Wes Craven’s Midlife Crisis, Now in 3D Let’s get this out of the way: Wes Craven was a horror legend. The man gave us A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and a lifetime of therapy bills. But in 2010, he also gave us My Soul to Take — a movie so confused, so bafflingly tone-deaf, … Read More “MY SOUL TO TAKE (2010): WHEN EVEN THE DEVIL ASKS FOR A REFUND” »
Love Hurts, Mostly the Audience There are bad sequels, and then there’s My Ex 2: Haunted Lover — a movie that makes you wish your ex were a vengeful ghost just so they could haunt you into forgetting it. This 2010 Thai horror “film” (a word I use very loosely) is the sequel to My … Read More “MY EX 2: HAUNTED LOVER (2010): WHEN BAD RELATIONSHIPS AND BAD WRITING WON’T DIE” »
A Mother’s Love — and Other Terrifying Fictions There’s a fine line between a psychological thriller and a two-hour hostage situation where everyone, including the audience, wishes for death. Mother’s Day (2010) doesn’t just cross that line — it douses it in gasoline and sets it on fire with a match stolen from Saw IV. … Read More “MOTHER’S DAY (2010): WHEN MOTHER KNOWS WORST” »
The Worms Are Coming, and So Is Regret The Syfy Channel has blessed humanity with cinematic masterpieces like Sharknado, Piranhaconda, and Ice Spiders. So when they announced Mongolian Death Worm, a movie about giant electrified subterranean snakes that spit venom and ruin oil rigs, the world collectively thought, Finally, art has peaked. Unfortunately, what we … Read More “MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM (2010): WHEN SYFY DIGS TOO DEEP AND HITS PURE STUPIDITY” »
Paging Dr. Mediocrity You know a horror movie’s in trouble when the scariest thing about it is the lighting. Midnight Beating, a 2010 Chinese “horror” film directed by Zhang Jiabei, wants to be a heart-pounding medical thriller. What it ends up being is a cinematic coma — an anesthesia-free lobotomy masquerading as a ghost story. … Read More “MIDNIGHT BEATING (2010): A HOSPITAL SO DEADLY, YOU’LL DIE OF BOREDOM FIRST” »
A Feeding Frenzy of Stupidity Every once in a while, a film comes along that redefines cinema. Mega Piranha is not that film. Produced by The Asylum — the same company that gave us Transmorphers and Snakes on a Train — this 2010 “mockbuster” swims confidently into the deep end of idiocy and promptly drowns. … Read More “MEGA PIRANHA (2010): A B-MOVIE THAT SHOULD’VE STAYED IN THE SHALLOW END” »
Welcome to the Mansion of Misery There are bad horror movies, and then there’s Mallika — a cinematic séance so boring it could put even the dead to sleep. Directed by Wilson Louis (who clearly offended the god of storytelling at some point), this 2010 Hindi horror flick tries to scare you with ghosts, gore, … Read More “MALLIKA (2010): THE HORROR MOVIE THAT DIES LONG BEFORE ITS CHARACTERS DO” »
When the Undead Feel Dead Inside Every generation gets the vampire movie it deserves. The 1930s had Bela Lugosi’s hypnotic stare. The 1980s had The Lost Boys and neon leather jackets. The 2000s had Twilight, which gave us sparkly bloodsuckers and eternal teenage angst. And then 2010 brought us Let Me In — a movie … Read More “LET ME IN (2010): A VAMPIRE MOVIE THAT SUCKS IN ALL THE WRONG WAYS” »
Bless Me, Father, for I Have Streamed By 2010, exorcism movies were multiplying faster than demons at a Ouija board convention. You couldn’t swing a crucifix without hitting a possessed teenager screaming about the power of Christ. But then The Last Exorcism arrived — a low-budget, found-footage horror film that didn’t just jump on the … Read More “THE LAST EXORCISM (2010): A HOLY ROLLER COASTER OF FOUND FOOTAGE FEAR” »
Send in the Clowns, and Maybe an Exorcist If Kidnapped was cinematic waterboarding, then Klown Kamp Massacre is the pie-in-the-face apocalypse we all deserve. Written and directed by Philip H. R. Gunn and David Valdez, this 2010 horror-comedy asks a simple question: what if clowns went to summer camp to perfect their craft — and … Read More “KLOWN KAMP MASSACRE (2010): THE GREATEST BAD MOVIE EVER HONKED” »