2001 Maniacs (2005)

2001 Maniacs (2005)
Rating: ★★★
Nov 3, 2007Splatter/Southern Town of Maniacs
Eli Roth-produced remake of the Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter film Two Thousand Maniacs, this plants tongue in cheek, is fairly and squarely aimed at a frat boy audience and unapologetic about piling on copious amounts of gore and naked breasts

Killer Pad (2008)

Killer Pad (2008)
Rating: ★★
Mar 17, 2021Party House with a Portal to Hell/Horror Comedy
Directorial outing from Freddy Krueger himself Robert Englund who makes the horror equivalent of a frat comedy where three guys rent a palatial home and throw a party as a portal to Hell opens in the basement

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010)

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010)
Rating:
Sep 3, 2014Splatter/Southern Town of Maniacs
Sequel to the outrageously gory 2001 Maniacs, although here the horror comedy balance spills over into absurd farce and cheap gore effects. Crucially, the film seems cheaper and less polished, more messy and random in terms of its arrangements

Rosewood Lane (2011)

Rosewood Lane (2011)
Rating: ★★★
May 18, 2017Sinister Paperboy
Victor Salva, known for Clownhouse and the Jeepers Creepers films, is one of the genre's more underrated directors, his films filled with incredibly eerie jumps. Here Rose McGowan finds her life terrorised by a malevolent paperboy possibly of supernatural origin

Chillerama (2011)

Chillerama (2011)
Rating: ★★★½
Jun 23, 2012Horror Parody Anthology/Drive-In Homage
In the same vein as Grindhouse, four filmmakers have come together to make an anthology of spoof horror films that homage the drive-in tradition. Good taste is left well behind and the results are both outrageous and funny

Insidious Chapter 2 (2013)

Insidious Chapter 2 (2013)
Rating: ★★★
Sep 13, 2013Haunting/Possession
James Wan proves himself consistently one of the finest directors working in the horror genre with this sequel to his 2010 film. The plot is trimmed to deliver a lean and effective scare show and Wan once again produces a series of eerie and unworldly jumps

The Signal (2014)

The Signal (2014)
Rating: ★★★
Sep 7, 2014Possible Alien Abductees/Reality Bender
A film ostensibly about alien abductees that has rather pleasurably been construed as a series of wild head-spinning twists that are constantly pulling everything we think we know is going on from under the audience, even if it eventually provides more questions than it ever does answers

Ouija (2014)

Ouija (2014)
Rating: ★★
Oct 26, 2014Ouija Board Unleashes a Malevolent Spirit
Blumhouse horror film based around the Parker Brothers boardgame. Modern multiplex horror films don't come more generic than this. On the other hand, you cannot deny that debuting director Stiles White creates some occasionally quite spooky moments, it's just that the rest of the show comes entirely by the numbers

Insidious Chapter 3 (2015)

Insidious Chapter 3 (2015)
Rating: ★★
Jun 6, 2015Haunting/Possession
Ok, so this doesn't have James Wan directing and is mostly a substantially less interesting ghost story before doing a repeat venture into the beyond. On the plus side you do have to admit that incoming director Leigh Whannell does generate a fair degree of eerie tension

Tales of Halloween (2015)

Tales of Halloween (2015)
Rating: ★★
Dec 14, 2015Anthology of Halloween Horror Stories
An anthology of Halloween-themed horror tales, all from different genre directors, including some interesting high-profile names. The results are uneven with the film providing a couple of amusing segments but nothing truly standout

Jack Goes Home (2016)

Jack Goes Home (2016)
Rating: ★★
Mar 31, 2017Weird/Disturbing Journey Back Home
Actor Thomas Dekker directs a film in which Rory Culkin travels home for a funeral and finds disturbing revelations about his past. This feels like one of Richard Bates (Excision, Trash Fire) Jr's black comedies of middle-class disaffection but circles weird happenings without going anywhere

Director’s Cut (2016)

Director’s Cut (2016)
Rating: ★★★
Jan 4, 2022Meta-Fiction/Film Gets Invaded by a Psycho Fan
A mind-bogglingly meta film that starts out as a regular crime thriller before it gets invaded and taken over by psycho fan Penn Jillette who abducts the star and is determined to write himself in as the hero

Insidious: The Last Key (2018)

Insidious: The Last Key (2018)
Rating: ★★
Mar 31, 2018Paranormal Investigation
After two fairly good initial entries, the Insidious series slipped into mediocrity with the third film and continues its downward slide here. The script is indifferently slung together and and new director Adam Robitel's clumsy jumpshocks are a far cry from the eerie effects James Wan pulled off

Max Reload and the Nether Blasters (2020)

Max Reload and the Nether Blasters (2020)
Rating: ★★★
Feb 20, 2022Videogamers vs Unleashed Demonic Entity
Videogamers fight a demonic entity unleashed from a 1980s game. A film that is far more fun that you expect and comes loaded with videogaming in-jokes