The Last House in The Woods. I wish I could recommend this film as a contrast with MOTHER OF TEARS: a state-of-the-art Italian shockfest that is as direct and as memorably twisted as Argento’s early work. And indeed, for the first few opening scenes, I believed such a comparison was justified. Certainly writer-director Gabriele Albanesi knows how to tell a story and how to work with actors (who, as part of what seems like an Italian tradition, simply have great faces). But the story is too unabashedly derivative—not just echoing other Euro-hits of recent years, with a touch of INSIDE and THEM and a large dollop of FRONTIERS, but also a whole slew of American horror franchises such as THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and WRONG TURN. So if you’re rabid fan of those titles, then check this out, but even so you might be a bit disappointed. As with FRONTIERS, you can chalk the whole thing up to friendly homage, but that film at least presented a couple of newish ideas and technically it was impeccable. Here the lighting and camerawork is spotty at times, and although the script structure builds suspense for short periods, it’s never really sustained. Yes, there is a pronounced kindertrauma factor in Last House, and that accounts for the slim margin of originality that the film does have; the problem is that the kid-in-jeopardy and kid-as-monster elements (the movie has both) are not really developed but rather used as flavor accents to a typical “survivor-girl” structure. It’s a bad sign when you can actually predict the order that the characters will die in, something I was able to do here. The final problems: a gore movie with lousy stuntwork is unforgivable; and an action thriller with no believable fight scenes is a bore. October 14

Dark Floors. Have you heard of the Finnish monster-metal band Lordi, or perhaps are one of its members? If so, you could find Dark Floors to be a total blast. Otherwise, you’ll want to give it a fairly wide berth. Which is unfortunate because director Pete Riski, like Albanesi in THE LAST HOUSE IN THE WOODS, has more-than-solid storytelling and dramatic skills. In fact, I’m hoping that the entire film becomes part of his industry reel and helps him secure the better projects that he deserves. Unfortunately, in Dark Floors all of Riski’s talent in establishing creepy atmsopherics and eliciting psychological nuance from his actors takes place in a context created by a big stinkhole of a script. I love “haunted hospital” settings, and the premise of having different creatures/monsters assail us on different floors could actually be kinda fun. However, our protagonists, the usual group of bickering strangers, are painfully clichéd—the black security guard, the cynical jerk, the special-needs girl with undefined powers, etc. And aside from having their numbers dwindle predictably, there’s not much of a compelling structure to the plot.

Unlike RE-CYCLE, there’s no overriding hook of character or situation to keep an audience involved in the story’s irrationally nightmarish aspects, so that in the end Dark Floors leaves the impression of being a J-horror outing probably best performed by finger puppets—it’s that unconvincing, forced, and simplistic. Moreover, all the moments of intriguing surrealism and (less-intriguing) high drama are so transparently in the service of providing a vehicle for each Lordi band member to have his own ultra-violent set piece that any sense of artistic authenticity plummets. October 14

The Vanguard. In many ways, this is a tricky film to sum up (much to its credit), but here goes: imagine a toned-down version of the Japanese forest-bound actioner VERSUS as directed by an Ingmar Bergman who feels he can do a better job with DOOMSDAY’s script than Neil Marshall did. Verbose enough to be a talk-show and top-heavy with a science-fiction critique of big business, The Vanguard picks up steam towards the end but otherwise is the most ponderous and awkward action-horror release I’ve seen in quite a while. Given the U.K. setting and quick-moving zombies (technically “bio-syns,” genetically-engineered predators), the film’s obvious antecedents are 28 DAYS/WEEKS LATER. Sadly, though, writer-director Matthew Hope lets things get unintentionally goofy by having these monsters flail their arms as they run, which results in their resembling roving gangs of angry, spastic chimps. In theory, this actually could be a promising idea—show the post-apocalyptic de-evolution of humankind by stressing more primate-like behaviors—but the second Hope took at a look at the footage, he should have recognized how silly this came off in practice.

Sober and thoughtful to the point of being somber, The Vanguard is admirable in its many small touches of realism: the hero uses not motorcycle and crossbow and other items of cool, but a low-tech bicycle and handheld hatchets. Both the budget and the editing, however, hamper the would-be gore scenes, with the money shots so clearly staged cutaways that any sense of spontaneity and shock is lost; we cut to close-up of an impalement but there’s no sense of continuity that this is the same body we saw in the fuller shot a moment earlier. All in all, a mildly interesting curiosity, and a valiant attempt to tell a vast story with limited means, but after a while one grows tired of looking at what seem to be the same two or three forest clearings and fields as stand-ins for the wider world. September 23