TheRetroCritic

I finally talk about Tom Cruise's latest blockbuster The Mummy .

Before Tom Cruise battled it out with Universal's latest Mummy, James McAvoy was Victor Frankenstein in this 2015 Frankenstein reboot. The film was a flop and another failed attempt at building some kind of new monster movie franchise or universe. Daniel Radcliffe plays a hunchbacked circus clown (need I say more?) who suddenly develops a passion for medicine (don't ask) and becomes mad genius Victor Frankenstein's colleague under the name Igor. They first attempt to make a living being out of various dead animal parts then move on to bigger, and more familiar endeavours. There's something consistently unclear about this movie: is it a prequel to the original classic or is it a prequel to a reboot Frankenstein movie that doesn't and will never exist? Of course it's the latter but the film's early claims that we all know Frankenstein's story along with various references to the iconic original constantly clash with the new interpretation of thes

After several false starts, it's looking like our beloved Universal Monsters might just finally get the reboot franchise they were promised years ago as The Mummy kicks off the new "Dark Universe" which would lead to an Avengers or LXG -style team-up. The reviews for this new remake haven't been kind but the presence of Tom Cruise in the lead role with the likes of Johnny Depp and Javier Bardem set to star in further movies might just help confirm this franchise as a done deal despite its lukewarm reception. The original The Mummy was a moody horror film and the Brendan Fraser-starring reboot more of a fun adventure series while this latest effort tries something in between: part-tongue-in-cheek actioner, part-creepy monster movie, this new Mummy certainly has an uneven tone, something that might have alienated some viewers and critics. The plot sees a couple of thieves uncover a hidden Egyptian tomb in war-torn Iraq where they quickly scoop up a mysterious sar

I talk a bit about Alien: Covenant . 

The only film directed by Dan Aykroyd to date, Nothing But Trouble was a dark comedy from 1991 which starred Chevy Chase as a businessman who is arrested for speeding then put on trial in the trash and weirdo-filled little town of Valkenvania, just off the New Jersey Turnpike. With a cast that includes John Candy, Demi Moore, Taylor Negron and Dan Aykroyd himself, Nothing But Trouble looked like a safe bet and its goofy plot had lots of potential. Unfortunately, the film was a massive flop, gathering only about $8M against a healthy budget of $40M, and the critics did not go easy on it. Nothing But Trouble was panned by everyone back in the day, including Chevy Chase himself, it was nominated for several Razzie awards and Dan Aykroyd would never dare direct a film again afterwards. Looking back, the movie's failure at the box-office is hardly surprising: sinking this much money into a story this bizarre was never going to deliver. The film itself, on the other hand, isn't

Ridley Scott's long-awaited return to the science-fiction genre was met with both praise and cynicism as Alien prequel (of sorts) Prometheus delivered in the stylistic department but failed to convince those more demanding fans of the franchise who perhaps expected something slightly different. Alien: Covenant is very much a direct sequel to Prometheus with Michael Fassbender returning as dodgy robot David and the story picking up some time after he and Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) departed for the Engineers' planet in the alien ship. Initially, however, we focus on new ship The Covenant and its crew who are travelling with thousands of human colonists and embryos in order to start a new life in a specific planet. Following a destructive accident in space which kills its Captain (an odd James Franco cameo), new robot Walter (also Fassbender) wakes up the crew and the new Captain decides to follow a radio transmission down to a nearby unknown world despite the fact it is

I play some more of PC horror game Blood .

Playing delightfully gruesome first-person shooter Blood .

I compile some of the "best" moments from the film Wolf .

There are bad movies and then there are borderline unwatchable bad movies. Manos: The Hands Of Fate would have probably remained in the latter category if it hadn't been for Mystery Science Theater 3000 's entertaining riff of the infamous stinker. This is a bizarre little zero budget horror movie from 1966 and pretty much everything about it is a disaster from the awful performances and the nonsensical script to the awkward direction and editing. The plot sees a family get lost while on a drive in the desert before becoming trapped in a lodge run by some kind of dodgy pagan cult. The leader of said shady group is The Master (Tom Neyman), he wears a long black poncho with a red hand motif, one of the film's most memorable images, he has several wives and sacrifices people to the deity he worships called "Manos" (aka "Hands" in Spanish). His disciple is a twitchy weirdo named Torgo (John Reynolds), who has inexplicably puffed-up knees and his own the

I talk briefly about new sci-fi horror film Life .

A few months before the release of Alien: Covenant ( Ridley Scott's latest entry into the long-running sci-fi franchise), comes Life : another creepy space-set horror thriller in which a group of astronauts are forced to face a thoroughly unpleasant monster. While some reviews for this movie might not go much further than mentioning how derivative it is since it is essentially a mix of Alien , The Thing and Gravity , one could argue that what it lacks in originality it makes up for in sheer terror and, in fact, surpasses some of the aforementioned films in some ways. Life may seem like a B-movie but it is so well made that dismissing it as just that would be unfair. The way in which the inside of the space station is shot really makes you buy the setting with its zero gravity and tight compartments as we follow the crew members floating through the station convincingly, something that Gravity didn't quite capture. The reasonable running time actually means the tension is

I talk about Gore Verbinski's latest horror thriller A Cure For Wellness .

The famously confrontational Joan Crawford and Bette Davis duo finally shared the screen in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? , a 1962 horror thriller directed by Robert Aldrich. The making of the film is the subject of new FX series Feud starring Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon. Like a cross between Sunset Boulevard and Psycho , What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? explores themes like madness, jealousy and guilt in a Hollywood setting as Bette Davis' ex child star "Baby" Jane Hudson keeps her disabled sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) imprisoned in their house feeding her rats and scaring the crap out of her. The film first gives us some background on the sisters as we see Baby Jane singing to a crowd of fans very much in her element: she is talented but also a spoiled brat. Blanche, on the other hand, is cast aside by her father who is too busy pushing Jane down the path of stardom. Skip to a few years later and the tables have turned with Blanche being a respected Holl

Gore Verbinski directs this strange horror thriller about a young executive who is sent to Switzerland to bring back his company's CEO. The latter has been staying in a spa or "wellness center" in what can only be described as Dracula's castle so what could go wrong? Dane DeHaan is Lockhart, the cocky up-and-coming employee who is essentially blackmailed into retrieving his own boss and who discovers just how unusual that mysterious establishment really is, the hard way. What was meant to be a quick job soon becomes a descent into Hell as Lockhart suffers a car crash, is forced to stay in the spa as a patient and slowly uncovers the sordid truth about this seemingly idyllic Swiss Alp location. This is a surprisingly derivative thriller as it evokes Shutter Island heavily in terms of plot and tonally resembles a reliably messed-up season of American Horror Story with shades of Guillermo Del Toro thrown in for good luck. On the plus side, A Cure For Wellness deli

M. Night Shyamalan had something of a mini-comeback with The Visit , a found-footage horror movie from 2015 about two kids going to live with their grandparents, whom they've never met, for a week. Audiences and critics didn't pan this one quite as much as the director's last few movies and it did well at the box-office so it was considered a success. The premise for The Visit sounded pretty silly and the trailers underlined that quite a bit as it showed two old people acting strangely and two kids being terrified of them for no real reason. The film itself, it turns out, mixes comedy and horror convincingly and is refreshingly self-aware. This was something The Happening attempted years prior but the whole thing ended up being unintentionally funny and the "scary" parts came off as goofy throughout, despite the sinister premise. The two kids who supposedly film the events in this movie, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), are decent actors

Ever since The Happening , every new M. Night Shyamalan movie has been met with cynicism. His last film The Visit was surprisingly well received, however, and so was  Split , a horror thriller starring James McAvoy as a man with 23 split personalities who kidnaps three teenagers. The serial killer premise sets the tone for the rest of the film, which is easily one of Shyamalan's creepiest efforts. We follow Kevin (McAvoy) as he incarcerates three innocent girls while still attending his psychiatrist's sessions. Meanwhile, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) and the other two teens try to figure out what's going on and look for a way to escape. Some of Kevin's personalities include a 9 year-old kid called Hedwig, the super intimidating Dennis and female mastermind Patricia. Your enjoyment of this film will depend completely on how you rate James McAvoy's performance which is both excellent but also wacky as hell. A lesser actor could have easily rendered Split either unwatc

Because found-footage surprise hit The Blair Witch Project was made for peanuts back in 1999 and made a ridiculous amount of money at the box-office, it was inevitable that a remake would happen at some point. Finally, in 2016 we got Blair Witch , a sequel/reboot looking to revamp the franchise. Like with most modern horror remakes, this is a thinly veiled reboot dressed up like a sequel but there's really nothing about it that directly connects Blair Witch from the original except for the fact that one of the characters is the brother of the girl from the first movie but it's not like we ever see her so it might as well have been a completely unrelated bunch entering the creepy woods many years later. Amusingly, none of the people involved in this new expedition appear to have learned anything from previous events making these guys far dumber than the last ones. James (James Allen McCune) is the brother looking for his sister even though he doesn't seem too concerned

Stephen Chow stars in Out Of The Dark , a black comedy from 1995 directed by Jeffrey Lau. He plays a mental patient claiming to be a ghostbuster who decides to train a group of useless security guards to handle some crafty poltergeists. Although he didn't direct this one himself, Out Of The Dark has all the trademarks of a Stephen Chow film from the gross-out humour to the cartoonish slapstick. The film pokes fun at thrillers and horror movies by following a selection of ridiculously clueless characters in a madcap plot that, unapologetically, makes little sense. This is a surprisingly brutal and gory comedy as people stab or shoot each other left and right prompting gallons of blood to gush in every scene. The humour throughout is dark, borderline sadistic at times but also completely juvenile so it's hard to take any of it seriously even when it's at its most violent. The plot, which is slight to say the least, is fully overshadowed by all the over-the-top gags that

There are plenty of Stephen King movie adaptations out there, enough to fill a small country, and this is one of them.  Children Of The Corn was released in 1984 and was based on one of the legendary horror writer's short stories. Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton play a couple who struggle to make their way back to civilisation after driving into an already dying child on a road near a cornfield. As it turns out, they have entered a town completely populated by kids who not only killed off every adult around brutally but who are part of some bizarre corn-themed religious cult. When poor old Vicky (Hamilton) is kidnapped, it's up to Burt (Horton) and a couple of younger kids to save her from being another human sacrifice. The film starts off on a gory note as we see the creepy children turn a diner into a bloodbath in what is the start of their grown-up eradication. After that, the film slows down quite a bit and we spend some time following Vicky and Burt wandering around