Jason Blum

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Paranormal Activity (2007)
Rating: ★★★★
Nov 2, 2009Haunting Found Footage Film
No-budget film that became a word of mouth hit, spawned a series of sequels and sparked off the Found Footage fascination that took over the 2010s. Unlike most of the films that followed, Oren Peli creates a creepingly chill atmosphere and some undeniable jumps
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Tooth Fairy (2010)

Tooth Fairy (2010)
Rating: ★
Jan 27, 2010Tough Guy Becomes a Tooth Fairy
From the top wrestling superstar in the world in the early 00s to movie action hero to being dressed in a pink tutu with fairy wings, it is hard to believe that Dwayne Johnson’s box-office star would have ever recovered from this family film embarrassment that sees him cast as a fairy
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Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)
Rating: ★★★
Oct 20, 2011Haunting Found Footage Film
The Paranormal Activity series still manages to produce a reasonable amount of eerie scares and jumps a third time around, although by now the claim to still being found footage is starting to strain credulity
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Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)
Rating: ★★
Oct 20, 2012Haunting Found Footage Film
The Paranormal Activity series has had a better run than most horror franchises up until now but the cracks are starting to show through here. This feels like it is straining to find some new way to do the familiar moves but fails to provide anything unexpected or original
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The Lords of Salem (2012)

The Lords of Salem (2012)
Rating: ★★
May 27, 2013Occult Happenings/Witch's Curse
In this homage to the 1970s occult film, Rob Zombie tones back the posturing shock effect of his earlier films and creates atmosphere. Eventually though, Zombie creates a film that feels coiled to unleash something bad but falters
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The Purge (2013)

The Purge (2013)
Rating: ★★
Jun 8, 2013Future That Permits One Night of Lawlessness
Film based around the improbable concept of a future where on one night of each year all crime including murder becomes permissible. While this promises a rich vein of satire, the film only emerges as a variant on Straw Dogs
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Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)
Rating: ★★
Jan 10, 2014Found Footage Film/Possession
Less another sequel than a spinoff of the Paranormal Activity series, this takes place with Latino characters and in a whole different culture and socio-economic strata. While this gives the series a face change, everything else it feels like the shuffling of a well-worn deck of plot cards
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The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)
Rating: ★★★
Dec 31, 2018Modern-Day Copycat of The Phantom Killer
Not a remake but a sequel to the cult true-crime film The Town That Dreaded Sundown with a series of copycat killings influenced by the film occurring in the present-day. Directed with a bravura stylishness that makes you jump out of your seat in joy
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Mockingbird (2014)

Mockingbird (2014)
Rating: ★★
Jan 7, 2015Found Footage/Home Invasion Thriller
Bryan Bertino who made the impressive home invasion thriller The Strangers and this was his follow-up. This was held up so long in release that its originality has been rendered everyday by others milking the Found Footage genre
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Ouija (2014)

Ouija (2014)
Rating: ★★
Oct 26, 2014Ouija Board Unleashes a Malevolent Spirit
Blumhouse horror film based around the Parker Brothers boardgame. Modern multiplex horror films don't come more generic than this. On the other hand, you cannot deny that debuting director Stiles White creates some occasionally quite spooky moments, it's just that the rest of the show comes entirely by the numbers
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The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

The Purge: Anarchy (2014)
Rating: ★★
Jul 18, 2014Future That Permits One Night of Lawlessness
Slightly more interesting than its predecessor in that it takes the action out from gated communities into the streets, otherwise this offers just the same as The Purge – much in the way of heavy artillery and a patina of contemporary politics that have all the depth of a protest placard
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Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)
Rating: ★★
Jan 9, 2016Haunting Found Footage Film
For supposedly the Paranormal Activity series final entry, this offer the novelty of the first Found Footage film in 3D – a gimmick that signals the series is out of fresh ideas. Moreover, the series' look via watching security cameras has been de-emphasised in favour of another CGI driven ghost story
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Jem and the Holograms (2015)

Jem and the Holograms (2015)
Rating: ★
Jan 29, 2016Girl Pop Band/Animation in Live-Action
The original animated series was one of the pop oddities of the 80s – part teen pop fantasy, part superheroics and secret identities. This live-action remake is an object lesson in how to strip all the fun elements out a series
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The Boy Next Door (2015)

The Boy Next Door (2015)
Rating: ★
Jan 25, 2015Stalker Thriller
A cougar version of Fatal Attraction with Jennifer Lopez stalked by a teenage boy. On every level this invites ridicule, from J-Lo sleepwalking through her performance to a director who has never made a good film to a script detached from human psychology
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The Visit (2015)

The Visit (2015)
Rating: ★★★½
Sep 19, 2015Found Footage/Weird Grandparents
M. Night Shyamalan makes one of his best films in ages. He kicks back his heels and goes nuts – at the same time as he is spooking us he also has us laughing; he ventures into making a Found Footage film but at the same time is also deconstructing the process with hilarious results
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Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)
Rating: ★★
Nov 12, 2016Ouija Board Unleashes Malevolent Spirits
Blumhouse's Ouija didn't get many good reviews but they proceeded with a prequel here. This is automatically the better film from the outset by employing Mike Flanagan, behind amazing works like Absentia, Hush and The Haunting of Hill House, as director, even if it comes out as one of Flanagan's lesser works
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The Veil (2016)

The Veil (2016)
Rating: ★
Mar 7, 2016Ghosts of Mass Suicide Cult Members
This has a great premise – a camera crew revisiting the site of a cult mass suicide stir up the ghosts of the cult members – and a director who I always maintained had much untapped potential. Alas, the finished result seems to slip by his hands
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Viral (2016)

Viral (2016)
Rating: ★★½
Dec 26, 2016Plague Outbreak/Zombie Parasites
Effort from the near-ubiquitous Blumhouse that is constantly confounding expectations – a plague outbreak drama but not quite, a zombie film but not quite. In the end, not a great or groundbreaking film but certainly a modest one that takes things in some interesting and original directions
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Split (2017)

Split (2017)
Rating: ★★★
Feb 4, 2017Split-Personality Psycho
M. Night Shyamalan's name took a nosedive throughout most of the 2000s (although I am prepared to defend him) but he received some of his best notices in years with his collaborations for Blumhouse, This split personality thriller, anchored by a tour-de-force performance(s) from James McAvoy, continues the upward trend
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Stephanie (2017)

Stephanie (2017)
Rating: ★★½
May 11, 2018Young Girl Faces Unseen Creatures Amid an Invasion
Akiva Goldsman is the single worst screenwriter in Hollywood with a line of genre atrocities to his name. In his second directorial outing, blow me down if Goldsman doesn't make a halfway decent film, a cryptic film about a young girl facing unseen monsters amid a possible invasion
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Upgrade (2018)

Upgrade (2018)
Rating: ★★★
Dec 23, 2018A.I Transforms a Wheelchair-Ridden Man Into a Fighting Machine
Leigh Whannell, James Wan's BFF and co-writer on the Saw and films, takes the director’s chair. A wheelchair-ridden Logan Marshall-Green gets an A.I. implant that gives him ninja super-skills among other things. Whannell’s action set-ups and plot twists are frequently ingenious.
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The First Purge (2018)

The First Purge (2018)
Rating: ★★½
Mar 24, 2019The Origin of a Future That Permits One Night of Lawlessness
Blumhouse have handed the reigns of The Purge series to African-American filmmaker Gerard McMurray who takes the opportunity to get political and drag the series into the era of Black Lives Matter
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Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)

Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)
Rating: ★★★
Apr 28, 2019Found Footage/Darkweb Snuff Filmmaking Group
Unfriended had a unique novelty approach - everything took place in one take where the film screen was a computer screen. You wonder what a sequel can add to this. The surprise is that we get a film even better than the original
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The Hunt (2020)

The Hunt (2020)
Rating: ★★★
Mar 27, 2020Human Bloodsports/Liberals Hunt Conservatives
Controversial variant on the human bloodsports plot of The Most Dangerous Game but where liberals hunt conservatives. A film with a darkly satiric bite that sets out to offend people on both sides of the political fence
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Mr. Harrigan’s Phone (2022)

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone (2022)
Rating: ★★★
Jul 8, 2023Text Messages from Beyond the Grave/Stephen King Adaptation
A nicely made Stephen King adaptation about a teen who starts to receive text message from beyond the grave. From Ryan Murphy, the producer behind tv's Glee and American Horror Story
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Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)

Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
Rating: ★★
Nov 10, 2023Videogame Adaptation/Killer Animatronics
A Blumhouse film adaptation of the videogame that was a considerable hit at the box-office. Josh Hutcherson plays a security guard at a pizza parlour who faces killer animatronics come to life
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