When you stop staring at its richly detailed design, you’re forced to realize you’re stuck in a snail-paced gumshoe mystery that isn’t exceptionally engaging.

Its middle ground of bittersweet family melodrama mixed with zany zombie action makes for a film whose fun comes from unusually entertaining eccentricity.

Like every good zombie story, “The Cured” understands that substance comes from commentary, not from carnage.

This is purely a filler film to make mortgage payments while everyone involved waits between better movies.

It is simply the standard by which all home invasion films must be measured in terms of resonant sensation and imagination infection.

“What We Do in the Shadows” features charismatic characters, biting dialogue, and appealing entertainment value while “Living Among Us” includes none of those things.

Given the violently fluctuating quality levels of the series to date, I’m not sure what the standards even are for grading a “Hellraiser” movie anymore.

Carefully measured performances send slow-burn suspense down a nerve-wracking straightaway of wicked witchiness.

Bella Thorne needs just one more long-delayed dud to dethrone Mischa Barton as the queen of forgettable thrillers dumped to home video.

Cutaway scenes constituting a loose Cloverfield connection feel more forcibly included than dad’s mistress at a family reunion.

“Inoperable” learned the wrong lesson from “Lost” about instilling suspense and made the same mistake of not thinking through its threads beforehand.

Whatever side of the blade one uses to slice it, “Victor Crowley” meets the standard for old-school slasher mayhem with a self-aware streak of black humor.

Attracting attention for its mildly bizarre initial atmosphere, rational moves take the movie off track as a darkly nightmarish drama.

“Bad Apples” badly wants to be in John Carpenter’s orbit, but it isn’t even competent enough to be considered Ed Wood adjacent.

Those looking past its love handles can find an intriguingly offbeat experience they most likely were not expecting.

One might not think a movie molded for midnight madness would have so much to say about complicated parent-child relationships.

It feels like Batman.  It feels in step with “The Animated Series.”  And yet, “Gotham by Gaslight” is literally in a world all its own.

“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.