Carrie (2013) version isn't bad but it is as unnecessary as any remake that ever put the dollar signs dancing in a Hollywoood producer's head.

Movies are made in the hope that they will make money of course. Even someone creating an obscure art film has some desire, in the back of their mind, some notion that they might turn some tiny profit. Hell, people who make Youtube videos on their smart phones HOPE to make money off the endeavor.

Then there are the movies that are made JUST to make money. These can still be entertaining--if they are well cast and made with a degree of professionalism.

Carrie is sort of in this category. There isn't anything terrible about it. It, more or less moves along at a decent clip, the acting is decent, the writing isn't embarrassing (even if most of the "scares" are not the least bit scary). It just isn't very satisfying and it seems sort of tired.

Carrie is cotton candy. It has no real value beyond that initial taste. While it is not poorly done it is also not particularly well done. They wisely eschew going for camp  as the original mixed camp and serious too well to be copied. There is no real tension in this movie and some of the acting falls short of "good" (the main antagonist for instance). 

Julianne Moore does a solid job chewing the scenery and playing the mad, religious fanatic mother.  Chloë Grace Moretz, a lovely girl, somehow manages to make herself look and seem awkward and plain in parts (until she is required to look dazzling). She does a fine job with the role, such as it is.

Yet all of this is barely enough to keep an audience engaged. It is difficult to pick out the good and the bad in the film because most of it is just so overwhelminglye mediocre. Carrie does the bare minimum.

When you hear a movie is the “scariest thing since…” you are inevitably disappointed. Expectations are king when it comes to horror scares and if you are waiting for them? Sometimes they are less scary.

In the case of The Conjuring I have inkling that, regardless of expectations, you will jump. You will also be creeped out or, at the very least, you will squirm a little.

The film defies recent conventions in horror movies.  Most notable are the false endings. Boo! The ghost/monster/demon isn’t really gone! BOOOO! Or even worse the “it goes on and on” ending demonstrating there will be a sequel if the film rakes in enough cash. Not that sequels are a bad thing but END the first movie and then do a sequel! Do not leave the audience hanging.  And there will certainly be a The Conjuring II but hopefully it will be in a film that stands on its own.

The Conjuring also doesn’t just aim to make you jump (I expect most people will be startled at least four or five times). The film aims for that elusive creepy, hair stand up on the back of the neck sort of scare. Most films cannot seem to muster these. The Conjuring manages this over and over. It isn’t that hard to make people jump—a creature leaps out of the darkness, a cat jumps up on the windowsill etc. Creeping people out takes more than that. There has to be a subtle evocation of commonly held fear, something that makes everyone go “ick” and then it has to be introduced in just the right way. It isn’t easy.

James Wan has proven to be a pretty reliable horror director already and this film burnishes his horror reputation further. Whether you like the Saw franchise or not? It was unique until it was beaten to death with lucrative but not terribly interesting sequels (note that Wan directed only the first installment).  Insidious was also a nice winter surprise of a horror film—and one of the films that helped to reignite B horror films creatively. Wan tops what he has done so far with The Conjuring. Sure, it isn’t as original as Saw? But it is a better film in many other ways.

The cast is also great.  Lili Taylor plays mom to Ron Livingston’s dad. They are the parents of five girls. He is a truck driver whose career seems to have led them to merely scraping by, naturally being unable to leave their newly acquired home.

Another refreshing thing about this movie is that the parents don’t bicker too much. One doesn’t see obviously supernatural events and then deny them. They see something funky is going on and they go find a demonology husband and wife team played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. Wilson, you will recognize as the dad from Insidious. Farmiga will ring a bell from her memorable performance in Up in the Air and the Psycho-inspired TV series, Bates Motel.  Both are actors I am always happy to see in a film or TV show.

All these actors—and especially the five children—add to the creepy ambiance. Having the five girls of different ages is also a clever, subtle, small detail that helps with the horror. You have five scared kids, not just one and they are of different ages adding a little something different. One of the first scenes where two of the girls first meet their evil housemates may be the scariest in the film and the reason is largely the “scared” acting of young actress Joey King.

The film is also paced well. There is a build-up of scary but it never drags. This is often a horror movie problem, too much build up. It never happens here.  All around The Conjuring delivers in every way a horror film can.

If you feel that you have to go see World War Z the first thing you need to do is put the idea that the film has anything to do with the book out of your head. It has nothing to do with the book. The name is the same and that is about it.

That, in and of itself, isn't an impediment to a movie being good. Plenty of adaptations of books have thrown the book out the window and done a decent job. The problem with World War Z is that it is an action movie where the action isn't terribly interesting and a horror movie that isn't particularly scary. It is even difficult to write about because it is so bland, like a slice of Wonder Bread and a glass of milk.

The film starts off with some promise. It doesn't spend a great deal of time on set up. We meet a family; dad has apparently quit a job recently working under circumstances that are dangerous. Then they are in a car in Philadelphia and shit goes crazy. Zombie-attack crazy.

These are non CGI zombies and we see people getting bit and turning and then Brad Pitt's Gerry burns rubber.  There are scenes of civic mayhem and conversations of rescue which happens shortly (as you might imagine, not without incident).

Brad Pitt and everyone else in the movie are fine but no one is given much to do. They seem to think that talking is bad and once there is any hint of any actual plot development there needs to be a large-scale CGI zombie attack.

Once on the ship the story and problems start to pile up. Gerry's family is on an aircraft carrier run by the military and UN. And he is sent out on a mission to discover the origin of the zombie plague. Basically from here he flies to Korea. Then decides to go to Jerusalem and finally to Wales. No need to refuel the plane, of course. There are, naturally, zombie attacks in all these places. It is very formulaic. Arrive in new place and then zombie attack. Hell, get on plane, zombie attack.

There is no chance in any of this to give half a shit about any of the alleged characters.

Then we come to the crux of the issue; the zombies are not scary. The CGI zombies do not move like humans. They move like a giant coordinated blob. It is far less real looking than any recent zombie video game. There is no suspense. They can pile up and go over a wall. How they manage to do it in Israel is idiotic. The Israelis are supposed to have seen the whole thing coming and yet they don't know not to have a sing along?

Next, when you find non-CGI zombies they are more comical than scary. The snap their teeth together in a motion that, presumably, indicates they want to bite you! OOhhh...scary. It is actually closer to laughable.

And with the PG 13 rating it isn't very gory (I am sure it will come out with a gorier version on DVD).

Another problem with this movie is its lack of attention to detail.  They send Gerry on an extremely important mission and give him a satellite phone. The assistant secretary of the UN doesn't seem to have a cell phone, nor does the military commander (who, oddly, appears in one scene). Who gets the other satellite phone? His wife. When he calls in with important information she has to run with the phone.  This is, of course, just an example. There is really nothing to this movie. It is all air and CGI.

More egregious is how this is obviously just a set up for sequel. Hopefully there will not be one. The resolution is sort of clever (and again has nothing to do with the book) but it isn't done particularly well. It sort of just ends and ends with a lame voice-over no less.

Probably the best approach to seeing The Evil Dead (2013) is to forget it is called Evil Dead. Think of it instead as “People, For Dubious Reasons Go Into The Woods And Inexplicably Read An Evil Book They Shouldn’t And Gross Things Happen”. If you do this? Your viewing experience will be improved.

This isn’t to say this is a bad movie. It isn’t at all. It is a stylishly directed film whose actors make the most of the script they were handed. It looks great, it is way more disgusting than the original but it doesn’t spend so much money as to profane the original film’s low budget roots.

There are changes in the plot that are nowhere near drastic enough to be called “twists.” There is also something really promising in the work of first time director Fede Alvarez.  It is just a professionally done horror film that, if not perfect, never lags. It isn’t exceptionally scary, as the ad campaign claims but the original wasn’t really scary, even at the time. It was gross and it was sort of creepy. This film is, as mentioned, far “grosser” and almost manages the creepy thing as well.

There is also something to recommend the film in how a first time director like Alvarez, was the one picked to work this film. It was, way back when, producers Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell’s first movie (as director and lead actor respectively).  The reason the film was lifted from obscurity was the attention paid by Stephen King. In a way, this remake is the duo’s way of “paying it forward” and, from this film, Alvarez, seems a really promising horror director.  He is a far better horror director than some hacks that have tossed out horror movies in recent months.

And who wants to step into the remake of a film that, pretty close to, invented a genre? It takes some guts but when you get the offer, you take it. Alvarez deserves credit.

The film actually develops characters a tiny, tiny bit more than the first film which, frankly, doesn’t bother developing characters at all. Jane Levy (Shameless), as Mia, is a drug addict brought to the cabin by friends and family (estranged friends in part) to help her rehab.  Betty Ford might have been a better choice but there you might run into Lindsey Lohan.

So we get she is damaged and why, when weird things happen, no one believes her. It is a good adaptation of the original plot. We get her brother abandoned her and we get she and some of the friends resent him. We don’t need a great deal of back story to bring the plot to a grinding halt via flashbacks and poignant conversations about lost youth. This movie is called EVIL DEAD not The Cider House Rules.

There is no bad acting in this film. The special effects are all professional and disgusting. The plot is something they at the VERY least try to make coherent.  Even if it doesn’t bear close inspection, it does so better than the original. But this is never as original as the 1981 film. But how could it be?

Go see this if you are a horror fan and think about how they could make an Evil Dead II with the last survivor at the helm that WOULD break new horror ground. That would be fantastic.

The Last Exorcism was a surprise. It was clever, it was scary and it made you care what happened to the characters in the film. The original Last Exorcism even managed to make the, by now, tired “reality television” way the film was shot effective.

It was a surprise. It was a good B horror film that mixed scary with creepy and made you overlook small flaws.

The Last Exorcism Part 2 is not a surprise. You do have to give credit for it not being called, simply, The Last Exorcism 2. That would be like Final Fantasy 2--oh...wait.  But you get the point, the people marketing the movie, at the very least, got that “last” didn’t fit with “2.”

And the film deserves more credit than simply that.

It is well-paced, especially in the first half, and the star, Ashley Bell is a truly unique actress. She looks plain one second and beautiful with a smile. A lot of her shifts between girl next door beauty and haggardness are doubtless due to talented make-up artists but a good portion is also due to the actress herself. It is to be hoped she winds up in films beyond B-horror fare --not insulting B-horror at all but she seems to have talent beyond simply that.

The film itself follows its predecessor immediately. Bell’s character, Nell, is the only survivor at the end of the first film and she has been brought to a house for girls in New Orleans. She still has the naïveté displayed in the first film but after being possessed by a demon and witness to a slew of murders this seems a little unlikely (on close examination but, of course, close examination is unwise in horror films).

As you might expect the demon hasn’t headed back to hell but is still on the hunt for—something. The baby in the first film might be expected to play a major role. It doesn’t (and it, it is, no sex is assigned). But that is a minor quibble.

The film is chock full of little jumps and it tries to keep continuity and does so, more or less. It lacks any real surprises though nor does it have any performances that elevate the film. Everyone is professional and solid but no one is given an opportunity to shine except Bell. There is barely another character in the film that couldn’t be described as “generic.” Credit is due for the across the board professionalism, often lacking in horror movies, which are so often just a cheap production aiming at a quick profit. They put some effort into making this work.

But maybe not enough to elevate this sequel to the exalted title of “good.”

It lags about half way through, tosses in the obligatory exorcism--mostly performed by characters that appear at the moment the audience knows an exorcism is to be done--and then ends. The film is a notch above the average horror film but nothing to get terribly excited about. It is to be hoped that this ends the series because anything that follows is bound to be convoluted.

After several years of early in the year horror films that stood out? This year has been less outstanding.

What makes a movie succeed or fail?

That is a question that folks counting beans in Hollywood have asked since Charlie Chaplin was still performing on the stage in London. And the answer has usually been; who knows?  But what about what makes a movie GOOD? That answer is not nearly as elusive.

 You have to be entertained, the film has to be well-paced and written, the acting has to be decent and you have to, to some extent, care what happens to the characters.  And horror films have some other criteria—one being that they have to be scary or, at least, creepy

Unfortunately the recent film, Dark Skies, has a plethora of movie killing traits; it starts slow, it relies on obvious attempts to scare that will draw yawns from horror veterans, the audience cannot possibly care what happens to the characters and, finally, the film is poorly paced.

Poor pacing can kill any movie and it is particularly deadly in a horror or suspense film. The run of the mill set up in Dark Skies (oooh! Something messes with the fridge! Saw that last year in The Possession) is meaningless and seems an afterthought. The characters inspire no emotion (despite the pretty solid acting). It just all seems formula. There are also lots of red herrings and side plots that are totally irrelevant to the plot moving forward. Nothing brings a horror film to a screeching halt faster than a visit from social services because of the abuse the ghost/demon/alien has visited upon a child character. What is worse than that? Bringing such a visit up and it never happening.

There is one scene where the family discusses their past over dinner in a house boarded up to keep the aliens out. Is it an homage or rip off of M. Night Shymalan? Who knows but it just makes the observant viewer recall what a good suspense director Shymalan once was and how hollow and weak Dark Skies is.

The aliens don’t look scary, the plot twist is predictable (it is all predictable) and the movie just exudes arrogance, some sort of “the audience is stupid” vibe. Sure low-budget horror almost always makes money so we are suckered into heading into the theater to see them. Sometimes the films are good--Insidious or The Last Exorcism for instance—and sometimes the films are not so good. But at least give us some indication of mental effort on the part of the director or writers. That is what kills this movie—the boring writing, the mediocre direction.

Sure the aliens look cheesy. So what? The demon possessed people in The Evil Dead look cheesy too but we all, justifiably, love that film. A low budget is no excuse for slapdash execution. The audience pays the same whether the movie cost 1 million or 300 million to make.

Audiences need to pay attention to who makes the movies. Usually Blumhouse Productions make good B horror but this film isn’t good.  Everyone misses (can you say Paranormal Activity 4?) but recalling Insidious, the first three Paranormal films and Sinister it is easy to have hope for future Blumhouse films. The director of this film, Scott Stewart, also directed the silly but watchable Legion and the totally unwatchable Priest. He doesn’t have a huge directorial track record so even a look at him on IMDB shouldn’t scare you. But usually? It helps.

Watch who writes and directs. Save yourself nine bucks.

Paranormal Activity 4 is a movie. Four (4) is a number and a word representing a number. Four rhymes with “bore” and “ignore.” It also rhymes with the phrase “ooo the invisible demon opened the door.” It does not rhyme with “scary”. This is ok since there is pretty much nothing scary in this movie anyway.

It is incredibly difficult to tell, if you have seen any of the other Paranormal films, to be sure if the lack of scariness is innate or if it is just because the viewer has already seen pretty much all of this stuff before. In fact, it is pretty damned amazing that this “franchise” (horrible term, makes a series of films sound like sandwiches from Arby’s) was kept relatively fresh through three movies. 

The first two worked because they took the standard horror movie time frame, where you wait for something to jump and scare you, and stretched it out. Right where you thought there SHOULD be something scary there wasn’t so you relaxed and THEN there was something scary. They also left you scanning the entire screen for little weird things happening in the background. They were tense. They also sort of made the filming of it all, the “found footage” aspect at least marginally believable.

The third film, which takes place back in the days of VHS, offered a slightly different spin with an old camera mounted on a rotating fan.  As it pans back and forth it really made you nervous. The introduction of child stealing witches in the third film was a whiff of desperation. It was trying to “explain” things maybe? But there was no real reason to do that. These films are all about the jumps and starts you make when something flits by or there is a loud sound. The more you explain the more dull it all gets.

In the new film? They try the same thing modern day with a Kinect. And the audience yawns.

The new film doesn’t get as much into the whole “coven” angle (except maybe at the ridiculous ending). But no one in the theater was surprised or jumping when things that were supposed to be scary happened. There is even a brief, “the cat jumps up” thing which is very Amityville Horror (the 1970s one). This film mostly uses computers and the Kinect as how the action is filmed. But what idiot runs around with their computer in their hand all the time? It is true that there are points where you can assume a hand held camera of some sort is being used but none of it really passes muster. The previous films kept the action more confined--which made it scarier somehow.

It would be interesting to have two theaters full of viewers—one who had seen all the previous films and another who hadn’t –to see if there was any difference in audience reaction.  Remember the ads for the first film showing audience members FREAKING OUT while watching the film? If you were that frightened of any of these films you are probably 7 years old. But they were certainly creepy. They took the creaking you hear in the night and gave you reason to be afraid of it. They took those creeped out moments we all feel and put them on film to creep us out even more.

Who knows? Maybe it is all just a matter of familiarity breeding contempt. And Paranormal Activity 4 is so familiar. It is like an old worn out pair of socks. It is done. It is over.  And it is to be hoped it is true that this is the end of it. But since the film has made over 40 million at this point? That is doubtful. Hollywood never, ever gives up on a series that is still making money.

It is really easy to take a hatchet to Silent Hill Revelation and many have done so. But my mom always told me; if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all. So, I have a list of good things about Silent Hill Revelation.

It looks cool. It is amazing what you can do with some mannequins, a shit load of plastic wrap and some CGI. Some of the monsters are even things you really wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley. Hell you wouldn't even, in real life, want to spend the night with one of the props in your house.

The acting, for the most part, isn't terrible. When you have vaguely ridiculous dialog having actors who can say it with a straight face really helps. It is even better if they can RANT it with a straight face (can you say "Malcolm McDowell"?).

It is almost possible to hear the director asking (during the few hours McDowell was on set); "Mr. McDowell? Can you dial it up to a 9 on the crazy-o-meter?"

It never slows down to such a crawl that you have an uncontrollable desire to play Angry Birds during the film.

Likewise they don't spend too much time with explaining what is going on or on any back story of any sort. Maybe one in fifty horror movies manage to do that sort of thing well and it is just a guess that, had they tried it, Silent Hill Revelation wouldn't be one of them.

It never tries to be too clever, there is no fake ending hiding another fake ending hiding another fake ending. It just sort of slogs along without much reason to hate it or like it. Hell, it might even be better if you just edited out the entire plot and had monsters and insane asylum inmates and demons and crumbling walls all happening for no reason whatever.

If they make another Silent Hill film they should definitely get Terrence Malick to direct.

This is the place where there would be further discussion of Silent Hill Revelation if there was anything else, whatever, to write about it.

In a few decades the people behind films like Sinister will be lauded as part of an era of classic American, low budget B horror films, in the way people look back at 60s and 70s Italian horror now.

The films do not break new ground necessarily but what horror film does these days? Most of the scariest ground has been trod and trod again. The trick is to do it well.

How does Sinister do it well?

First of all they keep the plot simple, they do not waste an enormous amount of time explaining what is going on or explaining what needs to be done to stop it. The script is pretty minimal.  How do you get by with minimal script?

One way is to hire good actors. Everyone in this film is good. Everyone is a pro. You don't roll your eyes once. You buy it and getting you to "buy it" in a horror film really is the trick.

This isn't to say complicated horror films are impossible, nor is it to say minimal always works. Yet when faced with small budgets you have to go with atmosphere and you can talk atmosphere to death.

This film creates atmosphere. It isn't perfect, there are parts of it that seem intended to be scary or creepy and simply are not.  There is even a small part that seems designed for no other reason than to give Fred Thompson a wee bit more screen time. But it all fits together without a seam and creates just enough of a creepy mood to make you jump once or twice.

Another great thing about the film is something it lacks--there are no false endings here. The false ending, or the false ending with another false ending and sometimes even another false ending, have become staples in horror films (and even action films). I am not saying do away with this. It just doesn't have to be in every single film.

Sinister also deals with the fleeting nature of fame and success and what people will do to get it back. But, like everything else in the film, this is kept minimalist. It doesn't leap out at you every second but you realize the main character, played by Ethan Hawke, was once a big deal and now isn't. And he is willing to move his family into a "murder house" to get that fame (and fortune) back. You also see that, even though he says it is for the family, it is really just for him.

And what happens to selfish people in horror movies? It varies from film to film but it is never anything good.

The Possession is not a groundbreaking film. It does not redefine horror or suspense films. It doesn't even redefine
"possession films" but it does, what it does, fairly well.  The acting is all far above the normal horror fare in that
they hired professionals like Kyra Sedgewick and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (if you get the urge to go see Expendables 2 instead rent the film Morgan starred in a few years back, The Losers, which does NOT suck). Both actors can walk through all this and lend, not an air of gravitas, but a sort of "real world feel." They seem like normal people--which is hard to do as an actor. It is likely much easier to play a cartoon.

In addition The Possession sets up the scariness and doesn't let itself get bogged down in real world problems-- like the relationship between Morgan and Sedgewick. This isn't Kramer Vs. Kramer. So many horror films dwell on the
failing relationship of parents. In "possession" films that always happens. Demons just do NOT bring a family together. A filmmaker, however, should resist the urge to spend much time on it.

We know he is a basketball coach. We know his wife and he are divorced and we know his kids, especially the youngest, are unhappy about it. That is all we need to know!

Cue entrance of supernatural "thing." In many movies it is a house. Hell, it can be a haunted vhs tape. Whatever a demon
can squirm inside! In this case it is a box with Hebrew writing on the sides.We know the box is bad. We see it behaving
in a bad way in the first scene of the film. Trust me, it is a mean, mean box.

We also know the box is going to totally go after the younger daughter, Natasha Calis, who looks like Anna Paquin, and gives off a creepy vibe even before her possessed make-up is applied. She can act. Which is something you don't always find in horror film kid actors. Although recently this has changed a bit.

So where does this movie go wrong?

It isn't particularly scary. It does manage a great deal of creepiness but that is sort of intermittent. The scenes where
the possessed or the box act up are more "scare" scenes and they mostly do not work. This isn't because the scenes are badly done; they are fine. But we have seen bugs. We have seen the person alone with the "cursed object" meet a grisly end. Think about it for awhile screenwriters and give us some new way a demon can do people in!

More irksome is that The Possession follows a typical horror film pattern that neatly sets up a sequel (with all new,
presumably lower-tier talent). In other words it isn't just an end in itself but gives the feel there was some bean
counter somewhere thinking; if this makes cash we need to make another one! Of course, you can ALWAYS make another one even if you let this movie end.

But for most of the film you do not need to think of this. Morgan's "likeableness" and the fact the film is well-paced will keep the horror buff at least vaguely interested. While the film is entertaining--not always something you can count on in a horror film (can you say; "Chernobyl Diaries?")--it will not leave you wanting to see it again. There isn't much you will miss in the first viewing.

Great horror movies always require multiple viewings.