Syngenor. First off, you need to know that the title kinda rhymes with “Eleanor”—I just wanted to get that out of the way. Now, if you’re in the mood for a wild-‘n-cheesy throwback DVD to laugh yourself silly over, then Syngenor is your ticket big time. The title character is an endearing amalgam of the Gill-man, a Cylon subject to factory recall, and a charbroiled lemur. Similarly, Syngenor, released in 1990, reflects almost every late-‘80s landmark genre movie, including ALIENS and, most obviously, ROBOCOP. (Except here the evil mega-corporation seems to have only about twenty employees). Adding significantly to that glorious ‘80s vibe is a knockout performance by David Gale of RE-ANIMATOR fame; he doesn’t just chew the scenery, he regurgitates it and then chews it up some more. He’s actually marvelously entertaining, and I’m not a big fan of over-the-top performances. Overall, the film strikes a tone that I’m guessing is almost impossible to bring off if you shoot for it consciously—not quite tongue-in-cheek horror, not quite straight-ahead horror-comedy, and not quite so-bad-it’s-good horror; it somehow takes the best of these approaches and makes them work. There’s snappy dialogue, mostly in the person of Mitchell Laurance’s intrepid reporter, which is pretty unexpected, and there’s even one or two sexy moments, which are even more unexpected. All you need to know in terms of storyline is that the Synegnors (yes, plural) were designed to be the ultimate desert soldiers to fight America’s wars in the Mideast (!)—this, despite the fact that they lumber about like outsized zombies and their communication skills seem to consist solely of throaty growling. And, oh yeah, now they're off their leashes. In short, Syngenor is the kind of movie that goes neglected in bins at movie rental places and has a 1.9 star customer rating at Netflix because folks must be expecting some kind of big-budget actioner. Now that you’re in the know, sit back and enjoy the craziness. Now, if I could only find a store that will rent me a Syngenor costume for Halloween… October 28.

Rain of Fire. A great way to creep yourself out, sometimes subtly, sometimes bracingly. While obviously a response to THE OMEN (1975), this 1978 Italo-Brit co-production has so many sequences that effectively churn up and then sustain a feeling of unease that it’s without question worth watching in its own right, not simply as a historical curiosity. As in other occult thrillers and their contemporary secular equivalent, the FINAL DESTINATION flicks, there’s a repeated pattern of evil forces orchestrating “freak accidents,” but seldom have I seen them pulled off in such eerie fashion. For example, one victim is done in by the encroaching tide in an exercise of virtuoso editing more than anything else. Director Alberto De Martinois is more than ably assisted by a stellar production design, which includes a memorable glassed-in insane asylum, and Ennio Morricone’s music, which seems to combine elements from his Argento scores and his future work on THE UNTOUCHABLES. The plot itself recalls THE OMEN II, but it lacks that film’s prurient sadism, and the set pieces anticipate such well-known films as DAWN OF THE DEAD and RESIDENT EVIL. If that weren’t enough, RAIN OF FIRE is also pretty interesting thematically—I can’t recall having seen a corporate executive who’s so paternalistic toward those protesting his company, or encountered a priest who so strenuously advocates abortion. As a thriller, the film does disappoint on some important levels. The major twist is so transparent as to not really be a twist, and the “redemptive” ending, while satisfying in many ways, doesn’t achieve the high-octane bang-up climax that earlier scenes lead one to expect. Still, discovering this extremely underrated apocalyptic parable is one of the high points of the season for me; in fact, the lack of special features on the DVD is a bit of a downer considering how good the film is. October 28

Re-Cycle. Expertly directed by the Pang Brothers—whom I generally regard as overrated—and sporting a twist that took me completely by surprise, this is a potent antidote to all the underwhelming Americanized J-horror releases of the past year. Frankly, based on their previous work, one would not expect the directors to be so at home in territory that usually belongs to Jeunet & Caro, Terry Gilliam or Tsui Hark: large-scale world-building in the realm of the fantastic. In fact, one doesn’t even expect such ambitions given the first half of Re-Cycle itself, which centers around standard there’s-a-dark-shape-hiding-in-my-apartment J-horror tropes. Some of the CGI is immaculate and striking, while other visuals are less convincing.

All in all, though, this is a very respectable blend of dark fantasy and horror that works so well precisely because it flows effortlessly between one genre and the other. Also, FYI, this might make a solid “date night” horror choice if your date is not as into horror as you are—Re-Cycle is often suspenseful and psychologically penetrating but it’s not grueling or particularly gory. September 23

Five Across the Eyes. Insanely watchable survival horror. Delivered via shaky cam to be sure, but that shouldn’t obscure how fine the camerawork in fact is, especially given the tight quarters—most of the action takes place inside a minivan. The terrific editing only helps matters. When five high school girls get lost on the way from a football game (this is the movie that really deserves the title "WRONG TURN"), they become terrorized and brutalized in ways that are hard to imagine—but the script itself never quite de-humanizes them, not even for a minute. The acting is not great in some places, but is quite strong in many and fearless in all. In some ways, it's a low-budget version of the French INSIDE—not just for its relentlessness and creativity in a subgenre that rarely has any, but in its interesting ideology that both celebrates girl power and features stark, uniquely female versions of both victim and  monster. The main difference, though, is that Five Across the Eyes has a sense of humor. The music I could live without (except for the peppy opening and closing credits), but otherwise this has been the most pleasant surprise of 2008 for me: I expected a lump of coal with a handful of glittering specks embedded in it, but what I got was a diamond with a few smudges. There will be many who disagree with this assessment and that’s fine—I’m sure the filmmakers behind this low-budget effort have been dismissed many times already by those looking only at the movie’s surface aspects. The truth remains that the script has far more ingenuity than most big-budget slasher films, and that directors Greg Swinson and Ryan Thiessen work miracles with the resources they have—so much so that after a while the limitations stop showing up as such, as in the case of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. No, I’m not ashamed to admit that my heart was pounding throughout most of Five Across the Eyes—except when it almost stopped a couple of times. September 30

Room 205. I’m not sure why the box art features a blurb that describes this import from Denmark as a “teen slasher flick” since that’s wrong on both counts; moreover, it could lead one to believe this is a full-fledged Cheese Danish rather than the stylish and thoughtful film it is. While on the commentary track director Martin Barnewitz modestly disavows any comparisons to Roman Polanski, that’s a losing argument for the first half of the film, which hooks the audience as only first-rate psychological-horror thrillers can. Writer Jannik Tai Mosholtkeeps us off-balance in terms of guessing the true source of menace—is it our college student protagonist, the "demons" she carries around inside her, her catty new dorm-mates, or perhaps something genuinely supernatural? Barnewitz shoots the film with highly evocative subjectivity that suggests a blurring of the boundaries between these categories. DP Mikael Valentin’s work in particular is worthy of awards: the use of light in this film is downright magical, with nearly every shot luminous and painterly. Like Polanski, Barnewitz is interested in the short distance between everyday cruelty and true evil, as well as in creating an atmosphere of madness that lingers behind everything, almost as if it’s very air that the characters breathe. But unlike Polanski’s best films, Room 205 has no sense of how to turn the screws and escalate either the drama or the horror. Still worse, rather than simply fizzling out as a psychological thriller, the film shifts gears radically in terms of tone and narrative and becomes a boilerplate revenge-ghost tale that will be oh-so-familiar to viewers of Asian horror, in particular Thailand’s SHUTTER and Korea’s ARANG. Add to this misguided change in emphasis a totally unconvincing love story that seems to been thrown in as an afterthought and a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about mirrors that will unfortunately call Alexandre Aja’s recent film to mind, and you have a real letdown. No doubt that for its visuals and for fans of European horror, Room 205 is a neat, little find, but that’s too bad considering it could have been so much more. October 14