Horror
Rod Lott
Within seven minutes of the start of "Bikini Girls on Ice," you get a bikini girl on ice. In other words, at least this Canadian slasher flick isn't misleading; it delivers exactly what's promised. It doesn't promise amateur-hour performances and stupid situations, either, but it has those, too, so the optimist in you could say it underpromises and overdelivers.

Horror
Rod Lott
Underwhelming on first viewing, 2009's "Laid to Rest" has grown on me. Robert Hall's attempt at creating a new horror icon in Chromeskull was a committed one, if not exactly valiant. Ditto for the sequel, which graduates the slasher to top-of-title prominence, "ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2."

Horror
Rod Lott
Imagine walking around in the dark of an old, rundown, abandoned house in the middle of nowhere with a frightened teenage girl for an hour or so. Or give your noodle a rest by watching "The Silent House," which does it for you.

Horror
Rod Lott
In titling their movie "Frat House Massacre," the filmmakers deliver exactly that and, in a strange way, none of that. It's purported to pay homage to the slasher films of yesteryear, but filtered through what hateful lens? In all the one-by-one gorefests I've seen — more than I can recall and more than you'd expect — I've never seen a guy urinate on a girl on the floor.

Horror
Rod Lott
My first response after seeing the recent remake “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”: “I liked it OK, but I still prefer the original, although I haven’t seen it in probably 15 years.”

Horror
Rod Lott
Earlier this summer, I read a book about the history of slasher movies, and kept a list as I went along of movies I've somehow managed not to see. As if by sheer coincidence, Shout! Factory plops two of them together in one "Killer Double Feature": 1988's "Bad Dreams" and 1982's "Visiting Hours," each on their own disc.

Horror
Rod Lott
Curses! I've been tricked into watching another mumblecore movie! Here I am, just as I had shaken Joe Swanberg's wretched "Nights and Weekends" from my mind, and "A Horrible Way to Die" dredges up all those dreadful memories of that overly affected anti-style.

Horror
Rod Lott
I’d like to think that even in a world without “Saw,” a movie like “Choose” still would be made. Any thriller with even a hint of gamesmanship in its plot automatically gets compared to that now-on-hiatus franchise, as if it were the first movie in history to devise such a story. It’s only natural, but also unfair.

Horror
Rod Lott
A prequel to 2004's "Malevolence" — a film I've never seen, and barely heard of — Stevan Mena's "Bereavement" is so rote, so by-the-numbers, I now have no interest in seeing where the story went from here.

Horror
Rod Lott
Hong Kong has a serious housing problem. As "Dream Home" informs us, owning property is a near-impossibility for today's generation of working youth, because asking prices have bloated for up to $3,200 per square foot. Yes, that's in American dollars.

Horror
Rod Lott
With “Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf” and its seemingly unconnected storylines, I don’t feel like I watched a movie. I feel like I watched four back-to-back episodes of a miniseries too out-there, too jumbled for prime-time tastes, like Stephen King’s “Kingdom Hospital.”

Horror
Rod Lott
At the summer camp at the center of this film, cell phones are christened "hell phones," fraternizing with the opposite sex is not allowed, masturbation is a sin that prevents you from entering the gates of Heaven, and everyone goes around calling each other "Brother" and "Sister.”

Horror
Rod Lott
After Dark Originals return this month with two more new releases, “The Task” and “Scream of the Banshee” — one of which may make your day.

Horror
Rod Lott
Now available uncut on Eureka!'s Region 2 DVD, the Spanish 1976 horror classic "Who Can Kill a Child?" makes only one misstep in my book: opening with an epilogue of real-life footage from Auschwitz and other sites of atrocities.

Horror
Rod Lott
We all know the legend of Bloody Mary, the girl’s name who — like Candyman — we dare not speak thrice in front of a mirror. “Blood Night” sorta kinda gives a backstory to Bloody Mary, taking her name a bit too literally.