Samantha (Najarra Townsend, Me and You and Everyone We Know) learns this the — ahem — hard way, after drowning her inhibitions in vodka and letting them run free at a party where she’s roofied by a stranger (Simon Barrett, You’re Next). What happens in the few days that unfold thereafter are akin to scientist Seth Brundle in Cronenberg’s […]
IFC
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Haunter
Abigail Breslin (August: Osage County) stars as Lisa, a teen who’s the only one in her happy family of four to notice that for some reason, they’re re-living the same foggy Sunday in the ’80s over and over and over and over. Keeping her forever 15, it’s a cyclical grind of missing laundry, Atari Pac-Man, […]
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Byzantium
The film takes its title from an old hotel into which Clara (Gemma Arterton, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters) moves with her “daughter,” Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan, The Host). The women are vampires; for 200 years they’ve been bound by blood and that’s a thirst they can’t quite quench, although Eleanor sure wishes she could. To survive, Eleanor seeks […]
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Maniac
That’s not to say this update isn’t gory — oh, boy, is it ever — but it has a style the first film sorely lacked. Admittedly, Lustig had little budget to work with back then, whereas P2 helmer Franck Khalfoun enjoyed a $6 million sandbox, now clumped with blood. Playing aggressively against his nice-guy rep, former […]
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Errors of the Human Body
Fresh from relishing villainy in The Call, the near-unrecognizable Michael Eklund cleans up nice as Dr. Geoffrey Burton, a reluctant geneticist specializing in embryonic abnormalities for very personal reasons. He leaves the University of Massachusetts behind to continue his controversial research in Dresden, Germany — a far less-politicized environment. But Eron Sheean’s film is not […]
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My Amityville Horror
Now a father himself of two teenagers, Lutz — a dead ringer for actor Michael Chiklis (Parker) — recounts what he, his siblings, his mom and his wretched stepfather went through in the Long Island home at 112 Ocean Ave., reportedly haunted because of the six murders that occurred there. Whether speaking to a psychiatrist, […]
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The Jeffrey Dahmer Files
Now available on the IFC Midnight label, The Jeffrey Dahmer Files is built largely on interviews with three people tied directly to the notorious serial killer who confessed to 17 murders: apartment neighbor Pamela Bass, police detective Pat Kennedy and medical examiner Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen. Each grabs your attention and holds it with his or […]
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Welcome to the Punch
James McAvoy (Trance) is all frowns and glares as Max Lewinsky (kin to Monica?), a cop still pining three years later for the One Who Got Away — not a girl, but a criminal. Fleeing from the scene of a big score on motorcycle, robber Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong, Zero Dark Thirty) managed to miss […]
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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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Save the Date
Not quite a pure drama, not quite a pure comedy, the scrappy charmer also is a love triangle sharing a point with a love rectangle, both hinging on Sarah (Lizzy Caplan, Bachelorette), an artist and bookstore manager who takes the plunge by moving in with her rocker boyfriend, Kevin (Geoffrey Arend, Devil), but bails when […]