If you have disdain for the Scream films, there’s nothing in Scream 4 that will change your mind.

If you haven’t seen 4 and are on the fence, the new Meta version of the 15 year-old franchise is the best of its sequels as it’s a marked improvement over 2000’s Scream 3 and slightly better than 1997’s Scream 2.

Scream 4 is also a huge step up from director Wes Craven’s previous project, last fall’s 3D (the ‘D’ stands for ‘Dull’ and ‘Dumb-as-fuck’) failure My Soul to Take.

Is the movie worth the 11-year wait? Sure, why not. If the moronic Saw sequels can be bowel-evacuated every Halloween with straight-to-DVD production values, then there’s no reason you can’t have 4 movies in 3/4ths of a generation that actually make some money. Especially one as nostalgically entertaining as this. Is it perfect? Far from it, but you can only see Insidious so many times, and unless your kids are going to force you to see Rio, there’s nothing else worth watching.

You know the drill. A Scream movie opens. People answer their phone. People are glad their phones are much smaller than when the Scream movies first began. People are not so glad when they get murdered by a person in a long black robe that miraculously never trips. Opening title cards.

It’s been a little over a decade since Sydney Prescott’s (Neve Campbell returning in her signature role and winning me a bet that she’s still alive) killed her boyfriend…her boyfriend’s mother…the film geek that was helping her boyfriend’s mother…and her half-brother. An only slightly lower body count than the Broadway production of Spider-Man.

Sydney’s returning to Woodsboro for the final stop of her book tour. She’s promoting her book (“Out of the Darkness”), giving away Party of 5 DVDs, and doing her best to keep Jennifer Love Hewitt from hassling her about a job.

Syd’s happy to see the rest of the Woodsboro gang. The ones that aren’t dead.

Inept Deputy Riley (David Arquette) is now inept Sherriff Riley. He still hasn’t figured out how to dislodge his dead sister Tatum (Rose McGowan) from the garage door. Odd since she’s been dusty bones since ’96. This doesn’t bode well…

Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) is now Gale Riley, no longer a tabloid reporter but beginning to scratch that itch again now that Sydney’s back. Even she senses that Sydney’s return will bring with her a whole lotta corpses.

Rounding out the cast are a bunch of young actors who were single-digits when the first Scream was released. Jill (Emma Roberts, embarrassed that her Aunt Julia was in Eat Pray Love) is Sydney’s niece. Kirby (Hayden Panettiere, cutting her hair short in order to keep pre-teens from whacking it) is Jill’s horror aficionado friend and remembers a time when Heroes was actually good. Trevor (Nico Tortorella) is/was Jill’s boyfriend and harbors an eerie resemblance to Billy Loomis. Olivia (Marielle Jaffe) is Jill and Kirby’s friend and serves no other purpose other than to…you can probably guess. The Randy Substitutes/Film Geeks are Robbie (Erik Eklund) and Charlie (Rory Culkin) and their purpose is to tell the audience how this generation’s Scream differs from the last (“You practically have to be gay”).

Not much development is needed for these characters because by the time the end credits roll, you can be sure that most of them will be dead. And yes, that may include Dewey, Gale, and especially Sydney.

Because there’s a new Ghostface killer on the loose, slashing and hacking away on the anniversary of the Woodsboro murders. And he/she/they won’t stop until…102 minutes later when the killer(s) are revealed in typical Scream fashion (although a huge difference between 4 and the previous installments is now it’s a LOT easier to have the ending ruined by some dick on the internet). You can be reasonably certain that whoever the killer(s) are, they won’t have much of a film career post-Scream because their filmography tends to dissipate once they take off the mask. Unless you’re a huge Timothy Olyphant fan

What works with Scream 4-

1) Of the returning cast, Courtney Cox makes the deepest impression as a now-obsolete Gale Weathers/Riley. Sure, she’s been out of the game for a while in a business that prizes youth above everything, but there’s no reason Gale can’t fight and bite her way back as Cox looks like she’s having more fun than either Campbell or Arquette.

2) Best pre-credits sequence since Drew Barrymore picked up the phone while making Jiffy Pop. Complete with Kirsten Bell delivering the best line of her career and a nice little rip on the Saw series.

3) Adam Brody and Anthony Anderson have wonderful chemistry as the comic-relief cops designated to look out for Sydney. They’re onscreen for the perfect amount of time, but you wish they were on more…although Bruce Willis probably wouldn’t approve. Destined for DVD outtake greatness.

4) Remember Jamie Kennedy’s “Rules for Surviving a horror movie” Scene from the original Scream? Scream 4’s version of it is just a knife-point better. Writer Kevin Williamson’s best scene since anything from the first movie.

What doesn’t work-

1) While nostalgia can be great and all, there’s nothing in 4 that doesn’t follow the Scream formula. The reveals, while not necessarily predictable, aren’t all that surprising. But for a 4th entry of a horror franchise, you could do a whole lot worse (See: Pretty much every 4th movie).

2) SPOILER The “alternate ending”. For those of you who’ve seen it, wouldn’t it have been much cooler, and genuinely shocking, to have ended it in the kitchen?

3) Makes the same mistake as Scream 3 by keeping Sydney in the background for a great deal of the running time. Sure, you have give time to the younger cast, but isn’t Sydney still the main character? You’d never know it for most of the last 2 movies.

Overall. If you see one horror movie this April, see Insidious. Then if you feel like it, see Scream 4, because you’ll have a better time than you expect and I think we’re all for giving Neve Campbell something to do.

The Lamberts are you average American family in a above-average American horror film.

There’s-

Josh (Hard Candy’s Patrick Wilson)- He’s a high school teacher and you learn two times within 30 minutes that there aren’t any photographs of him as a kid. Hmmmmm…

Renai (28 Weeks Later’s Rose Byrne)- She’s raising 3 kids (but only one of them matters) and taking some time off to work on her singer/songwriter career. Judging from her Browneye song in Get Him to the Greek, she’s on the right track. One of her pet peeves is telling everyone her name is pronounced like Renee even though it’s spelled so funky.

Dalton (Ty Simpkins)- He’s the kid on the poster, so you know he’s more important than the other 2 kids

Cali- She’s the baby of the family, and the only reason to have her character is to have the telegraphed scare involving her baby monitor. Once you have that, then she can be easily dispatched.

Foster- (Andrew Astor) This kid seems unnecessary, and only seems to be around to say the line “Dalton walks around at night”. Once he says that, you can leave him in the closet so he doesn’t disturb the rest of his family with his middle-child whining.

The film opens with the Lamberts moving into their new home. We see that Renai has some hideous Monkey Pajamas. Her important son Dalton happens to have the same kind of Pajamas. This qualifies as abuse in some states. In 99% of PG-13 horror the sight of these pajamas would be the scariest part of the movie. For Insidious, it’s decidedly not.

Dalton can’t seem to sleep. Renai says this is just a normal part of moving into a new home and the beginning of a horror movie.

Renai can’t seem to find some of the packed boxes she needs. Either their contents are being strewn about by her kids (something her children vehemently deny), or they’ve simply disappeared. She goes up into her new attic and is immediately put on edge because she thinks she sees…things.

Later, Dalton tries to be helpful and goes into the attic to help his mother because he didn’t see the scene five minutes ago when his mom was terrified. He’s not afraid because he has his Superman cape on. Because that worked out well for Brandon Routh. And Dean Cain. And Christopher Reeve.

The attic light is much too high for him to reach. Good thing there’s this handy dandy ladder for him to climb. Too bad there’s a rickety rung on it. Dalton steps on the rung, slips off the ladder and is out for the count.

His parents race to the attic to find Dalton splayed out unconscious. They’re upset because Dalton was hurt and not that superfluous middle child. The good news being that Renai finally found that box she was looking for. Too bad she doesn’t remember ever putting it there. Hmmmm…

They take him to the hospital. Dalton is in a coma…but it really isn’t a coma because his brain functions are normal and there’s nothing technically wrong with his body. The doctors have never seen anything like this except in horror movies. Josh and Renai wonder out loud what they’re going to do. The doctor answers that they’re going to be raped financially as the bills mount up and the hospital does unnecessary tests simply to pad the bill because this is America and you can do things like that and get away with it because there ain’t shit you could do for recourse. The Lamberts hopes their son gets better…and wish they lived in Canada.

A title card flashes 3 MONTHS LATER.

Dalton is back at home and attached to some kind of life support behemoth of a machine. It looks expensive, but you needn’t worry as the Lamberts are planning to sell the middle kid, Foster or Fred or Frank or whatever the hell his name was, in order to keep Dalton alive.

Renai wonders why the Universe is trying to break her.

Josh deliberately works late in order to avoid having to deal with things as long as possible.

While cleaning the house, Renai hears something very…unusual. She goes to baby Cali’s room and sees some Paranormal Activity going on. What is that face in the window? And whose hand does this bloody handprint belong to?

Renai’s either going mad or the house is haunted. Or both.

Either way, she convinces Josh that they should move. Again. So they do. But since we’re barely crossing over the half-hour mark of the movie we know that things have just begun, and that it may not be the Universe that is trying to break Renai and her family. But something more insidio…I meant, sinister.

Because as the poster’s tagline states “It’s not the House that’s Haunted”, as there’s something wrong with Esther, I meant, Dalton.

What works with Insidious-

1) The film uses minimum gore but has some of the creepiest, most unsettling images of this year or even last year made even more disconcerting by the fact that you never really get a good look at them…until you do. You’d expect the PG-13 tag to be the kiss of death as it is for most horror movies, but the Saw (the original, not the shitty sequels) team of writer Leigh Whannell and director James Wan manage to straddle the R line while never crossing over using genuine suspense to make the seasoned horror watcher over-anticipate the scare, before effectively blindsiding him/her.

2) A sequence involving Lin Shaye (2001 Maniacs) wearing what looks to be a Holocaust-type gas mask is one of the most harrowing of the entire season. You keep on expecting it to go over-the-top into absurdity, but it never does. I did notice the theater was at its most silent during this sequence. Probably everybody holding their breath.

3) Writer Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson bring unexpected and welcome comic relief as a couple of paranormal investigators. You keep thinking these characters would take you out of the movie as their attempts at laughs would be out of place, but they’re kept in check and for the most part fit within the framework of the story (“A thousand words is worth a thousand words”).

4) SPOILER- I don’t know what else to call it but…Darth Maul. If you’ve seen the movie, you know who/what I mean. Freaky.

What doesn’t work-

1) Barbara Hershey shows up as Josh’s mother halfway into the movie and does nothing to enliven an underwritten character. Maybe because Black Swan was released on DVD last week and Hershey is so good in it that I’m even bringing this up.

Overall. After 2007’s Double D Duds, the insipid Dead Silence and the shallow revenge thriller Death Sentence, Insidious director James Wan is back in the win column with the season’s best horror movie, throwing down a gauntlet that Scream 4 has to live up to two weeks from now. Those of you thinking this is another Saw couldn’t be more wrong…or more surprised…or more pleased. Maybe Wan and Whannell should only work together as it’s worked very well for them so far…

Don’t let the “From the Director of Twilight” tag dissuade you. Red Riding Hood is nowhere near as ________ (insert your own synonym for boring). It’s a marginally entertaining diversion that should satisfy its core audience (teenage girls) while not making the people they drag along (everyone else) wonder what they’re missing during the Battle: Los Angeles: Skyline 2 (click here to win Skyline on DVD) screening (you’re not missing much). Just to compare, for those of you who actually paid money to see last month’s atrocious tween-oriented I Am Number 4, Hood (directed by Catherine “Thirteen” Hardwicke and written by David Johnson) is a marked step up.

We’re on a movie set that’s supposed to look like a medieval village. The set/village is called Daggerhorn. It’s your typical movie village, except for one problem: When the moon goes full someone is killed by a werewolf, yet no one tries to move away. The villagers/extras try to appease the beast by sacrificing some of their livestock (poor piggy), which works for the time being. We meet a very young girl named Valerie, and it appears she has a crush on the local woodcutter’s son named Peter. It’s a very early part of the movie so everything’s shot in beatific light. There’s some apparent moral dilemma when Valerie contemplates killing a bunny and then we…

Cut to the present.

Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is a lot older and looks like that actress from Mean Girls that holds her breasts to predict the weather. Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) has grown up to become a woodcutter and gives Valerie looks like he’d do something to her involving wood.

It’s been almost a generation since the wolf has killed. Meaning someone will get slaughtered within 5 minutes after hearing that helpful little factoid.

Despite the smoldering looks they give each other, Val and Pete will not be getting married because she’s been arranged to be betrothed to…Henry (Max Irons). It doesn’t matter who Henry is. What does matter is that Henry is rich and Peter is poor.

Valerie doesn’t want to marry Henry.

Peter doesn’t want Valerie to marry Henry, nor does he himself want to marry Henry no matter how rich he is.

They propose to run away together, elope on the horses 20 feet away from them whose sole purpose is strictly for elopement. Valerie reasons they’ll have half a day’s ride before anyone figures out they’re gone. It’s such a perfect plan that nothing will stop it, not even the wolf because we already know it hasn’t killed in 20 years and it would be just too convenient if it were to start killing now.

Pete and Val head to the horses until…

They hear the Wolf Bell. They only use that bell when the wolf has killed. What are the odds?

Val and Pedro race back to the village. The wolf has killed again. This time the victim is Valerie’s sister (I forgot the character name so I’ll call her Marsha). She’s killed in a very non-gruesome PG-13 way so that it almost doesn’t look like she’s dead but just resting in an awkward position with some karo syrup right in the middle of the set.

Valerie’s day is not getting any better. First she gets pimped out to Henry, then she can’t run away with Pete the woodman, and it’s all her dead sister’s fault for dying and taking all the attention. It’s always Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.

Everyone in Valerie’s family is bummed that Marsha’s dead. Valerie’s MILF (Virginia Madsen) curls her hair. Her alcoholic dad Cesaire (Twilight’s Billy Burke) grieves by drinking, though since he’s an alcoholic he’d probably be drinking regardless.

Valerie goes to Grandma’s house (Julie Christie) for some sage wisdom and counsel. Granny says the time honored adage “All Sorrows are lessened with Bread.” That sounds like inane advice as, to quote Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, “Bread makes you Fat”. Grandma does give Val a nice big red hood to make her an easier target for any bulls that might be running loose.

The men of the village propose they go to the wolf’s cave and kill it. This will not work because we’re barely 20 minutes into the movie. The Local priest Father Auguste (Lukas Haas- Holy crap, first Haas is in Inception, and now this movie. Feels like the early 90s all over again) entreats the village to wait for Father Solomon to arrive as he’s a seasoned werewolf hunter. The village ignores him because they’re required to do something really stupid before the end of the first act.

The womenfolk stay home. The menfolk grab their standard issue angry mob torches and go a-huntin’. They breach the cave. Henry’s father Adrian gets torn apart, though you don’t see anything. A nameless villager kills the wolf they believe is the werewolf and takes along its head.
We know it’s not dead because we’re barely 25 minutes into the movie.

The hunters arrive ignorantly triumphant.

Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) arrives to be a killjoy. He’s also there to kill the wolf, as he has some very important Personal History with werewolves. Through a 2 page expository monologue, Solomon posits that the werewolf probably doesn’t live in the cave, but lives among the extras and day players on the set of Daggerhorn. Yes, the beast lives with them under the guise of a human and has been for generations.

The villagers think to themselves who it could be.

The teenage villagers tweet to each other who they think it is. Stacy Dibble thinks it’s Mandy Hoberman because she’s a Bitch. Gretchen Parkinson thinks it might be Bobby Huston because he was seen at the mall with Sara Barndoot.

Nameless soon-to-be-dead Villager says they’ve already killed the wolf only 30 minutes into the movie and they’ll be having a celebration to celebrate the celebratory nature of that fact.
Father Solomon tells Soon-to-be-dead Villager to go ahead and have the party, as it’s a great setup to have a lot of people die in one centralized location.

Meanwhile, let’s have our own little checklist as to who the werewolf might be-

Valerie- Probably not, but it’s established she does have a vicious streak and enjoys eating chickens raw. But she’s telling the story from a 1st person POV, so it could definitely be her

Pete the Woodcutter- He’s not around when any of the killings take place, but it could be like Scream when he’s exonerated from suspicion in the first act and then we think it’s not him and then it turns out to be him. Definitely one to keep your eye on, because he wears predominantly black. He also carries an Ax. With a sticker that says I Heart Killing Villagers.

Grandma- Oh yeah, it’s definitely her. No doubt about it. Who else would say all that bread bullshit and use her teeth as a killing machine?

Claude the retarded Kid- You just think he’s slow…right before he rips your throat out

Jacob Black- Doesn’t wear a shirt. Licks his own balls. Attracted to emo waifs that bite their lip too much and put their hair behind their ears while crossing their arms. Not a werewolf. Not a real one anyway.

Cesaire- He’s an alcoholic, so he probably can’t get it up much less muster up the scratch to become an actual werewolf. But he might be.

Henry- He’s rich but not snooty. Seems like a nice guy and has an inordinate amount of Hair Gel he shares with the rest of the medieval village. Probably a werewolf or at least werewolf sympathetic.

What works with Red Riding Hood-

1) Like Anthony Hopkins in last year’s werewolf movie, Gary Oldman arrives and dominates every scene he’s in elevating Red Riding Hood from mediocre to just above mediocre. When you compare his performance to the rest of the cast, everyone else seems to be coasting…or realize they’re in a PG-13 Werewolf movie and don’t need to take it as seriously as Oldman does

2) Solomon’s nails- Makes you wonder how he did them. Does put polish on them to make it…that color?

3) An unintentionally funny scene involving Valerie trying to distract Peter with some “suggestive” girl on girl dancing. Something like this fails on every level when you’re saddled with the PG-13 rating (Black Swan shows you how it’s done right, as I’m sure you’ve seen downloaded over and over). The reason it’s on this section of the review is that’s it’s too entertainingly dorky to be considered bad.

What doesn’t work-

1) PG-13 + Werewolf movie that involves Killing = ???? I realize you have to draw in the Tampon-and-Training Bra set, but with an ‘R’ rating, you could force them to bring their parents, adding the price of another ticket.

2) Again, the “village” of Daggerhorn looks too much like a movie set to be anything but distracting. It does have the advantage of being the cleanest medieval village in history, complete with craft services truck, tree trimmers, key grips, and klieg lights.

Overall. A engaging enough distraction for those of you who want to get away from the real world for about a hundred minutes as the moronic Battle: LA may mirror things you’ve been seeing on the news for the past 48 hours. If your girlfriend and/or daughter are making you see this with them, don’t worry too much as you’ll have a better time than you think.

One supposes that any discussion/review of the I Spit on your Grave remake (on DVD February 8th) has to be prefaced by a mini-dissertation on the original cult classic. But looking all that up would take too long and why bother when you could just Wiki the entire thing.

The only thing I need to look up is how to spell Meir Zarchi.

Like most of you, I’ve seen the original Day of the Woman (look kids, Irony) a couple of times. The most recent being about 4 years ago and I remember thinking it was a very effective piece of exploitation. I understood why it was so shocking back then and can sorta understand the following it’s received over the years. I know there’s supposed to be all kinds of female empowerment “subtext”, but it’s kind of hard to buy “subtext” when the actual text takes about 2 sentences to summarize. If you’ve never seen the first ISOYG, you can pretty much simplify it into…

Woman gets brutally gang raped.
Woman gets her brutal revenge.

Credits Roll.

10 Word summary. You didn’t even need the adverb ‘brutally’ before gang raped because most people just assume if a gang rape is taking place it’s brutal by nature.

As opposed to gang-raped…serenely.

So what does the new century’s version of Meir Zarchi’s shocker bring to the table, courtesy of director Steven R. Monroe and screenwriter Stuart Morse?

Well, since this is the 2000s, someone has to be filming everything going on. It’s such a cliché by now that the new Scream 4 trailer makes it a point to say what a tired trope it is. And yes, one of the rapists has an old school camcorder, because when you gang rape someone you really want to have taped evidence.

There are other minor updates, but for the most part the format for the new Grave-Spit is the same.

Woman gets gang-raped…brutally.
Woman gets revenge…even brutally-er.

Something a little more in-depth? Fine.

A beautiful young woman is looking for her cabin in the sticks. Her name is Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler), a writer looking for some solitude to begin work on her new novel and the last thing she needs is to get passed around like Monty’s pipe by a bunch of rednecks. Best of luck with that, Jen.

Jen’s a little unsure of directions, so she gets a hand-drawn map to her cabin. One never can trust those hand drawn maps, especially if the guy giving it you has enough space between his teeth to fit one of Jennifer’s novels.

The map’s not dependable, and Jen needs some gas. She goes to the only service station within miles to fill up and ask for real directions.

Luckily, all three of the male service station attendants know the exact location of Jen’s cabin. Unluckily, they all look like Rapists who think Larry the Cable guy is the epitome of high-end living.

Johnny (Jeff Branson) makes a strong impression on Jennifer with his subtle manner regarding the opposite sex (“You’re running a little hot. Maybe I should check up under the hood for you”). The last time that line actually worked might have been during the time the original I Spit on Your Grave was released. Jen counters with a barb something along those lines.

Out of embarrassment, the ruddy-cheeked Johnny trips and falls and gets the crotch of his pants all wet.

Jen tries to apologize, but the damage is done. Because insecure rednecks who’ve had their manhood challenged can only act out in one way. Plus, they’ve all been drinking…

Jen eventually finds her way to her cabin and begins work on her novel. With all the solitude, she regrets not coming up to the cabin earlier. She will change her mind in about 10 minutes of screentime.

Meanwhile, Pre-Rape Jen takes the time to jog around wearing short-shorts in a forest where you can’t hear anything for miles. That might not be important later.

In a deserted building near her cabin she finds a handy-dandy tool shed filled with lots and lots of sharp metal instruments that will probably not be used for torturing rapists later. She also finds another abandoned cabin that’s just ideal for storing things like corpses and such.

Even though she’s getting some good writing done, Jen’s still a little wary as it feels like something or someone is watching her. She goes outside. After smoking a joint. Alone. In the middle of the night.

This will probably not end well.

It turns out that someone is watching her as we see a low-end camcorder’s point of view looking at her wash her clothes while she’s in her bra and panties. At least she can be secure in the fact that whatever footage is shot will not be uploaded online because it’s doubtful whoever is filming doesn’t know how to use a computer. Or could even spell ‘computer’.

Not everything is perfect in Jen’s writer haven paradise as her toilet is on the fritz. She calls for help and is serviced by the local retarded toilet repairman Matthew (Chad Lindberg). He fixes her toilet.

After Matthew leaves, Jen accidentally drops her phone in the now-working toilet. Again, this will probably not be important later.

Jen is pissed that her phone isn’t working but after hearing a knock on her door, her phone (or lack of it) will be the least of her problems.

Hey, who’s at the door? It looks like the same trio from the service station, plus one very special guest. Now’s a good a time as any to…

MEET! THE! RAPISTS!!!—

1) Johnny (Jeff Branson again)- you’ve met him earlier that day, the one with the way with words. Now we find out he’s really, really into horses…and violating isolated women.

2) Andy (Rodney Eastman)- Each one of these characters is given only ONE character trait, and Andy’s is that he plays the harmonica. He also likes raping girls with his buddies watching.

3) Stanley (Daniel Franzese)- Stan holds the camera. And is fat. I was mistaken earlier as Stanley is given 2 character traits that distinguish him from the other rapists.

And…

4) Matthew the retarded toilet repairman. It seems he’s real sweet on Jennifer and thought it’d be super swell if he brought his friends over just to show how keen he thinks she is. Actually, he’s a little reluctant about this blatant breaking and entering and may feel a little guilt for what’s about to go down, but it’s probably too late for him to do anything about it.

Jennifer runs out of the house just as the rapists are about to violently introduce themselves. Fortunately, she finds Sherriff Storch (Andrew Howard). They go back to the cabin and the rapists aren’t there. Whew!

Storch notices empty liquor bottles and joints all over the cabin floor. He begins questioning Jennifer about them and puts her on the defensive. She should be, because while the Sherriff is being really thorough about frisking her, the service station boys and the retarded toilet fixer show up.

Jen’s day does not get any better…

If you remember the original, a good portion of the second act is a protracted assault scene that will cause a percentage of viewers to walk out of the theater or turn off the DVD.

After the men are finished with her, Jennifer staggers her way to a bridge and jumps off. Sherriff wants to make sure she’s dead, but after constant attempts and a month of looking, her body isn’t found.

As we all know or can guess, the rapists didn’t try hard enough because these (Jennifer) Hills have Eyes…for vengeance.

What works with I Spit on Your Grave 2010-

1) The only moment in this movie that’s genuinely unsettling is a small one involving a phone call and a little girl’s voice. Notice it’s the only instant that really catches you off guard.

2) A (possibly) unintentional nod to Oldboy. If given the choice, you’d probably have a better time watching Oldboy again than this.

3) Best use of Lye since Fight Club.

What doesn’t work-

1) The second half of the movie veers into generic implausibility as we’re supposed to buy that a writer raped and left for dead took the time out to figure out all those creative “punishments”. I guess it’s possible if she went to the Jigsaw School of Righteous Torture in the interim. And then watched Hard Candy over and over to learn how a woman with such a slight frame could lift and maneuver men twice her size.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you’ll find yourself muttering “Yeah right” more than once.

2) In the half-decade where the words ‘Torture Porn’ are as overused and trite as 3D is becoming, there’s nothing really shocking about anything in I Spit on Your Grave Version 2. Nothing you haven’t seen on half the horror movies on your Netflix queue. Intense, at times. Surprising, not at all.

Overall. An adequate revenge fantasy that does nothing to distinguish itself from the dozens of movies like it in this era of everything and anything goes. If it didn’t have the words I Spit on Your Grave in the title it probably would have been dusted aside. But if you weren’t immediately turned off from the premise, you’ll have a decent time. And if you were, there’s no way you’d watch this anyway…

None other than Stephen King called Let Me In (on DVD February 1st) the “Best American Horror movie in the last 30 years” and his favorite movie of 2010, at least that’s what it says on the jacket of the screener, so it has to be true. That King said it, not that Let me In really is.

Keep in mind that other movies on King’s top 10 list include Takers and Jackass 3D (Jesus Bale what the fuck is wrong with him?) so you’re going to have to cut that grain of salt into many fine pieces as you try to digest that “Best of the last 30 years” hyperbole. Maybe he was too busy writing to watch more than 10 films last year.

What is true is that Let Me In is the best American horror film released in 2010. Not that that was any big achievement since 2010 was a rancid year for horror. This isn’t taking away from LMI as its greatness is due and in spite of, the odds stacked against it. Consider-

1) It’s a remake- You could name 5 or 6 remakes off the top of your head that have been released in the last 20 minutes that aren’t worth the paper your ticket is printed on or the time it takes to download it. Whenever you hear news of a remake isn’t your initial reaction just to roll your eyes, knowing the outcome will look and smell like the septic fields of a MexiCalian abortion clinic around noon in trip-digit weather (e.g. The Nightmare on Elm Street remake everyone knew was going to tongue-paint the taint and didn’t disappoint by being a useless waste of celluloid)?

2) 1B) It’s a remake of Let the Right one In- Remember in 2008 when everyone was on the Swedish original’s nuts? You recall because you were taken aback by the novelty of LTROI as well. A vampire movie that didn’t feel like one, and a movie I didn’t appreciate at first but have grown to like more and more. I didn’t read a Top 10 Horror list that didn’t have LTROI on it. We all knew a remake was coming and…See Above. Sure, LTROI dragged at times, but you accepted it because it had subtitles, and they seem to go hand in hand more often than not. You’d expect an American remake to ramp up the violence but to sacrifice the character and the tone. It did…and it didn’t.

3) Vampires, again (said in the tone in which one anticipates trips to a jury duty or the prospect of eating vegan food)- LTROI was a vampire movie with resonance at a period of time when the predominant onscreen “vampires” were mopey pussy-lashed bitches that affronted real vampires that live among us or on every other show on the CW. You say you want vampires, but you don’t want actual vampires.

When Let Me In opened in early October it Efron’d at the box office, disappearing from most of its screens after 10 days and barely clearing $13 Million during its theatrical release.

The Lesson being, don’t bother making Good/Great horror movies because no one will see them. And judging solely by 2010, it’s a lesson well learned.

At least Let Me In will be released soon so you can finally see a good horror movie shot out of 2010’s womb. There were at least 6 (a third of them had Adam Green’s name attached) and you’ve probably seen the other 5.

If you’ve seen the original, you’re more than familiar with the synopsis and Let Me In doesn’t deviate from it all that much.

If you haven’t, you’ve got a couple of weeks. One of your horror-loving friends is bound to have a copy of LTROI somewhere.

It’s New Mexico. It’s 1983. It’s bleak and snowy. Reagan is President and the clothes are awful. A gurney is being wheeled into an operating room with urgency as opposed to the usual fuck-off speed in which orderlies move patients around.

Why? Because an Old Man (Richard Jenkins, ominous and sad, listed in the credits as The Father) has gotten into a bad car accident and poured a bunch of acid on his face. Richard Jenkins was last seen in the movie version of Eat Pray Love, but this isn’t the reason he acidized his face, though we think it should be.

A police officer (Shutter Island’s Elias Koteas, listed in the credits as The Policeman) has reason to suspect Old Man some gruesome murders that have taken place. Surely burning your face with acid in order to obscure your identity couldn’t possibly prove anything, could it? That’s what Officer The Policeman is there to find out.

He won’t get the chance because Old Man decides to throw himself off the balcony and onto the freezing asphalt of the hospital parking lot. Good news: This frees up another bed. Bad News: Officer The Policeman has just lost his only lead.

Before he dropped, Old Man was nice enough to leave a note- “I’m Sorry Abby”.

A title card takes us back Two Weeks.

Owen (The Road’s Kodi Smit-McPhee) is your average weird kid. His unseen dad and his religious freak mom (a barely seen Cara Buono) are on the verge of a divorce. He eats way to much candy and likes to hold knives up to the mirror while making imaginary threats (“Are you scared, little girl?”). Needless to say he’s a loner. He’s also a voyeur that likes to spy on his neighbors. He sees a young girl (Hit Girl Chloe Grace Moretz) and what looks to be her much older father entering the apartment building. They look average except the girl isn’t wearing any shoes in snow-covered ground. That probably means nothing. Or it could mean that she’s a vicious ageless vampire and he’s her Old Man consort and has been for years and years, murdering random innocent people so she can feed.

It’s probably something more innocuous than that.

The next morning we realize that Owen isn’t exactly tearing it up at school either. He gets bullied at school because he wears 80s clothes and is just plain bizarre. Hindsight being 20/20, we know now never to pick on the peculiar white kid with the buggy eyes because he’ll probably end up shooting everybody if he gets huffy enough. Since this is back then and school shootings didn’t happen every other week, Owen gets wedgied so badly that he pisses himself. Not exactly something that’ll jack up his Q rating among the students and faculty.

Later that night Owen is alone (again) eating candy and playing with his Rubik’s Cube at his apartment complex’ playground. Except this time his new girl neighbor is there. Again, she’s not wearing shoes. He introduces himself. She says her name is Abby and sets some ground rules (“Just so you know, I can’t be your friend”). She probably heard about him wetting his pants after getting wedgied. That’s pretty fast-traveling news considering there’s no Internet.

Still, a connection has been made. One that could last for better or worse.

Because more murders will occur, and more bloodshed will take place. Plus, there is that matter of the acid all over the face…

That rhyming wasn’t intentional.

What works with Let Me In-

1) The 3 leads are uniformly great, but 2008 Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins makes an indelible performance as Old Man/The Father, actually making more of an impact than Per Ragnar in the original. They both conveyed that same amount of weary resignation at being Abby/Eli’s manservant, but there’s something a lot more sinister about American Old Man. Sure, he’s tired of constantly killing…but you can tell a large part of him still gets a sick kick out of it.

2) Writer/director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) stages one of the best movie car accidents of the new century. Forget that you’re already keyed up by what happens (“Can I get a ride?”) in the previous scene, you’ll more than likely reset the chapter to make sure you’ve taken everything in. One of those How-did-they-do-that? sequences.

3) Abby is a lot scarier than Eli when she’s hungry. Like the original, you don’t get to see a lot of the “real” Abby. But when you do…

4) Great use of Hockey stick.

5) A lot more poignant than most of the horror you’ll see, asAbby and Owen’s relationship, while heartrending, is founded in extreme dysfunction. Yes, you want them to find and keep each other, even it can only logically lead to more and more death.

What doesn’t work, and keep in mind this is only a minor hedge-

1) The subplot involving Virginia (you remember from the original- Cats!!!) is scarcely given any weight, almost as Reeves could was trying to ignore it as much as he could. But the payoff is magnificent.

Special Features include-

Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Matt Reeves- It’s very insightful, except when Reeves is clearly distracted while watching Sophie Dee movies

From the Inside: A Look at the Making of LET ME IN- I might have seen this feature, but I was watching a Sophie Dee movie with Matt Reeves

The Art of Special Effects, Crash Sequence Step-by-Step- The second best feature of the disc

Abby Pimp Slaps Edward Cullen with 9 Inches of Limp Dick- the best feature of the DVD

Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by Writer/Director Matt Reeves- Didn’t bother because was still…SEE Second Feature

Trailer Gallery, Poster & Still Gallery- Yeah, you really care

Also on DVD- See above

Overall. You’re invited to see Let Me In, because it’s the best Horror movie you’ll see in February since you probably missed it last year. Hey, Stephen King loved it, though you’ll forget he also loved Jackass and try not to hold it against him.

At short last, the inevitable sequel to last fall�s gajillion dollar grossing smash, Paranormal Activity is here, much to the delight of its producers wanting to cash in some more before the treasure teat runs dry. One couldn�t go onto any entertainment site last October without seeing an ad for Paranormal Activity or watching it reap more and more millions as the weeks went by. I seem to remember it making a bunch of Top 10 Horror lists on both the Best and Worst sides. A year removed the movie seems oddly quaint as no film could live up to the hype bestowed on it but it still manages to do something a Saw movie couldn�t in 3 craptacular sequels: Deliver a genuine fright.

No small wonder Paranormal Activity prison-raped Saw Whatever last year so that now the Saw franchise is just below the Macarena in terms of social relevance as Jigsaw�s about as hardcore as a Huxtable.

I only mention the Saw franchise because that�s what Paranormal Activity can look forward to being if it makes more sequels like the lackluster Paranormal Activity 2. If PA 2 underperforms at the box-office one wonders if they�re going to go into full desperation mode and speed-churn another sequel in 3D…like some other retread series not worth mentioning.

Shame, because for the first 3/4s of PA 2 the audience and I were genuinely hooked, jumping at all the right and predictable places that one would at a Paranormal Activity movie. Admit it, you were clenching at times when you watched the PA 1 and only after you walked out of the theater did you begin to dissect and criticize. The sequel�s almost exactly alike as you can�t accuse PA�s makers of not knowing what their audience wants.

If only it weren�t for that awful ending…

PA 2 opens a little before the events of PA 1. We�re in lovely Carlsbad, California and we�ve learned that the Rey family have just been welcomed a new baby boy to the household.

Christy, Daniel and teenage daughter Allie (actors� names were withheld in order to keep some semblance of realism but now the secrecy is probably doing the actors a favor) are all beaming because little Hunter is such a ball of joy. Since this is a horror movie we know that baby Hunter is pretty much fucked.

The Reys also have a dog named Abby. Yeah, the pooch is screwed as well.

Also along for the ride is a Hispanic Housekeeper named Martine. She spends the beginning of the film smudging the house with incense in order to �drive the evil spirits away.� She might as well strap some dynamite to her chest for as long as the minority housekeeper lasts in these types of movies. Especially ones who sense evil spirits.

But enough about the bad news that�s about to happen.

It�s the Happy Sequence before the pots start to clang. Allie has her video camera permanently welded to her arm. Christy�s sister Katie (Katie Featherston, the juggy Demon girl from the first movie) is over to help babysit (�I can be evil�). Katie�s future dead boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) is enthralled with Allie�s camera and thinks about buying one of his own.

As we remember from the first movie, that worked out really well for him.

The Happy Sequence ends when the Reys come home to see their house completely trashed. Odd thing was, nothing was taken, just thrown all about. Christy is understandably freaked out. Daniel has a lot of security cameras installed specifically to record demon activity so Allie doesn�t have to carry that camera for the entire running time. At this point in the movie I wondered what Daniel actually did for a living because despite not having any discernable job, he and Christy can have 2 kids, afford a nice house with a pool and Housekeeper with enough left over to install about a dozen high-end security cameras. In California. At least the demons know to avoid the ghetto.

Martine thinks it�s the work of evil spirits and works her hocus pocus on the house so that it stinks of incense again. Daniel fires her because he doesn�t believe in the supernatural stuff and that smell just gets into your clothes and food. He might have just saved Martine�s life and ended his family�s. But at least the dog will get it first.

Now that all these cameras are installed they begin recording suspicious activity at night. First, pots start to fall off their hooks (scary!!!). The automatic pool cleaner is taken out of the pool every night so Daniel has to put it back in (demons love to take pool cleaners out of pools- You remember from your ancient Demon history). Then doors begin to open and close when there�s no wind (only demons open and close doors like that). Little Hunter seems preoccupied with…something in the room. Abby starts barking at something the cameras can�t see, thereby ensuring her doggy death.

Maybe Michael Vick is the demon.

As Christy and Katie talk about what�s going on in the house, we realize that paranormal activity is nothing new to their family.

We�ll cut this off at about the 25-30 minute mark, and if you�ve seen the first Paranormal Activity, then nothing about what happens in the next hour will surprise you. You might yelp and jump as anyone would if someone screamed in their ear every 15 minutes as the rest of the movie contains an assortment of Foley Jump Scares that give you a charge despite yourself.

Me, I just felt bad for that dog.

What works with Paranormal Activity 2-

1) Though the scares are cheap and predictable, (Loud sounds!!! Someone getting dragged through rooms!!!) that doesn�t mean they aren�t effective as I noticed more than a couple of sweaty-palm flashes and heard a portion of the audience shriek at a few well-timed spots. If I bothered to count, I�d guess that director Tod Williams and writer Michael Perry put in twice as many of these moments as there are in the PA 1. You might feel embarrassed and knock it later, but in the moment you�d be hard-pressed not to react. If this movie manages not to tank at the box-office, maybe director Williams can buy himself another �D�.

2) As you�d expect from a movie with an actual budget, the overall acting trumps the first one, simply because I�m guessing they could do more than one take. The unnamed woman playing Christy stands out as she has to do the most heavy lifting of the cast and makes every moment believable.

What doesn�t work-

1) Again, it�s practically a remake of the first movie as nothing comes as a real surprise, though a plot element is laughingly lifted from Ghostbusters 2. Needless to say, if you hated the first one, then you�ll hate this one too. Me, I liked PA 2 a little more than the first one except…

2) …for the awful final 10 minutes that ruined the entire experience for me, despite having only middling expectations to begin with. My favorite part of the first PA was the final shot because it was so out of left field. PA 2�s ending plays with your expectations from the first movie…and does everything it can to piss it all away. Too bad.

Overall. A halfway decent sequel tainted by a weak ending. That may be the only time that�s ever happened in a sequel, much less a horror one. Judging by the early box-office, reviews may not matter as the Paranormal Activity franchise remains a mini-juggernaut. But if you�re willing to wait, then you�re willing to skip, and for those on the fence that will prove to be the wisest choice. Abby wishes you would.

The Holocaust
Vegan desserts
Being forced to play the piano
M. Night Shyamalan’s last 4 films

As you’ve no doubt guessed, the items on this list are things that are terrible. So one might presume that the powers that be behind the marketing of the new “horror” movie Devil would maybe want to reduce the typeset on that whole “From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan” tag, unless of course your goal is to make as little money as possible. And yes, I was in one of those screenings last summer when they showed the Devil trailer and everybody began booing and laughing mockingly after his name appeared.

That’d be kinda messed up, if he didn’t deserve it so much.

I’m no Night Hater, but you’d think after clunking The Village, Lady in the Water, The Crappening and last summer’s atrocity The Last Airbender someone in the Night camp would mention to him that he lost it about the moment aliens were harmed by WATER(?) at the end of Signs.

Or maybe not release anything attached to Shyamalan barely 3 months after Airbender tanked.

Of course, all that is moot if Devil turns out to be a good movie.

It seems that scathing derision is only mostly warranted as Devil is nowhere near as atrocious as you’d expect but nowhere near the galaxy of good as it’s barely scarier than an episode of Goosebumps and contains one of the more unintentionally funny scenes of 2010.

As I was leaving the screening more than one person commented something to the effect that “This was such a waste of time.” I couldn’t disagree, but after Airbender, anything that doesn’t put you leave you catatonic is an improvement.

Plus, Shyamalan only gets a “Story by” credit so he can share the blame when this bombs with Hard Candy writer Brian Nelson and Quarantine director John Erick Dowdle.

Is Devil a better movie because others had more creative control? I can only speculate that if Shyamalan directed and wrote the script the movie would be much worse as its lean 80 minute running time would have felt at least twice that, so comparatively it’s a step in the right direction even though no one who actually likes movies should see Devil when The Town (whowouldathunk that in 2010 Ben Affleck would be a better director than M. Night Shyamalan?) and Easy A are screening right next to you.

Devil opens with someone falling 2 stories from a building onto a truck. This isn’t all that surprising because this is how most people exited The Last Airbender.

The cop on the scene is Detective Bowden (Chris Messina). Before he got called in to investigate the case of the falling guy that landed on the truck and died, he was talking to his sponsor, who in turn was telling him about the need to forgive. You see, about 5 years ago, the good Detective’s family was killed in a hit and run accident. He’s been so jaded that he doesn’t believe in God or the Devil and tried to drink himself to death. He does believe children are our future, not so much his son because he hasn’t accomplished much since dying so that college fund seems pointless. That seems like an awful lot of random exposition for it not to come into play later.

Through some very lucky detective work, Bowden finds the building the guy fell from, and at that very same moment 5 disparate people are making their way onto Elevator 6 (yeah, that’s subtle). We won’t know their names until later, but as you know from the trailer, they will have a devil of a time exiting that elevator, and that one of them is actually the Devil.

Could it be…

Old Woman (Jenny O’ Hara)- She seems the most likely suspect because she’s so old and frail and talkative so that you wouldn’t expect it so it’s more of a surprise if she really is the Devil. Gotta keep your eye for her. She’s shifty…and old. And incontinent. Bad news in an enclosed space.

Mattress Salesman (Geoffrey Arend)- Nope, he’s not the Devil. Because A) he’s a fucking mattress salesman B) he actually says the phrase “Why don’t you suck a butt?” which the Devil would definitely, definitely not say because the Devil is no longer in 3rd grade.

Mysterious White Guy who doesn’t say much (Logan Marshall-Green) – He’s mysterious. He’s white. He doesn’t say much. Statistically, the odds are he’s probably a serial Killer/date rapist and has body parts in his freezer, but could he really be the Devil? I’m not sure, but he sure is mysterious and silent and Aryan. He also has a nametag that says Satan.

Cute girl (Bojana Novakovic)- She’s Cute. She’s rich. And incontinent. No rich cute girl could possibly be the Devil. Or could she? Because if you eliminate the old woman she’s the next least likely which makes her the second most likely. Follow?

Black Guy (Bookeem Woodbine)- Definitely not him, because it would be too overtly racist to make the lone Black Guy the Devil. Even if he WERE the Devil, I wouldn’t just assume it because he was black and neither should you.

It isn’t long before Elevator 6 is stuck.

2 Security guys, Lustig (Matt Craven) and Ramirez (Jacob Vargas) see elevator 6 stopped…and some very disturbing images. Security can talk to Elevator 6, but the passengers can’t communicate back. Lustig and Ramirez both notice distortions in the feed, and a paused image reveals what looks to be a demon’s face. Lustig thinks it’s just interference.

Ramirez, being a devout religious nut, immediately jumps to the conclusion that the Devil is inside Elevator 6 with them. It might seem odd to the outsider, but Lustig and Ramirez have been working together for a couple of years and there isn’t a week that goes by that Ramirez DOESN’T think The Devil is on one of the Elevators. But this time, because he’s probably seen the trailer, Ramirez may be right and not just the soul-soliciting Bible-thumper he’s usually passed off as in the lunch room.

Meanwhile in Elevator 6, the longer the 5 people (or 4 people and 1 Prince of Darkness) wait, the more tempers and fears flare up as each of them has shown a repulsive side. Well it’s about to get a lot uglier, but the movie won’t get any better as it seems that someone or something has taken a bite out of Cute Girl. Yes, an actual bite but those teeth marks sure don’t look human.

Of course everyone looks at the Black Guy.

At least we know now that the Devil is a biter…but we’re pretty sure he isn’t black.

What works with Devil-

1) The opening credits are properly disorienting in a good way. Had they gone on any longer, a good portion of the audience would have been suffering from nausea.

2) The movie’s first act is well set-up by Director Dowdle, as for a good 15-20 minutes there’s a spark of hope that the movie won’t end up terrible. Unfortunately, your hope dissipates as Devil fails to deliver on almost every level.

What doesn’t work-

1) How many people know not to step in water when you’re holding an arcing live electrical wire? Yes, that’s everybody in the universe minus one stupid guard.

2) Unintentional Funniest moment of September- Ramirez “praying” to a monitor. At first only a couple of people started sniggering, and then the rest of the 20 people (including me) cascaded into full-blown laughter. You’d have to see it to realize how poorly this moment is set up. Then again, just don’t.

3) Again, after the first act, when an actual good movie would be getting scarier, Devil’s elevator spirals into silliness. We tolerated Shyamalan’s diversions into hokey spiritualism when his movies were actually entertaining, but when they’re garbage as they have been for over 6 years, they just become eye-rollingly tedious. Even if he’s not entirely to blame, it’s no more enjoyable for the audience. I was more creeped out in any 5-minute block of The Last Exorcism than at any point of Devil. I think even God walked out after minute 30.

4) It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that yes, the Devil does appear, but at this point in the movie you do nothing but shake your head in disappointment. I’m guessing that if the REAL Devil did show up, it wouldn’t be in something rated PG-13 as that would just ruin any street cred as an Evil Being and you come off as kind of a pussy or a Beiber and all the other Evil Beings laugh and stage whisper behind your back.

Overall. The power of Christ compels you to miss Devil. You were going to anyway, so go with that. Bad Things Do Happen for a Reason…like actually paying to see this expecting something good.

Finally. A Good movie weekend after the post Iron Man 2 blahs. It was beginning to look like summer 2008 all over again where we’d have to wait 2 and a half months for a Christopher Nolan film after an Iron Man opened while the filler in between ‘er was forgettable trash. Thanks to this week’s Splice and Get Him to the Greek, you no longer have to fear wasting your hard earned money on a flaccid Robin Hood, Jake Gyllenhaal’s slo-mo wall jumping in bloodless Disney battles and the latest, dullest, and hopefully last Shrek in a series that should have been mercy killed after the second one.

It’s refreshing and more than a little startling to have an intelligent thriller like Splice open in the thick of the summer season. That’s probably why it’ll be gone from theaters in about 2 weeks to make way for stuff like Jonah Hex and that teen movie with the fake vampires. Catch it while you can.

Splice opens with Genetic Scientists Clive and Elsa having a breakthrough. They have managed to create an organism that looks like a penis, a jumbo shrimp and a brain that’s been stepped on. Elsa thinks it’s cute. They call it Fred. Its counterpart is named Ginger. Things are not going to go well…

How can you tell Clive (Oscar Winner Adrien Brody) is at the top of his field? Because his hair is unkempt and his clothes don’t match. His very appearance screams “I’m too brilliant thinking up shit to care about my hair and clothes so fuck you, non-smart people.” If it weren’t for the fact that Clive was dating Elsa, we’d think he was a virgin, watching the Avatar Blu-ray over and over and over again wishing he lived on Pandora because actual humans are just a waste of time.

How do we know that Elsa is smart? Because she’s played by Dawn of the Dead’s Sarah Polley, an actress can’t help but radiate intelligence. She’s an art house princess (Guinevere, The Secret life of Words, The Sweet Hereafter, and other movies no one would pay to see because they have titles like The Secret Life of Words) who only deigns to cross over into looked-down-upon mainstream fare if it’s really really good. Or if she just needs to get paid.

The genetic possibilities of Fred and Ginger are endless: They could cure diseases using their cells injected into infected human bodies. There were other uses but they were too technical to follow. They’re all for the good of humanity unless it can somehow mutate into something that kills nearly everyone in the cast. But that’s probably not going to happen.

The Higher-ups where Clive and Elsa work want to proceed with caution. They want to go to “Stage 2” testing with Fred and Ginger and actual human trials are at least a half a decade away. Clive is peeved, but more or less accepts it. Elsa will not be stopped (“I won’t spend 5 years digging through pigshit looking for proteins”). Such is the glamorous world of science, though one would think Elsa has garnered enough seniority that she would be able to pawn off pigshit duty on some eager rookie.

Clive also has a younger less-smart brother on his science team named Gavin (Brandon McGibbon). We’re saying this now because just by being Clive’s brother everyone in the theater is sure that Gavin will die a horrible death within an hour. Maybe less.

Elsa says Fuck Stage 2 and injects human DNA into the material that made Fred and Ginger to be left in a vat overnight. She then goes to bed and sleeps soundly because she’s done something with absolutely no moral, ethical or physical repercussions whatsoever.

Later that morning, Elsa and Clive rush into the lab. It seems that the entity Elsa left into the vat has been growing at a rapid rate. Gavin was going to have it for breakfast but it started squirming and making chipmunk noises. Clive tells his brother to relax and enjoy the very little time he has on earth left.

Else shuns everyone out except Clive. She shows him a glowing blue monitor and because they’re scientists and not people watching a movie they know that the entity’s cells are multiplying exponentially. What would take days to do has only taken hours.

Clive is wary, not just because Elsa has just broken about 13 laws that could put them both in scientist jail. He’s afraid because in movies like this, it never, ever works out for the boyfriend. He breathes a sigh of relief because he knows he isn’t dying until well after Gavin gets killed. Thank the God of science for small miracles.

Elsa and Clive see what looks like a very large guppy/sperm swishing around in the vat. It’s got eyes and seems to be growing little hands and before long it begins jumping around the lab and breaks expensive prop equipment.

Clive gases it so they can examine it better. They notice the human DNA along with other things previously unrecorded in human history. Clive wants to kill it. Elsa will not allow it because she says she wants to study it a little bit longer, but it looks like there’s something more personal going on. Clive backs down because he’s whipped like Djimoun Hounsou in Amistad.

And before you can think about Sam Jackson’s arm ripped off in Jurassic Park, the being has turned into what looks like a little girl. Elsa evens has her wear a little blue dress, like Vicki from Small Wonder to make her seem less freakish, I guess. Making her look like the cancer girl from last summer’s horrible My Sister’s Keeper is the more humane thing to do.

Elsa has even given her a name: Dren. Because other than what looks like an ass on her head and a tail with a lethally sharp tip, she’s just like every little girl born in vat of viscous liquid.

Dren is sick and Elsa and Clive are at a loss for what to do because it’s not like you can take her to the doctor. Clive suggests sticking her in some cold water because it looks like she’s exhibiting feverish symptoms. Elsa is freaking out because she doesn’t want her little mutant girl to die.

While Dren is in the water, Clive has the urge to drown her to end this inhuman madness once and for all.

Dren is thrashing.
Clive is holding her down.
Elsa is screaming for Clive to stop.

He’s not going to have to because Dren seems to have developed gills…making her able to breathe in water and curing whatever was making her ill in the first place.

Elsa is ecstatic.

Clive knows that everything is fucked, his only saving grace is knowing that Gavin will die first.

After a month, Dren has grown from a Splice Girl into a full grown woman-thing. But what does she want, does she really really want? Dren wants to be free and it won’t be long before she realizes that no science nerds are going to be able to stop her for long. Plus, she spied on Clive and Elsa having sex and she wants to get in on that kind of action. Ewww. Seriously. Ewww.

What works with Splice-

1) Dren- as played by Delphine Chaneac, her dialogue consists of squeals and monkey-like tittering as she develops into the best movie monster of 2010. I thought that the promos revealed what she looked like way too much, and was glad to be wrong. Dren has a lot more going for her than looking like Sinead O’ Connor or that bald girl from that dull Star Trek: Voyager movie. Nothing compares to her (sorry) when it comes to freakish twists. This girl has got it in her genes (sorry again). For those of you wishing for a Natasha Henstridge-ish topless moment, you’ll get that too, though you might regret it.

2) A splicing montage set to techno and then…other types of music. I’m grateful that for only the price of a ticket we get to see how real scientists act and not some phony Hollywood version. Great discoveries are made through montage and can be somewhat attributed to DJ AM. Looking thru microscopes is not as boring as it seems when set to music. Makes you want to sign up for “Science” at a local JC.

3) The grossest sex scene of 2010. Will inspire numerous fetish clubs in and around Europe. I can only imagine how director Vincenzo Natali (Cube) blocked this scene. Actually, I really don’t want to.

4) Fred and Ginger “engage”. The funniest, sickest part of the movie. One could hear the audience laughing and gagging at the same time. The most rewind worthy moment of the summer so far.

5) The second grossest sex scene of 2010- Never have the words “Inside you” sounded so stomach-churning.

What doesn’t work-

1) Clive is established as the more reasonable of the 2 scientists. There are times when he’s the smartest person in the entire movie…except when the plot requires him to do something idiotic and irrational simply for convenience. If you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly the part I mean.

2) Final scene doesn’t really belong. It doesn’t necessarily ruin the film, but it’s usually tacked on to dumber movies than Splice.

Overall. You want laughs, go see Get Him to the Greek. You want intelligent scares and thrills, please see Splice. Yes, that Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl movie opens too, but when was the last time one actually paid to see a movie with Demi Moore’s son and didn’t regret it? Or Katherine Heigl for that matter that wasn’t named Knocked Up? Splice up your weekend and feel what it’s like to be smarter than movie doctors.

The Human Centipede is further proof that white movie tourists can be the stupidest motherfuckers on the planet. Or the least likely to have seen a horror movie that wasn’t PG-13 or star somebody from the CW.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that the poor girls in the movie deserved what they got, but there’s no way that anyone who’s actually seen a real horror movie would let this happen.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you can probably guess that The Human Centipede isn’t for everyone, but will no doubt scratch the itch some people have for torturing small animals or paying to see circus geeks. Needless to say, if you’ve eaten a large meal maybe you should wait about an hour before watching this. For your own good, especially if you’re wearing clothes you don’t want to have ruined.

The movie opens with a Creepy Looking guy (Deiter Laser, the offspring of Christopher Walken and Lance Henriksen) sitting in his car off the side of a German freeway.

We’re in Germany BTW, this is important because it’ll answer the “Why the fuck are people speaking German?” question you might ask.

Chris and Lance’s adult child is looking longingly at some pictures of dogs. That’s sweet. Must be a German thing, to drive off the freeway because you have a need to look at pictures of Rottweilers.

His attention is diverted because a large rig pulls up behind him. A redneck trucker exits the rig with a roll of toilet paper and seems to be bolting for the nearest area for cover, preferably a large bush or copse of grass.

We’ll try not to question what a redneck truck driver (complete with red and black checkered hunting cap) is doing in Germany, because that requires too much thought. We just hope he finds what he’s looking for.

It seems that Creepy Guy is following Redneck trucker…and he’s carrying what appears to be a rifle.

Creepy Guy aims the rifle at Redneck, who has found a comfortable spot and looks like he’s in a very vulnerable position. Creepy guy fires, and Redneck Trucker is out with his pants down

Back in a nondescript German hotel we meet Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie). They met a cute German guy earlier and are now looking for directions to a club called Bunker. If this were anything but a horror movie we’d expect Lindsay and Jenny to be drugged and date-raped by minute 20, sold into white slavery by minute 35, and saved by Laim Neeson by minute 90.

If they were only so lucky.

While they’re on their way, they get lost because they didn’t bother with things like “maps” and their rental car didn’t have GPS. Lindsay or Jenny apparently thought Bunker was located on the darkest and most isolated road in Germany because that’s where she decided to turn.

After doing the smart thing and walking around in darkness and rain for about an hour, they Gump their way to what looks like a light in a window. Good, a house…in the middle of nowhere…where no one can hear you scream for miles…

Sounds like the perfect place to knock and hopefully get some assistance so Jenny and Lindsay can put their night behind them.

Who answers the door, but the Creepy guy from the first scene. He introduces himself as Dr. Heiter (pronounced ‘Hater’) and asks perfectly innocuous non-sinister questions like “Are you alone?” and “Are you related?”

They answer truthfully and ask for a glass of water. Dr. Heiter is only to glad to get it for them. It sounds like he’s making a phone call to roadside assistance to help the girls out…but he’s not even using a phone, just talking into the air.

He also slips some white pills into the girls’ water. Probably some antacid.

That antacid turned out to be Roofies, and some quick working Roofies, because after a couple of moments these girls have been knocked the fuck out.

Jenny and Lindsay wake up strapped to hospital beds. The Redneck trucker from the first scene is right next to them, but he’s not long for this world because Dr. Heiter doesn’t think he “matches”. Within a couple of minutes, Dr. Heiter gets rid of Redneck and has brought everyone a new friend to play with: Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), a Japanese (???) tourist Dr. Heiter presumably found taking a picture where he shouldn’t have been.

If they weren’t already, Jenny and Lindsay are really wishing they sprung for the GPS, because Dr. Heiter has some plans for our three unlucky tourists, involving the A to B to C “attaching” of some lips to assholes. Just use your imagination…

What works with The Human Centipede-

1) The Centipede- it’s both gross and funny at the same time, and I wondered what the actors had to go through to become the Centipede because it really doesn’t look like fun, especially where the Girls are positioned. And yes, writers Ilona and Tom Six (who also directed) have addressed how they go to the bathroom. Kevin Smith would be proud.

2) Lindsay in the middle- maybe she shouldn’t have pissed off the good doctor so much.

3) The Gravestone provides the movie’s biggest laugh. More than you laughed at that awful new Shrek movie.

4) A great final shot that will either have you excited for The Human Centipede: The Second Sequence (2011) or tossing your Hot Pockets. Or both.

What doesn’t work-

1) After you actually see The Centipede in action, the movie flags because there isn’t a strong enough story to propel the final act. It’s hard to get more debauched than the Centipede, though the movie tries with wavering results.

Overall. A gross-out movie that should satisfy a horror fan’s need to see a sick twist every once in a while. While definitely recommended, I wouldn’t call it ‘good’ in any traditional sense but The Human Centipede does deliver what it sets out to. You want sick German depravity, you got it. Have fun and keep your strudel down.

After 2007’s horrendous POV film Diary of the Dead, you’d think that George A. Romero couldn’t do anything more to tarnish his legend as father and master of the zombie flick. After watching the lifeless mass that is Survival of the Dead you’d be wrong. Undead wrong…

After Diary and 2005’s laughably pretentious Land of the Dead (starring Simon Baker no less because everyone else was smart enough to say no) George Romero has officially George Lucas’d his own zombie franchise and he has nobody to blame but himself. The cure for something like that is simply to make a good movie, but odds are that that’s not going to happen anytime soon. As I tried to stay awake through Survival, I felt sad more than anything else watching Romero make a copy of a copy of a copy of his own stuff, yet saying nothing at all that couldn’t be conveyed by watching his classics Night of the Living Dead and the Dawn of the Dead. Even Day of the Dead has its moments while Survival has nothing but extras from old Irish Spring commercials.

If you’re feeling the urge to see Survival, don’t. It’s like watching a Wham reunion or that ill-advised New Kids on the Block tour a couple of years ago. Every frame of Survival only reminds you of how much better is was done years ago by the very same director. If you didn’t know that Romero directed Survival, you’d think what an awful Romero ripoff it was while you were watching it and bullimically purge yourself of the experience by viewing either 28 Days or Weeks Later, far superior zombie flicks that obliterate anything Romero’s done in the past 15 years.

We’ve all seen bad movies, as horror fans it’s par for the course and to be expected more often than not. But Survival is wrist-slittingly disheartening and given the choice, I’d rather have bad.

Gotta wonder if there’s some kind of Horror director Old Folks home, and if Survival may have gotten George Romero a reservation to a room on the dreaded “third floor”, the one where they’re not likely to come back except covered in tarp and the hallways smell like pureed vegetables and spackle. No, this isn’t some plea for Romero to stop making zombie movies before he M. Night Shyamalans himself to the point of no return simply because Survival of the Dead makes that argument better than any one person could. Like shooting your favorite dog because he has rabies and bit your kid in the eye. And then accidentally shooting your kid.

Survival of the Dead has a plot grifted directly from the SyFy slush pile…or something Romero wrote years ago but decided it wouldn’t make a good movie, found it in a closet again and thought it would be brilliant for the youth of today. It features a no-star cast, very few scares you haven’t seen dozens of times, and kills recycled from outtakes from other, better zombie movies. Zombieland is scarier, and from what I remember that movie wasn’t being played to frighten.

You know the drill…zombies running, or walking (slowly, practically moseying) rampant…don’t let them bite you…shoot them in the head.

We’re in the zombie apocalypse. The same zombie apocalypse we’ve been in for decades only this time we’re in a much worse movie. There are about 150, 000 dying per day and coming back to life. All of them want their money and time back for having to sit through this movie. What am I talking about? 150,000 people wouldn’t pay to see this movie…

Plum Island, somewhere in the East Coast, far away from Shutter Island because that’s actually good. It’s an island where everybody is contractually obligated to have really fake Irish accents. So much so that I wondered if genuine Irish people would be offended at how bad these are. Amidst the Plum Island zombies, we’re in the middle of a blood feud between the O’ Flynns and the Muldoons. Their battle is to see which has the more generic Irish last name since the Rileymacflanagans got killed off.

They’re at odds because Patrick O’ Flynn (Kenneth “Please don’t let any of my friends see me in this movie” Welsh), leader of the O’ Flynns has a no-tolerance policy on zombies. He sees them, they die. Even if they were once related to him.

The Muldoons, led by Seamus Muldoon (Richard “Fuck my fucking agent for sending me this script” Fitzpatrick), want to keep the dead in chains, but alive. We think it’s for pathetically sentimental reasons, but there may be a more dastardly motive.

Patrick has arranged a posse to go zombie huntin’, and you’re out of luck if you’re a zombie in his way. Patrick and the Brigadoon crew stop by a farmhouse, where Ma is wearing what looks like a homemade doll’s dress and Da is wearing overalls even the nearby Amish think is outdated.

Patrick think Ma and Pa Kettle are hiding their children, who may or may not be infected.

Ma protests. Pa protests. In the ensuing skirmish, Ma gets shot. She’s lucky because she gets to die relatively early in the movie while the rest of us have to stay until the credits roll.

Patrick and Co. go upstairs to see little Brother and Sister chained up to their beds in the midst of what looks to be the zombie sickness. Or the results of the obvious inbreeding that goes on in and around Plum Island (the primary last names are Muldoon and O ‘Flynn- do the math).

Patrick is willing to shoot them, but feels constrained because he’s never killed kid Zombies before. He’s relieved of not having to pull the trigger because Seamus Muldoon has just arrived and put a rifle to his head.

Seamus doesn’t shoot Patrick even though he wants to for stealing his pot o’ gold. Instead, he banishes Patrick off Plum Island for killing an innocent woman. Patrick is reluctant to go because he has a score to settle.

Meanwhile, in an even less interesting plot thread taking place in Philly, a small rogue army unit led by “Nicotine” Crockett (Alan Van Spring) has taken to robbing other people of their money (because that still has worth, though it’s never explained why) and their valuable possessions. His lone character trait is that he’s dangerous (“You’re dangerous…but not as dangerous as me”)…and that he smokes.

He’s helped by-

Tomboy (Athena Karkanis). Lone character trait: She’s lesbian. (“What’s too bad is there isn’t another bitch in this litter”)

Cisco (Stefano DiMatteo). Lone character trait: He’s Mexican. (“Hola…Yo Soy Cisco Gutierrez Gonzales Gonzales”)

Some other guy that dies soon. Lone character trait: He dies. (“Don’t kill me, I’ve just found the cure for Zombieism and add 5 inches to your penis with no harmful side effects”)

Kid (Devon Bostick). Lone character trait: He’s young. (“I can last about 45 seconds in the sack, perfect for when you’re on the run from zombies”).

Only 2 of those quotes actually made it into the movie, but you get the idea.

Nicotine and his crew have rescued Kid from a bunch of rednecks. Kid shows his gratitude by showing an Internet ad of someone named Captain Courageous telling everybody to go Plum Island, a place where they can feel saf(er) from the Zombies. You’ll note that Captain Courageous looks exactly like Patrick O’ Flynn.

Please try not to think about how Patrick O’ Flynn knew how to shoot and upload an Internet commercial when the height of technology on Plum Island was the toothbrush and sheepskin condom, and when they were actually used, the Plum Islanders forgot which implement was used for where.

Anyway, after a skirmish with the zombies, O’ Flynn finds himself on the ferry with Nicotine and his crew heading for Plum Island. Nicotine’s looking for some peace and Patrick’s looking to get back at Muldoon. If you’ve made it this far into the movie, you might as well slog through the rest, but it’s not really going to get any better.

What works with Survival of the Dead: And by works, I mean what isn’t completely life-draining about this comatose excuse for a horror movie-

Better than Diary of the Dead. Not saying much, I know, but you take what you can get when it comes to a movie like this.

Mmmmm….Horse.

What doesn’t work-

The pervading feeling of gloom that goes over you when you realize that a master has finally lost it and has nothing new to say anymore. Senility can be a bitch.

The realization that most if not all of the kills in this movie could have been avoided had the characters not been moronic enough to MOVE a step or two either direction. It’s not like these zombies have blazing speed, but they prove they’re smarter than any of the human characters by plodding…in a straight line. If you’re stupid enough to not run away, maybe you deserve to die.

The pervading feeling of gloom that goes over you when you realize that a master has finally lost it and has nothing new to say—Aw hell, I just wrote that. Somebody shoot me, I’m Romeroing.

If you were scared 3 times in this movie, then you’ve more than paid for the price of admission…if one scare = $5.

The inclusion of a cowboy character, hick accent and all, on Plum Island which is, as previously established, predominantly Irish. I remember laughing at the ludicrous implausibility of all this, but I realized that this was the most entertaining part of the movie. That’s just depressing.

Overall. Based on Diary of the Dead alone, you were going to skip this anyway. Good for you. You’d be better off watching the George Romero directed TV special OJ Simpson: Juice on the Loose. Not kidding, it really exists. Though the title has a different meaning now that it did back in 1974. Probably because he killed some people.

Shutter Island is the best movie of 2010.

I realize that with competition like When in Rome, Valentine’s Day, Dear John, Book of Eli and Extraordinary Measures, that’s like being the least effeminate boy band member. But if Island were released in 2009 like it was supposed to be, there’s no doubt it would fill one of the 10 Best Picture Slots, taking the place of something idiotic like The Blind Side. As it stands, come next fall as Awards season rolls around, it’s almost a surety that Shutter Island will be forgotten. Too bad.

At least you can see it now, and since there’s really nothing else worth watching in theaters, might as well…

Shutter Island marks Leonardo DiCaprio’s 4th collaboration with famed director Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Casino, Raging Bull), along with being Scorsese’s first movie since winning the Best Director Oscar for The Departed that he really deserved for Goodfellas. But who’s keeping track?

How does Shutter Island stack up in the DiCaprio/Scorsese canon? It’s a slim notch below The Departed but far more engaging than the uneven Gangs of New York and the slightly bloated Aviator. Scorsese’s not going for any awards though he’d deserve some if properly released, as this thriller is his most overtly entertaining movie since ‘91’s Cape Fear. For those of you who’ve read the Dennis Lehane novel, the movie is mostly faithful, until…we’ll get to that later

Shutter Island: Yet another reason that the cast of Growing Pains are gnashing their gums with Jealousy. And if you read any other reviews, they’ll most likely contain the phrases “nothing is what it seems” and some version of “trust no one”, because it’s just that type of movie.

It’s 1954. An epoch in modern history considered the “Good Old Days” by old people because movies cost a nickel and milk cost a dime. It was also an era when pregnant women smoked and drank hard liquor well into the 3rd trimester and working dads everywhere ignored their children and bottled up their feelings so that when they eventually died of a heart attack or whatever you die of when you work in coal mines, no one went to their funeral.

It’s also an inglorious time for the mental health profession as 2 schools of thought are battling it out: one faction says pills, pills, INJECTIONS to numb the mentally ill and make them more docile, while another says treatment of the human being is essential and secondary to curing the disease. Those people have probably never been to Ashecliffe Institute for the Criminally Fucked Up and Extremely Crazy even Though We’re not Supposed to Use the Word Crazy because it’s Not Really PC But Let’s Face it These Mongos, when it comes to the Slot Machine of Life, will always be Bunches of Grapes and Bells short of getting the Sanity Jackpot that Gets you to Normalville with the Rest of the NonFreaks.

Ashecliffe is where US Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio, now in his mid-thirties, but looking like in his 20’s instead of a perpetual teenager as he’s even got some man fuzz) is headed, located on the scenic, foggy, not-at-all threatening Shutter Island. It’s located somewhere near the East Coast because all the actors have their fake East Coast accents on. E.g. Harbor has been transformed into Hah-burr and Doctor is now Dawhk-terr and you must hold the first syllable of each word for about 4 seconds before going on to the next one.

Marshal Teddy can’t get to Ashecliffe soon enough, because it looks like he’s having a real bad case of seasickness. If given the choice, he’d rather have seasickness than the recurring nightmares involving his charred dead wife Dolores (the unnatural Michelle Williams) and memories of the Dachau liquidation.

Good thing Teddy’s new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) is there to hold his hand and give him some smokes. This is the first time Agent Daniels and Sidekick Chuck have ever worked together. That’s a rather innocuous piece of information that probably doesn’t plant a seed for something else that happens later in the movie. Just a piece of random data that you can forget and file in your back pocket under “unimportant”. Chuck has just such a neutral looking face that he can’t possibly be anything but someone to go along with Teddy, write in his notebook, and do whatever partners do. He even calls Teddy “boss”. Nothing initially fishy here.

Chuck and Teddy…or Teddy and Chuck are going to Ashecliffe because a patient named Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer) has escaped and it’s really ruffled the old white guys in charge. The head man Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley, sinister underneath his façade of erudition) is worried because Rachel seems to have disappeared without—

–What’s wrong with Rachel, you ask? She killed her 3 kids, sat them around the family dining table and then proceeded to eat breakfast. She might have been a tad upset when she asked 4-year old Junior Solando to pass the syrup but didn’t get any response because it’s hard to have good table manners when your mom just killed you. Rachel lives in her world where her kids aren’t dead and she’s not in a loony bin for killers and rapists, but back in her old house and her kids are still alive and everyone she encounters, from the doctors, the nurses and the primarily Negro orderlies are just a part of her fantasy as bankers and deliverymen and helpful neighbors that carry around huge needles encasing red or blue liquid and hold cups of pills that make everything all better. Sure, she seems nice on the outside, just don’t set her off.—

–chel seems to have disappeared without a trace. No one who was on duty that night saw her, and there isn’t anything that indicates Rachel herself has moved, other than the fact that she’s nowhere to be found. What’s more, it looks like there’s a huge storm on the horizon and if Rachel’s isn’t in her cell right quick, then she’ll probably be tossed out into the unforgiving sea. Too bad her primary physician went on vacation just this morning. He might have been able to help.

Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley, sinister with his shaved head and goatee) is one of those doctors who believe in treatment first, drugs second. His colleagues including Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow, looking sinister because that’s pretty much what Max Von Sydow does best), want to go hog wild with lobotomies damn near every chance they get. As the investigations begin, they seem to be taking a keen interest in Teddy’s whereabouts and his general state of mind.

Maybe they want Teddy to find Rachel, maybe they don’t. And what of those rumors that Ashecliffe conducts highly questionable tests on some of the more extreme cases? Or the whispers of genetic experimentation in collusion with the Nazis? Plotting a sequel to All About Steve?

But nothing should put Teddy, and the viewer, more at ease than knowing that Ashecliffe’s Deputy Warden is played by the Zodiac Killer from Zodiac (John Carroll Lynch) and that the Warden is played by Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), spouting such cotton-candy and caramel lines like “God gave us violence to wage in his honor”.

Teddy and Chuck question everyone that might have seen Rachel on her last night and begin by interrogating the loonies. There’s a guy who stabbed his housekeeper and a woman who sharpened her ax with her husband’s head (“I hear enough voices”). For people who constantly shit themselves, their answers seem oddly uniform. Chuck and Teddy surmise that the prisoners, er, patients have been coached. Somebody doesn’t want our Marshals to know something. Maybe everybody on Shutter Island wants something hidden.

Teddy and Chuck keep it on the low and tiptoe their way to Ward C. Ward C is where Ashecliffe keeps the true dregs of society, the rapists, people who talk during movies, the multiple murderers.

Because they’ve had hours to get to know each other, Teddy feels intimate enough with Sidekick Chuck to drop this little nugget of info: Teddy has an ulterior motive other than Rachel for being at Ashecliffe. He’s looking for the man who set his wife on fire and he has it on good authority that that man is somewhere in Ashecliffe. More specifically somewhere in Ward C. Chuck takes this exposition with as neutral expression as possible, almost poker-faced. What would a partner that Teddy had never met before today possibly have to hide?

While the storm’s heaviness begins to hammer down, we’re given some good news. It seems the previously elusive Rachel has just been found.

Now that Rachel’s back, Teddy Boy’s troubles are just beginning. As the movie progresses we realize that Teddy has more than enough problems of his own. Because on Shutter Island, nothing is what it seems and Teddy can trust no one but himself, and even that’s more than a little sketchy.

What works with Shutter Island-

Though she’s better known for being Heath Ledger’s ex and/or the remaining Dawson’s Creek cast member that still has a film career, Michelle Williams is unhinged beneath a floral print dress and drugged-out smile. Dolores is seen mostly in Teddy’s nightmares and though she doesn’t have a lot of screentime, you’re thinking about her for most of the movie, and not in a good way. White people and their fucking problems…

For those of you who loved the final 10 minutes of Inglourious Basterds, get your feel-good on during the Dachau liquidation flashbacks. Wait, we’re not really supposed to be “enjoying” them, are we? But they’re Nazis, so it’s okay.

A game of Tag in Ward C. How bad is it when Jackie Earle Hailey (the new Freddy Krueger, Rorschach in Watchmen, the pedophile in Little Children), is one of the SANER denizens of Ashecliffe?

You may be able to guess the ending if you haven’t read the novel or haven’t had it spoiled, but only in the broadest of senses. It’s the details that’ll really trip you up, so pay attention to everything, even the stuff you don’t have to.

DiCaprio’s best work for Scorsese, a notch better than his tortured cop in The Departed. How good is it? You’ll appreciate the performance more the second time you see it.

What doesn’t work-

1) Now, the ending isn’t necessarily bad but it does differ from the novel. It doesn’t work because while the book’s ending (“We’re too smart for that”) is a steel-toed kick to your chin, the movie’s ending more or less lets the audience off the hook. For a director as uncompromising as Scorsese, it’s kind of a head scratcher… Don’t take my word for it, take both of them in.

Overall. It’s the best thing you’ll probably see for months unless you and your kids are counting the days until Alice in Wonderland. For something you don’t have to take your kids to, hop on to Shutter Island and be grateful for your sanity. And no matter how much he begs or offers to suck you off…don’t pay for Kirk Cameron’s ticket. You’re just being an enabler.

After a long week of waiting, the miserable half of the audience that were forced to make Dear John the movie to finally, inexplicably knock Avatar off the #1 spot now have an avenue for cinematic payback. Hopefully after being browbeaten by your wives/girlfriends into seeing Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried express their virginal love as only a PG-13 movie can, you got rimmed or at least a handjob. You deserve that much, at least.

As an alternative, The Wolfman is no great furry shakes as a movie as it’s barely a couple of paws up from Jason Bateman’s Teen Wolf Too, but some decently graphic shots of gore should expunge some of the truly disgusting stuff you saw last week while Tatum and Seyfried were doing some hardcore nuzzling. Congratulations, Amanda Seyfried, something you’re in that’s actually worse than the $20 sets and Pierce Brosnan’s eerily accurate portrayal of a braying donkey in Mamma Mia!

The Wolfman is opening after an almost year and a half delay. You’ve waited this long, surely you can wait a few more months before it’s released on video. It’s not a terrible movie (nowhere near Blood and Chocolate bad and the wolves themselves vicious instead of New Moon vaginal) as most of the time you’re distractedly entertained. But you walk out of feeling it’s less than and considering the talent involved, you deserve a lot more than a mere “meh”…

If you really want to see a werewolf movie, you’d be better off watching Ginger Snaps again.

If you really want to see something in the theater, you’d be better off delaying gratification for a week and waiting for Shutter Island.

But if you’re dead set on Wolfman, set your expectation levels to Barely Above Mediocre and let the fur and fangs fly.

It’s 1891 in Blackmoor, England, a hundred years before Kevin Costner’s Surfer Boy Robin Hood and that ‘I Touch Myself’ song by the Divynils. We open on a man running for dear life. What’s he running from, and in such a bloody hurry? We can’t quite see it but we can hear that it’s rather large. After a couple of frames, some fleeting glimpses are revealed.

The man running probably got a good look at it, right before he got eviscerated. From what little we’ve seen it looks to be a previously unclassified being resembling a man/wolf hybrid. Possibly a manwolf of some kind, but we can’t be sure because we haven’t seen the opening title card.

After a couple of moments, we hear a female in voice-over as she’s dictating a letter. The voice belongs to a woman named Gwen (Emily “Fat Chronic” Blunt) Conliffe and she’s fiancé to a man named Ben Talbot. Or…was, since we saw Ben mutilated in the opening scene. She’s worried because Ben has gone missing and is writing to his brother Lawrence (Benicio Del Toro). Little does she know that her betrothed is in little bite-sized pieces all over the pretty English countryside, probably being gnawed on by random wildlife, grateful for the snack. That pointless letter was a waste of perfectly good stamp, and what with stamps cost these days…
And she’ll probably be bummed that her fiancé has no torso. Or arms. Or genitals. But she could have used that stamp for so many things, like bills or to finally write to her ex-boyfriend Chet “Whitey” McWhiterton to stop bothering her because she’s really going to marry Ben Talbot once and for all. Of course the irony being that once Chet got the letter Gwen would have known that the remains of her husband could probably fit inside the envelope she mailed. What we can all agree on is that it’s been an overall fucked-up day for Gwennie and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better.

Wait a moment. Gwen and…Ben. Maybe it’s good that one of them is dead.

Lawrence gets to England and begins to look for his dear estranged brother. He hasn’t seen his father Sir John (Anthony Hopkins) in years and there’s really no love lost between them. You see, Larry found his mother dead in his father’s arms, and he’s been really emo about it ever since. And later, John put Larry in an insane asylum because he questioned the need for male circumcision as it seems to be more of a cosmetic thing than a hygienic issue as previously believed. Needless to say, they both have issues and we’re not even 15 minutes into the movie.
John tells Larry he needn’t bother looking for Ben any more because his corpse been found. Maybe should have waited till after breakfast to spring that kind of news as the crackling bacon and ketchuped eggs don’t look all that appetizing anymore. Neither does that plate on the side with Ben’s spleen.

Also might have helped to tell Larry that Ben was dead that before he made the trip, but no matter. Actually, Gwen was going to write to Lawrence telling him that his brother was dead as she found out almost immediately after she wrote the previous letter…but she had run out of stamps.

Larry meets Gwen to give his condolences. After seeing Gwen, Larry realizes he’d like to give her something else, but it’s much too soon for that sort of thing. Wait another 3 hours for the 17 remaining pieces of Ben’s body to get cold. In the meantime, he’ll search around Blackmoor to find out what might have happened, because there’s some kind of wild animal or lunatic running around killing people related to the main characters, and if he/it is not stopped, more characters without names will be killed. But it’ll happen in a cool gory fashion so the audience won’t feel so bad for them. Larry still feels duty-bound to stop the killings, because it will get him into Gwen’s pants so much quicker. Gwen…so bereaved, so vulnerable, you might want to take off that corset to ease your constricted chest…

Larry discovers that Ben was in possession of a peculiar gold medallion. The kind that the Gypsies wear. Maybe it was a crazed Gypsy that killed Ben because you know how those Gypsies are…

Larry surmises that the local Gypsy camp may know what Ben was up to, or even what kind of beast befouls the night around them, killing folks willy-nilly with no fear of repercussion.

John warns to hold off the inquiry until after the full moon, in case there really is a lunatic on the loose.

Larry ignores John’s warning, because what does a full moon have to do with anything concerning a man-killing werebeast? And what kind of supercilious prat uses the word “befoul” in a movie review?

Larry goes to the Gypsy camp. Sure enough, it’s a full moon, but that probably doesn’t mean anything.

And completely having nothing to do with the full moon, the were-monster Beast creature begins attacking Gypsies. After a couple of minutes it’s Gypsy stew as arms and legs and brains and nuts and pants and laundry from various clotheslines and other body parts are strewn all over camp. It’s mayhem, but Larry has armed himself. But he sees a stray kid wandering off and it’s up to Larry to save him. He’s up to the task because he’s a trained actor!!!

Larry can’t find the kid, but the beast finds Larry and bites him on the neck. For the amount of time that the wolf-like creature was attached to his throat, you’d think Larry’d be dead, but he’s not. He’s only got severe wounds that if not treated properly will lead to infection.
John gets the best doctors in Blackmoor to help Larry and against all odds he gets better.

Unusually better. His hearing’s a lot more sensitive than before, and his shoulder feels stronger than ever. He checks out Gwen a little more closely, but alas, no see-through vision. The family dog growls at him, but that probably doesn’t mean anything.

Out of some sense of duty, or maybe she’s just on the rebound because her fiancé was butchered, Gwen has stayed to see that Larry has recovered.

Larry and Gwen chastely flirt by skipping rocks. Sure, he knows he’s hitting on his dead brother’s fiancé, but Larry can’t help himself and busts out such Black Dynamite lines like “make sure you swing your hips” as he’s showing Gwen his sure-to-get-the-ladies-panties-wet rock-skipping technique, Gwen is sufficiently impressed, meaning Gwen is really easy.

Meanwhile, Blackmoor is in frenzy, so they call in Inspector Francis Abberline (Hugo Weaving) from Scotland Yard. You may remember Francis Abberline as the character Johnny Depp played in From Hell and has been Jack the Ripper’s main protagonist in many other movies. You may also remember that Abberline DIED at the end of From Hell…but that’s okay, because he’s back from the dead to solve the grisly werewolf killings. And he heard Ben Talbot’s fiancé is really easy.

Things are going well…until the next full moon. Apparently, Larry wasn’t completely cured, and the wolf-creature bite has infected his blood so that every full moon he turns into a wolf-being and goes on a killing spree. I’m no moonologist but I didn’t realize that a full moon occurs every 48 hours or whenever it’s convenient to the plot. Must be a Blackmoor thing.

The next morning, Larry wakes up with his clothes all torn and bloodied. His father is staring at him telling him he’s done terrible things. Soon enough, a mob of villagers (along with their full complement of torches and rakes) have captured him and are ready to string him up. Stereotypically, the villagers are right and proper Palinesque hayseeds. By comparison, some werewolf blood mixed into the gene pool isn’t so bad when tempered with the multiple generations of inbreeding that’s been going on. So much so that if the number of non-rotted teeth on an adolescent is slightly more than the number of working eyes, then the offspring is considered a “success”…and used to mass breed the next wave of future plague victims.

Those dumb villagers, thinking they’ve got Larry cornered. But these Brit hicks don’t know what they’re in for, because tomorrow night (again, so soon?)…is the full moon.

What works with The Wolfman 2010-

1) The assault on the Gypsy camp is by far the best sequence in the movie. It’s the only time in the movie where you’re caught completely off guard as director Joe Johnston (Gremlins) stages it so you have no idea when and from what angle the Wolfman will strike next. You get a generous helping of body parts strewn along the screen to aid in your digestion. Sucks that when the sequence is over, you have another hour of film to go.

2) Anthony Hopkins- He’s the only one enjoying himself in this movie as he chomps down bogfuls of scenery as every character except his is a friggin’ mope. Aren’t monster movies supposed to be fun? If you think about it, Hopkins is playing a fuzzier and more grizzled version of the van Helsing character he played in Dracula. Except Wolfman isn’t as boring as that crappy Dracula and (thankfully) doesn’t have Keanu Reeves and his limp British “accent”.

3) Make sure there are enough bullets in your gun…in case you have to use one on yourself. Oops, too late. Got the biggest cheer from the crowd.

What doesn’t work-

1) The stop-and-start nature gets grating after about half an hour. You get excited whenever the Wolfman appears…and then begin looking at your watch whenever the frame fades in to daylight and you’re forced to watch “human” interaction. Benicio Del Toro’s a charismatic enough actor, but there’s so little in his character that engages the audience so that you’re looking out the windows in hopes of a full moon.

2) Though she stole scenes in the Devil Wears Prada and proved her acting chops exploring lesbianism tastefully topless in the excellent My Summer of Love, Emily Blunt plays barely a device of a character and when she’s asked to do some real acting, she’s uncharacteristically awful. Her final scene in the movie had a handful of audience members laughing…and when you see it, you’ll know why.

3) The climactic battle in the mansion is way too short and it’s wasn’t all that great to begin with. It’s perfectly set up, and you’re hoping for as much or more excitement and gore as the Gypsy Assault…and then it fizzles. This was going to be a more positive than negative review…until the final 10 minutes.

Overall. Skip The Wolfman and wait for video because it’s way too consistently erratic to be worth a price of a ticket. Much better suited for home viewing because you can stop when the movie flags and just plain skip the dull parts for all the gooey money shots. If you have to, go into The Wolfman just to avoid seeing Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift in Valentine’s Day and be grateful to whatever god you believe in that it’s not Dear John…

As another October nears its end, yet another Saw movie makes its way into theaters.

If this was say, 2006, you might have given a shit. But the Junior Varsity Saw trilogy has more than succeeded in turning a halfway decent horror series into a punchline. Hey, I guess we all have to laugh sometime until another Scary Movie comes out, but at least that series has the decency to stop at 5.

Yes, the Saw series sucks now but I can’t bring myself to hate it because there’s something entertainingly interesting watching how awful the Saw franchise has become as the series tries and new and dim-witted ways to breathe life into itself. Saw has become the Muhammad Ali of Horror: You sorta feel sorry for it as it stumbles its way about like a retard, stuttering and stammering trying to recapture whatever scintilla of former greatness it ever had until you realize that it did it to itself, overstaying its welcome, not leaving when it was on top, and seeing it now only reminds of you of how far down it’s fallen.

You know, I could rewrite that to make more of a boxing parallel…but it’s a Saw review, so I’ll save rereading and revising for a review that matters. The nice and easy thing about writing these Saw reviews is that I can just pull up another review I wrote years ago and change about 3 words, like Mad Libs, because there’s nothing much different from one sequel to the next.

Anyway, it’s actually kinda fun to watch what the Saw producers will come up next to Shark Jump/ Fridge Nuke/Animal Cracker Across Liv Tyler’s Stomach some life into its comatose patient. Unlike most people who want it to end or who hadn’t realized there were that many Saw movies, I don’t advocate pulling the plug because they at least guarantees some laughs (and even more snoozes) during the Halloween Season.

Wait a second…there seems to be something in this garbage next to me…Let me pick it up…

Yes, it’s the napkin in which the writers and the directors of the Saw have plotted out the next several chapters.

Nope, I think these aren’t notes but actual scripts.

On the bottom of the napkin there’s also a way that YOU can be the director of the next Saw movie, as they seem to be taking Saw directors out of homeless shelters because no real directors will touch it anymore…

Roman Polanski was asked if he’d rather stay in prison or be given a full pardon. The condition of the pardon being that he had to direct a Saw movie. After about a moment’s worth of contemplation, Polanski answered by putting his handcuffs back on and tossing the Interviewer’s salad. He has apparently gone accustomed to prison life and its many colorful forms of barter. And this is a man who was in Rush Hour 3…

Lionsgate and the makers of Saw ask you to apply for the job of the “director” of the next Saw by just filling out an application at your local temp agency. They’ll call you in about 20 minutes. It really doesn’t matter if you have no directing experience or think that “blocking” is something an O line does for Adrian Peterson. Judging from Saw IV, V, and VI…you really don’t need experience or even basic competence. Don’t worry about working with actual actors, because post Danny Glover and Cary Elwes, Saw doesn’t have anymore of those. Hey, it pays at least $9 an hour, and judging by the production value of Saw VI, you can have all the Fortune Cookies you can eat while you work. Even if you try it and don’t like it, that’s okay too because after you direct a Saw movie you can rest assured of never, ever being taken seriously as a director.

This year’s loser of the pool is Kevin Gruebert, who was the editor for last year’s comatose Saw V. It was directed by David Hackl (perfectly named), who was the production designer for some of the previous Saws. If you are currently on the production team of any future Saws, you might want to quit now or else you might be forced to direct… Then your family will laugh at you if they even acknowledge your existence

Future installments of the Saw series include-

Saw IVVIXIV- Someone in the Saw series gets pregnant as usually happens when a series gets obsolete. We learn that Jigsaw’s new apprentice Candace (Heather Langenkamp) has been with child for 3 months. On top of all that we get a flashback episode with swirly screen recollection from the previous Saws. It’s cheaply produced because you already have existing footage which defrays the lack of actual box office.

Saw VIVIVIVIVIII- Jigsaw and his newest apprentice Ralph (Chace Crawford) take in a homeless black orphan named Lawrence (that kid from Role Models) and hilarious hijinx ensue as Jig and Ralph realize it’s not so easy taking care of a kid while trying to hold down day jobs torturing people in overly elaborate ways.

Saw XPMELS- Lawrence, the black homeless orphan kid (that kid from Role Models), gets killed in a drive-by cross fire in this Very Special Episode of Saw. Jigsaw and his new apprentice Bryce (Jon Heder) teach everybody about the dangers of gang warfare. Stay tuned for the moving closing Credits song dedicated to Lawrence, sung by Jig and Bryce called “Bullets can’t Kill my Love for You.”

Saw RNDMC- After torturing a high school teacher Mr. Snackwell (Wallace Shawn) from our nation’s Inner City, Jigsaw and his new apprentice Rocco (Seth Green) are compelled to take that teacher’s place while the district waits for Mr. Snackwell’s severed head to heal. Jigsaw teaches the Inner City minority kids about physics and machinery and they teach him to dance and how to wear a baseball cap sideways while his pants hang low.

While you eagerly await those, the most recent Saw opens…

…Right after the last one left off, with that ending advertised last years as “one you can’t believe,” but which turned out to be the most retarded one yet. Agent Strahm (some guy picked off the acting truck) is dead, while JV Jigsaw Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor, projecting Frank Stalloneish anti-charisma) is still around to be the real Jigsaw’s (Tobin Bell, nice to see him earning a steady paycheck, but let’s hope he got paid up front instead of points off the back end because it’s embarrassing to try to cash a royalty check for 0.78) little Bitch. This time Jig’s got a “master plan” and it involves that box that his wife Jill (Betsy Russell- think Private School, think Topless) got near the end of Saw V. We really want to see what’s inside Jill’s box…

Within the folds of Jill’s box contains 6 manila envelopes bequeathed to her after Jig got cut up 3 movies ago. They are numbered 1 through 6 so the audience can follow. They contain people that Hoffman will torture in order to fulfill Jig’s will. Jig is like Tupac, in that even though he’s been dead for years, he still does more work dead than most people do alive. Sure, half of it now belongs to the second shitty Saw trilogy, but you take work when you can it.

One of those people is an actuary named William (Peter Outerbridge, whose last name is automatically more interesting than any of the characters in this movie), who had the audacity of denying Jigsaw an insurance claim when he was alive…

Don’t know why Jig’s so pissed, because I think anybody in insurance would deny him after looking at the grosses for Saw IV and V combined. It’s just good business.

Yes, this is how dismal and pathetic the Saw series has become: Jigsaw is actually torturing a guy because he’s in insurance. Meter maids better begin looking over their shoulders, along with those student loan people.

Anyway, Will the actuary has to run through a series of torturous games that you’ve seen in all the other Saw movies. Except this time, they’re not as good as it seems they’re using the rejects from the first 2 Saw movies because they’ve run out of decent ideas. All Hoffman has to do is press “Play” and have that constant look of constipation. I guess he’s suffering through his own kind of torture…

While we’re bored as shit just waiting for someone to get torn apart, we get to hear some eye-roll worthy bon mots like “Once you see death up close can you know what life is” and “Until a Person is faced with death it’s impossible to tell whether he has the will to survive.” Goody, not only are the Saw flicks deathly dull but they’ve also turned into MESSAGE movies with platitudes as empty as theaters in this movie’s second week of release. Odd how certain scenes in Where the Wild Things Are are scarier than anything in this or any of the previous 3 Saws.

In the next Saw you will hear such inspiring self-help lines like “In order to go left…you must make your way right” and “In order to go up, you must accept that you will go down.” You may have a moment to let the deepness of that sink in.

Will Will, make it through the Gorelympic Games without losing too many limbs? It’s Saw 6, does it matter? But rest assured, if he does die it’ll be in a manner that’ll prove just how stupid these characters are because all of them somehow got taken in and drugged by a guy wearing a horse’s head.

And what is Jigsaw’s master plan, and how does it involve the monotonous Detective Hoffman? It’s Saw 6, so you stopped caring about years ago. If you’re wondering why the theater you’re in is so barren, it’s because Paranormal Activity’s playing one screen down.

What works in this latest Saw failure-

1) Amanda (Shawnee Smith) returns from the dead and in a couple of scenes shows why Hoffman is such a pussy. It’s sad how the dead characters are infinitely more interesting that the live ones as this series limps along. Hell, bring back Donnie Wahlberg just because. Sure, he got his head mushed in IV, but I’m sure they could write some really idiotic way to bring him back. I mean, they got a whole 90 minutes of stupidity out of Saw V.

2) Saw 6 is an entrail-length better than Saw V. Which is kind of like saying you’d rather die getting gored by boars than botulism.

What doesn’t work-

1) If Tobin Bell is the Connery of the Jigsaws and Shawnee Smith is the Daniel Craig, then Costas Mandylor is the Timothy Dalton because he’s about as charismatic as Betamax. Did the casting call for another Jigsaw stipulate the most uninteresting actor possible, with the unique ability to add no inflection to line readings other than the fact that you can get the words out with what sounds like boxes of raisins in your mouth? It’s like being tortured by your High School Guidance counselor as you’re liable just to jump into the fence of razor blades just so he’ll stop boring you.

2) As the series snails on, the overused term torture porn seems more and more apropos because, like actual porn, no one sees these movies anymore for the “plot” or the “acting” (I think you need real actors for that), but for the splatter money shots involving the traps, which even in Saw’s very lax terms have gotten feebler as the series gets more and more flaccid. Soon we’ll be seeing shoelaces tied together or Chinese finger traps. Or someone will go to sleep and Jig will put their hand in warm water.

Only one trap really stands out, the one involving the merry-go-round (yes, you read that right, and yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds), not because it’s any great shakes as a trap but because it just gets more and more ridiculous as the minutes pass. I mean that in a good way. Good for a Saw movie anyway.

3) As you probably guessed, there is an opening for Saw 7. This applies to the 5 people that still care. If those 5 people see this movie twice, it will more than have covered the budget for Saw 6 because I think we’ve all seen Webisodes with better production value.

4) Derisively funny Saw prop- a switch is actually labeled “Live” and “Die.” You wish there was one labeled “Boring” and “Not Boring”, though the “Not Boring” switch might just get you back to the first Saw.

Overall. You know to skip this as the Saw producers know not to screen this for the mainstream press. Somebody you know will have a download in a couple of days so you can see what nobody’s been missing. But as Jigsaw might say “Only when you’ve seen the gory goodness of the first Saw can you be truly repelled by how awful these movies have become and just see Vampire Assistant like I did.” Heed the advice, and be grateful you have another year before you can ignore Saw 7…