I’ll be the first to admit — I’m far from the world’s biggest Mark Millar fan. I certainly don’t begrudge the man his success — more power to him for that. But success often breeds complacency, and as projects from Chrononauts to Starlight more than ably demonstrate, the rise of Millar’s star-power in Hollywood has resulted in a series of projects that are written with big- (or small-) screen exploitation in mind from the outset. Still, much as I was prepared in advance to be less than enamored with Huck, its inherent corniness and earnest simplicity won me over by the time it was over, and so I decided I’d give the latest Millarworld/Image project, Reborn, a go. In fact, truth be told, I’ve even been sort of looking forward to it —

But if I said that was entirely due to Millar himself, I’d be lying, of course…

I know, I know — I was thinking it, too, but 2014’s The Redwood Massacre isn’t set in northern California. In fact, hard is it may be for American audiences (including myself) to believe, writer/director David Keith’s low-budget splatterfest is basically the closest thing we’re ever likely to see to a Scottish version of Friday The 13th. And since I know that description is going to require at least a bit more explanation, here we go —

Local legend has is that the so-called Redwood House was scene to a bloody massacre years ago, and so, kids being kids, every year on the anniversary of the slaughter, tons of them head out to the wooded area around “ground zero” to camp, drink, smoke pot, screw, and generally act like assholes. And whaddya know, all five of our principal players here — Bruce (played by Mark Wood), Pamela (Lisa Cameron)…

Filmed in an apparently-disused building at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles for a reported $18,000 in 2014 by writer/director Theophilus Lacey, The 13th Unit is something I’d unfortunately not yet previously encountered in my “exploration” of Hulu’s lesser-known horror selections — a genuinely charming and reasonably gripping ultra-low-budgeter that punches much harder than its weight class and actually leaves you saying to yourself “ya know, that was pretty damn fun.”

Oh, sure, this suspenseful little yarn about seven people trapped overnight in a purportedly underground storage facility that houses and honest-to-goodness supernatural demon/beast in its titular 13th unit is hardly revolutionary stuff — and one could argue that The Hoarder exploits more or less the same premise (minus the largely-unseen creature) to greater effect, but shit — for what it is, this unassuming, obviously amateur number isn’t bad at all.

True, each and every actor has their struggles —…

Fed up to the gills with lackluster “found footage” or “mockumentary” horrors, the other night I found something a bit different in Hulu’s “horror and suspense” queue — a genuine, honest-to-goodness documentary from 2010 called American Ghost Hunter that purports to tell the “real life” story of director/star Chad Calek and his family, who apparently have endured years of paranormally-inflicted terrors in their home in the tiny town of Persia, Iowa.  What the heck? At the very least, it’s a change of pace, right?

Weeeelllllll — not exactly. Unfortunately, American Ghost Hunter — or American Ghost Hunter : The Movie, if you prefer — is, in may respects, every bit as listless and dull as many fake “hand-held horrors,” but at least it has one thing going for it : the genuine terror and distress of Calek’s family. So, hey, three cheers for legit human suffering, right?

The damn…

Okay — who in the fuck‘s bright idea was this?

I get that every low-budget indie filmmaker needs a “hook” of some sort, but this is the most curious one of all : get washed-up former tabloid mini-sensation Nadya Suleman, better known as the infamous “Octomom,” to appear in a “found footage” flick about a lady trying to sucker a guy into getting her pregnant so that she can give birth to, as the title implies, the devil’s kid (I know, I know — you’d think that if you wanted to have Satan’s baby, the best way to go about that would be to get Satan himself to knock you up, but apparently not) — and cast her not as the succubus who’s eager to get a very hot bun in her oven, but as the guy’s “second fiddle” platonic best friend, who’s a virgin to boot! A woman who’s…

So here’s one from the Hulu horror queue that’s so fucking obscure no one’s even bothered to review it for IMDB yet — 2015 no-budget (as in $9,000, Canadian) indie production All Hallows Eve : October 30th, a strictly fly-by-the-seat-of-its-pants venture from the mind of writer/producer/director/star Ryan Byrne filmed in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in probably just a handful of days and starring a cast of locals, most of whom are quite likely friends of the filmmaker himself. Sounds like the kind of thing I’m more or less genetically pre-determined to love, right?

And, ya know, truth be told this homemade number — also released (to the extent that it can be said to have been “released” at all) under the inverted title of October 30th : All Hallows Eve — has quite a bit going for it, mostly in terms of sheer heart and determination, but it also…

Shot in a mere five days just outside of Santa Clarita, California, with almost no script (apparently the dialogue was entirely ad-libbed by the cast), 2012’s Area 407 (released in certain international markets under the title of Tape 407 for whatever reason) sounded like something of a departure from the usual “found footage” nonsense when I read its brief description on Hulu’s “mystery and suspense” list, so I decided to give it a go — and that was my first mistake. The second, and perhaps most unforgivable one, was sticking with it until the end.

Here’s our set-up : sisters Trish (played by Abigail Schrader) and Jessie (Samantha Lester) are on a New Year’s Eve flight from New York to Los Angeles — recording their whole “experience” as they go, of course — when their plane starts losing altitude and, eventually, crashes. They survive, as do a small handful of…

Why do I do it to myself?

Seriously, you (whoever “you” may be) and I both know exactly what we’re getting we’re getting into with these lame “found footage” horror flicks from The Asylum, and there’s precisely zero chance that the next one we happen across will be at all “different” to the others in any way, and yet — there it was, sitting in Hulu’s “horror and suspense” section, and I couldn’t resist it. 2011’s The Amityville Haunting. “The lost recordings of the Benson family,” we’re told, who were apparently dumb/and or broke enough to move into the infamous Amityville house house despite knowing full well what happened to the DeFeo family there years — hell, decades at this point — earlier. Cue 86 minutes of exactly what you expect.

We start with a couple teenage kids fucking in an abandoned house, getting killed by a ghost (or…

Obviously, Luke Cage is the man of the hour at Marvel right now thanks to the tremendous success, both critical and commercial, of the Netflix series bearing his name, so it’s only logical that their editorial brain trust would be ready in advance to capitalize on his small-screen superstardom with a solo series featuring the Hero for Hire on the printed page, as well. Unfortunately for us all, David Walker and Sanford Greene’s usually-awesome Power Man And Iron Fist monthly has been hijacked, like so many other titles at the moment, into the dull and derivative Civil War II fold, but fear not — while we’re all anxiously waiting for that crossover debacle to mercifully limp to its conclusion so that we can finally have our books back, the latest  (and fourth, by my count) Marvel Now! initiative has kicked off with Cage!, a new four-parter from the mind…

I have to admit, of all the end-times scenarios I’ve imagined — and there have been many, I can assure you — the idea of a “medical apocalypse” due to the over-prescribing of antibiotics is one that never occurred to me. But maybe that’s just because I’m allergic to penicillin —

Still, it goes to show that there is, in fact, a pretty unique premise at play in the pages of Sugeon X, the latest Image Comics series to debut with a what’s-fast-becoming-commonplace (not that I’m complaining, mind you) extra-sized first issue for the standard $3.99 cover price (are you paying attention to how this works, Marvel? Because you really should be). Sadly, a gripping premise alone isn’t enough to salvage a comic.

So, yeah, this is a less-than-stellar review that I’m cranking out here, and of all the less-than-stellar reviews I’ve written over the years, this one hurts…