopher B. Landon and Carl Ellsworth

There is no reason to do a song and dance around what you and I both expect Disturbia to be.  It is an unofficial Rear Window with teenagers for teenagers directed by a guy who thinks he is a teenager, using two letter abbreviations […]

Directed by Michael Katleman, 2007Written by John D. Brancato & Michael Ferris

Nature run amok.  Crocodiles going ape shit.  You’ve seen Lake Placid.  Or Crocodile.  Or Crocodile 2: Death Swamp.  Or Lake Placid 2.  Or Dinocroc.  Or Krocodylus.  Or the upcoming, unrelated, duo of Rogue and Black Water…
Point is, it seems that all these misunderstood cuties […]

In case anyone has escaped the unsolicited promotion of Indie artist Christopher Alan Broadstone’s new DVD, 3 Dead Girls, here is yet another run down: 3DG is the newly available compilation of Broadstone’s award winning short films; Scream For Me, My Skin, and Human No More.
Listed Features:

New Hi-Def Transfer of Scream for Me
11 Commentary Tracks […]

Directed by Danny Boyle, 2007Written by Alex Garland

Confession: I like Sci-Fi more than I do Horror.  Considerably more, actually, but true Science Fiction, good or bad, is also considerably rarer.   Which is why it gives me great pleasure to write about Sunshine.  Not only do I get to  talk about something different for a change, […]

Directed by James Wan, 2007Written by Leigh Whannell

Full of emptiness, Dead Silence’s script was surely scrapped together after the Saw duo decided they wanted to somehow make a movie about dummies.  They certainly didn’t set out to tell a morbid coming home story, a murder mystery or a quiet chiller.  All of those things make […]

Directed by Mikael Håfström, 2007Written by Matt Greenberg and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski; from Stephen King’s short story

Two of 2007s most promising genre features take their cues from the short form of the Crimson King.  The Mist, directed by the proven Frank Darabont, and 1408, helmed by the relatively new Mikael Håfström.  The former […]

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007Written by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and Rowan Joffe & Jesús Olmo, Enrique López Lavigne

The torch has been passed.  Not just from original 28 Days director Danny Boyle to 28 Weeks director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, but from the apocalyptic consumer cannibalism of Romero’s Dead -ilogy to today’s Rage infected culture of […]

Directed by David Flores, 2007Written by Todd Hurvitz, Howie Miller

I am not going to bother wasting my time writing a formal review of Lake Placid 2.  I am simply going to transcribe the first 2 minutes of the script, anything else you need to know can be extrapolated from this inspired exchange:
"Man, this lake is […]

Directed by Tony Krantz, 2007Written by Erik Jendresen

Make no mistake, Raw Feed jumped off to a forgettable start with Rest Stop.  That flick did practically nothing right (except remind that Joey Laurence was still alive) and if popular opinion is to be believed - here’s looking at you IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes - the production […]

Written and Directed by Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror) and Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof)

I’ll not begin to pretend that I have any palpable knowledge of Grindhouses.  They mean nothing to me.  They lived and died before I even lived.  Their movies are lost to me, their directors are lost to me, their style is lost to […]