The Apparition embodies everything that is wrong with modern horror movies. There's no getting around the fact that the cast is unlikable, and the movie just isn't scary in the least. I almost want to call the the runtime out as a lie, because somehow a one-hour-and-twenty-two-minute minute movie felt like double that. Someone on Twitter told me they fell asleep after 10 minutes, and not only do I believe them, but I fully support their subconscious decision to tune this garbage out. Ashley Greene plays Kelly, a vet in training (or something), and if I never see her in another movie again, it would be cause for celebration. She's the definition of the "attractive" lead with no acting ability and one who doesn't seem capable of nuance; she's either her normal self or totally scared. Having recently watched Lovely Molly , which boasts an extremely talented and believable actress, the difference couldn't be any clearer. I'l...

Nowadays, there are about eight million movies about exorcisms, and The Possession has the distinct privilege of not being the worst one from 2012. That honor goes to The Devil Inside , which is just awful. The Possession , on the other hand, isn't too bad, even if it doesn't deliver too many scares. The characters propel it to be a little bit more than the sum of its parts, so for a Monday night Redbox rental, I was entertained. Okay, this thing should have been subtitled The Jewish Exorcist , because that's what it is. It's about a little girl, Emily ( Natasha Calis ), who finds a mysterious box at a yard sale, and once she opens it, she's slowly taken over by a malevolent demon. It takes a lot of cues from The Exorcist , but somehow the filmmakers forgot to add the atmosphere and intensity of the 1973 classic. There are some effective scenes, but overall, I couldn't help but feel like the director, Ole Bornedal , was playing it safe to ...

I really wanted to like Orphan. Horror movies about demented children can sometimes get a pass on the creepy kid factor alone. Other times, such as this one, that pass gets revoked and lit on fire as a warning for future audiences to run far, far away. Isabelle Fuhrman does a great job playing Esther, a 9-year-old psychopath, but almost nothing else in the story even passes the smell test. The cast, including Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard, should have been able to carry this film, but the script decided to veto that notion right out of the gate. It’s about a pretty well-off couple with two children looking to adopt a third. Several years ago, Kate (Farmiga) lost a pregnancy, and she and her husband, John (Sarsgaard), have been debating adoption ever since. Well, I guess all that ponderous thought amounted to meeting Esther once, shooting the shit about her paintings, and signing up without much else to go off of. That’s really the process they went through. On top of that, one of ...

Evan Kelly had better keep making horror movies, because if his debut, The Corridor, is any indication, he has the ability to invest me in characters with a very simple premise. The Corridor is about a group of guys who gather at a remote cabin in the woods to rekindle old friendships. One of them, Tyler, has recently gone through a very traumatic family event where he injured a couple from the group, and the friends’ bonding weekend is supposed to get him back into the swing of things as well as rebuild everyone else’s trust around him. As you can probably guess, things don’t go quite as planned. While out in the woods, Tyler stumbles into some kind of translucent wall of energy that causes machinery to malfunction and even makes his nose bleed. Soon enough, he brings the rest of the gang to check it out, and what begins as an exciting discovery eventually degrades into a full-on nightmare. The energy wall soon encases the group inside it, and weird things start happening. For examp...

I've watched Van Helsing three times now, and while I keep finding things to like here and there, it just doesn't come together as a whole. I really, really wanted to like it more than I do. I'm a fan of Stephen Sommers, and I see what he was trying to do. He wanted to make one big homage to the classic Universal monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.). That's a noble sentiment, but when ambition outstretches the material, it's time to re-evaluate. Sadly, the changes that I think needed to happen never materialized, and we're left with this mess of a monster movie gone wrong. Van Helsing's biggest mistake is how much ground it tries to cover in terms of combining all these different elements from separate stories. The basic plot centers around Dracula using Dr. Frankenstein and his monster to figure out how to create and sustain life. Dracula and his three brides have tried - and failed - to make their offspring viable, but nature just wasn't hav...