“Jigsaw” makes for a surprisingly solid stab at rejuvenating a long-toothed property whose corpse was as cold as John Kramer’s.

Can we add ‘conjuring creepypasta boogeypeople’ to the list of tired terror tropes to be put on ice for a while?

“The Open House” has nearly nothing of note, leaving just a throwaway thriller not at all worthy of bearing the Netflix name.

“Planet of the Monsters” impresses as a mature science-fiction epic with large-scale scope, although it undeniably underwhelms as a Godzilla-specific story.

I can commend the filmmakers for putting in honest effort to deliver the best formulaic “found footage” horror movie they could, even if the end result is dully redundant.

A number of “at least…” qualifiers keep “Villmark Asylum” from being hit by the same stale stick beating its dead horse of a story.

Someone with no qualms about subtitles or unflinching gore has no reason to drive down this dull detour when a bolder route splits at the same fork.

“Day of the Dead: Bloodline” mounts a persuasive ‘For Your Consideration’ campaign in the category of “Worst Movie to Bear the ‘Day of the Dead’ Name.”

Maybe when I see echoing emptiness behind the drearily dreamy drama of “The Strange Ones,” I’m rightfully seeing straight into hollowness where others swear they see substance.

I have to believe that “Devil’s Gate” had grander ambitions (than) to deliver a ho-hum episode of “The X-Files” in DTV feature form.

“Brawl in Cell Block 99” intentionally, and exuberantly, takes Tobias Beecher’s worst waking nightmares and exaggerates, exacerbates, and exalts them tenfold.

Strap in for a feature-length episode of “Law and Order: Blade Runner Unit” whose nine-figure budget depicts the future as depressingly dull.

Instead of a rich blend of high fantasy and urban action, “Bright” uses its cursory backdrop to build a spectacularly stale setup from chained-together clichés.

By consciously choosing the most predictable path at every creative juncture, “The Dark Tower” distills a mammoth amount of mythology into a colorlessly mediocre movie.

In light of where the franchise went both before and after, “Halloween H20” doesn’t hold up as one of the stronger takes on Michael Myers’ mythology.

If you break the hypnotic spell of the undeniably amazing production design, the reality is you’re stuck staring at a simple bounty hunter police procedural.

The meta-message appears to reflect the movie’s, which is that tainting the creator’s intent by imposing a will of our own leads to an unnatural abomination.

“Prometheus” is a cool-hued marvel of stunning imagery and ideas, even though some of the latter are no more substantive than that.

I suspect “Flatliners” 2017 will book passage on a boat of “oh yeah, I forgot they remade that” indifference before sailing into a storm of complete apathy.

Despite being gripping, emptiness inside individual pieces leaves one wondering what the overall experience is worth.