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Hostel / Hostel: Part II

From 2005, Hostel drops three collegians into Amsterdam for a debauched vacation of pot and poon, only to accidentally become victims in a bizarre business in which the wealthy pay big bucks to torture the kidnapped in an underground warehouse. Roth spares nothing, leaving viewers to cringe at every slice of the Achilles tendon, snipped […]

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Vile

So, yeah: It’s aptly titled. When two camping couples agree to give a ride to a stranded cougar (soap actress McKenzie Westmore) they meet at a gas station, they are gassed and awaken trapped in a house with five others. As explained by a helpful video, “Pain will be your only way out of this […]

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Bio-Dead

However, it takes literally 32 minutes for anything of significance to happen. Until then, it’s just a bunch of disembodied voices, belonging to faces you mostly don’t see, talking about the importance of gloves and masks like they’re stockers at Party Galaxy on the last week leading up to Halloween, as they amble about empty […]

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Shadow

This Italian-made but English-language thriller is an expectation-subverter, whose opening minutes of beauty belie the ugliness to come. Your first hint rears its head when our hero, David (Jake Muxworthy), stops for a beer in a mountaintop watering hole … where a Ouija board hangs on the wall. The trouble begins when two rednecks (Chris […]

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Piranha 3D

It’s a loose remake of Joe Dante’s “Piranha,” which was born in 1978 because producer Roger Corman wanted to cash in on the popularity of “Jaws.” It worked. Things come full circle in “Mirrors” director Alexandre Aja’s version, opening with a prologue that winks back at Steven Spielberg’s shark blockbuster by having Richard Dreyfuss essentially […]

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