The B-Movie Shelf

The Leprechaun from the original movie returns when a group of sorority girls unwillingly awakens him when they begin renovations on the farm house. REVIEW: I was weary of Leprechaun Returns upon the initial trailer. After all, Warwick Davis, the actor who played the Leprechaun in every other movie (minus the 100% unrelated Leprechaun Origins) was not returning for this one (although his reasoning is totally understandable) and on top of that it was being made by the SyFy Channel, and although I love their cheesy summer B-Movies, they aren't exactly who I think of when I think of resurrecting a beloved horror franchise and having it be worth it (their Pumpkinhead sequels, anyone? Urgh ). However, I really had nothing to worry about as this turned out to easily be one of the best entries in the series, if not the best. Leprechaun has always been a franchise where the idea itself was better than any of the actual movies. The first movie is so-so at best, with Leprech...

Six strangers find themselves in a maze of deadly mystery rooms, and must use their wits to survive each one. REVIEW: I had very little interest in Escape Room to begin with, just based off the fact that it was a PG-13 horror movie, being released in the movie death grounds of January, and the trailer did nothing at all for me. Well, to my surprise it actually turned out pretty decent. I mean most everything about it was pretty paint by numbers, sure. It was obvious which characters would survive and which wouldn't, it was obvious who would turn against the rest, it was even mostly obvious what order each of them would die in. Yet, the movie was still surprisingly entertaining.  Each of the characters remained interesting and were all acted quite well, and each of the trap rooms were visually interesting and unique from one another (the upside down pool bar was my personal favorite), and it was actually fun trying to figure out the clues to each escape room ...

Fans flock to a festival celebrating the most iconic horror movies, only to discover that the charismatic showman behind the event has a diabolical agenda. As festival attendees start dying off, three teenagers - more schooled in horror-film cliches than practical knowledge about neutralizing psycho killers - must band together and battle through various madmen and monstrosities to survive. REVIEW: Blood Fest is a new horror movie brought to us by Rooster Teeth of Red vs Blue fame, that follows a group of friends that attend a horror convention, only to have the entire thing be a trap set by a madman to kill as many people as possible in as many different horror settings as possible. I mean, yeah, the plot doesn't really make much sense if you give it any real thought, especially the mechanics behind it all, and there's a plot twist in regards to it that you can see coming from a mile away and that makes even less sense than the rest of it. Also, many of the ...

Burt Gummer, dying from Graboid poison, and his son Travis must go to a remote arctic research station in Canada's Nunavut Territory, in order to go up against a new batch of Graboids to save Burt's life. REVIEW: The Tremors franchise is one of my all-time favorite movie franchises, right behind Jurassic Park and Star Wars, and is easily my favorite B-Movie franchise. I reviewed all of the other Tremors movies earlier in the year ( Tremors, Tremors 2: Aftershocks , Tremors 3: Back to Perfection , Tremors 4: The Legend Begins , Tremors 5: Bloodlines , and even the short-lived TV series ), so I figured it was long overdue to finally get a review out of this year's newest sequel, Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell. Sadly, this is an entry I honestly have no idea how I feel about it. On the one hand, I loved all the callbacks to previous movies and previous characters - The town of Perfection shows up (albeit, only by showing us one single building that looks far mor...

Against the background of the D-Day invasion, a US military unit must rescue a brilliant British scientist, who is held captive by the most dangerous SS guards deep in enemy territory, however the mission turns ugly when the Allied soldiers battle with horrific experiments created by the Nazis. REVIEW: Nazi Overlord is The Asylum's newest release, obviously mockbusting (as they do so well) on the recent theatrical horror movie Overlord. The first hour of this movie is a chore to get through. Some of the acting is ok as far as Asylum's work goes but some of it is also downright brutal, and nothing interesting really happens for that first hour outside of a couple quick moments, which makes spending all that meandering time with some of these actors all the worse. The first hour could have easily been covered in a 20-30 minute time span and the pacing would have felt much better for it, and it would have given us more than a scant 20-odd minutes on the actual a...

Laurie Strode confronts her long-time foe Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago. REVIEW: As a huge fan of the Halloween franchise since I first started getting into horror in the late 90s, I was looking forward to this revival movie. Sure, I may find the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and Friday the 13th movies more ' fun' , but Halloween was always my personal favorite horror franchise as a teen. I knew I wasn't going to be overly disappointed because, quite simply, even with a worst-case scenario there was no way it could be as bad as some of the worst entries in the series previously (Halloween: Resurrection and Rob Zombie's Halloween II), and even those ones I managed to find some redeeming qualities. Luckily I loved the hell out of this. No, it's not perfect. I do have a handful of issues with it, although only one is a major issue (and it's a s...

In a small town in Massachusetts, a group of friends, fascinated by the internet lore of the Slender Man, attempt to prove that he doesn't actually exist - until one of them mysteriously goes missing. REVIEW: I have to admit that for the first 20 minutes or so of Slender Man, I was honestly really digging it. It was shot great with some really nice visual shots, it had an amazing sense of atmosphere, and the characters (at this point) were all likeable. But then the rest of the movie happened and every single bit of that went out the window. The acting got abysmal, as if the actors were reading off cue cards just off the screen, nobody at all was likeable and it seemed like the scriptwriter went out of his way to make these characters as unlikable as possible, the dialogue they had to work with didn't even make sense half the time, and all of the interesting visual shots and atmosphere seemed to be left behind and exchanged for cheap laughable...

Two young friends find a magic book that brings an evil ventriloquist's dummy to life and they must stop him before he destroys their town.  REVIEW: I had no faith in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween at all, based off the trailers and other reviews. And in some ways I was right. As a sequel to the previous Goosebumps movie it’s not good at all. It’s not even a sequel so much as a remake. Pretty much exact same story, just with much more of a direct focus on Slappy the Dummy. Also, with Slappy being one of the only actual Goosebumps monster to make an appearance in the movie (most of the rest are brand new monsters created for this movie, The Haunted Mask is really the only other Goosebumps creation to play any role in this. There is the Werewolf and Yeti but they're only on screen for about 5 seconds) it kinda raises the question as to why this movie even exists. It’s a carbon copy of the first, but without all the actual Goosebumps connections. HOWEVER . ...

It's been eight years since the opening night tragedy of Hell House, LLC and still many unanswered questions remain. Thanks to an anonymous tip, investigative journalist Jessica Fox is convinced that key evidence is hidden inside the abandoned Abaddon Hotel - evidence that will shed light on the hotel's mysteries. She assembles a team equally hungry for answers with one goal: break into the hotel and discover the truth. REVIEW: Hell House LLC 2: The Abaddon Hotel was easily one of my most anticipated movies of the year. The first Hell House LLC is one of my favorite found footage horror movies, possibly of all time. The level of fear, unease, and tension that movie portrayed was just unreal, so when I heard a sequel was coming this year it instantly moved to the top of my anticipation list. Well. What a gigantic disappointment Hell House LLC 2: The Abaddon Hotel turned out to be. This is right up there with The Houses October Built 2: Hellbent as one of the mos...

Five years after an unexplained malfunction at a Halloween haunted house attraction causes the death of 15 tour-goers and the staff on opening night, a documentary crew travels back to the scene of the tragedy to find out what really happened.  REVIEW: I know I'm in the minority, but Found Footage is one of my personal favorite sub-genres of horror, and among those Hell House LLC is easily one of my top favorite Found Footage horror movies of the last few years. It's a bit of a slow burn at times, but in this case it uses that slow burn wisely, letting us get to know and like the characters, something that, in my opinion, is very important to a Found Footage movie. Plus that slow burn is not without its moments of fright scattered here and there either. Some of my favorite creepy moments come during those parts of the movie, like the moment with that tall clown mannequin turning its head at the top of the basement stairs, and the whole strobe light test run...

America's third political party, the New Founding Fathers of America, comes to power and conducts an experiment: no laws for 12 hours on Staten Island. No one has to stay on the island, but $5,000 is given to anyone who does. REVIEW: I enjoy all the Purge movies, so The First Purge was no different. However, that's also part of the problem. After the first three movies , when you have a prequel explaining the beginnings of something, I tend to want a bit 'different' in there and for the most part this one was the exact same as all the others, and it doesn't really do anything different enough to warrant it being a prequel. It doesn't really explore anything that the other movies didn't explore, and it doesn't really show us anything that we havn't already seen done in the other movies. Also, the final 15 minutes or so is just a by-the-numbers boringly-shot shoot-out in an apartment complex between our main characters and a Gover...

In 1983, financially struggling college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret, putting her life in mortal danger.  REVIEW: The House of the Devil, brought to us by horror director Ti West back in 2009, is a very well-done and faithful throwback to the 1970's/1980's devil-cult horror movies of old, which any diehard fan of the horror genre should appreciate. It’s very well-acted, makes excellent use of building the uneasy tension throughout, and it culminates into nail-biting terror in the final half hour when the shit truly hits the fan. My only lone semi-complaint is that this movie does indeed move at a snail's pace and not a whole lot really happens, story-wise, until that final half hour. Personally, that didn't bother me too much, because I really appreciated how it used that time to make us acquainted with the main characte...

Alexandra reluctantly tags along for Slasher Sleepout, an extreme event that is part camping trip, part haunted house, and part escape room. But when the fun turns deadly, Alex has to play the game if she wants to make it out alive. REVIEW: Ruin Me is the latest Shudder Exclusive to go up on the streaming service, and it's strangely below their usual standards. This one feels more like a SyFy Original or an Uncork'd Entertainment movie. It's more of a 'Horror-Lite' type movie, made for people just starting out in the genre as opposed to hardcore horror veterans that the streaming service is aimed at. The plot is certainly interesting enough, and quite similar to another movie that came out over the last couple years, Fear Inc, where the characters don't know what's actually part of this immersive horror-themed game and what's real (if any of it), and the acting is surprisingly good from most of the actors, considering everything else...

Former Sergeant Barnes becomes head of security for Senator Charlie Roan, a Presidential candidate targeted for death on the annual Purge night due to her vow to eliminate the Purge.  REVIEW: After the claustrophobic home invasion first Purge movie and the fantastic world-building insane sequel , The Purge: Election Year is unfortunately my least favorite in the series. I still enjoyed it, but it's the one I can see myself rewatching the least. It's pretty much just the exact same movie as the second one, with a lot of the same types of characters and even subplots to it, just with a political spin added into the mix. What I loved most about the first movie going into the second is that each of those had a different feel and tone to them, making each one feel unique from each other, where-as this just feels like The Purge: Anarchy, Part 2. Granted, the new masks are still creepy, the death scenes still quite fun and inventive, and the political...

Three groups of people intertwine and are left stranded in the streets on the annual Purge Night, trying to survive the chaos and violence that occurs during the deadly 12-hour period. REVIEW: After the claustrophobic, personal, home invasion first Purge movie , the sequel, The Purge: Anarchy, opens up to show us the world at large during the annual Purge, having us follow multiple groups of people that get stuck out in the thick of it, in the streets, during Purge night and must team up and work together to get to safety and survive the night. And holy Jesus Christ, this movie is insane . This is the movie most people wanted the first one to be, and while I was perfectly fine with the smaller home invasion aspect of the first movie to start out, I'm glad we got this much bigger, much more insane, world building story for the sequel. Everything about this is just crazy and wild, and you'll find yourself saying 'Holy Shit.... ' multiple t...

A wealthy family are held hostage inside their own home for harboring the target of a murderous syndicate during the Purge, a 12-hour period, once a year, in which any and all crime is legal. REVIEW: I know a lot of people hate the first movie in The Purge series, but personally I really love it. It's an original horror movie (which is rare these days), a nd even though it's *just* a home invasion type flick, which I know is why most people don't like it, I love home invasion type flicks so that aspect didn't bother me at all. Plus it's a home invasion type flick with a fresh and unique background to the story, that being the entire idea of the Purge itself. The movie also had a great sense of atmosphere about it, and the director did a great job with mixing that atmosphere with tension as the movie went on. I know I definitely jumped a couple times throughout, and that's rare these days. Sure, th...