Dead Snow

Upstart Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola goes for gory glory in a Nazi zombie slasher pic that steals liberally from the Sam Raimi cannon of horror. Trouble comes when a group of medical students go for a snowmobile vacation in a remote mountain cabin that happens to be located on the grave site of hundreds of Nazi soldiers waiting for an opportunity to awaken and take back the gold trinkets they stole from local villagers more than a half century ago. There's plenty of toilet humor and gross-out visuals as our doomed group of victims do battle with an unending stream of zombies whose, make-up is the best thing in the movie. For young gore-hungry audiences who haven't seen "The Evil Dead" (one and two), "Dead Snow" could work as a stomach-churning thrill ride, but for more experienced viewers, you're much better off sticking with a master of the genre like Sam Raimi, whose "Drag Me to Hell" achieves everything the "Dead Snow" filmmakers attempted to do, and more. 
Rated R. 90 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Pontypool

Hemmed in by theatrically bound staging, "Pontypool" is an overly inflated zombie flick that makes overtures to a weighty theme of social consciousness that the screenwriters are ill-prepared to fulfill. The talky action takes place within the cinderblock walls of a lonely AM radio station, in the snowy town of Pontypool, Ontario, where Stephen McHattie's grizzled radio announcer Grant Mazzy employs every baiting trick to keep listeners tuned in. Panicked reports of violent mob attacks around the epicenter of town instill fear in Grant, his show's producer Sydney (Lisa Houle), and her assistant Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) as they attempt to unravel the mystery closing in on them. The tone goes all horror camp when the viral implications of certain repeated words seem to point to the cause of the zombie infestation. What might have worked as an Off-Broadway play flails as a movie.     
Rated R. 96 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Drag Me to Hell

Co-written with his brother Ivan, Sam Raimi crafts an enormously enjoyable house of cinematic horrors that is at turns funny, campy, shocking, and scary. The ever-engaging Alison Lohman plays Christine, a bank loan officer angling for an assistant manager position. Attempting to impress her boss with her ability to make "tough choices," Christine denies a loan extension to an old Hungarian gypsy named Mrs. Ganush (wonderfully played by Lorna Raver). The decision causes Mrs. Ganush to place a terrible curse on Christine that promises to drag her to hell at the end of three days. With the help of her attentive boyfriend Clay (Justin Long), and a knowledgeable psychic (played by Dileep Rao), Christine tries to get rid of the curse that causes all sorts of terrifying events and bodily harm. Sam Raimi uses everything in his bag of cinematic tricks to create a fast paced "Night Gallery"/"Twilight Zone"-styled horror movie that continuously goes much further than any expectations might prepare you for. "Drag Me to Hell" is the most fun I've had at the movies in years. It's destined to be a cult classic for all eternity.
Rated PG-13. 99 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

The Tenant (Classic Film Pick)

Roman Polanski’s 1976 psychological thriller  stars the director as Trelkovsky, a troubled man that takes over the former apartment of a young female suicide victim who jumped from its windows. Trelkovsky comes to believe that his new neighbors were to blame for the woman’s suicide, and are now using the same bizarre methods to extract a similar response from him. Known as the last of Polanski’s apartment trilogy, following “Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Tenant” contains one of the most outrageous double climaxes ever committed to celluloid. Nightmares will follow. 

Not Rated. 120 mins. (A+)

The Haunting in Connecticut

This structurally defective horror movie never pays off on the carefully planted "Boo" scares detonate at a regular rate over the course of its underdeveloped story. In order to be closer to the hospital where their teenaged son Matt (Kyle Gallner) is undergoing cancer treatment, Sara (Virginia Madsen) and Peter Campbell (Martin Donovan) rent a bargain Victorian house in Connecticut with room enough for their two other children and a visiting niece. As it turns out the troubled property is a former funeral home that was inhabited by a kooky family of corpse-collecting, séance-leading weirdoes whose son Johan (Erik Berg) could make ghostly ectoplasm spew from the orifices of himself and others. Afterthought subplots about Peter's battle with alcoholism, and a cancer-suffering Reverend champion (poorly acted by Elias Koteas) lead the movie to its slapdash conclusion. Only Kyle Gallner's gothic performance, as the death's-door-victim who sees more than just ghosts, gives the movie any weight.  
(Lionsgate) Rated PG-13. 92 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

The Last House on the Left (2009)

By definition, any update of Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left" is sure to be a schlock fest. Greek director Dennis Iliadis uses every trick in the book to ramp up suspense and deliver shout-at-the-screen shocks from Adam Alleca's and Carl Ellsworth's straight-forward script about violent retribution for crimes committed. When the Collingwood family of three go for a holiday at their lakeside house, swim champ daughter Mari (Sara Paxton) takes the family car into town to visit her feisty gal pal Paige (Martha Maclsaac). The promise of good marijuana lures the pair into the clutches of evil-doers that includes a prison escapee, his teenage son, a femme fatal, and a spitting-mad murderer. Audiences familiar with Craven's original know there will be an especially nasty rape scene--here constructed as a kind of group sex be-in. Payback comes from Mari's mom (Monica Potter) and pop (Tony Goldwyn) when the gang that brutalized their daughter shows up at the family lake house in need of medical treatment and shelter. As an exploitation B-horror movie, this latest addition to the genre is heads and shoulders above anything Rob Zombie has ever done.
Rated R. 109 mins. (B-) (Three Stars) 

Psycho (Classic Film Pick)

Alfred Hitchcock should be credited with making the first slasher film for the ground-breaking narrative template he created for "Psycho." Regardless of how many times you've seen it, "Psycho" is a compulsively watchable horror thriller that builds layers of exponential suspense with every scene. Famously made on a shoestring budget, with a television production crew, "Psycho" is a horror movie that gains claustrophobic momentum from its desolate "Bates" motel location where Janet Leigh's Marion Crane makes her last stop. Anthony Perkins gives a career-topping performance as the motel owner with a nasty mommy complex, based on real-life psychotic Ed Gein. The 1960 film found Alfred Hitchcock working at the height of his powers. The famous shower scene is still studied by film students for Hitchcock's brilliant use of montage. "Psycho" is everything a horror movie should be, creepy, sexy, dark, and terribly shocking. In a word, perfect. Rated R. 109 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

Nosferatu (Classic Film Pick)

Werner Herzog's 1979 homage to F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent film is an appropriately chilling telling of the Gothic tale derived from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Klaus Kinski delivers a spot-on performance that may be finest of his career as the bloodthirsty vampire Count Dracula who takes advantage of a real estate broker (played by Bruno Ganz). Isabelle Adjani brings her immutable beauty to bear as the broker's fearful wife fated to suffer Dracula’s bite. The movie is filled with delightfully scary touches and recreated camera angles from Murnau's original.

(A+) (Five Stars)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Classic Film Pick)

In the face of low budget B-movie monster flicks, Don Siegel's 1956 filmic adaptation of Jack Finney's science fiction novel introduced a new kind of double-edged social satire to movie audiences. Filled with classic chase sequences and creepy character development, the story follows Dr. Miles Bennell (perfectly played by Kevin McCarthy) whose small California town's citizens are being duplicated by aliens. Hitchcock couldn't have done a better job of ramping up the suspense in a horror film that is as much fun today as when it shocked audiences in the '50.
(A+) (Five Stars)

Eraserhead (Classic Film Pick)

David Lynch's immersion in the surreal world of his protagonist Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) comes through in a creepy black-and-white horror movie of sorts. "Eraserhead" provided an offset balm to the crush of 1977 Hollywood blockbusters like "Star Wars" when it was released. Hugely popular among the Midnight Movie crowd, the story follows fright-wig Harry through painfully slow and strange events centered around romantic relations with his none-too-forthcoming girlfriend Mary. It seems Harry has become a father--but how, and to what kind of freaky creature baby? Time drips like old paint in Lynch's surreal experiment, that revels in all things upsetting, disorienting, dark, and mysterious.

(A+) (Five Stars)

Friday the 13th

Death by a surfeit of sharp objects comes to two groups of ill-fated young campers whose brief vacations to the Crystal Lake stamping ground of the infamous hockey-mask-wearing Jason Voorhees (played by Derek Mears) incites prickly gasps and roller coaster laughs. Marcus Mispel (director of the "The Texas Chainsaw" remake) gets big budget assistance from producer Michael Bay for this enjoyable update of the classic horror flick that set off cinema's longest running slasher-movie franchise. Our modern batch of victims are just as obsessed with sex, drugs and music as the murder fodder of the 1980 original, even if the barebones revenge story (if you can call it that) is closer to the series second installment. Aaron Yoo delivers an especially fun performance as Chewie, a stoner with a bottomless stomach for booze.

(Warner Bros.) Rated R. 97 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

The Uninvited

Unrelated to the 1944 ghost story that gave birth to the great Jazz standard Stella by Starlight, this "Uninvited" is a clunky Americanized remake of Kim Jee-woon's 2003 Korean horror film "The Tale of Two Sisters." The upstart sibling directing team of Charles and Thomas Guard create hamburger-helper scares in a story about a suicidal girl named Anna (played by Emily Browning) who returns from a stint in the loony bin to live with her father Steven (played by David Strathairn in a squandered performance) and his new girlfriend Rachel (played by Elizabeth Banks). Anna's sister Alex (played by Arielle Kebbel) is quick to fill Anna in on how their now-deceased mother's former nurse Rachel has dug her nails into their father's heart. Anna suffers from hallucinations of her corpse-like mother crawling around the family's lakeside mansion, that point to Rachel as her assassin. Perfunctory scares lead up to a would-be surprise plot reveal that instead carries the odor of a day-old tuna sandwich left out on the counter. 
(Paramount) Rated PG-13. 87 mins. (D+) (One Star)

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Kate Beckinsale jettisoned the Underworld franchise for this third installment prequel that's made bearable only by Michael Sheen's strong presence as the Lycan werewolf slave Lucian. Beckinsale look-alike Rhona Mitra plays Sonja, the vampire princess daughter to coven king Viktor (played with googly eye acting techniques by Bill Nighy). Sonja and Lucian enjoy a tempestuous affair that's threatened by daddy's wrath should he ever find out about their intimate bond that promises to birth a new kind of creature. Hokey CGI graphics display bloody battles with hordes of Lycans being split in two as Lucian and Sonja attempt to overthrow the Vampire dynasty that condemns their union. Director Patrick Tatopoulos is in over his head with a movie that should, but probably won't, put a final nail in Underworld's monochromatic coffin.
(Screen Gems/Sony) Rated R. (C-) (Two Stars)

The Unborn

"The Unborn" goes from soft-core adoration of its stalked subject Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) to dark nightmares involving bugs for a tedious Exorcist-themed horrorshow. Writer/director David S. Goyer overreaches with a story about Casey, a Jewish girl haunted by a dybbuk, a demon from Hebrew mysticism. Casey desperately wants an exorcism to get rid of the gothic monkey on her back. Casey secures the help of Rabbi Sendak (Gary Oldman) and multi-denominational priest Arthur Wyndham (Idris Elba) to perform the ritual that will not be without incident. Gary Oldman steals what there is to take from his scenes, but a nonsensical B-movie like "The Unborn" is beneath is skills.

Rated PG-13, 88 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

The Mist

It took director Frank Darabont writing a better ending for Stephen King’s 1980 novella before he could tackle making the best legitimate horror movie to come out in years. A father and young son become stranded in a populated strip mall grocery store in Maine where a deadly mist enshrouds the area as part of a terrible storm. Hidden in the thick fog are gigantic insects and prehistoric creatures that ensnare the store’s inhabitants in a grip of fear that brings out their worst and best qualities. Marcia Gay Harden is magnificent as a Christian fanatic, and Thomas Jane gives the best performance of his career in a low-budget, retro horror movie that is equal parts satire, suspense, and surprise. "Stephen King’s The Mist" is a reminder of what a really great horror movie is all about.

Rated R. 127 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

High Tension

Gory European gothic horror doesn’t come any grittier and weirder than it does when a couple of would-be lesbian college girlfriends retreat to a weekend at the secluded farmhouse of one of their parents to study for their final exams. A local deranged psycho-killer pays a nocturnal visit to the house and imposes a bloody terror spree that has Marie (Cecile De France) chasing the madman to rescue her friend Alex (Maiwenn) who sits as his shackled hostage in the back of his van. A mix of English language dubbing and French subtitles adds to the charm of director Alexandre Aja’s homage to slasher films of the ‘70s, namely “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
Rated R. 85 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

The Cave

Replete with winged undersea cave monsters, unlikely mountain climbing heroics and a mutating microbe that turns its victims into creatures-in-waiting “The Cave” is a paint-by-numbers thriller lacking in pigment. Composer Reinhold Heil apes the soundtrack from “Jaws” to punctuate the action as a nine person scientific team, that includes Cole Hauser and Lena Headey, explore a mysterious cave deep under haunted Romanian waters. Characters repeat each other’s names so much that you feel like you’re in a kindergarten class as the body count goes up in the superficially claustrophobic environment. For a thriller set deep in the bowels of the earth “The Cave” never gets below the surface.
Rated PG-13. 97 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

The Birds (Classic Film Pick)

Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 follow-up to "Psycho" (1961) is an ambitious adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier story wherein the famed British filmmaker finds a full dramatic voice to connect his own fetishized sexual concerns to a socially sensitive satire of modern mores, as contrasted against a mysterious natural catastrophe. Groundbreaking on several levels of cinematic technique and dramatic form, "The Birds" combines forward-thinking special effects with an unconventional soundscape to instill a palpable lurking fear in the audience. Although not as horrifically shocking as "Psycho," "The Birds" is a more sophisticated film, and represents a high watermark in the prolific career of a true maestro of cinema. Tippi Hedren's performance as Melanie, a social butterfly that becomes caged by external conditions, is remarkable for the actress's ability to remain true to the stylized nature of the material's demands, while circumventing that limitation to render a pure vision of '60s era womanhood trapped the affection of a man (Mitch-played by Rod Taylor) whose relationship to his mother darkly informs his troubled emotional make-up. Endlessly watchable, "The Birds" is a masterpiece that can be read on many levels, providing insight into every aspect of modern filmmaking and dramaturgy.

The Exorcism Of Emily Rose

Audiences seeking the elusive rush of fear, that William Friedkin so eloquently delivered in his bar-setting 1973 horror classic “The Exorcist,” will be sorely disappointed by writer/director Scott Derrickson’s imbalanced attempt at stirring similar emotions. Purportedly based on actual events, the story commences just after the death of a teenaged girl (Jennifer Carpenter) during an exorcism performed by a priest (Tom Wilkinson) who suddenly finds himself the target of murder charges based on his assumed negligence. Father Moore (Wilkinson) refuses to cop a plea and in stead insists on publicly airing the girl’s story in a jury trial with the assistance of his power-hungry attorney Erin Bruner (Laura Linney – “Kinsey”). The movie unsuccessfully toggles between snappy courtroom testimony and creepy flashback episodes that build toward an anticlimax that reneges on the stated promise of portraying the immediate circumstances of Emily Rose’s death.
Rated PG-13. 114 mins. (C)

Underworld

Dulled by the gauzy dark blue, gray and green color scheme that became the rage after "Blade Runner" (1982) for conveying lurid futuristic landscapes, "Underworld" is a hybrid horror and action film that succeeds as neither. Filmed in Budapest, the movie centers on a centuries-old war between a race of Vampires and a clan of Werewolves (called "Lycans"), wherein the threat of interracial mingling necessitates the awakening of the Vampire leader Viktor (Bill Nighy) from his five-hundred-years sleep by Vampire warrior Selene (Kate Beckinsale). Endless gun battles propel the movie to its sequel-demanding ending. Kate Beckinsale is enigmatic as the rebel Vampire in love with the miscast Scott Speedman as Michael, a human on the brink of becoming the first Vampire/Werewolf creature.
Rated R. 121 mins (C+) (Two Stars)

The Order

“The Order” is a halfhearted “supernatural thriller”—interpret as not an actual “horror” movie--wherein exorcism-performing rebel priest Father Alex (Heath Ledger) must travel to Rome to struggle with “sin eater” William Eden (Benno Furmann) over whether or not he (Alex) will inherit Eden’s dark post. “Sin eaters” were medieval European excommunicated priests who gave last rights to dying excommunicated people by eating bread off of their bodies to absolve them of their sins. This arcane premise quickly crumbles under writer/producer/director Brian Helgeland’s clumsy handling of his own reckless script, and miscast actors who are never believable in their assigned roles. Shannyn Sossamon is a particular embarrassment as Alex’s suicidal love interest Mara, however Peter Weller is a stand out as a corrupt and evil priest attempting to become the next Pope. 
Rated R. 102 mins. (D) (One Star)

Cabin Fever

Newcomer writer/director Eli Roth's "Cabin Fever" is a nail-biting horror movie that has audiences alternately covering their eyes in fear during scenes of gory revelation, or guffawing out loud during moments of inspired humor. At a remote cabin in the woods, a group of five young friends have their week long vacation interrupted by a flesh eating bacteria that pits them against one another, and against their secluded surroundings. The film's random and surreal atmosphere is viscerally calculated by the characters' tender flesh as it's corrupted through contaminated drinking water and sexual contact. Indeed, "Cabin Fever" is filled with lovingly realistic gore that's sustained by a revved up plot that makes big cities look safe compared to unseen dangers lurking in the back woods of the countryside. 
Rated R. 94 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

28 Days Later

Horror movie fans will have something to crow about with director Danny Boyle’s post-apocalyptic “28 Days Later.” A deadly blood-transmitted virus (called “RAGE”) has emptied London of its inhabitants when Omega man Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakens in a hospital bed from a coma to join up with a few other uninfected survivors in escaping the zombie-like corrupted inhabitants who pursue them. This “Dawn of the Dead” inspired chiller is strong on concept, style and brutally violent action, but suffers from poor musical scoring, and a digital video format that helped keep its budget at 10 million dollars. “28 Days Later” doesn’t compare to such milestone horror thrillers as “Seven” or “The Vanishing” (the original Dutch version), but it’s still the best nerve shocker to come around since “The Blair Witch Project.”
Rated R. 113 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

Gothika

This shoddy B horror movie doesn't deserve a national theatrical run, much less the capable talent assigned to it. Halle Berry plays Dr. Miranda Grey a criminal psychologist who finds herself possessed by the tortured ghost of a deceased girl after she brutally murders her psychologist husband (Charles S. Dutton). Miranda is immediately taken as a prisoner patient at the mental facility where she formerly worked and must escape to prove her innocence. Robert Downey Jr. plays Miranda's previously amorous coworker who is now convinced of her guilt. The third act is so laughably awful that audiences will groan as the film's mystery premise collapses under some of the worst dialogue since "Battlefield Earth." As for the film's inscrutable title, no definition is ever presented.
Rated R. 97 mins. (D-) (Zero Stars)

Jaws (Classic Film Pick)

Spielberg's opening sequence of "Jaws" pushes Hitchcock's second act shocker from "Psycho" up to the start of a terrifying horror movie that also borrows from Hitchcock's other masterpiece "The Birds." A sexy nude girl goes for a midnight swim in the pitch black ocean off Amity Island, where the most phallic of creatures lurks below. John Williams' pulsing musical score sends shockwaves of fear deep into the central nervous system of the audience. Suddenly all teetering apprehension erupts into sheer panic as the vulnerable girl is thrashed about in the open sea like a leaky rag doll by an unseen shark of enormous strength and fury. The tyranny of mother nature will return to attack children before the local police chief Brody (Roy Scheider) will call upon the salty dog shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) and a geeky oceanographer named Matt (Richard Dreyfus) to go after the vicious monster that threatens the livelihood of the resort town. In 1975 "Jaws" made Steven Spielberg a household name by delivering on an unpredictable primal threat and fear of the unknown. For as many women who refused to take showers after seeing "Psycho," just as many stayed away from the ocean after seeing "Jaws." Peter Benchley's characters are exquisitely fulfilled by Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfus, who carry out the literary portent of their archetypes to the letter. In the end, the shark is a MacGuffin necessary for the men to bond and test themselves against what they fear most--their own mortality.
Rated PG. 124 mins. (A) (Five Stars)

The Exorcist (Classic Film Pick)

On the day after Christmas in 1973, Oscar-winning director William Friedkin followed up the tremendous success he enjoyed with "The French Connection" (1971), with the most daring horror film ever made; an adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel "The Exorcist." Blatty, a devout Catholic, had been inspired by a 1949 Washington Post article entitled "Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held In Devil’s Grip," and carefully crafted his novel around the area in Georgetown where he attended Jesuitical Georgetown University. It was a classically compelling American Gothic legend that set up an earth-shattering physical and religious battle between good and evil over the possessed body of a young girl named Regan MacNeil (unforgettably played by Linda Blair). Regan’s possessed entity was, and is, the closest vision of sheer evil to ever appear in fictive film. It was only fitting that the two exorcists attempting to save Regan’s life, by expelling the demon within her, offered up and ultimately sacrificed their lives. The supernatural incidents are resolved in the closing scenes of the movie, but the potential for evil to grip mortal humans is a ghost that lurks in the memories of every audience that sees "The Exorcist."
Rated R. 122 mins. (A+)

The Ring

By the time "The Ring" gets around to delivering its big surprise payoff, it's too little--too late. The horror feels likes it's already over when another character dies without putting up a fight or even running for the shear joy of providing an appropriate chase scene. The audience is even spared the sight of his supposedly gruesome corpse because, either the special effects make-up team couldn't get it right, or because the filmmakers ran out of money. Either way the movie is a dog from start to finish, with enough genre inconsistencies and plot holes to make it a textbook example of borrowing from too many divergent horror films to get anything right.
Rated PG-13. 115 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Dracula (Classic Film Pick)

Ladies fainted when Bela Lugosi rose from his coffin as a vampire in the 1927 Broadway production of "Dracula" that preceded Tod Browning's brilliant 1931 film version that had an equally chilling effect on movie audiences. Playwright Hamilton Deane based his lean script on Bram Stoker's famous novel, and introduced horror to the era of sound film. Dwight Frye's eerie performance as Renfield, the hapless British accountant who dares set foot inside Dracula's foreboding castle, sets a tone of ghoulish insanity that the vampire instills in men. For his well-established part, Lugosi is positively blood-curdling as he stalks every scene with his thick native Hungarian accent and dapper tuxedo and cape. "Dracula" is more than a milestone of cinematic horror, it represents a marriage of nightmare and reality that establishes an American gothic sensibility for other dramatic genres that followed. Stark, cold, and deeply sensual, "Dracula's" atmosphere and intention is rooted in a fear of unknown lust and desire from which there can be no escape. To view "Dracula" is to be bitten by the vampire's desperate attack.  
Not Rated. 75 mins. (A) (Five Stars)

Saw V

Everything after its gory "pit-and-the-pendulum" opening scare sequence is downhill in the fifth and potentially last installment in a horror franchise that has run completely out of steam. Inexplicably, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) has come back to life since being killed off in "Saw III" to enforce his torture methods of bloody rehabilitation, this time involving five dicey characters implicated in a building fire that killed eight people. Trapped in a poorly lit and filthy chamber of horrors, the group's number diminish after detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) is gets a promotion that squeezes out agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) in spite of his former heroic efforts that include escaping from one of Jigsaw's impossible death contraptions. There's plenty of splattered blood for its own sake, but what little story there is makes no sense and the movie ends on a false note without bothering to tie up its dangling plot threads. This movie blows.

(Lionsgate) Rated R, 93 mins. (D-) (Zero Stars)

Let the Right One In

Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a 12-year-old Swedish boy attracted to his new neighbor Eli (Lina Leandersson), a similarly aged female, uh, vampire--whose bloodthirsty father has been busy around their Stockholm anex, in this inventive horror movie from Tomas Alfredson. Set in the early '80s, Oskar suffers at the hands of school bullies during the day, but finds solace in the company of Eli at night—the only time she can come out. The budding romance that forms between the class-conflicted kids pulls an undertow of tension against the story’s quickening rhythms that unfold. Novelist/screenwriter John Ajvide Lindqvist’s script is a study in connecting the inner lives of emotionally bound characters to a suspenseful vampire plot in a cold foreign setting. For his part, director Tomas Alfredson shows a keen eye for minimalist horror ala something like "Fargo," and revels in creating a delayed series of thrilling surprises. This is a horror movie to savor.

Rated R. 114 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer

This old-school throwback to ‘80s era horror movies takes pride in the teen screams extracted by its goo-spurting, tentacled monster and his newly minted henchmen as they attack an unfortunate group of young college students. Plenty of blood-splattering gross-out fun, along the lines of "The Evil Dead," occurs as our anger-problem student Jack Brooks (Trevor Matthews) has to battle the forces of evil that turn his science teacher (Robert Englund) and fellow students into guts-for-glory monsters. The film’s obviously low budget doesn’t prevent the filmmakers from creating a zesty comically fueled horror flick, tailor made for gore-loving fans of the genre.

Rated R, 85 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

The Happening

One-hit-wonder M. Night Shyamalan further galvanizes the nickname given him by his detractors ("Shyamalama-ding-dong") with yet another pretentious movie that plays like a drawn-out "Twilight Zone" episode. An unknown phenomenon attacks the Northeast portion of America, where people suddenly freeze in their steps before committing suicide. High school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg), his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), and their friend’s 8-year-old daughter Jess attempt to escape the danger that seems to arrive with the wind. Stranded in an unpopulated part of Pennsylvania, the three hang on to survival even as those around them drop like flies. Poorly written dialogue and Shyamalan’s signature overwrought direction infects his actors, ruining every performance. A false-bottom crisis decision sheds no light of resolution on the dystopian story. You could make a case that "The Happening" is a decimal point better than Shyamalan’s last movie because he barely appears in it. If only he’d switch to directing television, movie audiences wouldn’t have to woefully repeat "Shyamalama-ding-dong." Oh wait, they’d do that anyway.
Rated R, 92 mins. (D)

The Mother of Tears: The Third Mother

Italian horror maestro Dario Argento finishes the "Three Mothers" trilogy that he began in 1977 with his popular film "Suspiria." Occasioned by the kind of visually fascinating Grand Guignol set pieces Argento is famous for, "The Mother of Tears" nevertheless ends the trilogy with a whimper. Argento’s famous actress daughter Asia phones in her performance as Sarah Mandy, an art restoration student who witnesses the ritualistic murder of a co-worker inside Rome’s Museum of Ancient Art, yet refuses to believe her boyfriend’s assertions about a group of witches inciting acts of violence all over the city. Clunky dialogue and jerky plotting hopscotch from one blood-splattered sequence to another, and it’s during these sexually tinged scenes of brutal savagery that Argento pays off on his promise as a visionary master of the horrifically surreal. Erotic undercurrents expand as the film approaches its outsized climax. This is a foreign horror movie that’s all about style and shock value. The fruit of Argento’s mad vision is an acquired taste, but there’s plenty to chew on here.

Not Rated, 98 mins. (C+)