Howling: New Moon Rising (1995)

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Asking anyone to watch “The Howling: New Moon Rising” should be punishable by jail time and some kind of psychological examination. “New Moon Rising” is so bad it’s inhuman. It’s so bad it makes the former “The Howling” entries seem watchable in comparison. There is no reason why “New Moon Rising” should exist. Near as I can figure, someone took a tourist board video for a small Western town, injected imagery depicting a view through the eyes of a werewolf stalking animals, spliced in footage from the past “The Howling” movies and called it a day.

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Howling III – The Marsupials (1987)

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It’s really tough to make sense of “The Marsupials,” but much like the second film, it has a good idea but a terrible execution. It wants to be a psychological thriller, a horror romance, a satire of horror movies, and a werewolf picture all in one and fails to deliver on these aspects two fold. “The Marsupials” garners too much of a narrative for one picture, and should have been spread out in to another film, altogether. One thing is for certain: The connection to the Joe Dante film stops at the fact that it has werewolves in it.

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Axed (2012)

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For a film called “Axed,” I was expecting something really dark and gruesome, and yet in the end I didn’t realize how trying Ryan Lee Driscoll’s horror drama would be. It’s a practice in tedium and boredom, with a mean spirit that is often very forced. If that’s not enough the direction leaves much to be desired with a series of performances that are sub-par at best. It’s a despicable film about a despicable man, torturing despicable people for no real reason, when it all boils down to it.

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The Wrong Man (1956)

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Imagine waking up one morning to run your errands, and you’re then stopped by police who insist you’ve committed a horrible crime? And what happens when everyone else you come across swears you’ve committed this horrible crime, and you know yourself that you’ve never even held a gun? How do you convince everyone that you’re an innocent man, when people can identify you as a criminal, and present evidence that contradicts your claims? What happens when you’re about to go to jail for a crime you have committed and can’t prove that you didn’t commit it? That’s the nightmare Manny Balestrero, a family man, finds himself in, in Alfred Hitchcock’s gripping and awfully horrifying thriller that sees a wrongly convicted man who has no chance of proving he’s committed the awful crime he’s been accused of.

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Psycho (1998)

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You have to wonder if Gus Van Sant either garners an enormous amount of hubris, or just has a masochistic streak in him. Why else would he dive head first in to a remake of a hallowed horror and cinematic classic? And why else would he deliver a remake that’s exactly shot for shot? And “Psycho 1998” isn’t a remake that’s shot for shot with some liberties taken. It’s shot for shot to where director Van Sant copies every single shot of the original film, except with new actors. Van Sant fills the remake with a surreal tone in the vein of David Lynch to where the movie is adrift in a time period blurred between the fifties and contemporary time.

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Psycho (1960)

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Director Alfred Hitchcock managed to set a precedent in 1960, not only for creating one of the greatest psychological thrillers, but for films that could become masterpieces despite their low budget. He also helped pave the way for the classic shocking twist that many directors continue copying today. Adapted from the novel that was based on the murders of Ed Gein, Hitchcock offers film-goers as much twists and turns as possible while managing to scare us at the same time. “Psycho” is the psychological examination of the twisted human psyche, the darkness in every human as Hitchcock was brilliant in conveying.

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Haunter (2013)

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You have to love the twist director Vincenzo Natali brings to the ghost movie sub-genre. While “Haunter” is by no means a terrifying film, it really works because it’s unique and often times original. It’s a very entertaining amalgam of “The Others” and “Amityville Horror” that centers on the ghosts that have been victimized by an evil entity lurking within a house and what happens when the victims of the specter finally decide to bring down the entity once and for all.

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