The Dry perhaps ends too tidily, but it remains a welcomingly straightforward and visceral thriller that plays fair with its audience. Robert Connolly’s The Dry begins with…
Profile’s subject matter is more than a little silly, but its thrilling Screenlife tinkering speaks to the form’s malleability and still-untapped potential. 2021 really might…
The Columnist successfully balances a line between the satirical and sobering, and delivers some nice genre play in the process. Ivo Van Aart’s darkly comic horror…
The Djinn offers plenty of playful throwback chills, but boasts eye-roll messaging and doesn’t quite know who its audience is. Anyone expecting the gore and camp…
The Paper Tigers doesn’t pull it all together dramatically or narratively, but its genre reverence is a steadying force. Reverence looms large in Quoc Bao Tran’s…
Cliff Walkers is a visually slick and violent spy flick that avoids propaganda and imbues its proceedings with considerable emotional and existential weight. Don’t let a…
Separation is yet another slog from director William Brent Bell, a logic-less and unscary bit of low-bar horror filmmaking. Director William Brent Bell has been…
Bloodthirsty is bland amalgam of werewolf flick signifiers and horror film clichés that do little to establish any unique voice. Reviewing Eight for Silver at…
For the Sake of Vicious doesn’t reinvent anything, but is a lean, nasty thriller that doubles as a remarkable calling card for the directing duo.…
Vanquish is bad, bizarrely so, but it’s at least not boring in its own dumpster fire way. After a few hits as a writer, including…
Wheatley’s latest both builds and holds tension effectively, harnessing the director’s penchant for psychedelia and bruising horror to brutal effect. When Martin remarks at the…
Held manages to best Cluff and Lofing’s The Gallows, but it still an abysmal, problematic, and tension-free failure. The new marriage-in-peril thriller Held comes courtesy…
The Unholy is a jump scare-centric, heavy-handed horror slog with little atmosphere and even less mystery. Keeping the good old-fashioned huckster spirit alive, Sony’s genre imprint…
Every Breath You Take is a derivative, cliché-riddled yawn that would be more at home on late-night cable than on theater screens. While its title…
Honeydew is the latest effort to angle toward the elevated horror label without providing much substance to this framework. Premiering at the Nightstream Film Festival…
The Courier doesn’t rank among the spy film greats and misunderstands its own core, but it’s a diverting enough shadows-and-cigarettes throwback. The Dad Movie of 2021…
Rose Plays Julie ultimately relies too heavily on well-worn revenge tropes at the expense of any substantive study of identity. So cold and somber that it…
Come True is an empty-headed, poorly-conceived horror flick that mistakes endless stylistic detail for substance. Anyone who has ever experienced night terrors can attest to the…
Cosmic Sin is an affront to shoestring filmmaking, delivering a final product entirely bereft of imagination and lazy in execution. Does Bruce Willis even watch the…
The Vigil isn’t without its minor grievances, but its willingness to navigate new horror territory is most welcome. Since the birth of the horror genre, especially…