I probably shouldn’t even try to review this, to be honest.

There’s such a thing, after all, as being too attached to something — and Love And Rockets, arguably the seminal independent comics series of all time,  has been part of my life since I first discovered it at age 12 and allowed brothers Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez (heck, third brother Mario was even part of the mix back then) to expand my definition of what comics could both achieve and be well beyond my then-current preconceptions of the medium. And while there have been times when my interest in it has ebbed and flowed, it’s always been there. From its first magazine incarnation to the “solo” series that followed in its wake to its second iteration in standard comic-book format to its most recent version as a series of annual (or thereabouts) graphic novels, I’ve grown up —…

Maybe I’m just beaten down.

Like a stone weathered away to nothing by a constantly-running stream over time, I’ve absorbed so many third-rate “found footage” horror flicks in recent years — particularly in the past few weeks thanks to Hulu’s “horror and suspense” offerings — that anything even slightly more competent than the usual drivel starts to look like a work of comparative cinematic genius.

All of which, I suppose, is my way of saying that I know that writer/director Hunter G. Williams’ 2011 indie offering The Crying Dead (or, as it was known during production, The Whispering Dead — don’t ask me what prompted the last-minute, and frankly rather stupid, title change) really isn’t all that great — but damn, coming after to a lot of the absolute shit I’ve subjected myself to lately, it might as well be Citizen Kane.

Sure, every done-to-death cliche is present and…

One of the more interesting-sounding flicks I stumbled across in the “horror and suspense” section on Hulu right now, at least by my admittedly off-kilter standards, was the ultra-low-budget 2010 Canadian production Dead Genesis, a Romero-esque (minus most of the Master’s skill) socio-/politically- conscious zombie flick shot for 15,000 of those rather funny-looking dollars they use north of the border in and around Barrie, Ontario that admittedly was pre-destined to reek of amateurism but nevertheless seemed to promise more by way of thematic ambition than most essentially homemade numbers of this sort typically have the stones to even attempt, much less actively offer. I was also reliably informed by a handful of sources I trust that the opening scene was a real motherfucker, so what the heck — earlier today I decided to give it a shot.

The first thing worth mentioning, I suppose, is that, yeah —…

I’ll watch anything with Tony Todd in it. Even if he’s just got a few lines, you know they’ll be delivered with a soul-shaking, baritone, horrific gusto. He never half-asses it, our guy Tony, but let’s be honest: particularly in recent years, a number of the low-budget productions he’s been involved with have indeed been half-assed.

Which brings us to our latest “Halloween On Hulu” offering, a 2013-filmed UK number I found in their “horror and suspense” section last night called Dead Of The Nite. And I’m sorry, but this flick is just straight-up atrocious on pretty much every level.

Welcome to another “found footage” paranormal story! A crew of purportedly intrepid “ghost hunters” are off to investigate the infamous Jericho Manor, which has a standard-issue “haunted history,” and once they arrive to roll cameras for their internet “live feed” show, they’re informed by the caretaker (played by…

When a flick offers atmosphere but not much else, then it better offer a hell of a lot of atmosphere in order to rise above simple “well, that was a waste of time” classification. I’ll say right off the bat that 2015’s The Inhabitants — the brainchild or the writer-director tandem of Michael and Shawn Rasmussen — has plenty by way of atmosphere going for it, without question. But I’m not sure it has much to recommend in its favor beyond that — yet I’m not ready to call it a waste of time, either. So I guess it must have — what was that again? — “a hell of a lot of atmosphere,” indeed.

Crucially, that sense of atmosphere isn’t the by-product of accident, but of authenticity. Filmed at the historic Noyes-Parris House in Wayland, Massachusetts, this is a fairly simple tale about a husband and wife named…

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)…