Review – Interior

A guy is trapped alone in a haunted house, a place far too suburban to pack much of an inherent aura of dread. Mind you, I don't necessarily require a dilapidated mansion next door to a cemetery, but it might have helped to shoot in a spot that looked a little less like it might be the producer's mom's house. The bland setting does help a couple of subtle, spooky shots to work pretty well. But an occasional creepy bit isn't anywhere near enough to sustain a story so dull that it seems to drag well beyond its relatively short running time. See if desperate

Review – Terrifier

The killer clown from All Hallows Eve gets his own movie for some reason. The production relies almost entirely on extreme gore, including a designed-to-stir-controversy scene in which a naked woman is suspended upside down with her legs apart and then split in half. Back in the 1970 and 80s (when I first developed a taste for scary movies and we used to watch clowns for breakfast), that would have been shocking stuff. Now that pre-existing misogyny has been wed to a near-constant sense of over-stimulation, extreme violence that at one time might have shocked now tends only to bemuse. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – The Purge: Election Year

This time around the usual plot line about ordinary people trying to survive the country's annual 24-hour crime spree is joined by a left-wing candidate whose opponents are trying to take advantage of the chaos to assassinate her. The thinly-veiled anti-Trump moralizing is spread pretty thick (not that I'm necessarily objecting), particularly toward the end. Excessive preaching notwithstanding, the production includes some dislikable villains meeting satisfactorily violent ends. What more can one ask from an entry in the Purge series? Mildly amusing

Review – Boggy Creek Monster

Some of the fine folks of Fouke, Arkansas, are interviewed for this documentary about the bigfoot-esque monster that first gained national attention thanks to The Legend of Boggy Creek. The production involves a lot of wandering around in the woods while locals tell their tales of encounters with the beast. Overall this is neither credulous nor incredulous to be interesting to anyone other than those already fascinated by this corner of the cryptid kingdom. Mildly amusing