By Ray Pride

There’s a weave of wicked play in “The Cabin in the Woods” that makes it tough to describe without giving away the game. Although the most recent commercials do indicate some of what’s afoot, they’re more tease than giveaway. The studio’s synopsis reads: “Five friends go to a remote cabin in the woods. Bad things happen.”

Let’s see… Drew Goddard’s directorial debut, co-written with longtime colleague Joss Whedon, is about what’s under what’s in the basement and what goes on under that? Talking to the extremely affable and extremely tall Goddard recently, I suggested this comedy-horror-puzzle could honorably earn a three-word review from someone who didn’t want to give away too many particulars. “What. Th’. Fuck.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

“Does this sound fucking PG-13 to you?”Joseph Kahn’s megameta nihilisploitation genre maelstrom, “Detention,” gets an A+ if only for its endearing ADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD. Suspended from the armature of high-school movie memes, horror and otherwise, Kahn and co-writer Mark Palermo flaunt the entrails of movies from “Back to the Future” to “Breakfast Club,” from “Prom Night” to “Donnie Darko,” nurturing an intense kinship to “Heathers,” and lifting from “Freaky Friday,” all careening at tender velocity. Read the rest of this entry »

In “The Devil Inside,” William Brent Bell’s mock-documentary, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) travels to Rome with filmmaker Michael (Ionut Grama) to investigate an attempted exorcism twenty years prior that left Isabella’s mother (Suzan Crowley) committed in a mental hospital outside Vatican City. After an unsettling reunion leaves her unsure that her mother’s affliction is psychological, she appeals to devout David (Evan Helmuth) and cynical Ben (Simon Quarterman)—both of whom are ordained priests as well as exorcists—for help. When Isabella and Michael accompany the two priests to an exorcism to learn about possession and determine the truth about her mother, they fall into a world of the possessed Read the rest of this entry »

Gremlins

By Garin Pirnia

What better way to ignore the six-week long brouhaha called The Holidays than with slasher horror films that take place during the holidays? Instead of sitting through the usual TBS twenty-four-hour “A Christmas Story” marathon or humoring your parents by watching the oldie-but-goodie “March of the Wooden Soldiers,” check out one of these great offerings available on Netflix and YouTube. It’s going to be okay. It really is.

“Gremlins” (1984)
“Gremlins” is usually filed under “family films,” but with gremlins being microwaved, blenderized and that horrific scene (“that’s when I noticed the smell”) where Phoebe Cates regales Gizmo and Billy with how her father broke his neck coming down a chimney trying to surprise them as Santa Claus, it’s pretty obvious that this is a horror film lurking in Mogwai clothes. Read the rest of this entry »

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson

RECOMMENDED

Antiseptic yet endearingly lurid, shiny as a polished stone, Bill Condon’s first of two “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” movies is a couple degrees cooler than camp but at least warmer than the grave. The Oscar-winning writer-director (for the script of “Gods and Monsters”) approaches the material with more tongue-in-cheek, largely in line readings, than earlier directors confronting the sparkly vampires and doggie werewolf boys who surround its hard-crushing teen-girl protagonist Bella. It’s efficient filmmaking shot straight to the heart of its expectant target audience. Kristen Stewart’s nasal murmur, smaller and smaller beside Robert Pattinson, makes for a toothy tiny bride in brown-eyed contacts, blushing, barefoot. Eat, prey, turn? Marry, fuck, thrill? “You have to accept what is,” a character says, meaningfully meaningless. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Horror-comedy’s hard, but Eli Craig’s daffy, near-delirious “Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil,” which debuted at Sundance and SXSW in 2010, makes the spurting, spirited redneck slasher movie look easy. The good guys live in the hills; it’s those terrible college students, an unaware “car full of morons” out on a lark who are going to step into all the wrong things. These guys aren’t bad: Call these surprisingly smart locals “Straw Puppies.”  Read the rest of this entry »

In “Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence),” Tom Six reprises his 2009 horror film by adding “2″ to the title while multiplying the victims by a factor of four. Instead of sequencing three naked people on their knees with pieholes stitched to assholes, this time there are twelve people stapled together. Why? To model a “human centipede” with a pass-through tract: ingestion- digestion-excretion-ingestion… repeat ad nauseam. Read the rest of this entry »