Evil Dead (2013) 8/10

Starring : Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore
Director : Fede Alvarez
Running Time : 92 mins

A group of youngsters take a trip to a remote cabin in the woods, hoping to help Mia (Levy), who has recently started her journey of recovery from drug addiction. When one of them, Eric (Pucci), discovers the Book of the Dead in the house he stupidly reads some of the incantations out loud, releasing a terrible evil that starts to take over each of them one by one in an attempt to get a foot hold into the human world.

Fans of the horror elements of the original movies will love what’s been done with this reboot of the franchise. This actually manages to be far creepier than the original, which tended to come across as unintentionally campy and fun when it was trying to be genuinely frightening. If you like your horror films visceral and cringe-worthy, then this will definitely be up your street. And the rumours of Army Of Darkness 2 being made after this – it’s been 21 years, so I can wait another three to see which ending it will follow on from.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Evil Dead

Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare (2010) 7/10

Starring : Frank Welker, Mindy Cohn, Matthew Lillard, Grey DeLisle
Director : Ethan Spaulding
Running Time : 70 mins

In the fifteenth of the direct to video Scooby-Doo series, Fred Jones (Welker) invites his friends to spend some time at his childhood summer camp, Camp Little Moose, where Fred is volunteering as a councillor. But when the gang hear of a camp legend, the Woodsman, coming to life and scaring the campers, they decide to investigate what’s going on to prevent the camp from being permanently closed down.

This is one of those rare Scooby-Doo movies where the clues are actually really well placed and subtle so you can join in on the fun of solving the mystery without feeling like everything has been spelt out to you. Fans of the Scooby gang will enjoy seeing Fred take centre stage for a change, though there are still plenty of laughs from Shaggy and Scooby.

You’ll like this if you liked : Scooby-Doo And The Loch Ness Monster

Fun Size (2012) 7/10

Starring : Victoria Justice, Thomas Mann, Jane Levy, Chelsea Handler, Thomas McDonell, Osric Chau, Thomas Middleditch, Jackson Nicoll
Director : Josh Schwartz
Running Time : 87 mins

Wren’s (Justice) plans to go to the big Halloween party are scuppered when her mother Joy (Handler) forces her to babysit her little brother Albert (Nicoll). Things take a greater turn for the worse when Albert goes missing, and Wren and her friends April (Levy), Roosevelt (Mann) and Peng (Chau) help her search with disastrous results.

Although probably not the most imaginative movie ever made, this is just a kids film and as such it delivers enough humour and slapstick to keep most kids entertained. The kid that plays Albert is awesome, and a film just about him would have been just as fun (although incredibly similar to Baby’s Day Out). The only issue I have is that this came out pretty soon after The Sitter and, aside from the target audience, has a lot of similar aspects.

You’ll like this if you liked : Adventures In Babysitting

Wrong Turn 4 : Bloody Beginnings (2011) 5/10

Starring : Jenny Pudavick, Tenika Davis, Kaitlyn Wong, Terra Vnesa, Ali Tataryn, Samantha Kendrick, Victor Zinck Jr, Dean Armstrong
Director : Declan O’Brien
Running Time : 94 mins

A group of teens who have decided to go snowmobiling find themselves lost in a terrible snow storm. They eventually find shelter in the Glenville Sanitorium, an abandoned hospital – or so they think. It isn’t long before they find themselves under attack from the former patients who had killed the staff thirty years earlier and have developed something of a taste for it.

This movie is supposed to act as a prequel to the prior three movies, but all it did was spoil them slightly. I liked the idea of them always living in the woods, but this makes out that they only moved to the cabin a matter of months before the first film. It also makes no sense that no-one went to investigate what had happened at the hospital for the past thirty years. This instalment is beyond the realms of suspending disbelief, and the characters are so one dimensional it’s ridiculous. My advice – don’t watch this.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Hills Have Eyes

Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) 6/10

Starring : Alexandra Daddario, Tremaine “Trey Songz” Neverson, Scott Eastwood, Tania Raymonde, Dan Yeager
Director : John Luessenhop
Running Time : 92 mins

Heather Miller (Daddario) inherits a Texas estate from a grandparent she didn’t know she had. Upon investigation she discovers that she was adopted and that the grandmother in question is her real one that she never knew about. She travels down with a group of friends to check out the place, which turns out to be a huge mansion in the middle of nowhere, but little do they realise that one of Heather’s murderous relatives is lurking in the cellar.

There are so many mistakes in this movie, like Heather should be pushing forty and the burn mark on her chest should be so much bigger as she received it as a baby, but if you just switch off your mind and watch Daddario bounce around as she tries to escape from Leatherface then you might feel like you’re watching one of the classic bad horror films of the 80s.

You’ll like this if you liked : Wrong Turn

Hellraiser : Hellworld (2005) 5/10

Starring : Lance Henriksen, Katheryn Winnick, Christopher Jacot, Khary Payton, Doug Bradley
Director : Rick Bota
Running Time : 91 mins

Following the death of one of their friends – who was obsessed with an online game called Hellworld – five teens receive invitations from the game to attend an exclusive party in a remote mansion. They arrive to find an orgiastic atmosphere, but behind the scenes they discover that they may in fact be in hell.

Yet another horror movie that had the mythos of Hellraiser copied and pasted into it, which forces all of the movies to have a bluff ending. Throughout this movie I got more and more cross as Pinhead and friends started killing people who had nothing to do with the puzzlebox, only to have the whole movie be a complete cop out as it comes to a close. Fans of the original series will be annoyed by this, but it might go down reasonably with those less familiar with the original.

You’ll like this if you liked : Stay Alive

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) 6/10

Starring : Katie Featherston, Kathryn Newton, Sprague Grayden, Stephen Dunham
Director : Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman
Running Time : 97 mins

Five years after the events of the Paranormal Activity 2, teenager Alex Nelson (Newton) and her family start to experience strange goings on when they’re new neighbours move into the neighbourhood and they have to take in their son when the mother is rushed to hospital. Weird shapes and figures start showing up on their video cameras, and

The makers of this series of movies are pretty much treading the same ground with this fourth instalment. The twist with this one is that it’s a younger group that are terrorised by the entity, and that the creepy kid next door is kidnapped baby Hunter from the previous films. Fans of the series might find this a bit tired, and the shock effects are pretty much the same with things there to make you jump and lots of confused people watching videos and asking “What was that?”.

You’ll like this if you liked : Paranormal Activity 3

Lake Mungo (2008) 7/10

Starring : Talia Zucker, Rosie Traynor, David Pledger, Martin Sharpe
Director : Joel Anderson
Running Time : 88 mins

When sixteen year old Alice Palmer (Zucker) dies in a drowning accident, her family start to believe that her spirit is haunting them when her image starts showing up in photographs taken after her death. When it is revealed that her brother Matthew (Sharpe) had faked the videos and photographs, the family are lead to a far more sinister video and a recording on a cell phone that may explain the reasons behind Alice’s suicide.

This starts off like a more documentary style version of Paranormal Activity soon proves itself to be far more human and far more character driven. This could have been so much better if it hadn’t have turned back to the supernatural explanation for why events occurred. The fact that she was exploited in a sex tape would have been a far better explanation than that she saw her own bloated ghost!

You’ll like this if you liked : The Fourth Kind

Dark Skies (2013) 7/10

Starring : Keri Russell, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, Kadan Rockett
Director : Scott Stewart
Running Time : 94 mins

When strange occurrences start happening around their house, including their food being mysteriously stacked to ceiling height in the kitchen and flocks of birds killing themselves by flinging themselves at their house, Lacy Barrett (Russell) and her husband Daniel (Hamilton) start to worry for their children’s safety. When Lacy sees a figure in their son’s room, they decide to install security cameras to find out what’s going on, they discover that all the members of the family have been having blackouts and that a sinister alien force may be out to get them.

Fans of Paranormal Activity and The Fourth Kind will find this movie runs over some very familiar territory, but at least it doesn’t claim to be found footage. The pacing is slow and the scenarios are over the top, but this is perfect for people who like ridiculous alien invasion movies and the twist ending might come as a surprise to even the most jaded amongst you.

You’ll like this if you liked : Sinister

Cabin Fever 2 : Spring Fever (2009) 7/10

Starring : Rider Strong, Noah Segan, Alexi Wasser, Rusty Kelley, Marc Senter, Giuseppe Andrews
Director : Ti West
Running Time : 87 mins

When the water supply for popular local bottled drink Down Home Water is infected by a flesh-eating virus, the local high school prom finds itself the prime location of the spreading disease when the water is used in the punch. Only Deputy Winston Olsen (Andrews) realises what is happening when he discovers the remains of an infected teen in the woods after it has been hit by a bus, and he soon realises that there may be a cover-up for the infection!

This silly comedy-horror is made in the worst possible taste, but that doesn’t stop it being funny. Fans of recent teen-comedy horrors will feel right at home watching this, although it does go a little further than most with its gross out disgustingness as the movie progresses, and the last half an hour pretty much has no humour whatsoever, except in the scenes with Deputy Olsen.

You’ll like this if you liked : Poultrygeist : Night Of The Chicken Dead

The Collection (2012) 7/10

Starring : Josh Stewart, Emma Fitzpatrick, Christopher McDonald, Lee Tergesen
Director : Marcus Dunstan
Running Time : 82 mins

After he survives being held hostage by a serial killer known as The Collector, a man named Arkin (Stewart)finds himself kidnapped and forced by a group of mercenaries lead by the mysterious Lucello (Tergesen) to go back into the warehouse hideout of the killer in order to rescue a young girl named Elena (Fitzpatrick).

This is a pretty decent thriller from he makers of Saw. It starts out ridiculously over the top, but the pacing soon slows down which makes for a much more interesting film. Fans of slasher films will get a kick out of this horror flick, which is definitely not for the feint hearted.

You’ll like this if you liked : Saw III

Return To House On Haunted Hill (2007) 7/10

Starring : Amanda Rhigetti, Cerina Vincent, Erik Palladino, Tom Riley, Andrew-Lee Potts, Jeffrey Combs
Director : Victor Garcia
Running Time : 82 mins

Ariel Wolfe (Rhigetti), whose sister apparently committed suicide after escaping a terrible night at the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, has it made it her mission to find out what really happened to her. She soon discovers that her sister was in fact murdered by dodgy art dealer Desmond Niles (Palladino), who forces her to go back to the institute to locate a valuable artefact with a number of his business associates but they soon discover – along with some other people who have wormed their way into the building – that the place is haunted by its former residents.

In spite of a ridiculously convoluted plotline and some obvious coincidences, this was actually pretty good. Fans of the original will be surprised that this is on a par with the 1999 classic, and it’s a shame it didn’t get a cinema release as many will assume that this is terrible.

You’ll like this if you liked : Thir13en Ghosts

GI Joe : Retaliation (2013) 7/10

Starring : DJ Cotrona, Byung-hun Lee, Adrianne Palicki, Ray Park, Jonathan Price, Ray Stevenson, Channing Tatum, Bruce Willis, Dwayne Johnson
Director : Jon M Chu
Running Time : 123 mins

When the GI Joe team is framed for terrorist crimes, they are disbanded by the American government under the President’s orders, but when they hear that Cobra have been employed by the President as their replacement, they start to suspect that something might be up, and after some investigations Lady Jaye (Palicki) comes to the conclusion that who they think is the President is in fact an imposter.

This was actually better than The Rise Of Cobra, though I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe it’s because there was a bit more humour in this, which really helped, and also there was a slightly better plot, which always helps. The majority of the cast from the original are missing in this instalment, but it makes things less sure for viewers, who can think that any of their favourite characters might drop dead at any moment.

You’ll like this if you liked : Transformers : Dark Of The Moon

Cats & Dogs : The Revenge Of Kitty Galore (2010) 6/10

Starring : James Marsden, Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate, Katt Williams, Bette Midler, Neil Patrick Harris, Sean Hayes
Director : Brad Peyton
Running Time : 83 mins

Rogue MEOWS agent Kitty Galore (Midler) has decided to go it alone and not only bring down her canine foes but also destroy her former feline allies. As a result, cats and dogs are left with no choice than to join forces in the battle against a new greater evil, and agents Diggs (Marsden) and Catherine (Applegate) – dog and cat respectively – are paired together to take the evil Kitty.

Fans of the original movie may feel that this simply treads over old waters with a new villain who’s very similar to Mr Tinkles from the original (who makes a guest appearance). The jokes are basically stolen in large from other popular movies, and not even in a clever way where you can call it an homage. My advice – unless you are under ten, don’t bother with this.

You’ll like this if you liked : G-Force

The ABCs Of Death (2012) 6/10

Directors : Nacho Vigalondo, Adrian Garcia Bogliano, Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, Marcel Sarmiento, Angela Bettis, Noboru Iguchi, Andrew Traucki, Thomas Cappelen Malling, Jorge Michel Grau, Yudai Yamaguchi, Anders Morgenthaler, Timo Tjahjanto, Ti West, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Helene Cattet, Simon Rumley, Adam Wingard, Srdjan Spasojevic, Jake West, Lee Hardcastle, Ben Wheatley, Kaare Andrews, Jon Schnepp, Xavier Gens, Jason Eisener, Yoshihiro Nishimura
Running Time : 130 mins

This movie brings us a series of 26 short stories focussing on the subject of death, directed by a variety of directors from around the world.

This is an interesting anthology that starts off strong but then starts to get a little boring in the middle. Some of the standout sections include D Is For Dogfight, a story with a twist in which a man is forced to fight a dog to the death, K Is For Klutz, an animated segment where a women tries to get rid of an embarrassing turd, C Is For Cycle which is interesting but could have been better, X Is For XXL in which a fat women has enough of being ridiculed about her weight, N Is For Nuptials where a man’s infidelity is revealed by his new pet bird, and B Is For Bigfoot which really should have been longer. Saying that, some of the worst segments were I Is For Ingrown, which confused me because the name didn’t feel connected to the content, S Is For Speed which just reminded me of Bitch Slap, P Is For Pressure which felt like the ending was tagged on to get a P word, and F Is For Fart which was just stupid. Because these are so hit and miss, my overall ranking for this movie has dropped to a six, though some segments are easily 8s or 9s.

You’ll like this if you liked : Compilation Movies

The Rebound (2009) 7/10

Starring : Catherine Zeta-Jones, Justin Bartha, Art Garfunkel, Joanna Gleason
Director : Bart Freundlich
Running Time : 96 mins

When Sandy (Zeta-Jones) discovers that her husband is cheating on her, she moves out of their suburban house and into the city where she rents an apartment above a coffee shop. There she meets barista Aram Finklestein (Bartha), whose French wife only married him to get a green card, and she hires him to be a nanny for her kids so she can go out and get a job, and it isn’t long before they start to date, but neither one is sure if what they are feeling for each other is real or if they are just ion the rebound.

This actually wasn’t too bad of a rom-com. The main characters were likeable and you really feel yourself routing for them towards the end. Comedy-wise I’d say the self-defence class scene was the stand-out moment in the movie, and it’s nice to see Zeta-Jones doing slapstick comedy – something she isn’t usually associated with. This is a nice movie for couples, so sit down with a loved one and enjoy this little gem.

You’ll like this if you liked : Love And Other Drugs

The Last Stand (2013) 6/10

Starring : Arnold Schwarzenegger, Forest Whitaker, Johnny Knoxville, Rodrigo Santoro, Jaimie Alexander, Luis Guzman, Eduardo Noriega, Peter Stormare, Zach Gilford, Genesis Rodriguez
Director : Jee-woon Kim
Running Time : 108 mins

Small town sheriff Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger) leads a peaceful life in his border town of Sommerton Junction, following his partial retirement from the LAPD, but when he is given news that escaped drug kingpin Gabriel Cortez (Santoro) is heading for his town in the hopes of crossing the border into Mexico, so Owens is forced to bring together his inexperienced police force in order to stop the criminal.

It’s a little disappointing that Arnie chose this movie to make his action lead comeback. The plot is pretty basic and the jokes are a little lame, plus Arnie is looking really old. Fans of his movies might be disappointed that there aren’t really any action scenes with him until close to the end, but they’ll love seeing him on screen again even if he’s looking a little ragged.

You’ll like this if you liked : Walking Tall

Our Idiot Brother (2011) 7/10

Starring : Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer, Rashida Jones, Steve Coogan
Director : Jesse Peretz
Running Time : 90 mins

Following his arrest for selling drugs to a uniformed cop, Ned (Rudd) is forced to move in with his mother. Eventually he starts getting involved in the lives of his three sisters, Miranda (Banks), Natalie (Deschanel) and Liz (Mortimer), gradually managing to interfere with all of their lives and causing them grief ranging from ruining their marriages to wrecking their job opportunities.

This was a pretty funny vehicle for Paul Rudd and the ensemble cast of characters involved. He manages throughout to remain both idiotic yet likeable, and the gradual progression of his sisters from hating his stupidity to growing to love him again is enjoyable to watch. This is well worth watching, especially if you’re a Rudd fan.

You’ll like this if you liked : Jeff, Who Lives At Home

Compliance (2012) 8/10

Starring : Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy, Bill Camp
Director : Craig Zobel
Running Time : 90 mins

Fast food restaurant manager Sandra (Dowd) receives a phone call from the police claiming that Becky (Walker), one of her employees, has stolen money from a customer. As she follows instructions to help the police over the phone, she finds herself being forced to do more and more unreasonable things in order to prove Becky’s guilt.

This is a pretty disturbing movie, all the more so as it was based on true events. The prank caller that tries to encourage otherwise reasonable people into abusing the victim of the prank manages to manoeuvre his targets in such an obviously manipulative way it’s hard to understand how anyone could have fallen for his routine. Personally I’d have told him to send a squad car round and hung up on him.

You’ll like this if you liked : Havoc