Like a gender-reversed Deliverance, three friends (Straw Dogs‘ Kate Bosworth, Childrens Hospital‘s Lake Bell and Aselton) motorboat to the titular isle for a gals-only camping trip. When three hunters cross their path, Abby (Aselton) spontaneously invites them to share their campfire and liquor. The guys accept, but after the very married Abby gets very drunk […]
horror
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Detention of the Dead / The Demented
Imagine if zombies invaded The Breakfast Club. That’s literally the setup experienced by your stock-character students of the nerd, the jock, the misfit, the bully, the cheerleader and, so it’s not a total copy of the 1985 John Hughes classic, a wisecracking Asian kid (Justin Chon, 21 & Over) to spout things like, “I gotta […]
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Evil Dead
In Sam Raimi’s wildly original, wildly influential The Evil Dead of 1981, five friends into the woods for a cabin getaway and couldn’t get away from the demons they accidentally summon from an ancient book. In his feature debut, Uruguay director Fede Alvarez retains that setup, minus the vacation. In his vision, the young men […]
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Berberian Sound Studio
Berberian Sound Studio isn’t directed by Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, but it may as well be. His influence is draped lovingly all over the British film: • A projectionist seen only by his hands dons black gloves — the requisite accessory for many a murderer in the director’s giallo efforts. • The movie within […]
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The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh
Two more ingenious shorts have followed, and now, finally, Gudiño’s first stab at a feature with The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh. The budget remains small, while the creeps have increased exponentially. Do not watch it while alone and in the dark. Narrated by grand ol’ Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement), the newly departed woman […]
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Would You Rather
In order to afford a bone marrow transplant for her ailing brother (Logan Miller, The Bling Ring), young, unemployed Iris (Brittany Snow, Pitch Perfect) accepts an exclusive invitation to a dinner party hosted by businessman Shepard Lambrick (Jeffrey Combs, the Re-Animator trilogy), at which his foundation will award a sizable sum of money to one […]
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Blood Runs Cold
In this Swedish take on the all-American slasher film, Winona (newcomer Hanna Oldenburg) seeks refuge from stress at a vacation home, only to find more of it. Part of that is because she runs into her ex-boyfriend, Rick (Patrick Saxe, also making a feature debut), amid all the wintry conditions, but most of it is […]
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23:59
In the opening scene of writer/director Gilbert Chan’s film, we also learn that if someone dies at that time, one minute until midnight, his or her soul will not rest in peace. Tan (newcomer Tedd Chan) tells his fellow recruits this while regaling them with ghost stories on the floor of their barracks. They’re in […]
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Come Out and Play
Francis (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Lola Versus) and the very pregnant Beth (the genetically blessed Vinessa Shaw, Side Effects) rent a boat to explore the nearby island of Punta Hueca (can’t-be-accidental translation: Hollow Point). Under a sweltering sun, they find a few kids at the dock and seemingly no else along the village’s roads or in its […]
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Anatomy / Anatomy 2
As Paula quickly discovers through her studies, there exists a crazy, frat-like organization on campus whose members like to perform autopsies. What’s so crazy about that? The surgeons of this secret society like to perform said autopsies on live humans. Naturally, that results in danger for her and creepy imagery for us. Slick, sick and […]