Road movies annoy me, but I think vampire flicks rock. A hybrid of the two should be like the bastard child of Carrot Top and Nicole Kidman; you don't know which way it could go, but you have an aching suspicion that this one's got its daddy's genes.

Not so with The Forsaken, which rewrites vampire lore (I think director/writer J. S. Cardone should get a special prize for being "rethink #1,000,000"), but steals copiously from other vamp films (most notably John Carpenter's Vampires).(read more...)

Although it certainly has a lot of the superficial trappings of a classic "natural monster" horror film (as well as suggestions of other subgenres), Arachnophobia never really settles down to reside in the genre. Fans who like their horror to be scary won't find much to rave about here unless they come to the film with an almost irrational, deep-seated fear of spiders. Worse, fans who become easily irritated by quirks might hate Arachnophobia, because this is a film chock full of them. In the beginning, they're as slight as Hannibal Lecter in a pink chiffon jacket. By the midway point, the film is a veritable three-ring circus.(read more...)

Spanish/Portuguese co-production centering around the Templars, a group of medieval knights who were executed for their satanic practices and had their eyes plucked out by birds. Now, they arise from the grave in skeletal form, ready to drink the blood of any poor soul unfortunate enough to spend the night in their castle. Having no eyes, they find all of their victims by sound, but this isn't much of a handicap. If you were being chased by 600-year-old armored corpses, you'd make a lot of noise, trust me. The plot, incidental as it is, has a group of people investigating the death of a friend at the Templar ruins.(read more...)