A young woman is tricked into returning to his estranged family in Nova Scotia in Hailey Rose. A decade ago, Hailey (Em Haine) left her home in Nova Scotia after her mother Olga (Kari Matchett) blamed Hailey for the sudden death of her father Roger (Billy MacLellan). One day, Hailey receives a frantic call from …
psychotronic film
This review was originally published as part of my coverage of the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival In a world without death, a detective tries to solve a murder committed by a terrorist group in Restore Point. In 1948 Prague, the population is able to be restored from death by digital back-ups stored by the Institute …
The Jigsaw killer seeks vengeance against those running a fraudulent cancer clinic in Mexico in Saw X. John Kramer (Tobin Bell), aka the notorious Jigsaw killer, is given at most a year to live from his brain cancer. One day, John comes across fellow cancer patient Henry Kessler (Michael Beach) and sees that he is …
A drunken applejack salesman has to rebuild his fortune by becoming the world’s greatest fur trapper in Hundreds of Beavers. Jack Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) is an applejack salesman who finds his business destroyed by invading swarms of beavers. Left freezing in the wilderness, Jack has to build himself back up and catch various …
In a world without death, a detective tries to solve a murder committed by a terrorist group in Restore Point. In 1948 Prague, the population is able to be restored from death by digital back-ups stored by the Institute of Restoration run by Rohan (Karel Dobrý). Emma Trochinowska (Andrea Mohylová) is a detective investigating the …
A woman searching for her parents gets more than she bargained for in The Long Night. Having grown up in foster care with no idea where she’s come from, Grace (Scout Taylor-Compton) gets a lead about where she can find her birth parents. Grace heads off with her boyfriend Jack (Nolan Gerard Funk) to an …
The popular video game series receives a rebooted adaptation with Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) has returned to the near-isolated town of Raccoon City to try to get help from her brother Chris (Robbie Amell) exposing the experiments of the Umbrella Corporation, headed by William Birkin (Neal McDonough). Chris shrugs …
The popular fighting video games receive a new film adaptation in Mortal Kombat. Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is a past-his-prime MMA fighter, who learns from Major Jax Briggs (Mehcad Brooks) that the dragon-shaped birthmark on his chest makes him chosen to participate in an ancient tournament called Mortal Kombat. Pursued by Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), sent …
A retiring hitman finds himself hunted by his younger clone in Gemini Man. Henry Brogan (Will Smith) is an ageing government assassin, who has become disillusioned with killing and decides to retire. After retiring, Henry learns that the target of his final job was innocent. This knowledge makes Henry a target of the agency he …
A kindergarten class on a field trip has to survive a sudden zombie outbreak in Little Monsters. After being dumped by his girlfriend for not wanting kids, Dave (Alexander England) goes to live with his sister Tess (Kat Stewart) and five-year-old nephew Felix (Diesel La Torraca). After dropping Felix off at his kindergarten class, Dave …
Neil Marshall reboots the adventures of the monster hunting hellspawn in Hellboy. Hellboy (David Harbour) is a hellspawn raised by Trevor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane) of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. While on assignment in England, Hellboy comes across a plan by the pig-like fairy Gruagach (Stephen Graham) to resurrect The Blood Queen Nimue …
The wife of a famous author silently suffers after he wins a Nobel prize in The Wife. Joan Castleman (Glenn Close) is a woman married to acclaimed author Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), who receives a call one morning saying that he has won the Nobel prize in literature. Initially Joan seems ecstatic about her husband’s accomplishment, …
Two young women journey across zombie-infested Germany in Endzeit – Ever After. Following a plague leaving the world overrun by zombies, the two German towns of Weimar and Jena are the last holdouts of the human population. Vivi (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) and Eva (Maja Lehrer) are two very different women from Weimar, who involuntarily team up …
A high school student who sees dead people finds himself recruited to a group of spirit-hunting warriors in Bleach. Ichigo Kurosaki (Sota Fukushi) is a teenager, who has had the power to see ghosts around him since he was a kid. One night, he encounters Rukia (Hana Sugisaki), who is a member of a group of warriors …
A man who’s slowly going invisible tries to save his daughter in The Unseen. Bob Langmore (Aden Young) is an ex hockey player, who is now a struggling mill worker in a quiet town. Bob abandoned his family 8 years earlier, partly due to the fact that he has a condition that is slowly turning him …
Twelve New York City police officers join a class action lawsuit against corruption in the NYPD in Crime + Punishment. Within the NYPD, a number of Black and Latino officers are encouraged by their superiors to perform illegal summons and arrest quotas, with those refusing to do so facing repercussions. A number of these officers, …
A group of security guards struggle to survive an attack by vampires (and clowns) in The Night Watchmen. A young rookie (Max Gray Wilbur) reports for his first day of duty as a night watchman at the Baltimore Gazette. Not bother to ask his name, the team of Ken (Ken Arnold), Jiggetts (Kevin Jiggetts), and …
A Swiss farm girl is curious to learn the truth about a local legend in The Girl Down Loch Änzi. Laura is a 12 year old girl, who lives with her family of a charcoal burners on a farm in the Swiss mountains. Laura has becomes obsessed with the local legend of the Änziloch Maiden, who …
The battle against The Tall Man comes to its conclusion in Phantasm: RaVager. Alone in the desert, Reggie (Reggie Bannister) follows the trail of The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), in search for his best friend Mike (A. Michael Baldwin). However, along the way Reggie finds himself hopping between various realities, whether it be him in …
Two men dream of building a time machine in How to Build a Time Machine. It was in 1895 when H.G. Wells wrote his novel The Time Machine, which inspired many on the possibilities of time travel. Having gone to see the 1960 film adaptation of The Time Machine as a kid, filmmaker and animator Rob …
Bruce McDonald makes his return to the horror genre with the twisted Halloween fantasy Hellions. One Halloween, in the small town of Waterford, Dora Vogel (Chloe Rose) finds out that she is pregnant. Unsure how to respond to this news, Dora stays home as her mother and young brother goes trick-or-treating. However, Dora soon finds herself tormented …
It’s Yakuza against a zombie horde in Deadman Inferno. Former Yakuza boss Hiroya Munakata (Shô Aikawa) is a shell of his former self after surviving an assassination attempt ten years prior. Munakata’s friend and blood brother Takashi (Shingo Tsurumi) is released from prison and is ready to be reunited with his daughter Hinata (Maika Yamamoto), though he …
A man finds love with a woman with a monstrous secret in Spring. Following the death of his mother, Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) goes into a personal tailspin, which includes getting into a bar fight that costs him his job. Looking for a change of scenery, Even travels to Italy and gets a job working …
A man films updates on his life over a 35 year period in Sam Klemke’s Time Machine. In 1977, a teenaged Sam Klemke decides that he is going to film an annual progress report on his life. As the years go by, Klemke progressively becomes more heavy and bearded, as he settles into a career …
From Chris Alexander comes this spiritual sequel to his 2012 debut Blood For Irina. A vampiric force of nature named Irina (Shauna Henry) wonders the countryside claiming victims in her path, with Irina’s destiny apparently being tied to a pregnant widow (Carrie Gemmell). On the trail of Irina’s destruction is a murderous preacher (Nivek Ogre). …
From cult independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Broken Flowers) comes the brooding vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a centuries-old vampire, who currently lives a reclusive and depressed life in Detroit as a rock musician, with his only contact with the outside world being a human named Ian (Anton Yelchin), …
Celebrity apes are the subject of the observational documentary See No Evil. Cheeta is the last of the apes to play the sidekick of Tarzan and is celebrating his birthday; Kanzi communicates with his trainer via a touchscreen computer and is learning to bond with his son Teco; Knuckles was the was subject a number …
Hong Kong pop star, turned director, Juno Mak directs that a film that is meant as a homage to the 1985 vampire comedy Mr. Vampire, even casting that film’s star Chin Siu-Ho in the lead role. In Rigor Mortis, Chin plays an aging actor, who is mourning the loss of his wife and son and …
The Disappeared tells the story of six shipwreck survivors stranded on two life boats in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. The crew consists of Captain Gerald (Brian Downey), Mannie (Billy Campbell), Gib (Ryan Doucette), Pete (Shawn Doyle), Merv (Gary Levert), and Dickie (Neil Matheson). Gerald estimates that they are 600 miles from shore and …
Continuing the ongoing trend of fairytale adaptations, Jack the Giant Slayer expands the classic story of Jack and the Beanstalk into an epic adventure for the whole family. Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: First Class) plays Jack, a farmboy enamoured with the legends of giants his father would read him. One day, while in town to sell …
Two strangers named Freddy and Ana meet each other as they travel alone on bus heading back to their home town of Pearl. Even though they are apparently strangers, by coincidence they find out that they happen to live close by to each other on the same street. After some mild flirting between the two, …
My favourite scene of the stop motion film ParaNorman happens within the first five minutes. The opening scene of the film is a full-on homage to grindhouse films of the 1970s, complete with an old-fashioned “Feature Presentation” title card, grainy and scratched images, and a synthesized score. I definitely have to say that I liked the zombie …
I suppose that I shall start by saying that, even though the film is called The Raven (and features plenty of ravens within the film), it has nothing at all to do with Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem (if you want an adaptation, watch the 1963 Vincent Price film). I suppose the title is meant as …
The directorial duo of Neveldine/Taylor had a somewhat entertaining start to their career with the original Crank. However, in every film they made since (Crank 2, Gamer, and now Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance), they have steadily become my least favourite filmmakers. Through their direction, Neveldine/Taylor took the sequel to 2007’s Ghost Rider (a film …
I know I said in my last post that I was going to wait until the film’s official opening on Friday to post my thoughts on Paranormal Activity 3, but I feel like I want to talk about the film now. The film is an origin story of sorts and tells the story of the …
I never ever watched The Green Hornet TV series (with the exception of the character crossing over to the Batman series, which was by the same producers) and I only really knew the basics of the character. In fact, it was only recently that I found out that the character began as a 1930s radio …
Based on what I heard Angels & Demons had the better story of Dan Brown’s two Robert Langton novels. I have never read either of the novels, so I have no context of comparison, but the seemed to be a more traditional thriller than the elaborate puzzle that made up The Da Vinci Code. I’d …
When a film has the Disney label, you know that it is meant for families, so even though this film is more action-packed than the original Escape to Witch Mountain, it is still a fun family film. There isn’t really much else that I can say about the film. So, I will just end by …
This film probably had two stigmas going against it long before any trailers were released: one was the stigma against remakes and the other was the stigma against Keanu Reeves. I will first address the remake issue, since it is the most poignant. No matter what word is used to describe them (remake, reboot, reimagining, …
If you recall my Movies of the Moment column for this month, I put this film as one of the films I was not interested in seeing this month. However, this was because I thought I wasn’t going to be able to see it in 3D. When I found out this was not the case, …
Beowulf was an interesting experiment: take the motion-capture technology used in making The Polar Express and use it to make a more serious epic. I won’t go into the debate about whether or not this film really needed to be made using motion-capture CGI instead of live action, since I’m actually a little tired of …
Ghost Rider is definitely one the lesser known characters in the Marvel Universe. Heck, I only really recognized the villain, Mephistopheles, purely from his inclusion in an old NES Surfer Surfer game. Still, I would have to say that Ghost Rider is one of most enjoyable of the Marvel comic movies. In my opinion, it …