Net response to the movie could best be described with onomatopoeia, specifically whatever word equals the sound made when you push your tongue between your lips and blow.

No matter how patiently anyone waits for the film to finally boil, the top never blows off the tame tension because barely anything simmers underneath.

Trouble comes from trying to have its cake and eat it too by quizzically blending tangible thrills with hallucinatory horror.

“Amityville Clownhouse” is actually “Amityville: Evil Never Dies.” Yes, with just this one release you get to dab two squares on your ‘I’m in Amityville Indie Hell’ bingo card!

Don’t be disappointed when the package you ordered gets delivered. “No Escape” is precisely the twentysomething-targeted version of “The Game” meets “Hostel” it sounds like.

“Killer Queen’s” more critical carryover from “The Babysitter” is a charmingly chipper cast that’s game to get goofy, gory, or both.

While “The Dark and the Wicked” isn’t poorly produced, I simply don’t see what would inspire anyone to tell someone else, “you really ought to see this movie.”

When it finally does swing into macabre matters, the switch feels like a sudden shock even though the movie quietly conditions us for horror all along.

Apparently no one challenged the redundant script by asking, “what makes this different from every other movie about a psychopath chasing a woman in the woods?”

“Centigrade” isn’t a true story, which makes it all the more baffling that its creators would build such a boring script when they weren’t beholden to specifically dull details.

“The Block Island Sound” plays like how a conversational Edward Burns movie might be if psychological suspense darkened that brand of homespun indie atmosphere.

“The Mortuary Collection” unfolds in a manner where the movie becomes a complete front-to-back experience designed with escalating entertainment in mind.

“The Oak Room” plays cards close to its chest, too close for those who need a little more orange for the dangled carrot of intrigue to remain enticing.

It’s a sleepy story that someone will certainly call “hauntingly beautiful,” two words which translate to “snoozefest” in more viscerally-oriented vocabularies.

“Monster Seafood Wars” serves up a delectable dinner of cool comic book conflicts, Saturday matinee mirth, and enjoyably frivolous fun.

It takes more than witches to make the movie read like it wasn’t inspired by an average afternoon of “Rawhide” and “The Rifleman” reruns on MeTV.

The belt buckle on forest-set survival/slashing setups is fixing to burst and blind horror fans in one eye from the force of its flight.

“The Columnist” nails many of the marks it aims at on the “problems with social media” dartboard. It just hits them at the widest possible margins instead of drilling the bullseye.

It looks exactly like the “Waterworld” stunt show Universal Studios puts on 10 times a day, and is about as impressive.

Anticipate epic sci-fi action and the movie’s dialogue-driven drama certainly won’t slake a thirst for thrills.