Two feature films in, and UK-based director Ben Wheatley has already carved out a personality and style that’s recognizable as all his own. His first effort, DOWN TERRACE, was a blackly funny and affecting Ben Wheatley crime picture. Now, KILL LIST, premiering at SXSW as part of the SXFantastic section, is a blackly funny, disturbingly violent and equally effective Ben Wheatley horror film.

It's a bad analogy—because it often conjures up thoughts of junk food and Doritos—but sometimes horror simply needs comfort food. Not in the sense of a guilty pleasure, but a wonderfully prepared bit of something old-fashioned; hence, THE INNKEEPERS.

Starting with DEAD OF NIGHT way back in 1945, British filmmakers have been at the forefront of the horror-anthology movement; heck, they saw the screen possibilities in America’s EC comics a couple of decades before we Yanks did. The country continues to push boundaries with LITTLE DEATHS, a triptych as graphically sexual in its terrors as we’ve ever seen in an omnibus feature—or any fright film, for that matter.

The story of Little Red Riding Hood has long been analyzed and dissected as a parable about the struggle between the innocence of childhood and the big bad adult demons of sexuality. Which makes it appropriate, if regrettable, that the new film adaptation of the fairy tale represents a battle between director Catherine Hardwicke’s stated desire to really get under the fur of the story and the studio’s anxiousness to pitch to the TWILIGHT crowd.

While an incredibly fun and original genre movie is very, very welcome in the midst of this particularly dim winter for wide releases, here’s the shame of it: Late this April, “summer” will kick off with the fifth entry of a tired and often obnoxiously dumb series built around fast cars. Really, there’s only the slimmest of chances it’s better than Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer’s 3D revenge road movie, which is much more befitting of signifying the beginning of hot weather, short shorts and sweet times.

The cover story for FANGORIA #301 (out now, and available for purchase on this site) is an extensive interview with LEGEND-ary author Richard Matheson. In the chat, he talks about his considerable and influential literary works as well as the TV and film adaptations of his stories. Matheson had quite a bit to say about his seminal 1954 novel I AM LEGEND and the movies inspired by it, including the 2007 film starring Will Smith. Here’s Michael Gingold’s review...

For anyone who’s ever said they’d kill for the right place to live, your horror heroine has arrived. Lai-sheung (Josie Ho) goes to just that extreme—repeatedly—in DREAM HOME, a Hong Kong horror feature that blends assorted styles and tones into one nastily entertaining package.