Even if the film didn’t write all of it, “The Amityville Horror” became the template followed by all haunted house chillers since.

“The Third Saturday in October’s” period details are terrific, and the film recreates 1980 without swinging a sledgehammer in your face about it.

For as entertaining as the film can be, there’s a sense it only scratches the surface of something fresher and funnier if it were to risk pushing further.

If you just want a cinematic spectacle of deadite-driven gruesomeness, “Evil Dead Rise” delivers more entertaining amounts of gore than any fan could hope for.

Russell Crowe does his demon dousing with the delightfully drunken haughtiness of Oliver Reed plus the scenery-snacking sensibilities of Tim Curry.

No one appears to be phoning anything in, but when you build something with blocks whose only color is beige, the final form can’t help but be basic.

The movie fondly reminds me of smirking at quickie conspiracy theory series in the days before 1am programming slots were taken over by Joey Greco and “Cheaters.”

You can either look at “Kids vs. Aliens” as a low-budget Amblin adventure, or as a big-budget backyard B-movie. The latter makes it far more fun.

Like a grandma too timid to cross the street for fear of getting grazed by a bicycle, “65” sticks to playing it safe at all times.

Elizabeth Banks and Jimmy Warden basically build “Cocaine Bear” like a classic Roger Corman drive-in flick, just with big studio bucks and an all-star cast.

I’ve decided to give it a “neither here nor there” 50/100 because review scores need numbers, not shrugging shoulders emojis.

Welcome to the bottomless sewer of lo-fi indie fright flicks. Don’t feel bad. Winnie-the-Pooh apparently dwells down here now too.

Believe me, I agree I’m the last person I’d expect to find defending a widely derided “Children of the Corn” movie as “not that bad,” even “decent, actually.”

Too low-key to be of consequential value as a memorable thriller, the only way to take “Consecration” is as a middling one.

The only thing keeping “The Outwaters” from exile in a DTV wasteland is the suspicious spin from prominent people promoting it as a major event in horror entertainment.

Landing where a lot of Netflix features often do in the end, “We Have a Ghost” settles for their standard of being “alright, I guess.”

As a character-driven thriller, “Knock at the Cabin” attracts attentive eyes by having its charismatic cast turn up the tension on a highly suspenseful mystery.

I don’t see a reason to recommend “Cold Ground” since it’s uneventfully dull. To keep it in the Fabien Delage family, track down “Fury of the Demon” instead.

What more would any reasonable person expect from a film that touts the tired tagline, “How far would you go to save your child?”

Typical though its subdued spooks may be, “The Offering” serves them up with elegantly unsettling flair.