Walker: Independence (Pilot), on CW

Like many people today, Abby and Liam Walker have left the corruption of Massachusetts in search of opportunity in Texas. Unfortunately, the corruption has followed them. Liam was supposed to be the town’s new sheriff, but he was murdered on the trail. She was also left for dead, but leaving-for-dead works just about as well in westerns as it does in horror. Naturally, she wants revenge and the suspicious new replacement sheriff goes to the top of her list in the pilot episode of Anna Fricke’s Walker: Independence, which premieres tomorrow on the CW.

After she and her husband were gunned down in the dead of night, Walker wakes up in an Apache camp. For understandable reasons, the noble (and rugged jawed) Calian is reluctant to walk her all the way into town, but he will be her first ally. Shortly thereafter, she will have an awkward first meeting with irresponsible outlaw Hoyt Rawlins, but they will also forge a weird alliance of convenience.

According to Calian, the town’s deputy is a decent fellow, but newly installed Sheriff Davidson gives off seriously villainous vibes. It turns out he is also from Boston, but he was part of the corrupt machine there. Cautious about announcing herself, Walker finds temporary employment with Kate Carver, a showgirl of some repute and Kai, an immigrant Chinese laborer. At the end of the episode, we also learn one of them has a secret sideline that should wear well throughout the first season.

Independence is a Yellowstone-like prequel spinoff to the CW’s rebooted Walker. None of the characters from the contemporary series could credibly guest-star, since there is roughly one hundred and forty years separating their timelines, so fans of the original Chuck Norris series could pretend it is a prequel to it instead.

Indeed, they might want to, because Independence shows all kinds of potential. Comparing pilot to pilot, Independence might represent the rare spinoff that far surpasses the quality its parent series. Whereas Walker presented itself as the corporate diversity seminar version of the Texas Rangers, Independence is nicely setting itself up as an old school western. It is very clear Abby Walker intends to get justice or revenge, which ever comes first.

Project Wolf Hunting

Nobody ever had fun on a ship in the movies and they probably never will, unless the Love Boat eventually gets adapted to the big screen. There will certainly be no love, fun, or safe spaces on this cruise. The Korean Justice Department procured a cargo ship to secretly ferry ten highly dangerous extradited criminals from the Philippines. The bad news is the bad guys have a plan to hijack the ship. The worse news is there just so happens to be someone more dangerous than them on board. Things will get spectacularly messy in Kim Hong-sun’s Project Wolf Hunting, which opens Friday in theaters.

There was an “incident” at the airport the last time the cops brought back a group of extraditees, so they want to keep this one on the down-low. Unfortunately, the sinister, serpent-like Park Jong-doo managed to replace several crew-members with his thugs, who will easily take control of the ship. The surviving cops think they are merely facing a Die Hard-type situation, but it gets worse.

Unbeknownst to the cops and criminals alike, a strange and savage humanoid is also somewhere on the ship. The shadowy cabal pulling all the strings brought a replacement doctor on-board to keep it safely sedated, but in all the confusion, it inevitably rouses, proceeding on an awesomely gory rampage.

It bears repeating there are absolutely no safe spaces in this movie. Wolf Hunting is the kind of film in which people are bludgeoned to death with their own limbs. It is all about action, energy, and adrenaline. Yet, there are a few characters that are sufficiently vivid, most viewers will feel bad when they meet an unfortunate end. Seriously, don’t get too emotionally involved.

Ruzowitzky’s Hinterland

Sadly, too many Vietnam veterans could relate to the indifferent and sometimes hostile homecomings these Austrian POWs experienced after WWI. In retrospect, this turned out to be a terrible long-term social policy. Fully cognizant of the scars he carries, former Lt. Peter Perg is skeptical he can transition back to civilian life, but the ex-cop agrees to help his former colleagues hunt for a serial killer preying on his fellow army veterans in Stefan Ruzowitzky’s Hinterland, which releases Friday on VOD.

This is 1920 Vienna, but it looks a lot like Tim Burton’s Gotham. Using digital technology, Ruzowitzky immerses his cast in a highly expressionistic urban jungle, inspired by Dr. Caligari and other silent films of the era. It looks amazing, like film noir from Hell, in a good way.

However, Hinterland also has a narrative of some substance to go with its stunning visuals, unlike many would-be dazzlers that forget the other elements that produce a worthy film. Perg has a real case to investigate and macabre clues to uncover, as further horrific murders are discovered.

Initially, the only one who really wants him involved in the case is Dr. Theresa Korner, a woman as you might have guessed, whom the police commissar reluctantly promoted to her current medical examiner position during the War, simply because there were no qualified men at the time. Yet, she also remembers first-hand Perg’s brilliance during previous cases.

Ruzowitzky does not ring this bell obsessively, but it is pretty easy to see from their treatment from interwar society why many of Perg’s fellow veterans would be radicalized by the National Socialists. Ruzowitzky also nicely shows the not-so cold war being waged between the Communists and various nationalists in the city’s streets and back alleys. Ironically, even though a great deal of the picture was digitally generated, Hinterland has a keen sense of time and place.

Deadstream, on Shudder

If you seek attention in a horror movie, you will get attention, but not the kind you want. Shawn Ruddy, a live-streaming un-fluencer agrees to spend the night in a haunted house for followers and sponsors, but the nasty spirits he riles up are far more dangerous than he anticipated in Joseph & Vanessa Winter’s Deadstream, which premieres Thursday on Shudder.

The disgraced Ruddy really screwed-up with some kind of ill-conceived bum-fighting video. Freshly re-platformed and re-monetized, he is hoping his haunted escapade will launch his comeback. Knowing what a scaredy-cat he is, Ruddy chucks his car’s spark plugs into the woods and drops the key to the front door through a grate in the floor. Obviously, he will soon regret doing this.

Evidently, Mildred, a frustrated Mormon Emily Dickinson hanged herself in the house. Subsequently, several kids also met untimely ends in the spooky manor, all of whom start scaring the heck out of Ruddy, which he duly live-streams. That is why he is so surprised when Chrissy, one of his “followers,” crashes the party, even though the evil house is completely locked and boarded up.

Deadstream shares a similar premise with several previous movies, such as The Deep House (and the graphic novel Creeping), but the execution is so energetic, it often reaches heights of true mania. Granted, Ruddy is a total jerkweed, but co-director-lead thesp Joseph Winter defiantly leans into his cowardly, self-absorbed shortcomings. He also plays off the weirdness Melanie Stone brings as Chrissy quite effectively.

They Crawl Beneath

Bugs and worms tend to grow large out in the desert, like in It Came from the Desert or the Tremors series. At least that franchise had some humor to help the wacky premise go down easy and some survivalists, who were properly supplied for a siege. Unfortunately, the Barstow cop at the center of this film gets caught flat-footed in Dale Fabrigar’s They Crawl Beneath, which releases today on VOD and DVD.

Danny Moritz has been crashing with his slacker Uncle Bill, while he and his girlfriend Gwen Bishop have been fighting about everything and nothing. Inconveniently, old Bill did not have a proper jack, so when the mutant worms attack while they are working under a vintage muscle car, Bill gets crushed to death, leaving Moritz alone, precariously pinned underneath, and potentially at the mercy of the toxic worm-things.

Frustratingly, the film is stuck right there with Moritz, trapped under a car, in Uncle Bill’s garage, which is sealed up like a prison, for unlikely reasons. Of course, Moritz passes in and out of consciousness right when his colleagues from the force come to check on him. Indeed, nearly everything about Tricia Aurand’s screenplay will have viewers slapping their foreheads, especially when Moritz starts arguing with his mental projection of Uncle Bill. It might be time to temporarily retire this device, considering how effectively Panhandle and The Flight Attendant recently employed it.

It is too bad the narrative is manipulative to the point of annoying, because the practical creature effects are really cool. It shows a low budget creepy-crawler film get look professional. Sadly, the quality of writing is not much better than drive-in staples like Kingdom of Spiders.

Reginald the Vampire, on Syfy

Apparently, vampires aren’t so woke after all, since they happen to be such nasty fat-shamers. If you don’t have six-pack abs, you’re not getting turned. Reginald Andres is the exception. His sire did not plan on turning him, but it was the only way to save the nebbish Andres in executive producer-showrunner Harley Peyton’s Reginald the Vampire, which premieres Wednesday on Syfy.

Andres is a nice guy, but he never had a chance to fulfill his potential. Stuck working at the Slushy Shack, he carries a torch for his co-worker Sarah Kinney, but he lacks the confidence to recognize she kind of likes him too. However, Maurice Miller can see it.

Having just arrived in Akron, the vampire has already become a regular at the Slushy Shack (these vamps can still consume regular human food). Since he is a cool vampire, Miller “glamours” Andres to ask out Kinney. When she says yes, he agrees to tutor the now fully cognizant and somewhat panicked Andres for his big date. Unfortunately, that is why Andres happened to be with Miller when vampire enforcers from Angela Hibbert (the local vampire queen bee) came to deliver a violent message. They couldn’t resist feasting on Andres, so Miller offers him a choice (after the resulting carnage). Die and stay dead or die a few seconds earlier and come back reborn.

Of course, it is not quite that simple. The vampire Reggie is locked into his old schlubby human body, which definitely makes him an outlier among vampires. In fact, they consider him a freak that should be eliminated, especially Hibbert, who was originally Miller’s sire, but is now his deadly rival.

There is a lot of vampire intrigue in Reginald, but it is the characters that really wear so well over the course of the first five episodes. Arguably, Peyton’s adaptation of Johnny B. Truant’s novels perfects the balance between fannish humor and vampire peril better than just about any film or series since Buffy and Angel.

Jacob Batalan (Ned Leeds in the Spider-Man movies) portrays Andres as a genuinely likeable loser, while Mandela Van Peebles is super-cool and smooth as Miller. Frankly, the latter looks so much like his father in his younger days, the show almost makes us wonder if Mario Van Peebles might be a vampire masquerading as his own son. Em Haine is sweet and quirkily off-center enough to be a good match for Andres, but never to an annoying extent.

Bring It On: Cheer or Die, on Syfy

Even if it is not wildly popular when it airs on Syfy, it would be great if this sequel inspired more mature straight-to-DVD franchises to reinvent themselves in the horror genre. The Sniper and The Marine could fight zombies, The Cutting Edge could feature stalkers on ice, and the steamy Wild Things thrillers could easily accommodate a Carmilla-like vampire. However, the long-running Bring It On did it first, when a mysterious slasher starts killing the Diablos cheer squad in Karen Lam’s Bring It On: Cheer or Die, which premieres this Saturday on Syfy.

Twenty years ago, one of the Diablos cheerleaders died during an aerial stunt, partially due to jealous sabotage from within the squad. Abby Synger’s estranged mother was one of the guilty cheerleaders. Now, she is on the Diablos cheer squad, but strict Principal Simmons has flatly banned any aerial moves. That means they always finish dead last (so to speak) in competitions. However, this year Synger wants to be different. She and her co-captain convince the squad to give up their Halloweens, so they can secretly train their prohibited routines, to surprise everyone at the state meet.

Conveniently, the newest team member can get the key to the old shuttered high school, because she is Simmons’ adopted daughter, but she assures everyone she is no snitch, including her sister, who is also on the team. Inevitably, once they are in the spooky old building, someone dressed as the Diablos mascot starts knocking them off, one by one.

There is no doubt Cheer or Die will be too restrained for most slasher fans. This film is not so scary, but neither is A24’s critically anointed Bodies Bodies Bodies either. Halina Reijn’s screenplay got more laughs out of its chaotic premise, but screenwriters Rebekah McKendry and Dana Schwartz scribbled out some reasonably clever, appropriately attitude-heavy dialogue. Alten Wilmot gets most of the laughs as vain Mateo Adamos, one of the guys who throws the girls into the air and catches them, at least if he were allowed to.

Quantum Leap: Somebody Up There Likes Ben

In the previous series, Dr. Sam Beckett often jumped into a body just about as it was about to be clobbered by a haymaker. Sooner or later, the new leaper, Dr. Ben Song was bound to get similar treatment. He is somewhat fortunate his chin music comes from a mere sparring partner at the start of tonight’s Quantum Leap episode, “Somebody Up There Likes Ben.”

Obviously, the writers of the current continuation series are somewhat familiar with the classic Paul Newman boxing film, so give them points for cinematic literacy. The 1970s vibe is also pretty cool, but unexpected. The big non-spoilery development of this episode is the fact Song somehow managed to leap beyond his own lifetime. There will be other technical difficulties for the team that might have a bearing on the ongoing mystery as to why Song was compelling to leap without warning.

Obviously, winning Danny Hill’s title fight will most likely factor into Song’s efforts to set things right. However, he also must help the fighter’s manager-brother start dealing with his PTSD. To its credit, this episode demonstrates great empathy for Vietnam vets like Daryl Hill, who is indeed callously called a “baby-killer” during the hour-long drama.

Solar Opposites Halloween Special, on Hulu

Normally, Tales from the Crypt’s Crypt Keeper is our host for horror stories. This time he is the guest star, when Terry and Jesse, the two younger pro-Halloween aliens from Planet Shlorp, mad scientist him out of a purloined corpse as a way to celebrate the scary season. Chaos and foul language ensue in A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposite Solar Special (a.k.a. Solar Opposites S3 E12), which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

As fans of the series know, Korvo dislikes Earth, but he really, really hates Halloween. Yumyulack isn’t too crazy about either, but he is less emotional and more contemptuous expressing his distaste. However, Terry and Jesse, who act like the kids of the space-expedition-turned-family are totally down for it. Frankly, they show us why Halloween, which very much is a nostalgic throwback to small town Americana, can never be canceled (outside of pandemics or inclement weather)—because an army of kids would rise up in arms.

Excited to participate in the neighborhood house decorating campaign, Terry and Jesse plunder a grave, reviving and mutating the body into an EC Comics like horror host, who constantly spouts off little macabre anecdotes—in the voice of John Kassir, from the long-running Tales from the Crypt franchise. Naturally, the Crypt Keeper drives Korvo to distraction, but Yumyulack is not around to be annoyed, due to a rather unfortunate misadventure.

If you have not seen Solar Opposites before, it is easy to pick up the gist of it from the Halloween special. Think of it as My Favorite Martian with cussing and oral sex jokes. It is raunchier than The Simpsons but it also has a sharper edge, while being far less didactic. Just about anyone across the political and cultural spectrums can laugh at the Solar Special without ever feeling attacked.

Blumhouse’s Compendium of Horror, on Epix

In the future, the Blumhouse production company might have their own episode in talking head horror documentaries like this. They do not toot their horn so much in their own survey, but a lot of their comentators’ talking-points sound very much like the same old stuff we’ve heard before. However, Robert Englund’s narration definitely gets you in the mood to rewatch a lot of the films discussed in showrunner James Buddy Day’s five-part Blumhouse’s Compendium of Horror, which premieres tomorrow on Epix.

Blumhouse and Day break down horror by general chronological periods, starting in the 1930s, with the classic Universal monsters. This is generally the best episode, as long as you won’t wonder where the silent German expressionists are. Next, “Atomic Nightmares” episode does a pretty good job chronicling the rise of Japanese kaijus and their low-budget American mutant cousins. However, the pejorative use of the term “red scare” to describe the themes of films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers is not entirely appropriate, given what we now know about Soviet covert activity at the time. At this point, nobody seriously denies the US Communist Party was wholly controlled by Moscow and actively abetted Soviet agents engaged in espionage.

Bizarrely, Hammer, Universal’s British successor, is almost completely ignored in “Unholy Dreams,” which largely focuses on 1960s and 1970s horror as an expression of the counter-culture’s interest in exoticism and the occult. Even more troubling, it completely misrepresents Friedkin’s classic The Exorcist as a subversive attack on conventional Christian values. The truth is William Peter Blatty, who adapted the screenplay from his own novel, was a devout Roman Catholic, who believed the Church was our last, best, and possible only defense against evil. If you were to compile a list of the great Catholic films of the 20^th Century, The Exorcist would rank towards the top—very possibly #1. To so badly misunderstand and distort its significance reveals the problematic biases of the critics who appear in Compendium.

The next episode is somewhat better, discussing 1980s slasher films in the context of the sensationalistic media coverage of real-life serial killers. The final fifth episode was not yet provided for review, but there is a good chance it misses an important point. As a genre, horror is at a turning point. It has never had greater prestige. Yet, as Compendium often points out, in the past, horror has often reflected society’s anxieties, sometimes without consciously intending to do so. Recently, many horror films have stopped reflecting widely held fears, opting to tell viewers exactly what they should fear instead. There have been dozens of climate change horror movies, but really none of them amounted to much.

Wayne Wang’s Life is Cheap … But Toilet Paper is Expensive

Yat Boon jai (a.k.a. “The Man with No Name”) is right about one thing when he accepts this dodgy courier gig. It would indeed be a last chance to see the real Hong Kong as it truly was before the 1997 handover, which turned out to be a national tragedy for Hongkongers. Unfortunately, the naïve Asian American with a taste for flashy cowboy apparel will be in over his head navigating the HK underworld in Wayne Wang’s Life is Cheap … But Toilet Paper is Expensive, which also had a rocky reception when it was originally released in 1989. Ripe for reappraisal, a new, slightly revised and freshly restored print of Wang’s film is now screening at the BAM cinema.

The unnamed courier, who actually seems to have a name on imdb and other online sources, has no idea what is in the briefcase he carries for his boss’s colleague. He doesn’t want to know, as long as it is not drugs. He is supposed to give it only to “Big Boss,” but apparently it is not important enough for the senior Triad to make time to see the Courier. As a result, he is left with too much time on his hands. His boredom leads to danger when the Courier starts hanging with Big Boss’s femme fatale mistress, Money.

Life is Cheap generated controversy when it was originally refused an “X” rating, eventually becoming one of the first films to carry an NC-17. It is hard to fathom why. Admittedly, there is a hand-chopping motifs that often recurs, but it looks cheesy compared to modern gore. Wang also captures some duck butchery that might disturb some viewers, plus it all builds towards a truly scatological punch line, but it still seems tamed compared to its reputation.

Frankly, Wang’s pseudo-documentary style, often incorporating long monologues resembling interview segments, might have been ahead of its time in 1989. Fifteen years ago, Life is Cheap might have suffered in comparison to other Jia Zhangke docu-hybrids and the like. However, in post HK “National Security” Law 2022, it feels like a sad elegy to a ruckus Hong Kong and a vibrant local culture that no longer exists. Gone are the days when the son of American immigrants from Hong Kong can return to their homeland, to film a gritty, experimental gangster movie, guerrilla-style on the city’s streets.

In fact, the film reaches true heights of elegiac lyricism when martial arts legend Lo Lieh appears in one of the docu-interludes, portraying a former pianist, who cut off his own arm rather than compromise his integrity during the Cultural Revolution. Life is Cheap might be getting a new lease on life here in America, but there is no way you could screen it in Hong Kong today.

Family Law (Pilot), on CW

Maybe a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, but what is he, if he hires his toxic, alcoholic daughter? Abigail Bianchi is actually the third of Harry Svensson’s three grown children (all from different mothers) that he hired at his family law firm. She is not happy to be there, but it is her only option after a drunken vomiting courtroom incident. Even in Canada, the courts frown on such behavior, but each case offers more dramedy-redemption in writer-creator Susin Nielsen’s Family Law, which premieres Sunday on the CW.

In the pilot episode, “Sins of the Father,” Bianchi does not know her entitled half-siblings very well and neither of them is happy to have her join the firm. Before the regurgitation incident, Bianchi was a hot shot litigator, so she feels like family law is beneath her. Only the transgender receptionist is happy to see her.

Currently, Bianchi is separated from her unfaithful husband, who still has custody of the kids, because she is such a dumpster fire. Their little boy always looks forward to her visits, but their teen daughter is openly siding with dad and against her. At least she has the boozy support of her Ab-Fab mother Joanne Kowalski, Svensson’s first wife. Perhaps understandably, some of Bianchi’s baggage comes out during her first case for the firm, involving years of unpaid child support from a father, who answered an online ad for a no-strings-attached sperm donor.

Honestly, most of the legal plotlines of the pilot episode feel like they could have been brainstorming notes discarded from the writers’ room when L.A. Law was cancelled in the mid-1990s. It is basically the same formula. The pilot gives us one primary case, addressing a mildly controversial issue, while also following a slightly comical secondary case (this time around it is a doggie custody battle).

Family Law might not be stylistically innovative, but that is no great sin. The problem is the complete and utter lack of characters any sane viewer would want to spend time with. Bianchi is abrasively annoying, Svensson is insufferably arrogant, and the step-siblings combine the worst of both. Even Lauren Holly generates more eye-rolls than laughs as the diva-ish Kowalski.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever, on Apple TV+

Well into the 1950s, the northern Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood was considered the most rural area in the borough. Technically, it could still be. Traditionally, it was also predominantly Irish Catholic. Not surprisingly, the locals took exception to antiwar protesters who casually smeared the troops as “baby killers.” Out of that shared frustration, Chickie Donohue, a peace-time veteran and Merchant Marine, hatched a scheme to deliver beer to his neighborhood friends serving in-country. Much to everyone’s surprise, especially the soldiers in combat, Donohue followed-through. His real-life adventure is now the subject of Peter Farrelly’s The Greatest Beer Run Ever, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

Donohue still lives at home, because he and his mother think it would be a waste to pay rent while he is gone for months at a time with the Merchant Marine (who also have a crucial role to play during times of war). However, that means there are plenty of opportunities for arguments with his anti-war activist sister. During a gripe-session with the “Colonel,” the bartender at their local watering hole, Donohue latches on to a crazy idea to deliver beers to the troops in Vietnam, as a way to express their appreciation. However, it was not a totally unrealistic idea for Donohue, because there happened to be a supply ship leaving for Saigon that still had a vacancy.

With a duffle bag full of Pabst and a list of names and general locations, Donohue sets off, naively heedless of the chaos and danger he would be stepping into. For the sake of dramatic cohesion, Farrelly and co-screenwriters Brian Hayes Currie and Pete Jones compressed Donohue’s months-long mission into a 72-hour pass—over the final days of January, 1968, thereby raising the dramatic stakes, as those who know their history will immediately understand.

Clearly, Farrelly is going for a Good Morning Vietnam vibe, but Greatest Beer Run proves that is easier said than done. It so obvious Farrelly and his co-writers feel duty-bound to criticize the war, without attacking the troops in the way so many New Left protesters did. As a result, the film twists itself into pretzels, not infrequently questioning the motives and integrity of the government and top military brass, while attempting to sympathize with the enlisted men. It almost reaches Jekyll-and-Hyde extremes.

Indeed, Coates, the war correspondent played by Russell Crowe is supposed to be one of the good guys, but his smug moral superiority is absolutely nauseating. Regardless, he cannot help comparing unfavorably with Donohue, whom Zac Efron portrays winning earnestness—and nebbishness, very much contrary to his image. This is definitely some of his best work.

Interview with the Vampire, on AMC

New Orleans really is the perfect place for vampires. It is a city built around nightlife, where they bury their dead above ground. The new series reboot definitely capitalizes on the New Orleans vibe, but it also embraces the homoeroticism of the original novel. This definitely is not Tom Cruise’s Lestat. What was once implied is now explicit in creator Rolin Jones’ Interview with the Vampire, which premieres Sunday on AMC.

Years ago, vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac sat for an ill-fated interview session with rookie reporter Daniel Molloy. Years have passed. Molloy is now an aging journalist, facing his mortality. With the CCP pandemic raging, Molloy agrees to a do-over with Pointe du Lac, meeting him in his luxury Dubai penthouse.

This time around, Pointe du Lac is a Creole vampire, who saved his family fortune through his administration of several Storyville sporting houses. How he met Lestat de Lioncourt hardly requires much explanation. Although de Lioncourt first humiliates Pointe du Lac with his favorite high-class prostitute, they are soon sharing her services. Pretty soon they do not even need her at all. By this time, de Lioncourt has turned his vampire apprentice-lover. However, Pointe du Lac still attempts to maintain ties with his family, despite the increasingly awkward complications of his sexuality and vampirism.

In the film, Pointe du Lac was played by Brad Pitt, which made sense, whereas Cruise portrayed Lestat. Honestly, it was a miracle the director Neil Jordan was able to make that work to the extent that he did. Louis’s new Creole-ness is certainly woke-compatible, but it fits relatively easily with the novel’s themes, further emphasizing Pointe du Lac’s outsider status.

However, the best part about the new series is the older, dramatically more cynical Molloy, now portrayed by Eric Bogosian, who is a major trade-up from Christian Slater. Time after time, Molloy undercuts the eroticism and moral relativism Louis tries to cloak his story in. Repeatedly, he asks tough questions about the vampires’ victims and their bereaved families. Honestly, it is a shame so few real-life journalists demonstrate this kind of integrity and tenacity.

The Dark Heart, on Topic

This five-part series is based on a real-life Swedish true crime book, but it could be any number of cases, since family members are always the first suspects when someone is murdered. It sure looks like Sanna Ljungqvist killed her strict father, Bengt, with her boyfriend Marcus Tingstrom, the thuggish poppa of her child, but volunteer missing persons-searcher Tanja Thorell is the only one investigating the case in director-co-creator Gustav Moller’s The Dark Heart, which premieres today on Topic.

Ljungqvist is fresh out of school with a forest-management degree, but Bengt condescendingly dismisses all her new ideas for their forestry business. Ironically, that pushes her into the arms of brooding Tingstrom, whose father has long-feuded with Bengt, as their fathers did before them.

It sure seems like something bad happened to old Bengt, because he has been missing for over a year in the later time-line. Ljungqvist’s older sister Emelie, who hasn’t lived on the family tree farm in years, contacted Thorell’s missing persons group. Basically, she administers a Facebook page and a list of a few dozen volunteers, but she mobilizes them all to search the woods around the Ljungqvist farm. However, Ljungqvist and Thorell will not grant them permission to search their property, thereby raising Thorell’s suspicions—quite rightly so.

Dark Heart was probably conceived as a thriller that explored the troubling emotional terrain of family dysfunction, like Blood and Broadchurch, but it leans much more towards angst than suspense. Although the initial split narrative is a little confusing, viewers will pretty much know what happened and are where it is headed, right from the start.

Hostages, in The Epoch Times

The Hostage Crisis was an international crime and a national tragedy for the Iranian people. HBO's HOSTAGES eventually makes that point, exposing the way the Ayatollah manipulated the incident to consolidate his hold on power. Fittingly, it premieres during the Masha Amini protests. EPOCH TIMES exclusive review up here.

Smile—Turn that Frown Upside

The lost verses of Charlie Chaplin’s classic tune probably go something like “smile, even though you're being tormented by a supernatural entity,” right? Weirdly, the song is not heard during this film, unless it is buried deep in the closing credits. There is no cheap irony, but there are jump scares. However, those jump scares are unusually effective in director-screenwriter Parker Finn’s Smile, which open Friday nationwide.

Dr. Rose Cotter is an incredibly diligent emergency room psychiatrist, but even she is shocked when her new patient, Laura Weaver, brutally kills herself during their first session. The experience understandably disturbs her, but she feels an additional sense of unease. Her eyes must be playing tricks on her, because she keeps seeing her late patient’s maniacal smile on other people.

Slowly, she starts to suspect a mysterious something is stalking her. Her wealthy fiancé is not much help, but her torch-carrying ex-boyfriend, who conveniently happens to be the cop who responded to Weaver’s suicide case, helps her research the victim’s past. It turns out, Weaver also witnessed a grisly suicide a week earlier. That man also watched a shocking self-annihilation a week before, and so on and so forth.

Smile might be a studio horror film, but you can see the influence of the “elevated horror” trend. Finn seriously addresses issues mental health and family dysfunction in ways that never feel exploitative. The film could even be therapeutic, were it not for the very standard horror movie ending.

There are still a lot of jump scares, but they really make you jump like a nervous jackrabbit. At nearly two full hours, Smile is a bit too long (ironically Finn adapted it from his short film), but there are a number of super-sharply executed, highly memorable scenes, such as Cotter’s prison meeting with an accused murderer, who might have escaped the Smiley curse.

Spirit Halloween: The Movie

“Visit our stores and maybe you’ll be possessed by an angry ghost” is an unusual commercial message for a company to put out, but Spirit Halloween is not your typical retail chain. They only open brick-and-mortar stores for 60 to 90 days out of the year, usually taking short-term remnant leases. It is easy to see why middle school monster fans like Jake and his friends would be fascinated by their inventory. However, sneaking into the big-box pop-up on Halloween night is obviously just asking for trouble in David Poag’s Spirit Halloween: The Movie, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Jake loves Halloween, because it brings back fond memories of his late father. Unfortunately, his obnoxious friend Carson believes he is already too old to trick or trick. Instead, he wants to go to a teen party or pull stupid teen pranks. Somehow, he and Jake come to a compromise, agreeing to secretly spend the night in their local Spirit Halloween. Their third friend Bo knows it is a bad idea, but he is even more passive than Jake.

Unbeknownst to them, the store leased an empty old Kmart or whatever, built near the site of the orphanage legendary real estate developer Alex Windsor tried to evict, before his untimely death from witchcraft. Windsor has become a local legend, but his ghost is very real. He still hates kids, but he would be happy to take possession of one of the boys’ bodies. They could use some adult supervision, but they will have to settle for Carson’s teen sister, Kate (which will be just fine with the smitten Jake). She figures out what they are up to, but she does not expect to also find Windsor’s ghost controlling Spirit Halloween’s ghoulish animatronics and standees.

This film could also be called “Product Placement: The Movie,” but it is easy to see geeky pre-teens loving it (we probably would have). It is not The Monster Squad, but it has Christopher Lloyd channeling his Who Framed Roger Rabbit persona as the sinister Windsor. The various possessed Halloween decorations are amusing and most likely will inspire increased sales from indulgent parents.

The Munsters: Revived by Rob Zombie

This beloved TV family was more apple pie-American than the Waltons, the Cleavers, or the Simpsons, but they originally hailed from Transylvania. Sure, some most fans might be somewhat fonder of the Adamses or the Collinses of Collinsport, but we all have a soft spot for Herman Munster and family. That’s why everyone had the same thought when Rob Zombie’s remake was announced: “he better not screw it up.” At least he gets the tone right in The Munsters, which releases today on DVD and Netflix.

Lily is a ghoul (with the moistest) living with her father the Count, who wants her to settle down with a wealthy Nosferatu. Instead, she falls for Herman Munster, the days-old creation of Dr. Henry Augustus Wolfgang. He was stitched together soon after the death of two brothers. One was a brilliant quantum physicist. The other was a moronic nightclub comic. Guess which one’s brain Wolfgang’s assistant Floop was supposed to steal and which he plundered instead.

The Count thinks Herman is an idiot, but it is love at first sight for Lily. Unfortunately, the Count is not wrong about Munster, which makes him easy prey for Lily’s scammer brother Lester, a compulsive gambling werewolf deeply indebted to fortune-teller-real estate developer Zoya Krupp (yes, we still love Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva in The Wolf Man, but the Roma stereotypes are getting a bit outdated).

Unlike every other film Rob Zombie ever made, The Munsters is sweet and gentle. You won’t hear anyone leveling charges of toxic fandom to defend the film, because it respects what made the original so enduring—a loving nuclear family, who just happen to look like vintage Universal monsters. To that end, there are a number of warmly pleasing sequences, like Herman and Lily’s duet on “I’ve Got You Babe” and Herman’s introduction to Lily’s uncle, the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The problem with Zombie’s script is that it is a totally unnecessary origin story. We completely get who the Munsters are. There is no need wasting time explaining. Just cut to the riffing on classic monster tropes. Frankly, there is not a lot of genuine conflict to drive the narrative, such as it is. We do not even get to meet Eddie or Marilyn Munster yet, but the original cast-members Butch Patrick and Pat Priest who portrayed them have voice-over cameos (as Tin Can Man and an airline announcer) that viewers should be forewarned of, because otherwise they aren’t likely to register.

Preman: Silent Fury

Premen are not exactly triads, because they pretend to be guardians of their neighborhoods. Consider them Indonesian “community organizers.” Of course, when crooked politicians want a block cleared of residents, they are the ones to call. Naturally, they turn on one of their own when his son witnesses one of their murders in Randolph Zaini’s Preman: Silent Fury, which releases today on DVD and BluRay.

For various reasons, some related to his deafness, Sandi has profound self-esteem issues. He really believes he is only fit to be enforcer for Guru’s Preman gang. When he first joined the Preman, they were more like what they present themselves to be, because they were led by the respected Haji. Now, Haji is on the other side, refusing to vacate the neighborhood a mobbed-up politician wants to re-develop.

Unfortunately, Sandi’s son Pandu sees Guru murdering Haji. Sandi hopes to stash Pandu with his estranged mother, but Guru’s assassin is hot on their heels. The flamboyant Ramon is a notoriously messy killer, who enjoys snipping up his targets with his hairdresser’s scissors. Right, you won’t see a villain like Ramon in a Hollywood movie anytime soon.

Preman definitely isn’t Hollywood, but it and other Indonesian martial arts releases make a good substitute for the action films we used to enjoy from Hong Kong. Tragically, the HK film industry has been profoundly compromised by the CCP, to the point where the propaganda outweighs everything else. Preman has plenty of the old school, bone-crunching action we’re missing and it is also weirdly eccentric, which also follows in HK traditions. At one point, Sandi cuts through a small army of Preman thugs, who appear in his mind’s eye as fuzzy cartoon animals.

Zaini plumbs his antihero’s subconscious deeper and further than most martial arts films ever attempt. At times, it is downright neurotically existential. However, Zaini always takes care of the action business. Preman’s fight scenes are particularly distinctive, because of Sandi’s preferred weapon of choice: the monkey’s fist, a rope on a string that takes on lethal power through centrifugal force.