Vacancy (2007)
Jun 15, 2008Remote Motel Torture and Sadism
A reasonable film clearly influenced by Hostel with Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale as a married couple who sign into a backroads motel used to shoot snuff movies
Mark L. Smith
The Hole (2009)
Feb 21, 2018Kids Open a Portal/Young Adult Horror
One of the less known films of Joe Dante. A 3D work that just predates Avatar, it is a YA horror story in the vein of The Goonies or Dante's own Explorers crafted with care and an affection for the characters
Vacancy 2: The First Cut (2009)
Jan 31, 2010Remote Motel Torture and Sadism
Passable sequel (or rather prequel) to the remote motel snuff movie thriller Vacancy. Even though a throwaway effort, it manages to build an okay head of steam
Martyrs (2015)
Feb 28, 2016Imprisonment and Torture
Martyrs was one of the most grimly disturbing films of the 2000s; this English-language remake, which waters everything down and rewrites the ending to have one of the girls bursting in to save the other with a shotgun counts as surely one of the great all-time cinematic bad ideas
Overlord (2018)
Mar 1, 2019Nazi Mad Science Experiments
J.J. Abrams' produced film about soldiers encountering Nazi mad science experiments during WWII. Despite a decent budget thrown at it, this was a box-office failure. It may be that in a genre where we have gravitated to films about Nazi zombies and Nazi moonbases, this was just too tame
The Midnight Sky (2020)
Jan 8, 2021Last Man on Earth Tries to Communicate with a Space Mission
George Clooney starred in Gravity and now directs/stars in his own scientifically grounded space film about the last man trying to communicate with a surviving space mission following a catastrophe event on Earth
Twisters (2024)
Aug 24, 2024Tornado Chasers
Sequel to Twister, the Michael Crichton written film about tornado chasers, this updates the story to the 21st Century and aims for much more in the way of mass destruction spectacle