Burgeoning filmmaker Axelle Carolyn showed a lyrical, controlled sense of cinema in her 2011 short film debut THE LAST POST. Now, the sometime actress, model and author has created another work of gentle, macabre craft in THE HALLOWEEN KID.

The early scenes of Ridley Scott’s PROMETHEUS serve as an eye-filling reminder of how rarely we get big, serious movies about space travel these days. After a string of films in which aliens have brought the fight to us (with decidedly mixed results), here’s one that honors the grandeur and potential terror of exploring “the final frontier.”

A movie that calls itself PIRANHA 3DD is clearly not meant to be judged by typical, reasonable critical standards. Clearly it’s meant to viewed and recommended as an exercise in dumb fun. But really, did it have to be this dumb?

Don’t be fooled by the presence of Kristen Stewart or the family-friendly property itself; SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN isn’t just for swoony preteens looking for melodramatic romance. While it certainly does have all the elements of a multiplex-friendly light fantasy, there is a darkness at its core that pushes it closer to Hammer than Disney.

Less than a year ago, this critic put figurative pen to page and reviewed maverick macabre maestro David Cronenberg’s decidedly non-horror film A DANGEROUS METHOD, and made the case for the claim that it was indeed just another extension of the same themes of the transformative loss of control that has permeated every DC movie since 1975’s THEY CAME FROM WITHIN (a.k.a. SHIVERS). That same belief will now drive the review for his latest heady film, COSMOPOLIS (opening across Canada June 8 with a U.S. theatrical yet to be announced), a vaguely dystopian picture set in a bizarre version of the turn of the millennium, based on the satirical novel by Don DeLillo and starring TWILIGHT heartthrob Robert Pattinson in a decidedly non-tween-fetish-idol role. 

With prominently advertised Oren Peli involved as a writer and producer, one might expect CHERNOBYL DIARIES to be a found-footage investigation-gone-wrong movie—PARANORMAL RADIOACTIVITY, if you will. Instead, it’s a largely conventionally shot film, with material to match.

As a man who is so claustrophobic I get panic attacks in a tight shirt, the idea of being trapped in a prison sounds like a living hell of a nightmare wrapped in a miserable experience. Now add a couple hundred remorseless psychopathic killers running about unrestrained, and you’ve got yourself a super-phobia. You also have the ground work for a great movie premise, and the plot behind ASYLUM BLACKOUT (now available on VOD via IFC Films).