Director: Patrick Brice
Year released: 2014
THE CHARGE: He's a creep. He's a weirdo. What the hell is he doing here?
THE EVIDENCE: Josef is dying. He advertises on Craiglist for someone to film his last days, and to impart wisdom to a young son who will grow up without ever getting to know his father. Aaron answers the ad and it doesn't take long before he gets the sense that there's something... off about Josef. But hey, a job's a job, right? Even if it's the last job Aaron might ever take...
Director: Steven Goldmann
Year released: 2008
THE CHARGE: Offering a double-wide dose of delightful dread.
THE EVIDENCE: In case you haven't noticed by now, I watch a lot of horror flicks. My wife is kind enough to sit through most of them with me. And when we popped the tantalizingly titled Trailer Park of Terror into my DVD player, we did so with the lowest of expectations. With a title like that, how could we expect anything but a laughable and ultimately forgettable b-movie? So imagine my surprise when, about a half hour into it, I turned to my wife and asked, “Is it me or does this movie actually NOT suck?” She answered, “It’s not just you. This really is GOOD!”
Director: Richard Hiltzik
Year released: 2008
THE CHARGE: Sleepwalking through the worst case of sequelitis in many moons.
THE EVIDENCE: The original Sleepaway Camp introduced audiences in 1983 to teenage gender-confused serial killer Angela. It's considered a controversial classic for two reasons: 1) many of the campers who swear like sailors on shore leave, including some of the killer's victims, are played by actors actually under the age of 18 and 2) it features the most bizarre final frame of any movie in the history of film-making.
Director: Rick Jacobson
Year released: 2009
THE CHARGE: Not being the biography of WWE's Stephanie McMahon. (That's a pro wrestling joke. You see, she likes to slap people a lot and... oh, never mind.)
THE EVIDENCE: If you ever watched women’s professional wrestling and thought “this would be a lot better with some blood and some lesbian tongue wrasslin’”, then stop whatever you're doing - and if you really think along those lines, I don't think I want to know what you're doing - and watch Bitch Slap immediately!
Directors: Katsuyuki Motohiro & Naoyoshi Shiotani
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Not being bad, just being drawn that way.
THE EVIDENCE: I'm throwing a little bit of a change-up into the blog today, passing judgement on a recently released anime film. Don't worry. There are no Pokemon, Digimon, Dragonballs or Ben-Wa balls to be found here. In fact, today's movie is a poitical thriller with a heavy sci-fi influence, a few horror elements and an occasional burst of splatterific gore for color. So let's dive in and see what Psycho-Pass: The Movie is all about.
Director: Marc Fratto
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Kidnapping. But is it really a crime if the guy you kidnap is the Antichrist?
THE EVIDENCE: Amazon Prime has become a breeding ground for horror. From A-list titles to zero-budget exploitation flicks, it's all there. And with probably ten times the number of titles as Netflix, it's become my go-to for checking out movies that are under the radar. Hell Fire is one of those titles, capturing my attention with its titillating cover shot of a bound man looking between the legs of a scantily-clad gun wielding woman. I went in with high hopes and low expectations... and was completely blown away.
Director: Michael & Peter Spierig
Year released: 2003
THE CHARGE: Bringing Australians back from the dead. ZOMBIE ZOMBIE ZOMBIE, OI OI OI!
THE EVIDENCE: Meteorites carrying an alien virus smash into a Australian village, killing the townsfolk and then turning them into zombies who crave human flesh. (Has there ever been a zombie who didn’t?) A small group of survivors takes refuge in a bomb shelter but, realizing there are almost no supplies to sustain them, try to figure out how to get past the zombie hordes and get out of town. The task proves to be far more difficult than they expected, but it’s not because of the zombies...
Directors: A whole bunch of them
Year released: 2016
THE CHARGE: Encouraging cinematic ADHD by hopping onto the anthology bandwagon.
THE EVIDENCE: Let's get this out of the way: I don't care much for anthology films. Most of them are lazy endeavors held together by the loosest of threads. They're generally the refuge for directors who have ideas but neither the budget nor the expertise to develop them into full length features. But the success of anthologies like the V/H/S and ABCs of Death movies have ensured that we'll be accosted by these short film collections for some time to come. Holidays is one the most recent additions to the genre and, like almost all anthologies, offers stories of varying quality.
Director: Can Evrenol
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Serving up 31 frosty flavors... of TERROR.
THE EVIDENCE: Foreign horror films can make for interesting viewing. Sometimes it reveals universal themes that are frightening regardless of your nationality or background, like the extreme horror of the French films Martyrs and Inside. Sometimes it reveals unique motifs to specific to the culture of the film's origin, like the dark humor of the Israeli film Rabies or the socio-economic motives behind the violence in the Japanese film Dream Home. Baskin, filmed in Turkey, falls between those two ends of the spectrum, giving what seems to be a very local flavor to universally nightmarish concepts.
Director: Michael Steves
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Being the only horror movie I know of that's named after dingleberries.
THE EVIDENCE: Peanut butter and chocolate. Beer and pretzels. Jennifer Lopez and Judge Hammer. They're all examples of things that go great together. Clinger wants to check if the same applies to to teen Disney comedies and graphic horror, and the results are pretty much what you'd expect.
Director: Roger Corman
Year released: 1962
THE CHARGE: You got Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent Price and Roger Corman and can't come up with a better title than that?
THE EVIDENCE: Tales of Terror is one of several collaborations between Vincent Price and director Roger Corman to bring the works of Edgar Allan Poe to the big screen. This one’s a little different from their other films in that it doesn’t focus on one story. Rather, it’s an anthology that presents three Poe tales: Morella, The Black Cat and The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Price appears in all three and provides a voice-over introduction to each of the stories as well.
Director: Colm McCarthy
Year released: 2010
THE CHARGE: Appropriation of Irish folklore to create a mash-up of Twilight, Beauty and the Beast, and a Lucky Charms advert.
THE EVIDENCE: I know what you're thinking and I'll get this out of the way right off the bat: Outcast does not feature Andre 3000 anywhere in the movie. So those of you hoping for a few rollicking choruses of "Hey Ya" will have to look elsewhere. I know, I was disappointed too.
Director: Chad Ferrin
Year released: 2006
THE CHARGE: Hiding brightly colored painted eggs... of DEATH.
THE EVIDENCE: Today, Film Verdicts continues its recent foray into the world of holiday horror. There have been plenty of horror movies centered around holidays: Halloween, Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine... heck, there have been no less than two horror films centered around Mother’s Day. But to my knowledge, no one has tackled a fright flick that takes place on Easter (unless you count Mel Gibson’s religious splatter flick The Passion of the Christ). It’s a bit surprising, considering the holiday’s major theme of resurrection of the dead. But Easter hasn’t quite turned the corner from a religious holiday to a secular one and the thought of a gorefest centered around a holy day is still considered taboo to some.
