Krampus movie review: holiday horror
There’s no mythological weight behind this flick’s anti-Santa. This is more like a standard slasher horror, its baddie on a rampage of arbitrary carnage.
fantasy
The Good Dinosaur movie review: bad dinosaur, bad
Shamefully banal; such a confused mess that I cannot even figure out what the title is supposed to mean. A slap in the face to Pixar fans after Inside Out.
The Hallow movie review: misses the forest for the trees
Nothing but atmosphere, albeit atmosphere that is more effective and elegant than the typical horror flick. But there’s almost no actual story here.
Tales of Halloween movie review: buckets of blood, and lots of laughs
The best of the bunch in this anthology of vaguely interconnected shorts are the outrageous and uproarious genre pastiches “Friday the 31st” and “Bad Seed.”
The Vatican Tapes movie review: to the devil with it
The demonic-possession subgenre isn’t exactly one crammed with quality cinematic experiences, but it hits a dull, unscary new low with this inept flick.
The Last Witch Hunter movie review: burn it at the stake
If this were Law & Order: Black Magic, which it almost seems like it wants to be, it’d be a helluva lot more interesting than it is.
Goosebumps movie review: stick with the books (LFF 2015)
More theme-park attraction than movie, and paradoxically distastefully self-congratulatory about the Goosebumps phenomenon and insulting toward its author.
Hotel Transylvania 2 movie review: check out and never return
The barrage of nonstop sitcom idiocy is nigh on unendurable. A father plotting against his daughter as touching and uplifting? Way worse.
Pan movie review: a disaster of fantastically epic proportions
An embarrassingly empty pastiche of numerous beloved action blockbusters, all frenetic action and soulless mishmashes of fantasy imagery.
The Messenger movie review: voices from the other side
This he-sees-dead-people drama slathers on the moping misery with a trowel, and indulges in a wishy-washy ambiguity that serves no purpose.
