Bloodline Killer (2024)

Bloodline Killer plays like the sequel to a movie nobody made. At the same time, it’s a blatant rip-off of two movies that have been made and remade ad nauseam (Halloween and Scream). The filmmakers probably figured that a general sense of deja vu would be just as good as a backstory.  I held out some...

Crimes of the Future (2022)

Crimes of the Future is a near-perfect recipe for vintage David Cronenberg. Not a remake of his 1970 movie of the same name, but a revisiting — complete with nods to Dead Ringers, eXistenZ, and The Fly — of recurrent obsessions: body horror (which the protagonists regard as "body art," but then isn’t real-life body...

Night Teeth (2021)

Night Teeth’s vampires follow three rules: 1) never reveal their existence to humans; 2) never feed on anyone without their permission; and 3) never enter Boyle Heights without authorization. The first rule makes sense, the second is a surefire way to starve, and the third suggests that these vampires might as well become zombies, as feeding on brains is...

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

The original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre predated the original Halloween by four years, but now it’s the former’s turn to follow in the latter's footsteps, resulting in a case of the blind leading the blind.   This new Texas Chainsaw Massacre (hereinafter TCM) takes its cues from the recent Halloween and Halloween Kills, even bringing...

Miranda Veil (2020)

Miranda Veil is a wonderfully schizophrenic film — a morbidly twisted love story, a peyotized road movie, and a deranged black comedy that defies traditional storytelling conventions and offers an original, surprising cinematic experience. There is madness here, but it has a method.    Writer/director Levin Garbisch questions political correctness without resorting to gratuitous shock value. That...

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

Late Night with the Devil is not just bullshit; it’s Penn & Teller: Bullshit-worthy bullshit. Most movies are bad because they lack quality; this one is bad because it lacks scruples and moral fiber. It is as spurious as the supernatural claims it supports, and as devious (and thank God, as sloppy) as the con...

Monster Mash (2024)

Any movie called Monster Mash is obviously not meant to be taken or to take itself seriously; still, this is not nearly as much fun as a movie called Monster Mash ought to be, mainly because it doesn’t know whether it wants to be homage or parody.  Dr. Frankenstein (Michael Madsen) sends his monster, Boris...

The Haunting of Morella (1990)

This movie claims to be “Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunting of Morella.” That is, in one word, horseshit; Poe never wrote anything with that title any more than he wrote the epigraph that opens the film: “And the ghostly winds whispered but one sound upon my tortured ears—Morella...evermore.”  The actual quote, “The winds of the...

Island of the Dolls (2023)

Island of the Dolls is “based” on the “true story” (uh-huh) of Adrian (Howard J. Davey), who in the mid-1950s found the drowned body of a little girl named Josie. Adrian buried her, whereupon “he was haunted by her spirit.” Why? Who knows? Maybe he accidentally buried her alive.   Adrian “attempted to appease [Josie] with...