Review – Bird Box

Once again humanity finds itself assailed by alien invaders with a bizarrely specific MO. In A Quiet Place the risk was making sounds of any kind, and here laying eyes on the mysterious threat spells instant doom. Sandra Bullock stars as a hapless, blindfolded woman trying to shepherd her kids through a dangerous world of monsters and vicious survivalists. See if desperate

Review – The Curse of La Llorona

This is by far my favorite entry in the Conjuring universe, at least in part because I had no idea until midway through that it was even intended to be part of the set. No Warrens. Only a brief, irrelevant glimpse of Annabelle. Instead of the series standbys, we get a genuinely scary antagonist from Mexican folklore. A social worker and single mom (Linda Cardellini) finds herself pitted against the infamous child-snatching ghost. Worth seeing

Review – Body Bags

This experience taught me a couple of things about my memory. First, I thought I’d already reviewed this movie long ago. I must have seen it before I started writing reviews, because this was definitely a re-watch. And second, I recalled only the middle entry in this three-story set. That’s because the memorable one was at least creative, however strange. The first and third were trips along well-travelled roads. John Carpenter steps out from behind the camera to play the host for the bracket. Mildly amusing

Review – Happy Death Day 2U

Once again sorority sister Tree Gelbman (once again ably played by Jessica Rothe) finds herself stuck in a time loop with a homicidal maniac in a dumb-looking baby mask. At least this time someone else is the killer’s target, and some science nerds may have a time machine solution to the problem. Mildly amusing

Review – Happy Death Day

Poor Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe). She’s stuck in a Groundhog Day cycle of endless repetition, with the added bonus that she’s murdered by a stalker right before every reset. Like Bill Murray’s character in the non-homicidal version, through slow repetition she gradually learns to be a less awful person and eventually figures out who keeps killing her over and over. Occasionally the story takes an amusing turn, but for the most part it’s familiar territory. Mildly amusing

Review – X-Men: Dark Phoenix

This entry in the series puts an end to Fox’s X-Men franchise. The studio drove at least some of the nails into the coffin by under-funding the production after poorer-than-expected box office for the previous entry. Plus – horror of horrors! – they dared to leave Wolverine out of it and focus on a female protagonist. Killing off one of the popular characters probably didn’t help, either. I watched this twice (once on an airplane and then again when I could actually pay attention to it), and both times my reaction was that this was neither as bad as the fan boys seemed to think nor as good as some of the other entries in the set. Mildly amusing

Review – The Darkness

During a trip to the Grand Canyon, a family picks up more than just standard souvenirs when the son strays into the wrong cave and ends up possessed by an evil spirit. When they get home, at first the lad’s strange behavior gets blamed on his autism. But when the physical manifestations begin, it’s off to the predictable races. Mildly amusing

Review – Mobsters

Nearly two decades before Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, this is what star-studded, empty-headed mobster movies looked like. A quartet of faces that would have been familiar to audiences in 1991 (though not so much now) play real life gangsters Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello and Bugsy Siegel. The resulting parade of male bonding and violence would have impressed audiences in its theatrical release, though now it’s more of a “who the heck is that?” experience. Mildly amusing

Review – Angel Has Fallen

After twice saving the President from attacks, Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) finds himself in assassins’ crosshairs. Sure, they’re still trying to kill the Commander in Chief. But this time around they frame the hero as a co-conspirator. So most of this story is taken up with his efforts to evade capture, prove his innocence and thwart the bad guys. The result is just as predictable as it sounds. Mildly amusing

Review – Hellboy (2019)

I just don’t see why this character needed a reboot. The first Hellboy adaptation wasn’t my favorite movie of all time. It wasn’t even my favorite Guillermo del Toro movie. But it was reasonably entertaining. Ron Perlman in particular seemed born to play the lead. And though there isn’t anything especially wrong with this version, it simply seems unnecessary. It’s the cinematic equivalent of how we keep building new houses even though we already have plenty of great old houses standing vacant. Mildly amusing

Review – The Conjuring 2

When I first learned that they were making a movie out of the exploits of Ed and Lorraine Warren, I was afraid that it would turn out to be a petulant defense of the couple’s discredited exorcism operation. They wisely bypassed the issue in the first one and unwisely took it up here. This outing finds the Warrens journeying to London to do battle with an evil presence bedeviling a single mom and her kids. The plot is primarily driven by the mystery surrounding the nature of the antagonist. It’s a ghost. It’s a demon pretending to be a ghost. It’s a child pretending to be a demon pretending to be a ghost. It’s a … well, by the end I didn’t care what it was as long as it was over. See if desperate

Review – 47 Meters Down: Uncaged

The first 47 Meters Down had a couple of things going for it: a simple story and a handful of good jump scares. This one can’t even do that much. The plot in particular is an elaborate mess about teenage girls getting trapped in an underwater cave network infested with blind cave sharks. The closest I came to being entertained by this was when I somehow managed to accidentally turn on the audio descriptions for visually atypical audience members. Hearing a calm voice recounting what I was watching at least confirmed that the dreadfulness wasn’t an optical illusion. See if desperate

Review – Annabelle Comes Home

Pre-teen kids and a basement full of evil artifacts are automatically a bad combination. Actually keeping a basement full of anything dangerous isn’t the height of wisdom if you have an inquisitive child. And or course adding a babysitter to the mix just makes things worse. From the perspective of the evil doll locked up in the Warrens’ collection, this is the opportunity of a supernatural lifetime. See if desperate