Olivia (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) gets an eyeful in "Final Destination 5".

Like many parts of the country these days, the horror genre has been firmly in the grips of a drought for the last few years. True relief has been scarce and we find ourselves grateful for even the slightest promise of it we may feel on the wind. All the while, charlatans and assorted snake oil salesmen proffer gimmicks and false hope, which we eagerly accept in lieu of the real thing.

But one day, relief will come.
Just not today.
Today, we get “Final Destination 5”.

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She is the danger that bumps in the night: Chainsaw Sally (April Monique Burril).

From the ages of about eight to thirteen, I was more or less surgically attached to a library. For us old folks, the library was our internet, except that it was made out of paper. Completely unlike the current internet, the mainstay of the library wasn’t porn, but the librarian. Neither sexy nor scantily clad, the librarian was usually an older woman whose temperament ranged somewhere from genial to dour. Ordinarily you could find her behind her desk or dutifully pushing her trolley along, re-shelving books. I highly suspect her cologne was a subtle Eau de Book Paste.

One thing for sure, they never built them like Chainsaw Sally.

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Chris (Sean Bridger) and Belle (Angela Bettis) and their "perfect" life before "The Woman".

In the beginning, as some people like to say, god created… well pretty much everything. But, it was kinda like throwing a party and nobody showing up, so god created guests: it solved the immediate problem and saved him on the cost of invitations. It wasn’t too long, though, before there was drama. God created man first and then pulled woman from an extra body part: so they were created together but not equally. Man was to be the boss of the woman. And while woman sought knowledge, man, by proxy for god, found that to be evil, they were cast out of paradise and woman was made to bear the burdens for her transgressions.

At least that’s what some people say.

Some people might say that man, in his natural state, prefers the balance found in a matriarchal belief system. Others still might say that man was created as a result of biological happenstance and natural selection. One thing that could be agreed upon is that Lucky McKee’s “the Woman” is a potent movie.

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David (Jayson Champion) tries to survive his last case in "Kodie".

Not long ago, if you wanted to make a movie and show it in theaters, you needed to have a wheelbarrow full of money. Lacking that, the chances of your movie ever seeing the light of day were between slim and none. However, with the maturation of DSLR camera technology, almost anyone can become a filmmaker. I love the fact that technology has taken something that used to only be the only in the hands of a select few and has opened the gates for everyone.

Enter Abel Berry and his latest film, “Kodie”.

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Yep, looks like another needless sequel in "Scream 4".

To paraphrase something a wise woman once said, assumption is a crap-filled Twinkie: it looks great until you take a bite out of it. An assumption is a little bit of mental laziness that circumvents the heavy lifting of critical thinking and just going with whatever’s easiest.

Of course, this brings us to Wes Craven’s latest effort, “Scream 4”.

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Kristen (Amber Heard) just can't wash the crap smell off from "The Ward".

In a perfect world, there is no crime, no disease. In a perfect world, we are at peace at the personal level, the global level and every level in between. In a perfect world, no good deed goes unrewarded, nice guys finish first and true love conquers all.

In a perfect world, John Carpenter never makes a movie like “the Ward”.

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Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) and creepy goings-on in "Insidious".

The problem, I think, with most horror movies these days is that they’ve forgotten how to scare us. The relationship of today’s horror film to the audience is very much like that of an old married couple who’ve fallen into a rut. They both go through the motions of the relationship as they have over the course of the years on auto-pilot. Maybe they do things not really even knowing why but just because they’ve done them for so long that it’s become the only way they know. Similarly, horror fans go to horror movies hoping for something new, but nothing really ever changes. We hope for something better, but if we don’t get it – well, that’s just the way it is.

Horror movies startle us.
Sometimes, they shock or disgust us.
Scaring us, however, is a nigh forgotten art.

Thankfully, James Wan and Leigh Whannell haven’t forgotten. The duo that put the genre on its collective ear with the game-changing “Saw” have teamed up again to put their spin on the classic haunted house story in “Insidious”.

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Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) and Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) play Find the Lycanthrope in "Red Riding Hood".

Four reviews and countless diatribes later, I think it’s pretty safe to say: I hate the Twilight movies and all things like them. I try to be objective about them, really I do. However, there is something about the bloodless, broken, soft-focus style of these films that simply makes them repellent to me.

But these are fantasy films. Their world is protected from my unending scorn by this simple fact. Just like in “Star Wars” or “Star Trek”, the world in these films operates under certain rules and attracts a set of fanatical followers who enjoy the films regardless of their content or quality.

“Red Riding Hood” easily resides in this world.

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Howard (Richard Gunn) and Charlotte (Abigail Mittel) move into a mystery in "Fugue".

For a couple of years in college, I was a music major. I generally liked it except for Tuesdays and Thursdays when, invariably, I’d have a 7:30AM class. My freshman year it was Music Appreciation. Music History took its place my sophomore year. These weren’t bad classes but they were pretty early in the morning in a well air conditioned auditorium with comfortable chairs. In other words, it was a recipe for an unintentional nap. I don’t remember much from them, but I remember this: a fugue is a musical piece with two or more counterpointing voices.

It’s also a rare psychiatric disorder which included reversible amnesia.
Both play a part in Barbara Stepansky’s second feature film, “Fugue”.

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Nikki (Roxy Vandiver) and Rachel (Julin) demonstrate the power of cheer in "Spirit Camp".

If you ask either of my ex-wives, there are a great many things that I don’t know anything about. However, I do know something about cheerleaders. Now before you start with the knowing winks or high-fives, let me clarify: my older sister was a cheerleader. That made me the dorky little brother that got dragged along to games or was otherwise jammed into a car with a bunch of girls wearing really short skirts. It wasn’t all bad.

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