Sometimes Hollywood remakes a horror classic and breathes new life into it. Other times, Hollywood takes Wes Craven’s 1977 grindhouse shocker, feeds it radioactive sludge, and spits out The Hills Have Eyes (2006)—a movie that manages to be both brutally violent and brutally stupid. Alexandre Aja directed this remake, which promised savage scares and instead … Read More “The Hills Have Eyes (2006): Cannibal Mutants and a Trailer Full of Regret” »
If you’ve ever wandered into the horror section of a bargain-bin DVD rack and thought, “What’s the worst thing in here?” congratulations: you’ve found The Graveyard. This 2006 slasher “film” (and I use that word as generously as calling Taco Bell “Mexican cuisine”) is the third and mercifully final installment in the Bloody Murder series, … Read More “The Graveyard (2006): Where Slasher Movies Go to Die” »
Sometimes you hear the title of a movie and think, “Wow, that sounds ridiculous, I have to watch it.” Then you actually do, and realize you’ve been punished for your curiosity. That’s Evil Bong, a 2006 “stoner horror comedy” from Charles Band, a man whose entire career seems like a dare to see how many … Read More “Evil Bong (2006): High Concept, Low Quality” »
If you’ve ever thought, “What if Final Destination was written by someone who just discovered Nokia ringtones?” then congratulations, you’ve imagined Dead in 3 Days, a 2006 Austrian horror flick that tries to spook you with anonymous text messages and ends up proving that the scariest thing about high school graduation is the hangover. The … Read More “Dead in 3 Days (2006): Text Me Never” »
There are bad horror films. There are boring horror films. And then there’s Crazy Eights, a cinematic experiment in how long you can watch adults wander through an abandoned building before you start rooting for asbestos to finish them off. Part of After Dark Horrorfest’s “8 Films to Die For” collection, this is the one … Read More “Crazy Eights (2006): Eight Is Enough (And Maybe Six Too Many)” »
There are bad movies. There are offensive movies. And then there are movies like Cannibal (2006), Marian Dora’s feature-length debut that somehow manages to be both boring and revolting at the same time. It’s like if Silence of the Lambs and Cooking with Emeril had a child, and then that child grew up to eat … Read More “Cannibal (2006): A Recipe for Disaster” »
Let’s start with the obvious: if you’re going to call your movie Big Bad Wolf, you’d better bring something to the table other than a discount werewolf costume and dialogue that sounds like it was scribbled on a bar napkin at 2 a.m. But no, instead of a ferocious horror film, we get a 2006 … Read More “Big Bad Wolf (2006): Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Script?” »
There are horror films that make you want to leave the lights on. Then there are horror films that make you want to leave the theater. The Abandoned, Nacho Cerdà’s 2006 entry into the “spooky house with family trauma” genre, is firmly in the second category. It’s an international co-production between Bulgaria, Spain, and the … Read More “The Abandoned (2006): A Haunted House That Should Have Stayed Empty” »
Scotland has given the world many treasures: whisky, bagpipes, Sean Connery, and Trainspotting. Unfortunately, it also gave us Wild Country, a 2006 low-budget werewolf movie that proves sometimes £1 million is still about £999,999 too much. Directed by Craig Strachan, this film tries to mix teenage drama, creepy castles, and lupine horror into something resembling … Read More “Wild Country (2006): When Werewolves Attack… Your Patience” »
There are movies that elevate the made-for-TV horror genre—films so gleefully ridiculous they become cult treasures (Sharknado, Leprechaun in the Hood). Then there are movies like Vampire Bats, a 2005 CBS “event” sequel to Locusts, starring Lucy Lawless, which promised thrills, scares, and mutant bat mayhem but delivered… something that looked like a rejected Goosebumps … Read More “Vampire Bats (2005): When Nature Attacks… with Microsoft Paint Fangs” »