Like the endless SAW films before it, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is becoming an annual Halloween tradition. The first was a clever low-budget surprise and the second is more like another Halloween tradition — the haunted house. You know the haunted house run by the local high school or amusement park. You walk slowly through dark corridors and periodically there is a scary face staring at you around a corner or someone jumps out and yells boo. There’s no story only the promise of scares.

This second outing is a prequel of sorts. The events of this film take place around the events of the first, but with new characters at the center. I make this clear because if you didn’t see the first film you wouldn’t know what the text on the screen “60 Days Before Micah’s Death” means. The new haunting victims are the sister of the first film’s Katie (Katie Featherston) and her family. Kristi (Sprague Grayden, TV’s SIX FEET UNDER) has just had a baby boy named Hunter (William Juan & Jackson Xenia Prieto). Soon after bringing home the newborn, strange occurrences begin, which increase as the baby gets older. Kristi’s step daughter Ali (Molly Ephraim, TV’s LAST MAN STANDING) believes  it’s a ghost, while her husband Daniel (Brian Boland, THE UNBORN) disregards all in supernatural explanations.

Others differ at what to do. Martine (Vivis Colombetti, GAS FOOD LODGING), the Spanish-speaking nanny, tries to drive out the bad spirits in the house with incantations and incense. Because isn’t that an employment requirement for ethnic servants in horror films? Katie, who had bad run-ins with spirits as a child, tells Kristi to just ignore it or it will just get worse. Ignoring your house trashed or every cabinet in the kitchen opening at the same time is hard to do though.

Like the first film, this one carries the found footage conceit, but with far less success. After the trashing of the house, which is believed to be a robbery attempt, Daniel installs security cameras everywhere. A great deal of the activity, or more accurately inactivity, is seen through these vantage points. When the film isn’t frozen on a static shot, waiting like one of those annoying prank Internet videos that have something jump out and scream at you after a half minute of looking at nothing, the film attempts character dynamics with forced home video moments. But nothing gets any deeper than family or supernatural banality. The film is about as tedious as watching a stranger’s home movies.

Oren Peli’s original focused on how the supernatural events transformed the relationship between Katie and Micah. It was just as much a character study as a really effective horror film. Now Peli has handed the creative reigns to others. Director Tod Williams (THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR) creates tension, but not because we care about the characters, it’s only to prepare ourselves for the next boo moment (just like a local haunted house). The domesticated setting only adds to the level of tension because we can relate to the scary feelings of walking across our dark homes late at night wondering what that noise is. But after awhile you know where the noise is coming from and you stop being scared and start feeling stupid for being scared in the first place. By the end of this film I was laughing at so many of the film’s attempts at being spooky. Oooooooo night vision.

Everything about this film annoyed me. It’s like at a bad haunted house where someone jumps out and doesn’t scare you, but continues to dance around right in front of your face as if that is going to send you scurrying away in horror. Just like I know there is a 6th grade gym teacher behind the mask, I was fully aware of the director and writers trying to scare me. It’s a manipulation not a movie. If that’s what you want then rev up the chain-less chainsaw and have a good ole time. But if you want a film, buy a ticket to something else.

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Stephen King named this disease outbreak horror film one of his favorites of 2009. This makes a great deal of sense considering it feels like a King story. King creates tension through personality conflicts and so do directors/writers David and Alex Pastor. It’s a mix of THE STAND and ZOMBIELAND, but without the laughs.

An airborne virus has killed most of humanity. A foursome scavenges what they can and avoid the infected at all costs. Danny Green (Lou Taylor Pucci, FAST FOOD NATION) is the sensible one, who conservatively sticks to the rules, even ones that do not apply in a world without a society. His brother Brian (Chris Pine, STAR TREK) is a tough guy smartass, whose maturity is limited so he likes to pick on his smart, awkward younger brother. Bobby (Piper Perabo, THE PRESTIGE) is Brian’s girlfriend who seems too caring to be with him. Kate (Emily VanCamp, THE RING TWO) is Danny’s girlfriend, who hasn’t been with him long, but she has no other place to go.

Along the road they run across Frank Holloway (Christoper Meloni, TV’s LAW & ORDER: SVU), who has a sick little girl named Jodie (Kiernan Shipka, TV’s MAD MEN). Frank has heard a report that a cure has been found. Brian leaves them behind, but when their car breaks down, they hike back to take their SUV. However, Bobby won’t let them leave the little girl in the desert to die, so they come to a compromise.

At its core, the film is a survival tale about the lengths people will go to stay alive. The protagonists fear running into the ones who won’t stop at violence. There are others who believe in mercy killings. At a resort, they meet a survivalist group who have their own set of rules for creating their own new society. Danny, Brian, Bobby and Kate have their own way of reacting to the people they encounter. With each new scenario what they think they believe is challenged. Rules sometimes don’t apply. Lines of morality are blurred. One decison can change the way they look at everything else after.

The Pastors get strong performances from their cast. Pine exudes alpha male charm and arrogence. Pucci makes Danny sensative and logical — a young man who uses his mind before his emotions unlike his brother. Perabo is effortlessly likable. She is the conscience. VanCamp makes Kate more complex than what is on the page. Her character is in a vulnerable spot; she might act differently if she knew the people she was with better.

CARRIERS doesn’t blaze any new ground, but it does build compellingly from one episode to the next pushing its characters to extremes. The situations force the characters to act. Some rise to the occasion and others succumb to it. What seemed wrong before might seem very right later on. Survival is not pretty and after some things are done, you can never go back.

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Director Daniel Stamm puts a found footage twist on the exorcism tale. A documentary crew plans to cover a fake exorcism in order to reveal how they are done. They get into a family where secrets hold the key to what they are calling possession. What is real and what is illusion is hard to tell.

Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian, TV’s GENERAL HOSPITAL) comes from a long line of exorcists, but he has stopped performing them out of guilt. When asked by the filmmakers if he is a fraud, he says, “That’s your word.” His new mission is to expose the practice for what it is so that no child will die ever again at the hands of an exorcist. Cotton is like a flashy faith-healing TV evangelist. He loves an audience.

At first he thinks he is performing the exorcism on farmer Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON), who believes demonic forces are killing his livestock. To his dismay when he arrives at the Sweetzer house he learns that Louis believes that his teen daughter Nell (Ashley Bell, TV’s UNITED STATES OF TERA) is the one killing the animals. The family has lived isolated from the outside world since the death of their mother. Nell’s protective brother Caleb (Caleb Landry Jones, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS) throws rocks at Cotton’s car when they first arrive. So Southern hospitality might be an illusion too.

At its core the film is a critique of twisted religion. Cotton is a huckster who uses it to make money under the guise that he is giving someone the ritual they need to get past whatever mental issue they are suffering from. Louis uses religion as a weapon to control his children and an excuse to lock them away from a world he fears. Cotton is trying to make amends and wants to help Nell, but he’s digging for the Earthly cause.

The found footage conceit works quite well with this material. It gives it authenticity, especially when we start to wonder whether it’s all some kind of ruse or if something supernatural is really occurring. But the key question is: who is conducting the ruse? You can see the influences of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT all over this film.

Stamm takes his time, using his actors to create real personalities. Uncertainty drives the tension. Each scare builds on the next and with each unexpected reveal the characters take on depth and the situation gets more dire. Nothing is forced… at least to a point. The film loses its way in the last five minutes with a lazy ending that is almost laughable in its absurdity. It’s a shame, because it could have ended earlier and provided a satisfying closure. But it in an attempt to have one last big shock the film not only jumps the shark, but turns around, comes back and beats it with a stick until it’s dead.

Within the craziness of the ending, there is one moment that redeemed it for me, because it was a nice character moment with Cotton. While the ending is a big let down, the journey to it is worth taking. The film still works, because the ending fits, its just silly. Things are an illusion but we just don’t know whom has the magic wand.

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Sometimes you find a film that is a comedic treasure. Each line is hilarious. Scenes build one on top of each other increasing the level of entertainment. Right when you think it can’t outdo itself it does just that. That is this film. However, it’s supposed to be scary so it does so with sheer awfulness.

Seth (Robert Ormsby) tells his grandson Joshua (Michael Stephenson) a horrifying fairy tale of a young man who dresses a lot like Peter Pan that is seduced by a beautiful freckled girl. He should have known something was wrong when he saw that those freckles are clearly painted on. The girl is in cahoots with goblins who make green ooze flow out of the young man’s pores. The tale is a warning to the young boy who is going on vacation in the country with his family. Of yeah, grandpa is also dead.

Joshua’s father Michael (George Hardy) is going to make sure that his family has fun as they trade homes with complete strangers cast right out of CHILDREN OF THE CORN. Joshua’s mother Diana (Margo Prey), with her permanent dead stare smile, goes along with her husband as if she is brainwashed. Holly (Connie Young), Joshua’s older sister, is upset that her boyfriend Elliott (Jason Wright) chose his loser friends over coming along with her family.

The town where they are staying is called Nilbog, a farming town where they eat thick rancid milk and vegetables covered in what looks like pastel-colored cake icing. The food is tainted and will either turn the eater into a vegetarian zombie like the townsfolk or make them ooze green goo and transform into a tree or you could just melt into a sickening Jell-O green cottage cheese. The mythology is never consistent. Director Claudio Fragasso and his co-writer Rossella Drudi couldn’t make up their mind on their villain either. We have little people in bad Halloween masks as goblins. We have Creedence Leonore Gielgud (Deborah Reed), the bespectacled Druid witch in the forest. We also have the meat-hating preacher Bells (Mike Hamill), who looks like an early ‘80s pro wrestler awkwardly dressed up in a suit.

Vegetarians as vicious killers is hilarious. But nothing beats Creedence seductively dancing with an ear of corn in order to lure in one of Elliott’s horny teen friends. It gets so hot that that corn pops. So what weapon do you use against them, but a double bolonga sandwich.

The perfunctory dialogue is in the same league as Ed Wood. Each actor has a special way of mangling it too. Stephenson yells every line in a squeaky voice. Hardy puts dire emphasis in the most innocuous statement. “We have video!” is screamed in order to ensure the disinterested guests from Nilbog that their house will be fun. Prey is like a monotone robot. Reed’s character might not eat meat, but the scenery is fine. The entire production has the quality of amateur theater from the stiff performances to the overdone stage lighting to cheap effects.

Even the title is hilariously inept when you think that no one mentions a troll in the entire film. The name was tacked on after the distribution company thought it could market it better as a sequel. Ironically this is the TROLL film that people remember. Well at least people who love bad films. BEST WORST MOVIE chronicles this film’s surprising fanbase. So it holds a rare place in movie history along with Ed Wood’s work as an awful film that has inspired a good film. MONSTER A-GO-GO can’t say that.

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Is this the most disturbing film ever made? Many have said so. A great deal depends on what you bring to it. A fan of extreme cinema might find it less provocative than say someone who sticks to PG inspirational films. It contains graphic depictions of rape, necrophilia and pedophilia. Many of the concepts are some of the vilest ideas I’ve ever seen in any film. It stands in infamy with the likes of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and SALO. But is it simply exploitation or something more?

Milos (Srdan Todorovic) is a retired porn star that has settled down in a simple domestic life with his beautiful wife Marija (Jelena Gavrilovic) and adorable young son Petar. His former co-star Lejla (Katarina Žutic) offers him a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on an art porn film for the auteur Vukmir Vukmir (Sergej Trifunovic). The money would set up Milos and his family for life, but he worries about the secrecy surrounding what he will have to do.

The first day of filming is disturbing, so Milos asks his brother Marko (Slobodan Beštic), a Serbian cop, to look into his director. When he discovers that Vukmir was a former child psychologist, he goes to back out. Vukmir explains the film is a representation of the Serbian people and then shows Milos a video that would make any father vomit. Milos flees, but he has been drugged and when he wakes up bloodied in his own bed. He then sets out to piece together what has been done to him and worse what he may have done to others over the past three days.

Director Srdan Spasojevic has high intentions for sure. The film begins with an arthouse looking title with traditional Serbian music and is then smashed by an aggressive looking title and a hard driving metal soundtrack. The provocateur isn’t solely set on shock. This isn’t HUMAN CENTIPEDE or total trash like MURDER SET PIECES. He makes us care about Milos and his family. Milos gets in over his head and must seek out his missing family. Spasojevic makes the whole experience like a twisted ALICE IN WONDERLAND with Milos falling deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Vukmir tortures the man past anything anyone could endure.

So what is Spasojevic trying to say? He presents the idea that the Serbian government screws its citizens from the moment they are born. The metaphor is literally that. There is nothing subtle about it. The sex and violence is pervasive and often way over the top. One could also read a comment on the dangerous direction gonzo porn is going too. But like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and its comment on the extremes documentarians will go in exploiting their subjects, the excesses of A SERBIAN FILM undermine the message and work to support the very problem it hopes to critique.

Especially when it comes to any comment on sex, the film falls apart. The first scene finds Petar watching one of his dad’s old films. His father and mother seem to not care one bit. When Petar asks about the wheels that turn down there, Milos explains to him how to masturbate. The kid is like eight or nine. This is supposed to be an innocent portrayal of childhood sexual curiosity to contrast the kiddie porn elements that Vukmir exploits, but it all has the same creepy effect. As for its comment on sexual violence, a sex scene between Milos and Marija seems to say, “Go gonzo.”

All of this is presented with skill. Nemanja Jovanov’s cinematography is slick. This doesn’t look like an ugly exploitation film. Spasojevic’s torture porn is certainly more thoughtful than HOSTEL where it beats us with gruesomeness and than makes us feel like fools for caring about the victims. Milos’ experience is always the focus. It’s absolutely key to recognize that many of the horrid things Milos is forced to do we watch only as he pieces them back together in order to find his family. The audience isn’t mercilessly being subjected to him helplessly victimized and victimize over and over again.

Yet some of the sexually perverse kill scenes seem to be there solely to be there. Someone doesn’t make a film like this without the hope of shocking people. But each shock needs to be tied to the message to really be affective and this is where Spasojevic misses the mark the most. The ending surprise is much like other surprises in extreme cinema, but far more visceral. However, the film shows its purpose to shock when Milos uses his penis as a weapon. It’s so ludicrous I laughed and that is the moment when the whole thing spun off into farce.

After reading the hyperbole filled reviews coming out the festivals, I prepared myself for the experience by reading the full plot description beforehand. It certainly lessened the shock, but it also freed me to watch the film, because I had already experienced the revulsion from the reading the Wikipedia description. My first time was like seeing it for the second time and the shocks don’t hold up. They start to become comical because they are so extreme.

Some of the most shocking elements of this film are those not seen. If Spasojevic had kept this in mind more often, he might have created an even more provocative film. Just because you can show something horrible that no one has shown before doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Nothing here stands as the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen on film. Nothing is like the nine-minute rape scene in IRREVERSIBLE. Nothing is like the cat violation in LEOLO. Nothing is like the prostitution or drug scenes in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. Nothing is like the murders in ICHI THE KILLER. Nothing is like the home invasion scene in HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER. Nothing is like the genitalia mutilation in ANTICHRIST. What these shocking scenes have that A SERBIAN FILM doesn’t is that they are one shocking scene within a larger less shocking film. Spasojevic wants to shock us every ten minutes. You can only get in someone’s face and scream “boo” so many times before they just get pissed at you for it.

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I’ve seen bits and pieces of this over the years since it came to cable. Some of the pieces I caught impressed me, because it seemed the whole thing was a spoof of the FRIDAY THE 13TH series, as well as space horror films like ALIEN. Now that I have seen the film from start to finish, I have come to the conclusion that it is trying to make fun of the series, but the problem is that it was written like one of those late-night softcore spoofs.

In the prologue, Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder, HATCHET) has been captured and is set to be cryogenically frozen, because he can’t be killed. He gets loose in the facility and Rowan (Lexa Doig, TV’s ANDROMEDA) lures the killer into the freezing chamber and accidentally gets frozen along with him. Apparently Earth was doomed with or without Jason on ice because in the future humans live on Earth II. An education mission is sent back to Earth to check it out, discovering Rowan and Jason and taking them back on the ship to thaw them out.

On the ship, the plot is a complete rip off of ALIEN. Prof. Lowe (Jonathan Potts, DEVIL) is the weaselly corporate hack who sees Jason as dollar signs. Simply replace the alien with Jason and the space miner victims with scientists and horny students. The rest of the film is watching one horny teen after another getting hacked up. One victim gets her head dunked in a sink of liquid nitrogen and then has her face smashed on the counter. I lost count of the number of victims that get slashed by a machete. One even loses his arm via the big knife while Jason is still frozen for goodness sake.

None of this is taken seriously in the least. Losing an arm in the future is no big deal because there is a machine that will reattach it. That’s if you don’t forget to bring it back with you like the dummy does in this film. His great line when someone hands him his arm, “I gotta stop losing my arm. Hi arm.” Kay-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder, TV’s ANDROMEDA) is an android who is like the Terminator crossed with a dominatrix version of the sex bots from AUSTIN POWERS. Her nerdy programmer

The only truly funny moment is one where the crew get Jason stuck in a virtual reality room and send him back to the 1980s Crystal Lake camp where he started his murders. Two buxom beauties give him come hither looks from their sleeping bags, which become killing tools for the confused and frustrated monster.

In a big tense moment, the spaceship comes full speed into a space city and takes out tops of buildings. The pilot says they just need to turn around because they over shot it. It’s not campy funny; it’s just stupid. Even the opening sequence there is not tension when it is clear it’s trying to play things straight. Director James Isaac (SKINWALKERS) cuts the sequence to an awful score that sounds like it came from one of those bad Halloween music CDs you buy at the drug store.

As the tenth installment in the horror franchise, this one does nothing to improve its reputation. It’s not as low-rent as FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING, but it’s not worthy of being a theatrical release either. It’s cheap in every meaning of the word. When a franchise has run out of ideas, they always send the characters to space. So why not Jason? He’s beaten every other cliché to death why not that one too

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Arnold Schwarzenegger faced off against these skilled hunters in the original film and now Oscar-winner Adrien Brody picks up the big gun. Too bad Brody didn’t get the better role. This sequel goes back to the essence of the original, but loses all the suspense.

Brody plays Royce, a special ops soldier who is dropped from the sky into a jungle. He doesn’t know why he is there. All he remembers is a flash of light. Others start joining him. They’re all killers from various locations on Earth and it becomes clear quickly that they are not the hunters in this scenario.

Director Nimrod Antal’s film is populated with stereotypes from central casting. Isabelle (Alice Braga, I AM LEGEND) is the woman… and also the most kind of the group. Noland (Lawrence Fishburne, APOCALYPSE NOW) is the kooky survivor who has lasted against the aliens the longest. Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien, FAIR GAME) is a laconic yakuza. How much you want to beat he finds a samurai sword? Stans (Walton Goggins, TV’s THE SHIELD) is a cruel Southern serial killer. Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov, NATIONAL TREASURE) is a Chechen rebel whose massive gun is disproportionate to the size of his brain. Cuchillo (Danny Trejo, MACHETE) is a Mexican drug cartel. Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, TV’s THE 4400) is an African warlord. Edwin (Topher Grace, TV’s THAT ‘70S SHOW) is a surgeon who seems misplaced with these savages. Seems.

These characters exist to get killed off one by one. Who will last to the very end is obvious from the start. Disoriented by their location and disadvantaged by their weapon supply, the group is hunted by various ugly predators and their toothy attack hounds. They are being toyed with and that’s how the audience feels as well. The story starts with some suspense, but by the time the big reveal comes, the story just plods forward with nothing else to surprise us with.

The big reveal I will not reveal, because I didn’t know it going in, so I will keep the surprise. It’s not a great surprise, but it does increase the hopelessness of the humans’ cause. But it also puts into question the motivations and bank accounts of the predators. They go to a lot of effort to basically play with mice.

Once the end comes, Antal, producer Robert Rodriguez or one of the four credited screenwriters couldn’t help referencing some of the classic lines from the original. That’s where the film completely lost me. It just highlights the problem with this sequel. It doesn’t build on the first film; it’s just tries to copy it. Because the outcome is so clear, this actioner is as thrilling as shooting fish in a barrel. And as original as that metaphor.

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The tag line for the film is that it will do for skiing what JAWS did for swimming. Now in no way is it in the same league as Steven Spielberg’s classic, but it’s certainly on the same field with films like OPEN WATER, which found a couple left behind in shark-infested water on a scuba trip. The action for this tense horror/thriller moves the action to a ski lift in the sub-freezing cold.

Joe Lynch (Shawn Ashmore, X-MEN) and Dan Walker (Kevin Zegers, DAWN OF THE DEAD) are best friends who have planned a snowboarding/skiing trip. Joe is upset that Dan has brought along his novice girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell, FINAL DESTINATION 5). Dan is too cheap to pay for lift tickets so he has Parker charm the lift operator to let them on. Big mistake. Tensions were running high from the start and they only come to the breaking point when the threesome is accidentally left on the lift after closing.

Adam Green, who is best known in horror circles for his campy HATCHET series, goes the opposite way with this film. It certainly has it’s gross out moments, but the focus is more on interpersonal conflict and dread. Green takes his time to establish the dynamics between the characters. It’s actually surprising to see this much personality in characters in a scary movie.

Now, Green does have to set up a complex scenario of mishaps to get his premise off the ground, but it never destroys the credibility. So many scenarios these days are ruined by the prevalence of cellphones. The complications of being trapped on a ski lift are mined extremely well. The height and the cold are just the start of their worries. Frozen metal is far more gruesome here than when Flick stuck his tongue to the flagpole in A CHRISTMAS STORY. There are perils to climbing down that the layperson might not even think of. And there is a pack of wolves roaming below once they get to the ground. Whenever you think there is some common sense element Green has ignored, he addresses it satisfyingly. A CAT driver is a bit stupid, but you have to have stupid people in horror films, right?

In actuality, I cared little about the contrivances, because I cared so much more about the characters and their situation. I wanted to see how these characters reacted, fought and come together over the situation. Resentments spur actions that might have gone differently under other conditions. Each action that they take pushes the next reaction, driving the plot and suspense. It’s one of those stories that make you wonder what you’d do in the same situation.

Who decided not to buy lift tickets? Who should and shouldn’t be there? Who did or didn’t decide to take dangerous actions? Each question makes one double guess each move. Guilt might be one of the most dangerous elements attacking these friends.

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Kevin Smith’s horror thriller has more to admire about it than to like. The end result of his first venture into the genre highlights his weaknesses and his strengths. Thematically the film is written wonderfully with solid dialogue. But when it comes to pacing, which is so crucial to the genre he is working in, he gets murdered.

In the long tradition of horror films, three horny high school boys venture out to have sex. They’ve found Sara (Melissa Leo, FROZEN RIVER) on the Internet and she is willing to have sex with them all. This however is just a trap. She is a member of the church run by radical preacher Abin Cooper (Michael Parks, KILL BILL), who believes it is his calling from God to kill all sinners.

For his religious cult Smith draws on the real life Fred Phelphs and his Westboro Baptist hate mongers who protest funerals. For the ATF response, he takes a page from David Koresh and the Waco disaster where government mishandling leads to babies being burnt alive. In the film, the ATF agents are led by Joseph Keenan (John Goodman, TV’s ROSEANNE), a man with faith who wants to do what is right, but is trapped between two difficult choices.

Smith has brought together a great cast. Parks fills Abin with a traveling preacher swagger. When he preaches he is convinced of every vile thing he spews “backing it up” with hand picked scripture and real world events. The typhoon in Thailand was due to sex tourism, etc. Goodman makes Agent Keenan, a journeyman. He just wants to do his job, he’s not looking to be a hero… or a patsy. When he gets a controversial command, he demands a text of it first just to cover his butt.

Leo is the true believer, who would follow Cooper into the flames of hell. She has raised her family in his church, but a rift forms with her daughter Cheyenne (Kerry Bishe, TV’s SCRUBS), who doesn’t feel it is right to let the young children die. Travis (Michael Angarano, SKY HIGH), Billy Ray (Nicholas Braun, SKY HIGH) and Jarod (Kyle Gallner, JENNIFER’S BODY) are the helpless captives of the zealots. They’ll find themselves in a situation where their would be saviors become just as dangerous as their kidnappers. Sheriff Wynan (Stephen Root, OFFICE SPACE) is the local sheriff who is a tormented closeted homosexual with a wife.

The set up works, but it starts to unravel when Parks makes his big appearance. His lengthy soliloquy is not poorly written by any stretch, but its sheer length brings the film to a halt when the tension should be on the rise. Taking one’s time could have built dread, but Smith focuses on Cooper and not their captives. Jarod simply has to sit there and listen. Cooper’s speech is scary in the sense that people can twist religion to believe in awful things, but it’s not scary in the horror movie sense at all.

Smith develops most of his story threads nicely, accept for the crucial thread. The three boys become secondary characters or are forgotten for such long period of time we forget they’re still alive. These are the characters we’re supposed to care about, but they often become punchlines. They get lost in the grander ideas Smith is more interested in.

Smith finds an unconventional ending, but it feels like a cop out worse than a deus ex mechina. If Parks big speech can be forgiven as character development, Keenan’s big speech is sinful in how it robs the film of the visceral ending that is needed.

Smith borrows some visual style from the horror genre, but his signature flat look sneaks in just so you know it’s him. But he should have borrowed more than just gritty visuals. Pacing is so critical to building tension and tension is something this film has little of. Smith’s chatty style is fine for pop culture infused comedies, but it doesn’t build fear.

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This remake of a 1973 TV movie has all the classic haunted house qualities. Gothic location. Creaking doors. Dark halls. Secret rooms. Ominous help. Benevolent creatures living aside a family. By putting the youngest of the family at the center of the story, the film develops an inherent tension. The issue is how long can you buy this little girl in peril?

Sally (Bailee Madison, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA) has been dumped onto her father Alex (Guy Pearce, MEMENTO) by her mother. He is in the process of refurbishing the grand manor of nature artist Emerson Blackwood. He has a new girlfriend named Kim (Katie Holmes, BATMAN BEGINS), who tries to be nice, but Sally doesn’t want to be nice back. The situation is bad for everyone. On a walk around the grounds, Sally discovers the house has a basement, which the gruff old caretaker Harris (Jack Thompson, STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES) seems very fearful of.

From the film’s prologue, we already know the dreadful things that occurred in the basement. When Blackwood (Garry McDonald, MOULIN ROUGE!) was still alive, his son was kidnapped by the nasty little creatures that live in the ash pit. They live off teeth and something in their mythology demands them to take a life every time they emerge. So when Sally goes down in the basement, which is more like a dungeon/evil scientist’s lab, we know that things are going to get scary.

As is the case when kids in movies say they are seeing something supernatural, the parents don’t believe them. Sally’s father is frustrated with it all because his mind is completely focused on all the money he’s sunk into this house. Kim is a little more open minded, responding to the legitimate fear that Sally displays. The little girl is curious about the creatures at first, but soon learns that they aren’t really trying to be her friends.

The film is quite scary up to a point. It starts to peter out toward the end when the audience has seen just too many scenes of Sally stuck in a room with bicuspid-hungry gremlins. She’s a smart and brave kid, but when you know your enemies are afraid of the dark, you’d think that the first things you’d do is flip on the light switch. The story mines too many of the same scares and they loose their effect as the film goes along. I lost count of how many times someone peered into a hole and the creatures try to poke out their eyes. By the time the climax comes, the house and the things that have occurred make certain motivations seem unbelievable. Sometimes it just comes down to wrong staging.

Also, director Troy Nixey drops a right decision toward the end. The creatures are not nearly as scary when we see them. With their whisper-like grumblings, they can actually become comical. I was far more frightened of them when they were just glowing eyes under the bed and scurrying fuzzballs along the floorboards. Nixey creates great atmosphere, but sometimes undermines the drama with fancy camerawork. One particular zoom really stood out and creates laughs instead of dread.

Supernatural master Guillermo del Toro wrote the script with Matthew Robbins (DRAGONSLAYER), based on Nigel McKeand’s original teleplay. Del Toro was inspired by the original as a kid. This R-rated film would scare the bejeezus out of a kid now. It was a good move to cast a kid in the lead role instead of an adult like the original. I can’t deny that for almost 2/3rds of the film, it had me. It’s like when you were a kid and you dared yourself to go down into the basement without turning the lights on. At first it’s scary as hell, but once your eyes got accustomed to the dark, the furnace just looked like a furnace.

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