Look what happens when you’re handed a monster franchise like “The Avengers” – even your mustiest film projects get a second lease on life.

Director Joss Whedon, the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” creator chosen to helm the upcoming superheroes flick, will finally get to see his 2009 horror film “The Cabin in the Woods” in theaters.

He’ll just have to wait a few more months for the privilege.

“The Cabin in the Woods” stars a pre-”Thor” Chris Hemsworth in an ensemble shocker about a group of pretty young folk who get more than they bargained for while traipsing through the forest.

The trailer looks like a Cuisinart pastiche of horror staples with a few puckish moments to remind us Whedon is behind the camera. “Cabin” got caught up in the MGM bankruptcy mess, but clearly Hollywood wasn’t itching to get it in front of the masses.

Read into that what you will.

(more…)

It’s clear the assembled directors behind “Chillerama” love movies – old-school horror romps, to be precise. But an anthology mash note to the Ghost of Horror Films Past needs more than just unabashed genre love.

“Chillerama,” available now on Blu-ray and DVD, apes the trashiest elements of pre-grindhouse genre films in the hope of drawing sympathetic laughter. Instead, we suffer through four near calamitous shorts which short-circuit an otherwise clever conceit.

The directors behind the film – Adam Green (“Frozen”), Joe Lynch (“Wrong Turn 2: Dead End”), Tim Sullivan (“2001 Maniacs”) and Adam Rifkin (“Detroit Rock City”) – clearly spent their formative years watching every B-horror movie telecast in their home towns. Their collaboration yields a pastiche of horror movie tropes with little effective storytelling to paste them together.

(more…)

The new horror comedy “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” actually has something in common with the “Harold and Kumar” trilogy. No, it’s not a copious amount of marijuana, medicinal or otherwise.

The two films both shatter stereotypes with alacrity. When was the last time we saw an Asian male and his Indian sidekick pulling pranks like a couple of white college students? And, with “Tucker & Dale,” how often are rednecks portrayed as a film’s virtuous heroes?

“Evil,” out on Blu-ray and DVD this week, pits a pair of hillbillies versus a passel of cool, well-tailored college kids. Said kids are ugly to the core, while the West Virginny types prove to be sweet and soulful right through the closing credits.

The film essentially has one joke to tell, but it survives that by giving us two very engaging characters to keep on telling it.

(more…)

You don’t need a critic or video store geek to tell you to watch ‘The Shining’ this time of year.

It’s practically required viewing for horror buffs. The same holds true for ‘Halloween,’ The Exorcist’ and ‘Psycho.’ If you haven’t seen those chiller classics, then drop everything and add them to your Netflix queue (assuming you still have one).

This is a different kind of list, one drawing attention to sleeper horror films which still deliver the goods. They may not have film critics lining up to sing their praises, but here’s betting they raise a few goosebumps just in time for Halloween.

(more…)

“When are you going to stop taping us?” says the female star of ‘Paranormal Activity 3.’

“When this thing is over,” her obsessed husband replies. This franchise is far from over, even if its best days may be behind it.

The third chapter in the sleeper film series can’t measure up to the previous installments. But its signature gimmick – staring at security camera footage until things that shouldn’t be moving start moving on their own – remains a nerve-jangling affair.

Horror movies exhaust themselves with digital effects, torrents of blood and other genre flourishes. All ‘Paranormal Activity 3′ needs is a creaking door or a flapping bed sheet to make us recoil in our seats.

(more…)

Horror movies from the 1970s didn’t have CGI or other modern effects to scare us silly.

They unnerved us all the same, in part, by their uniquely creepy soundtracks and penchant for atypical acting. That’s a kind way of saying they boasted indifferent, sometimes amateurish performances.

All of the above apply to ”Zombie,’ the 1979 Italian import sure to grab attention again this Halloween season thanks to its Oct. 24 Blu-ray release. The film, considered an unofficial sequel to 1978’s ‘Dawn of the Dead,’ earned its classic status with one of the strangest sequences in any zombie film. How many times do the undead wrestle tiger sharks?

(more…)

With the second season of AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ returning this week, I’d like to recommend a different kind of zombie movie. The 2008 film ‘Pontypool’ is more of a psychological thriller akin to Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ than a pure zombie feature. And if you love zombies, talk radio or smart horror films, this one’s for you.

THERE BE SPOILERS BELOW. . . and braaaaaains!

Based on the Tony Burgess novel ‘Pontypool Changes Everything’ and inspired by Orson Welles’s radio broadcast of ‘The War of the Worlds,’ ‘Pontypool’ combines two modern crazes – talk radio and zombies. The film centers around Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), a shock jock who lost his job in the big city for pushing things a little too far.

Mazzy has a new job in the small town of Pontypool, Ontario, where he and his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) clash over the best way to run his broadcasts. As they argue their way through his first broadcast, they start getting reports of a riot at a local doctor’s office. The nature of the riot is unclear as the rioters seem to be shouting gibberish about the disappearance of Honey the cat. Soon, the reports get more ominous until the radio broadcasters themselves come under attack.

‘Pontypool’ differs from other zombie movies because it disdains what has become the standard undead formula. Almost without exception, the films involve a small group of people trapped by zombies forced to shoot their way to safety. These films invariably turn into gross-out fests and shooting galleries almost from the opening scene. ‘Pontypool’ doesn’t. You don’t even see a zombie for a long time, and you never see a gun. Instead, you watch Mazzy and his staff of two (Sydney and Laurel Ann) struggle to make sense of what is going on based on the sketchy reports they are getting. And it is gripping! (more…)

Prequels usually mean studios can hire a younger, more demographically friendly cast to extend a popular franchise. Fans, in turn, get to see how a beloved story began. But audiences need something else – a credible reason to turn back the clock. That’s where the otherwise perfunctory prequel ‘The Thing’ comes up short.

The new ‘Thing,’ which takes places days before the events in John Carpenter’s 1982 classic of the same name, merely replicates that film’s tactics with less panache.

‘The Thing’ churns out the kind of slick special effects Carpenter would have killed for at the time. But the 1982 model teased out the story’s paranoia with crude but effective tools. The new ‘Thing’ feels like an artificial attempt at bringing a monster franchise back from the dead.

(more…)

Director Lucky McKee’s ‘The Woman’ would be an overt but timely critique of patriarchal societies had it hit theaters a few decades ago.

Seeing it today with its grim look at the male-dominated family unit is an bewildering experience. And that’s before we meet the feral young woman at the heart of this unorthodox shocker.

McKee, whose underrated film ‘Red’ covered far more traditional turf, is throwing so much on the screen it’s hard to know what to assess first. But the narrative proves sluggish and cold, and even after processing his critiques, it’s hard not to want him just to get to the Grand Guignol finale already. However, when he does, even veteran horror fans will wince in shock.

Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers) runs a reputable law office and has a beautiful wife (Angela Bettis of McKee’s ‘May’ fame) and three children. But all is not well with this Cleaver-esque clan. Daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter) looks ashen as she sits in class each day, silently hoping the teachers won’t call on her. Son Brian (Zach Rand) is just downright creepy, a cruel lad who can sit idly by while a girl is tormented by his peers.

The family’s odd dynamic is rocked when their father finds and captures an uncommunicative young woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) roaming the woods. “We need to civilize her,” he tells them. And with one look at this poor soul, we’re forced to agree. (more…)

Run for your lives! It’s October, the unofficial horror movie month! Horror is consistently one of the most popular genres in film, with even middling movies guaranteed to make money. Why? Because audiences want to feel emotion from their entertainment, and no emotion is easier to evoke than fear.

Fear comes in many forms, everything from being startled to deep psychological terror. Few movies reach that final level, but when they do they leave a scar on our culture. With that in mind, let’s talk about the twenty most significant horror films. These aren’t necessarily the best or the most scary or even my favorites, but when you die . . .  these will be on the test.

Father Merrin had come to save Regan from Satan’s fluorescent lightbulbs.

1. Night of the Living Dead (1968): The importance of this film cannot be overstated. This film brought horror movies to adult audiences. Before ‘Dead,’ horror was costumed monsters aimed at kids. The film also kick-started the zombie craze which continues unabated today in film and within the Democratic party, and it established all the conventions for the zombie subgenre. “Yes we can . . . yes we can.”

(more…)

Horror movie audiences think they would react with far more cunning than most movie victims. Why, if that were me, I’d grab the nearest sharp object and slice and dice my way to freedom.

Take that, Freddy Krueger.

It’s one reason ‘Kidnapped’ packs such a visceral impact – at first. The Spanish import, which screened at the Mile High Horror Film Festival Oct. 8 but will be available Nov. 29 on DVD,  uses a naked sense of reality to bring us up close to a homeowner’s worst nightmare – the home invasion.

The victims here aren’t heroic or even remotely competent in their own defense. It’s a miracle they survive the film’s first few moments given their boneheaded attempts to save themselves.

(more…)

Writer/director Tom Six may think he’s outdone himself with the second installment of his horror franchise ‘The Human Centipede.’

All he’s really accomplished with ‘The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence]‘ is prove his chorus of critics right. Yes, the new film is the grossest movie you’ll see this or possibly any other year. But it’s also irredeemably dull, and that’s the most offensive part of a movie genetically engineered to make us sick.

Meet Martin (Lawrence R. Harvey). He’s a short, lumpy parking garage drone obsessed with the film “The Human Centipede.” But this meta twist isn’t about a horror geek’s predilection for pain. Martin wants to out-do the mad surgeon from the film and connect 12 poor souls into one, long human centipede.

For those who lacked the fortitude to watch the first film, the mad Dr. Heiter (Deiter Laser) fused three people together in a way that can’t be described in a family-friendly manner.

(more…)

Alfred Hitchcock filmed the 1948 suspense yarn “Rope” to look as if the bulk of the action was captured in a single take.

At least he tried to pull off that feat. Technology handcuffed him, so he ended up using a few tricks to create that illusion.

The new Uruguayan horror film “The Silent House” (“La Casa Muda”) attempts a similar stunt but with far more finesse. You’ll be hard pressed to catch where director Gustavo Hernandez cheats, if he does at all, in capturing this haunted house yarn with one 90-odd minute take. The film’s bigger concern is one shared by today’s found footage horror films like “Apollo 18″ and “Paranormal Activity.” This “House” has little room for character development. It’s far more invested in making the simple act of ascending a stair case a knuckle-clenching affair.

(more…)

The scariest part of the new thriller “The Haunting in Connecticut” comes during the opening credits.

“Based on the true story,” we’re told, and it’s hard not to giggle.

That’s not the kind of scary the film’s producers were gunning for. But it’s a good fright for horror fans hoping to trade their hard earned cash for some goosebumps. Sure enough, “Connecticut” can’t deliver on the scares, but at least it’s not as monumentally silly as the “true story” warning portends.

Horror movies can live or die in the casting. The recent “Last House on the Left” remake shouldn’t have been so effective, but all the key roles were fleshed out with alacrity. Same goes for “Connecticut,” which gives the unsung Virginia Madsen a rare lead role. She plays Sara, the mother of a cancer-stricken teen named Matt (Kyle Gallner). She moves the family to a wheezy old rental house that’s only a few miles from the boy’s hospital. (more…)