When is a found footage horror film not a found footage horror film? When none of the characters scream at the person holding the camera.

That’s pretty much exactly what the new horror flick Chernobyl Diaries is: a rather typical tale of six young idiots who visit somewhere they REALLY shouldn’t, and briefly live to regret it. The only factors that separate this movie from so many of a similar ilk is that A) this actually isn’t a found footage movie, just a horror flick with some really sketchy cinematography, and B) the location our dummies are visiting … is the infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Yes, the one that went kaboom back in 1986. Whether or not this is a tacky location for a stalk ‘n’ stab horror flick is a question for people more socially-concerned than myself; I just want to know if we have a good horror flick here. More

It’s all right there in the title, so don’t walk into a film called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter with a chip on your shoulder. You may like, love or detest the film, but by purchasing a ticket for a film with that title, you officially recuse yourself from being a snarky wise-ass. You buy the ticket, and you’ve already bought the concept, and no amount of clever eye-rollings will make you seem cooler for knocking a broad, strange, amusing, and admirably straight-faced action/horror flick entitled Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This is hardly any sort of masterpiece, but it is precisely what movies like Van Helsing, Jonah Hex, and The Mummy 3 attempted and failed: an effects-laden, tongue-in-cheek, period-piece monster movie that aims to bring some modernized butt-kicking back to an era we generally take pretty seriously: the American Civil War. More

An unhappy young woman with a tragic past travels back to her old family home following the death of her mother, only to discover that … wait, let me go take a nap.
Surely we’ve seen a dozen or so horror films that could boast that same sketchy premise, and here is yet another one. Nicholas McCarthy’s The Pact does, to be fair, manage to deliver a decent combination of supernatural and practical horrors in its final act, and the lead actress is pretty excellent throughout, but on the whole the film has serious pacing issues, a distinct lack of energy, and very little in the way of distinctness or originality. More

It all started with a film called Jaws. And it was good. From that 1975 classic we leap over several truly terrible rip-off movies and focus on Piranha (1978), which was Roger Corman, Joe Dante, and John Sayles ripping off Jaws, with a hearty dose of their own clever gimmickry and amusing ideas. That one led to Piranha 2: The Spawning (1981), which was the directorial debut of a certain James Cameron. Then there was a new version in 1995 that starred William Katt, and was made for cable TV, which only the nerdliest of underwater horror fans have ever seen — and then a 2010 version that got rid of the horror, ramped up the blood & bikinis angle, and showed up boasting all sorts of silly 3-D doo-hickeys. And now we have Piranha 3DD, which, by my reckoning, is a sequel to a remake of a ripoff. But still, it does have piranha in it. More

Here’s how to create a true stinker, in Hollywood terms:

A. Purchase the rights to a creaky old “cult favorite,” one that means virtually nothing to modern audiences (aside from a vaguely familiar title), but still maintains a loyal fan following. (These are the people who will do all your free advertising soon.) More

“Subversive” is a great thing to be, especially if you make movies. Smart, subversive filmmakers can take something beloved yet painfully familiar, examine it from all possible sides, and then construct something that pays homage and pokes fun at the same time. Airplane! subverted disaster movies; Hot Fuzz did it for buddy cop movies; and now, Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have delivered a brilliant subversion of horror cliches, stereotypes, and conventions. The title is The Cabin in the Woods, it’s a metric ton of fun, and get this: it’s just clever enough to make you reconsider how you look at horror flicks.

Note: this particular movie has lots of surprises to offer. Some very big, many that are so quick you might miss them. This review will spoil none of those. More

How many tight places can movie characters become stuck in? We’ve seen phone booths, ski lifts, and (of course) coffins in recent years, but here comes a trap for the modern age: the isolated, indoor ATM vestibule. I know I’ve seen a few of these things: obscure little islands of light that are sometimes tucked into the back of a mall parking lot. At the wrong time of night, a lonely ATM machine can be a pretty creepy place. So why not an all-in-one night horror flick in which three clueless idiots are trapped inside a glass box by a hood-wearing psycho killer? More

The indie king of the slow-burn horror flick is back, and this time Ti West is bringing along an unexpected dose of wit, warmth, and weirdly effective character-based comedy. In many ways, West’s The Innkeepers is a lot like his previous features (The Roost, Trigger Man, and The House of the Devil), in that you know it’s a horror / thriller flick going in, but the director has a grand old time while building the tension, laying down the foundations of the (eventual) pay-offs, developing his odd characters in colorful ways, and (this time around) presenting long and amusing volleys of dialogue between the film’s two lead characters. More