Of all the big fright franchises doing these “requels,” “Scream” weaves what’s new with what came before more seamlessly and more satisfyingly than anyone else.

If you’re fine with Naomi Watts jogging and talking in front trees, trees, and more trees, “The Desperate Hour” has more footage of her looking worried than limited patience can handle.

It’s always a plus to spend time with Dennis Haysbert and Dale Dickey, and since it doesn’t demand full engagement, you also get to play on your phone without pressing Pause.

If “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is the boisterous bad kid barking from the back of the classroom, then “The Cursed” is a boarding school preppy who plays first chair violin.

I’ll probably start by forgetting everything about “Incarnation,” which shouldn’t take long since it has nothing worth remembering in the first place.

What more can anyone ask from a flagging film series that hasn’t been on firm footing in forever than to celebrate the savage spirit it’s most known for?

The movie’s maudlin characters do indeed live in the grey. And that grey they live in is a shade so dark, it might as well be pitch black.

Your mind will have to make do with a mildly moody little spooker with vaguely psychedelic vibes and a dreamy texture that’s deeply entrenched in an indie aesthetic.

“The Forest of the Lost Souls” intrigues as an artfully experimental thriller, although its accompanying message doesn’t come across so clearly.

Overlong, uneventful, and with not much more than static-filled phone calls standing in for scares, it’s about as skippable as low-budget horror fare gets.

Individual mileage will absolutely vary as the subdued psych-thriller tone and DTV texture will either hit your slow burn sweet spot or lull you into a yawn.

After battling boredom like Alicia Silverstone battles the shark, I’m going to guess “The Requin” means “NyQuil in film form” since it tastes awful and will put you to sleep.

Forgetting it’s a motion picture that can show as well as tell, “Dracula” becomes burdened with enough empty-calorie chitchat to rival a full week’s worth of “The View.”

Now it just feels less like enjoying a popcorn B-movie in a theater and more like watching the nightly news on a panic room monitor.

No normal person looks at cover art featuring Mickey Rourke in an eyepatch and thinks, “This ought to be an epic war movie on par with ‘Saving Private Ryan’.”

Even when the movie follows expected conventions, it does so creatively, and always with an eye for maximum cinematic suspense.

It’s all a whole lot of basic blah blah blah, unsurprisingly resulting in a movie that’s just as blah as everything in it.

“Amityville Uprising” plays like ‘A Day in the Life’ of an average neighborhood police station, with all of the dull drama that entails.

When it comes to a blind person battling a trio of thieves trying to rob an isolated house, “See for Me” leaps high above “Don’t Breathe.”

The more of these DIY Amityville junkers I sit through, the more they violently rub sandpaper all over my lifelong love of horror.