“A troubled young woman is convicted of petty felonies and forced to withstand house arrest in the home of her estranged mother, blank slate of a stepfather, and a bunch of evil spirits who make creepy noises…”

Yeah, Housebound probably sounds like a mash-up of two or three clunkers you’d probably rent from Redbox and end up hating. Something about terms like “troubled woman,” “house arrest,” “estranged mother,” and “evil spirits” can make a movie sound like a dry and predictable affair.

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As lazy as this might sound, movies like Dead Snow 2 are particularly easy to review, and the reasons why should be pretty simple: same writer / director, pretty much the same crew, it’s got the same tone, the same style, and the same sense of humour, but given that this is a Part 2, we of course need a few new characters, some “extra”-creative carnage, and something particularly explosive. It’s not exactly brain surgery to make a follow-up to a silly zombie movie that lots of people enjoyed, provided you bring back all the key ingredients — and throw a few new toys into the mix.

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It’s often pretty interesting when a smart male filmmaker tells a horror story that’s about women. Directors like Eric England (Contracted), Paul Solet (Grace), or Lucky McKee (May, The Woman, etc.) But wouldn’t it be a cool switch to see a horror story about a man that was written and directed by a woman? I say hell yes it would.

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Most horror films offer normalcy that is invaded by something truly scary – or at least that’s how the formula works most often. But leave it to an astute genre guy like Lucky McKee (May, The Woods) to deviate from even the most basic of established genre formula and deliver a ferociously strange new horror film. This flick doesn’t attack normalcy with terror; it introduces one style of horror into a film that already has a second horror film on the back burner. The Woman is, more or less, two horror flicks in one, and they’re both pretty damn cool.

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The recent resurrection of the historical Hammer Films studio was, of course, cause for much celebration among horror fans around the world. The British production company built a name for itself in horror in the 1960s and it’s been great to have them back. (You don’t have to bother with The Resident, but Hammer productions Wake Wood, Let Me In, and The Woman in Black are all worthwhile horror films.) The company’s latest offering is, at best, a mixed bag. The Quiet Ones aims to combine an effectively creepy story set in 1974 with a bunch of “found footage” footage that serves no real purpose.

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There’s more than enough doom, gloom, and moody atmosphere in the creaky but engaging maritime thriller Cargo (2006) to help one forgive its more familiar components, and even at its weaker moments it offers a great pair of performances that manage to keep the ship afloat.

Yes, that was a very terrible pun. My apologies.

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If you’re familiar with the work of Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono, you already know what to expect from Cold Fish: something entirely unpredictable. The film will not disappoint. A strange, savage, and altogether fascinating slow-burn thriller about a domesticated schlub who gets pushed around by his nasty daughter, his licentious wife, and his latest business partner, Cold Fish feels sort of like Eli Roth directed Fargo in Japan. But perhaps that’s selling Sono’s film short; it’s also sort of an epic character study that begins quietly and uneventfully that offers strangely engaging twists every third scene.

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