Despite initially appearing as though it might have uniquely foreign flavor, “Ouija Séance” ends up being tap water terror from a microbudget faucet.

With a marital strife melodrama sitting at its center, “The Domestics” has too tame of a tempo for the campy component of its setup to stay in step with the style.

“Tau” ogles Maika Monroe so obsessively that I wouldn’t be surprised if her talent agent sued the production company for misrepresentation of their project’s purpose.

“Hover” plays less like a traditional Syfy thriller and more like an “Erin Brockovich” drama that happens to have a mild science-fiction overlay.

“The Russian Bride” doesn’t establish a gun so much as it lays out an entire Chekhov’s arsenal of future story beats.

Imagine “Hereditary” with a foreign fright film flavor, but presented with James Wan’s sense of cinematic spook-showmanship.

The movie stocks several secrets up its sleeve to notch it above being another routine run through a harrowing home invasion.

Bahrani’s film comes off Frankenstein’s table as a lumbering brute built from mismatched parts that don’t work well in unison.

Simplicity stales quickly, drying the movie into a 90-minute apocalyptic redux that doesn’t seem to say much about the human condition, or the inhuman one for that matter.

“Darkness Reigns” forgets to oil its setup with an actual story, leaving an unpopped dud to rattle around an empty bag.

Pop scares and slaughter push mystery and tension aside, putting “Prey at Night” in line with any number of other “masked killer on the loose in the dark” films.

Familiarity keeps Huh’s smoldering thriller from reaching a full boil, yet supernatural suspense stays simmering with a menacing mood insistently bubbling underneath.

As long as a mouth expects the familiar taste of Taco Bell, “Truth or Dare’s” fast food flavor satiates a quick craving for scary movie simplicity.

It’s in everyone’s best interests to move away from this forgettable flotsam as swiftly as possible.

“Mary Shelley” means to cram a kitchen sink of costume drama clichés into an overlong mood exercise obsessed with thickly laid theatricality.

“Unsane” takes a nifty nucleus for a psychological thriller and deliberately makes it decidedly less intriguing by giving it an unnecessary gimmick.

“In Darkness” emerges from its overwrought, overwritten funnel as a visually juicy bite of overdramatic intrigue.

Someone curious about seeing “Feral” in a theater asked, “is it worth a drive into Hollywood?” I considered replying, “it wasn’t worth the walk to my television to watch it on VOD.”

There’s a reason why Blumhouse movies are labeled “From the Producer of ‘The Purge’ and ‘Get Out’” instead of “From the Producer of ‘Visions’ and ‘Totem’.”

“The Jurassic Games” earns a predominantly positive review because it is precisely the kind of knowingly campy B-movie I expected it to be.