It’s rare for a horror movie to run this deep on themes of friendship, finding hope in oppressive darkness, and refusing to be broken by bleakness.

What if we take “The Strangers” and do the exact opposite of everything that made “The Strangers” suspenseful and successful in the first place?

“Vicious” erases potential resonance with inessential stuffing that’s overlong, unnecessarily ambiguous, or just plain boring.

Summing up the movie’s “no duh” declarations: Violence as entertainment is bad. Exploitation is bad. Fanaticism is bad. “Him” is also bad.

“V/H/S/Halloween” represents the series’ rebound, as it’s easily the franchise’s strongest and most consistent collection in years.

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” purports to be “based on a true story,” although it’s anyone’s guess where facts are supposedly included in the fiction.

“The Toxic Avenger” feels like a true Troma film, but older, wiser, and with a lot more wit to go along with the grossouts and B-movie bloodbaths.

The real thing these shorts have in common is that they're all too long by about 20%, and some have nearly nothing to do with the supposed sci-fi frame.

The result is a consecutive collection of incongruent stories whose tenuous connection is just that they're sheltering under the same thin umbrella.

Where “Night of the Reaper” hits a hard snag with its comparatively calmer tone is in not establishing the same sense of dread that “Halloween” does.

“Strange Harvest” echoes “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” in a manner that’s able to maintain its own originality despite the déjà vu.

Everything about “Witchboard” 2024 can be described as “average,” with “below” fitting in front of that word more often than “above” applies.

Once its foundation firms up, “Weapons” continues forward as an experiment in storytelling that’s more about the telling than it is about the story.

“The Home” has the appearance of a slow-burn snore, but its essential organs are grown out of grindhouse gruesomeness and B-movie battiness.

Engaging as allegory, and entertaining as a carnival-like freak show, “Together” is a full-bodied horror experience.

“I Know What You Did Last Summer” might not be the legacy sequel many fans wanted, but it might be the best to be expected.

“House on Eden” is what you get when a horror film is treated as a conduit for content rather than a medium for cinematic storytelling.

“Bambi: The Reckoning” delivers a headache-inducing hangover that’ll have audiences asking, “why in the world did I willingly watch this?”

No matter what a viewer gets out of the movie, there’s an inescapable sense that its disparate parts are still missing key pieces.