“Son” only fills to the minimum line with the lukewarm water of thin characters who exist purely to push paltry plot points along a slow and familiar path.

When a film doesn’t connect with you, it can be useful to ask, “Is it the movie or is it me?” In the case of “Lucky,” it might be me.

“Safer at Home” can only have time capsule value as contemporary “Reefer Madness” camp about how doing ecstasy can lead to a ludicrously horrible outcome.

“Sator’s” smoke comes from the tinder of its atmospheric allure, not from the thin sticks of its highly fragile fantasy.

I watched “Paranormal Prison” because I was morbidly curious about haunted building “found footage” fluttering briefly back to life, and look what little that got me.

“Wrong Turn” isn’t a “retain the rights” rush job. It’s a well-crafted thriller with a fair number of things falling into its favor.

Regardless of whether this one tickles your particular dark fantasy fancy, Jennifer Harrington certainly knows how to cut together a crisp flick.

Who knew the tantalizing prospect of Nic Cage carving his way through homicidal pizza mascots would prove to be so disappointingly dull?

On any other day, I’d review “Fear of Rain” unfavorably for being a “morning watch” movie you’d fully forget about by the afternoon. Not today though.

Whoever selects Barbara Crampton’s projects needs to turn down things like “Sacrifice,” a waterlogged thriller that’s as pedestrian as its recycled title.

Marshall and Kirk made a two-hour snoozer whose primary value is as a surefire solution for shooting your attention span to ribbons.

I imagine there was a river of drool in the theater row where A24 buyers sat during the film’s festival debut. “Holy sh*t! Did Rose Glass make this movie specifically for us?”

In keeping with ‘90s cinema references, “A Nightmare Wakes” is essentially a horror-tinged arthouse biopic by way of Merchant-Ivory on a budget.

Appreciators of smoldering suspense, indie aesthetics, and foreign flair will be pleasantly surprised at how much polish “The Funeral Home” puts on a traditional haunted house yarn.

Knocks at the door when no one is there can only take a horror movie so far, and that distance has difficulty covering “The Night’s” runtime.

“Psycho Goreman” is kind of a kooky kid flick for adults who fondly remember ‘The Neverending Story’ and want to see dark fantasy like that with the gnarliness ratcheted up to 11.

I preferred “Don’t Tell a Soul” when it was being a drama over when it was being a thriller. And I think its solution for a solution is more of a copout than a clever twist.

Tom Savini’s fire appears impossible to distinguish, and “Smoke and Mirrors” makes sure everyone can see how brightly that blaze burns.

It’s fluff you can watch on fast-forward and the only side effect is how much faster the film will evaporate from your memory.

Sometimes, one person’s impressively contemplative sci-fi is simply another person’s superficially padded speculative fiction.