I don’t know if “The Reclaimers” is a proof of concept short film or not, but if director Jason Sheedy is planning a bigger feature, count me in. “The Reclaimers” is a stellar horror scifi hybrid that watches like a mix of “I Am Legend” and “Bird Box.” It’s an interesting concept in a well worn concept that works very well thanks to the single performance by star Erin Ownbey. After her grandparents are killed by invisible creatures, a determined young woman seeks to avenge them with the help of her canine companion – the only one who can see the mysterious invaders.
Tag Archives: Survival
Trunk: Locked In (2024)
The tough thing about making a thriller centered entirely around a confined setting is that you have to kind of build something new with every plot beat or else it wears thin easily. While “Trunk: Locked In” could be confused with the previous year trunk-centric thriller “The Call,” Marc Schießer’s “Trunk” is much more about the victim within the trunk of a car. The majority of the movie’s script spends time only only trying to figure out the hows but the whys and inevitability of what might happen in this circumstance all the while she’s stuck in a trunk forced to deal with a faceless entity that has in their clutches.
A Creature Was Stirring (2023)
Coming to Blu-ray and DVD February 13th from Well Go USA
During a blizzard, a duo breaks into a nurse’s house where she’s taking care of her daughter with an unusual affliction. Soon, things take a turn for the worse and everyone involved is forced to fight for their lives.
No Way Up (2024)
It seems like not many remember what a good survival film is, anymore, and while so many present prime opportunities for knuckle biting tension, often times they tend to fall so flat. Claudio Fäh’s “No Way Up” is a great idea for a survival thriller where the odds are deliriously stacked against a group of people. It’s just shocking that so much of this opportunity is wasted in favor of what is mostly a flat, redundant, and dull thriller. I don’t know how you take a great idea like “No Way Up” and leave it feeling like nothing is ever really fleshed out or fully developed.
Last Night at Terrace Lanes (2024)
Now Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
An obvious but loving ode to “Assault on Precinct 13,” Jamie Nash’s horror survival comedy is probably one of the more entertaining indie films I’ve seen in a while. It’s a movie that is obviously small in budget, but makes the most out of a single setting horror film through the end. I was surprised by how much director Jamie Nash was able to pull out of this premise as they’re able to really justify why the film is confined to one place and is set during one night rather than multiple days. “Last Night at Terrace Lanes” is that classic siege horror film but with a dose of familial drama and coming of age.
The Warriors (1979): 2-Disc Limited Edition [4K UHD]
Now Available from Arrow Video.
It’s no secret that I Love “The Warriors.” I’ve loved it for years, and I talk about it constantly. I own a massive poster, the vinyl soundtrack the entire funko pop wave, the PS2 video game, and most of the editions on DVD and Blu-Ray. It’s a movie that’s had an interesting genesis starting out as a novel, transformed in to a notorious feature film, which then became fodder for video stores and was played quite often in syndication on cable and network television. It then evolved in to a cult classic and now a more widely celebrated cult masterpiece. And rightly so.
It’s a movie that works on so many levels as a streamlined, sleek, gritty, and exciting gang picture that Walter Hill directs with pitch perfect efficiency, and it’s garnered another well deserved special release from Arrow Video.
Rhyme or Die (2021)
I love Max R. Lincoln’s whole twist on the idea of people waking up in an abandoned warehouse and being tormented by a cruel game master. While “Rhyme or Die” sounds silly it actually manages to end as a very entertaining, gory and twisted short that uses the whole device of music as a test, rather than morality. Ironically the whole challenge of rhyming is used as a means of testing the morality of the players as we’re never sure what kind of weird games these people will play on one another to survive.