wer horror movie review

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

A defense attorney begins to suspect that there might be more to her client, who is charged with the murders of a vacationing family, than meets the eye. A defense attorney begins to suspect that there might be more to her client, who is charged with the murders of a vacationing family, than meets the eye. A defense attorney begins to suspect that there might be more to her client, who is charged with the murders of a vacationing family, than meets the eye.

• William Brent Bell
• Matthew Peterman
• Brian Scott O'Connor
• Sebastian Roché
• 95 User reviews
• 55 Critic reviews
• 1 nomination

• Talan Gwynek

• Klaus Pistor

• Gavin Flemyng

• Claire Porter

• Henry Porter

• Peter Porter
• Mrs. Gwynek
• Officer Rineaux
• News Interviewer
• Lead Officer - Abandoned Building
• Lead Officer At Barn #1
• Lead Officer At Barn #2

• French Farmer #1
• French Farmer #2

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Filming for Wer began in May 2012 in Bucharest, Romania, and William Brent Bell shot the movie concurrently with another project, The Vatican.
• Goofs When Gavin is shaving himself of his hair, the last thing he shaves is his left eyebrow, but in the next, cut-to scene when he starts looking up into the mirror, the eyebrow is unshaven, and the same for when he starts screaming into the mirror in the next shot.

Klaus Pistor : That's why his whole family should be exterminated

Klaus Pistor : Come on motherfucker... show yourself

• Connections Featured in Bad Movie Beatdown: The Devil Inside (2013)

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 33 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Robert’s Review: Wer (2013)

Sometimes cheesy, occasionally nonsensical, but kept solidly on the rails by an interesting story and some splattery goodness. Werewolves get all scientifical!

★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ Directed by William Brent Bell

It’s a story as old as, well… wolves, I guess. The werewolf. Those vicious, hirsute denizens of the night have long been prowling around the edges of our favorite genre. From classics like Ginger Snaps (2000), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and Dog Soldiers (2002) to Lindsay Lohan’s raging dumpster fire, Among the Shadows (2019), if you’ve got a craving for some hairy horror there’s a movie out there to suit your taste.

Writer/director William Brent Bell’s Wer (2013) easily fits somewhere in the middle of the pack. Based in France, Wer tells the story of American civil rights lawyer, Kate Moore [ A.J. Cook ; TV’s Criminal Minds (2005 – 2020)], and her team who have been hired to defend a man accused of murder.

Okay, maybe “accused of murder” is putting it too lightly. This quietly eccentric giant of a man, Talan Gwynek [ Brian Scott O’Connor in his first and only role in anything, according to IMDB], is accused of attacking a young family of three: brutally mauling the wife, killing the husband, and mostly devouring their pre-teen son. What follows is part C.S.I. , part police procedural, and part bloody mess.

The French police lead by Commander Pistor [ Sebastian Roché ; HBO’s The Man in the High Castle (2016 – 2018)] reluctantly work with Ms. Moore and her legal team as she tries to prove shaggy Mr. Gwynek couldn’t possibly have eaten that small family. Research is done, conditions diagnosed, and experiments performed. The end result being carnage, death, and bodies rent asunder. Well done, legal team!

Wer is a bit of a slow burn, but it has a satisfying payoff for the viewer who sticks with it. Truthfully, A.J. Cook has never been able to carry a movie and the complete absence of chemistry between her and Simon Quarterman [HBO’s Westworld (2016 – 2020)] — the legal team’s animal expert and supposed love interest for our main character — doesn’t do the movie any favors. Just ignore all that, though. The story is fun, the scientific exploration of lycanthropy is entertaining, and the action sequences are satisfyingly brutal.

If you’re a fan of those of a wolfen persuasion, do yourself a favor and check out Wer . This strangely little-mentioned film manages to hold its own in spite of its flaws and is a good time to boot.

Wer is available for streaming from Amazon and likely all sorts of other places as well.

Review by Robert Zilbauer.

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WER (Movie Review)

Charlie's rating: ★ ★ ★ ½ director: william brent bell | release date: 2013.

I have been and always will be a massive proponent of the werewolf genre. From way back to Lon Chaney Jr.’s  The Wolf Man  up to contemporary classics like  Dog Soldiers . The issue when delivering on a concept with generally perceived strict rules like Werewolves tends to become “how can we utilize well-traveled genre terrain for new and inventive ideas”. Thankfully William Brent Bell’s  WER  is up to the task of using a few new spins on the werewolf genre as well as packaging them in an in-your-face, found footage/mockumentary style without the need of maintaining a consistent and specific point of view. Bell’s previous work consists of the poorly received video game horror flick  Stay Alive  and the dreadful found footage exorcist picture  The Devil Inside , so color me surprised that this film is both competent and interesting. After a brutal double homicide involving tourists in rural France, the lone survivor gives a description of the murderer that is quite similar to that of a werewolf. Through a flurry of newscasts it’s revealed the police have apprehended Talan Gwynek (Brian Scott O’Connor) for the crimes, under possibly corrupt motives. Defense attorney Kate Moore (A.J. Cook) sees this as an opportunity for career growth as well as believing in Talan’s innocence despite his imposing physique. Talan resembles the description from the survivor standing 7 feet tall and featuring thick body hair and a beard. Yet the defense team quickly uncovers more information that seems to lead them to think Talan isn’t the murderer. With forensic help from Kate’s ex Gavin (Simon Quarterman) it becomes the defense team’s belief that Talan suffers from a rare disease that would physically disable him from being able to have committed the crimes. A series of medical tests are run on Talan for verification, and then the tone of the film drastically changes. WER  represents a very visceral and grisly take on the genre. Blood and gore is ample throughout the feature. An early scene of an autopsy on the first victims illustrates just how gruesome the rest of the film can be. With fast paced editing and a zooming camera, most of the gore is brief but affecting.  WER  maintains a solid energy after being built on a courtroom premise for over 30 minutes, consistently featuring bodies tossed around like dolls, and limbs treated like the petals of a flower. It’s an energetic and engaging experience that vividly captures the locations and people involved in each situation. The performances in  WER  are also top notch. Kate Moore’s portrayal by A.J. Cook is confident yet vulnerable in each successive scene. Brian Scott O’Connor is tremendous in both his physical presence and his seemingly gentle nature. It is very clear from early on that O’Connor is sweet, perhaps misunderstood, but possibly extremely dangerous. Simon Quarterman is also surprisingly essential to the film and quite nearly the heart of the story with his complex delivery of Gavin’s motives. Overall it’s a strong cast that lets the top three do a lot of the leg work. They keep the material interesting and remain committed to their duties even when the audiences’ interest may wane a bit. WER  is a strong entry to the werewolf genre; it’s not altogether a classic, or a disappointment either. There’s plenty to love including the performers and the action sequences, but certain scenes appear cheap and needed another pass on the CGI. The pacing of the third act is dreadfully slow, and the reactions of police to the presence of a supernatural creature are downright stupid (Yea there’s a super strong werewolf killing everyone, what do you say we try to corner him in a tight cave!). But there are some nice, if predictable, character turns that amp up the human drama just enough to maintain the interest to the film’s conclusion.

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Wer Reviews

Modern science, rural v. city politics, and a drop of superstitious fantasy come together for a partly found footage horror nightmare with werewolves.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 6, 2019

While Wer stumbles a bit out of the gate, a fiercely wild werewolf story eventually takes over that enters genre areas previously unexplored by horror filmmakers, resulting in an ambitious payoff that redefines how we see werewolves.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Aug 24, 2014

WER: Film Review

Synopsis: A defence attorney begins to suspect that there might be more to her client, who is charged with the murders of a vacationing family, than meets the eye.

Originally made in 2013, it’s been a long two years for William Brent Bell’s lycan thriller WER to reach our shores. One part found-footage film and one part action thriller, WER is an adrenaline-fuelled creature feature offering audiences a realistic take on the werewolf legend.

Here a defence team, lead by Final Destination 2’s A.J. Cooke, are given the task of proving their client is innocent after an eye-witness places him at the scene of a vicious murder. Desperate to prove that his wolf-like MO is a consequence of a mental illness rather than a supernatural curse their opinion begins to change the deeper they delve into the mystery.

Despite its somewhat amateur approach, WER quickly becomes an engrossing police thriller until its generic third act. Bell’s direction can get messy during the action scenes as the camera work is unsteady throughout but beyond that he has crafted a smart package that overall has a strong payoff.

A.J. Cooke delivers a bog standard performance bringing very little to the film and is clearly overshadowed by her co-stars. For example, Brian Scott O’Connor’s performance as Talan is incredibly strong by comparison. He takes his audience on a emotionally draining journey starting out as very vulnerable but through the subtleties in his performance, a slow-creeping feeling of menace oozes a sense of dread creating a very unsettling sensation of unease.

As with any good creature flick the effects are important and sadly this is where the movie is a let down. The effects are mostly CGI but look incredibly choppy on screen which slightly mars the experience as the film goes on. Thankfully the entirely believable performance from the cast keeps the story on track therefore effectively reducing the fallout of the hammy effects.

A fine meal strung together by an intriguing web of mystery laid lovingly on a bed of lycan myth, WER is served as a recipe that demands an acquired taste. So, if you are a werewolf fanatic like myself then there’s a lot of meat to chew on here but, for anyone else… approach with caution.

Words: Jon Dickinson (@marvelguy)

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2013 Directed by William Brent Bell

The legend reborn

A defense attorney begins to suspect that her client, who is charged with the murders of a vacationing family, might be more than meets the eye.

A.J. Cook Sebastian Roché Simon Quarterman Vik Sahay Brian Scott O'Connor Stephanie Lemelin Oaklee Pendergast Angelina Armani Corneliu Ulici Brian D. Johnson Sarah-Jane Mee Ozana Oancea Alexandra Pirici Constantin Florescu Ionut Grama Rudy Rosenfeld Collin Blair Camelia Maxim Gelu Nitu Alin Olteanu Alexandru Nedelcu Lucy Kite Dominic Reynolds Dominique Schwoebel Horatiu Bob Olimpia Mălai Adrian Ciobanu Sibylla Oarcea Clare Fernyhough Show All… Mihai Stănescu Charlie Angela Silviu Dudescu Ioan Brancu Vasile Nistor Andreea Esca Geo Dinescu Daniel Popa

Director Director

William Brent Bell

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Simona Dinu Ovidiu Paunescu

Producers Producers

Matthew Peterman Morris Paulson Steven Schneider Kelly McCormick Lucinda Englehart Elle Smith

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Marc Schaberg Nick Meyer Brian Pitt

Writers Writers

William Brent Bell Matthew Peterman

Casting Casting

Kelly Wagner Dominika Posserén Domnica Circiumaru

Editors Editors

Tim Mirkovich William Brent Bell Robert Komatsu

Cinematography Cinematography

Alejandro Martínez

Production Design Production Design

Tony DeMille

Special Effects Special Effects

Adrian Nica Sorin Udroiu Sam Chronic

Stunts Stunts

Composer composer.

Brett Detar

Sound Sound

Mark A. Rozett Greg Mauer Trip Brock Steven Avila Peter D. Lago Steven Utt Kelly Vandever Alexander Pugh Matt Salib T.J. Boyd James Bailey Mirel Cristea

Costume Design Costume Design

Monica Florescu

Makeup Makeup

FilmDistrict Incentive Filmed Entertainment Prototype Room 101 Sierra/Affinity

Releases by Date

27 aug 2014, 16 nov 2013, 27 feb 2014, 07 aug 2014, 14 aug 2014, 14 oct 2014, 04 dec 2014, 19 aug 2014, 23 sep 2014, 11 mar 2015, releases by country.

• Theatrical 18

South Korea

• Theatrical 청소년 관람불가

89 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Bunny🐰🪓 ★★★½

Ever since I was a kid I was fascinated by werewolves even before I started geeking out over horror movies but it started fading away slowly because there weren't that many great films about this subject matter and one day a cunt of a movie named TWILIGHT is released and it ultimately kills all the fascinations that I had for it but when I heard about WER I wanted to watch it but again was alarmed because it was made by the same guy who pooped The Devil Inside a year ago, so I wasn't expecting much from it but damn you William Brent Bell you redeemed yourself and I respect you for that.

Wer is about a man who…

Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★½

An exciting new take on Werewolves that is more than worthy of your time! I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised!

Gruesome, Gory, and Graphic Violence!

The color of the CGI blood was off.. but guess what I'm a big girl now so I managed to get over it! ;-)

Review by Tim McClelland ★★★½

A unique take on the werewolf movie that really tries to do something a bit different. The first half is really just about a lawyer trying to help her client who has been convicted of murder, but then it takes a turn and the second half becomes a whole new beast...yeah, I'm not going to apologize for that phrasing. The end builds to a big finale and they really have fun letting the werewolf be an unstoppable badass. There is some decent gore that felt subdued at certain points and you won't find any crazy transformations here, but that didn't hinder my enjoyment because they weren't entirely necessary for the way they were telling this story. It's a cool take on the creature we have all seen before and it's quite entertaining.

Review by ZaraGwen ★★½

I wish this movie could have decided if it was going to be found-footage or not because the inconsistency was really annoying

Review by maiashewrote ★★★

Werewolves made found footage enjoyable for me! Is there nothing they can’t do?

Review by F3lixL3g1ons ★★★★

Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Drama, Fantasy… a little bit of everything under the banner of Lycanthropy. If that sounded dry, don’t worry: this is solid Found Footage that doesn't pull any punches and stands out from the pack; and I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy every bit of it.

Definitely not for haters of the shaky genre; but for those of you who appreciate it, this is certainly one worth chasing down.

Review by night_shift ★★★

This was a pretty interesting take on the werewolf genre.

Defense attorney Kate Moore, played by A.J. Cook, takes on a case being held against a local man Talan Gwynek who's accused of a brutal slaughter of a man and his young son, the wife barely surviving. The evidence against him is an eye witness description of a large, hairy man from the clearly traumatized survivor. As Kate delves further into the case, joined by ex and animal expert Gavin and a sort of research wizard Eric, she finds that Talan is not all that he seems and neither is the case.

I really, really liked this explanation of how werewolves work. It was interesting and they did try making…

Review by abs 🦭 ★★½

idk i just watched for aj cook

Review by MoeMents ★★★½

Der Campingausflug einer französischen Familie endet mit einem tödlichen Tierangriff. Danach legt der Film seinen bestialischen Vorfall aber in die Hände einer Rechtsanwältin (A.J. Cook), sodass wir im Found Footage ähnlichen Stil einem Ermittlungskrimi folgen.

"Es gibt eine Studie über Epileptiker, bei denen der Vollmond Anfälle auslöst."

William Brent Bell (Devil Inside, The Boy, Orphan: First Kill) vermengt Justizkrimi, Tierhorror und Mysteriedrama zu einem ungewöhnlichen Genrefilm, nervt zwar mit Wackelkamera und viel zu rasanten Schnitten, wertet durch subtile Genre-Eckpunkte und deftige Akzente aber zweifelsohne auf. Selbst wenn umgehend zu erahnen ist, wo die Geschichte hingehen wird, liefern Kriminalfall und medizines Mysterium eine spannende Atmosphäre und einmal eine andere Herangehensweise ans "bestialische" Nischenkino. Wer minimale Trashapekte in Kauf nehmen kann, wird seine radikale Freude damit haben. Unerwartet gute Überraschung!

Review by John (Magic Rat Movies) ★★★★ 1

Typical……you wait years for a decent werewolf movie, then two come along at once! Like the similarly impressive Late Phases, Wer tackles the hairy old horror favourite from an unusual angle. Shot with a documentary aesthetic, Wer begins with an American family gruesomely slaughtered whilst on a camping trip in the French countryside. The main suspect for the savage murders is Talan Gwynek (Brian Scott O’Connor) a physically imposing giant - hirsute, brutish, borderline mute, a wolf in man’s clothing? From here the film takes the form of a forensic investigation / criminal defence drama, with A.J.Cook’s incredibly easy on the eye attorney Kate Moore desperate to prove her client’s innocence, whilst beginning to question that very fact herself, as…

Review by Jayson Kennedy ★★★

Werewolf. Read anything about this horror and that word is bandied all over. An example of a worst kept secret tainting mystery for an attorney and her two investigators to unravel. What's coming is obvious, but Wer rides on rationalizing a captured murderer resembling Italian actor George Eastman gone feral. That may disappoint since the research gets procedural, exploring motivations and possible explanations over his extreme strength, until a scene inadvertently(?) riffing Howling III (1987). Then a manhunt and possibility of another bitten satisfies the action-horror slant wolfman cinema usually culminates in. A transformation is denied though; keeping to the non-traditional approach. Watched via Universal's DVD.

Review by Chris Brown ★★★★½ 1

The best werewolf film in many a full moon.

Great plot, interesting characters, unflinchingly violent and gory and great direction.

I always thought the concept of a werewolf was so damned good that it was guaranteed to always make a film great. But the years have proven that theory dead wrong, with most werewolf movies sucking. Hard. That's what makes it so nice when a film uses the concept creatively in an exciting and scary film.

This film is fucking fantastic

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Wer [Review]

This ain’t no  Silver Bullet  kind of werewolf flick.   Wer  is a fairly fresh new take on the classic monster genre that has become quite stale.  Most of the movie plays out like a mystery.  Is Talan, who clearly looks the part of a werewolf, the evil monster that he is accused of being, or is there something more sinister at play?

With a run time around 88 minutes, it’s an easy film to stay engaged with.  I do think it fits a bit more into the thriller side of the genre, since the scares are basically absent.  There were a couple of eyeball scenes that made me cringe, which is a testament to the effects.  The visual quality almost gave it that B-movie feel, but with the intriguing story and great sound you really stopped noticing that early on.

If I was going to say one thing negative about  Wer , it would be that the last 10 minutes felt a bit out of place.  As the story hits its climax, the thematic mood changes.  I won’t ruin it here, just be prepared for it to run off the rails a bit.

Overall, this is one of those gems that doesn’t deserved to be overlooked.   Wer  is perfect proof that some of these tired old sub-genres still have plenty of life left in them.

Despite being low on the Fear Factor scale, this movie is really worth watching.  Do yourself a favor and queue this one up.

Jacob Hopkins

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The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review

Rating: ★★

Director – William Brent Bell, Screenplay – William Brent Bell & Matthew Peterman, Producers – Matthew Peterman, Morris Paulson & Steven Schneider, Photography – Alejandro Martinez, Music – Brett Detar, Visual Effects/Prosthetic Effects – Almost Human Inc. (Supervisor – Robert Hall), Special Effects Supervisor – Adrian Popescu, Production Design – Tony DeMille. Production Company – Prototype Productions/Room 101, Inc.

A.J. Cook (Kate Moore), Simon Quaterman (Gavin Flemyng), Vik Sahay (Erik Sarin), Sebastian Roche (Captain Klaus Pistor), Brian Scott O’Connor (Talan Gwynek), Camelia Maxim (Mrs Gwynek), Stephanie Lemelin (Claire Porter)

An American family are brutally killed while holidaying in the small French town of Cerdon near Lyon. The hulking, simple-minded Talan Gwynek is arrested by police based on the description given by the surviving wife. Katherine Moore, an American human rights lawyer living in France, comes in to represent Talan. She becomes concerned that the case against him is based on slim evidence. She brings two forensics experts who attempt to determine the type of animal they think killed the family. She comes to believe that Talan suffers from porphyria, which would have made him too weak and incapable of conducting the killings. As they investigate and dig into the secrets of the town, it becomes apparent that what they are dealing with is a werewolf.

Wer was the fourth film from director/writer William Brent Bell. Bell had worked around Hollywood as a second unit director and production assistant since the 1990s and then made his debut with the comedy Sparkle and Charm (1997), which does not appear to have been widely seen. Bell then hit genre material with his next film Stay Alive (2006), which came produced by McG and was premised on the absurd notion that Countess Bathory, one of the historical true-life progenitors of the vampire, had been incarnated inside a videogame. Bell’s next film, The Devil Inside (2012), which told the story of an exorcism employing a Found Footage approach, was a surprise box-office hit, even though the film attracted poor reviews. Wer was Bell’s follow-up, although failed to build on the momentum of The Devil Inside and went directly to dvd.

With Wer , William Brent Bell has set out to make a werewolf film. Although it is obvious to every member of the audience that they are watching a werewolf film, the film wants to pretend that it might not be a werewolf film. There is the strange oddly truncated title (surely the correct prefix is ‘were– ‘?), while the term ‘werewolf’ is also mentioned only once throughout at the very end. The rest of the script wants to play a game where it first teases us that Brian Scott O’Connor could not have had the strength to conduct the attacks and then that he has a condition known as porphyria (which is medically rather different in symptoms to what the film makes it into).

Much of the film seems to swing between these alternate explanations as though it is trying to opt for an ambiguously mundane explanation for lycanthropy. This is something that has a great many possibilities – the classic Val Lewton film Cat People (1942) was premised on doing exactly that.

On the other hand, William Brent Bell’s direction is far too unsubtle to allow this to work. He wants to also give us scenes with Brian Scott O’Connor transforming and going amok, whereupon all the carefully established alternate explanation is reduced to zip. As a result, all that it seems we have is a werewolf film that takes nearly two-thirds of its running time to ever unleash its werewolf.

William Brent Bell also seems to want to create a Found Footage werewolf film. This is an idea that has intriguing potential. In recent years, we have seen the Found Footage genre resurrect almost every other horror archetype – the ghost story, the possession/exorcism film, the monster movie, the vampire film, the zombie film, the Frankenstein film, the serial killer film, the alien body snatchers theme – but not the werewolf genre.

One had hopes that Wer might have emerged along the lines of the quite good Afflicted (2013), a Found footage film that took the point-of-view of watching someone as they transformed into a vampire. This sort of happens with the scenes where Simon Quaterman becomes infected and gradually develops more wolf-like habits throughout the course of the film. That said, the direction these scenes are going is obvious from the moment we see he has been bitten and holds no surprise.

Moreover, what we have is a Found Footage film that is only pretending to be Found Footage. We get much in the way of handheld camerawork that wanders all over the place, is jumpy, out of focus and unclear. Despite this, the film does not make the pretence to being filmed by people in the midst of what is happening. Indeed, there are specific scenes, like where A.J. Cook is locked alone in an interview room with Brian Scott O’Connor or where Simon Quaterman is observing his changes, where quite clearly nobody could have been looking on filming what is happening. And so all that we end up getting is an ordinary dramatic film that to no particular artistic end is filled with shoddy, amateur-looking camerawork.

William Brent Bell next made The Boy (2016) about a sinister doll, followed by its sequel Brahms: The Boy II (2020), the ghost story Separation (2021) and Orphan: First Kill (2022).

Trailer here

Wer Review – the best werewolf movie in recent times

• Published on 9 April 2021
• by The ScreenSlut

In my almost hopeless search for werewolf movies that aren’t comedies, I managed to find this gem of a horror via Wikipedia of all places. As I have said in my horror sub-genres guide , finding new and good werewolf movies sometimes seems like looking for the holy grail. 

However, in the film Wer I definitely found what I was looking for. Wer manages to have an intriguing story that also offers some brutal and electric fight scenes, good enough for any werewolf fan.

Wer starts off with the gruesome deaths of a family who were camping in the woods in the French countryside. However, the wife, Claire Porter, manages to survive. Through her recollection she describes an almost inhuman man, covered in fur and unexplainable strength, who violently attacked and ate her husband and son. A manhunt starts for this man, and the police, hell-bent on tying things up, arrests the recluse Talan Gwynek. We follow a defence attorney, Kate, and her team of specialists who are trying to exonerate him. 

Now this is clearly a low budget movie, which you can tell by the almost found footage style of camera work, which makes the audience feel like flies on the wall. But it also features a different take on werewolves , which are quite different from the traditional imagery we are used to. Some people may balk at this reimagining of a werewolf, however I think they more make up with it with their brutal action scenes at the end. And if this becomes a way for filmmakers to make more werewolf movies, which are few and far between, then I am all for it. 

Adding to that, unfortunately due to this non-traditional style of werewolves, there are no body horror transformations to get excited about. There is a hint of one, in the later portion of the film, but this quickly is interrupted with violent action. However, it would be possible to interpret that the transformation of the werewolf is not fully done, and what we witness in this movie is just the start of things. Which would make the later brutality even more frightening.

However, I have to mention that it is a bit of a shame that the name Wer was picked. If they had kept the subject matter of werewolves on the down low, it would have had an even bigger impact. Though it actually means “who” in German , but for English-speaking audiences, it is clear why they stuck with that name.

With this in mind, you do end up expecting something to happen, so the writers tipped their hand a bit. Which is a shame, as with their shift in tone, from law procedural story to bloody horror, would have been more of a delightful surprise. This does not mean that I did not thoroughly enjoy this film, knowing roughly what was going to happen. 

Due to the focus on the arrest and prosecution of Talan, it is easy to forget that this movie is meant to be about werewolves. But it adds a nice human element that allows you to connect not only with Talan, but Kate and the rest of her team. This is expertly done, by focusing on the police and their hasty handling of this case. 

Wer unlike other werewolf movies, tries to go for a less fantastical approach to werewolves, not claiming supernatural forces behind this ill-fated affliction. They do hint at some link to the moon, but they do not delve too deeply into this side of things. But I am glad that they don’t go too far in the direction of realism and science. Wer doesn’t try to rewrite the werewolf origin story exactly, but its more so that the characters are trying to make sense of what they are seeing.

When the final reveal of the werewolf was shown, I must admit, I was quite surprised. The preceding events had been slow paced, that this gear shift change was quite dramatic. The resulting bloody deaths from the werewolf becoming known, are not something to be missed. What they lack in body horror visuals, they make up with gory deaths, that will make you grimace at times. 

They do not shy away from showing the gore as well, which you would suspect with low budget movies. The final showdown, even if you do not agree with the rest of the movie, is definitely worth the watch. But it is really the buildup in the first half, that makes the ending so much more shocking and compelling. Wer is a modern take on the werewolf monster that you cannot miss.

Wer is available to stream on Shudder and to rent on Amazon Prime Video.

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A “found footage” horror movie about werewolves? From the guys behind The Devil Inside?  Bear with me, I promise there’s a light at the end of this topsy-turvy tunnel.

Where The Exorcism Of Emily Rose attempts to weigh demonic possession against mental illness, Wer calls upon the same judicial storytelling by putting a suspected werewolf on trial in hopes of proving innocence through physical ailments. Playing out like a faux-documentary, most of the film is spent watching a sassy lawyer defender her furry client, condemning a case riddled with inconsequential evidence that only the worst investigation could slum together, but a shockingly invigorated third act changes at the rising of a full moon. Writer/Director William Brent Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman’s previous film,  The Devil Inside, crumbles under the weight of vapid storytelling and an absolutely insulting ending, but these rejuvenated artists refuse to wander the same joyless road a second time. Wer comes alive where The Devil Inside falls apart, stuffing audience’s gullets with frenzied werewolf carnage, but after sitting through two acts worth of rather plodding casework, crowds will be divided over one common question – does Wer ‘s payoff deliver a rowdy enough conclusion to compensate for an hour’s worth of lethargic legalities?

A.J. Cook plays Kate Moore, an ambitious American ex-pat lawyer abroad, who must defend a French man named Talan (Brian Scott O’Connor) who’s currently on trial for the murder of a vacationing family. Convinced such a visibly suffering man couldn’t possibly have ravaged the unsuspecting campsite, crushing skulls with the power of 4,000 PSI, it becomes her mission to prove Talan’s innocence. Aided by her crack “investigator” Erik (Vik Sahay) and her romantically complicated medical advisor Gavin (Simon Quarterman), Kate battles with local authorities who believe Talan to be a ruthless murderer, but each clue uncovered sides more with the timid countryman – until a dark family secret changes everything.

Frankly, Wer deserves credit for pulling Bell and Peterman from the dregs of horror genre Hell, banished to the lowest points after wasting everyone’s time who grumbled through The Devil Inside . Wer might begin just like their previously unfulfilling exorcism flick, hiding reveals while swinging focus around like their cameraman suddenly experienced a seizure, but then a surprisingly intriguing werewolf legends kicks in with ample amounts reinvention and ingenuity. I promise, you’ve never seen werewolves dealt with such humanity, transforming even more minimally than Michael J. Fox’s slam-dunking teenage hairball – creating more a murderer than Universal creature.

Similar genre pieces such as An American Werewolf In London , and more recently Hemlock Grove , pride themselves on skin-tearing transformations whenever it’s time for Wolfy to play, but I find Wer ‘s scenario tenfold more frightening because changes to Talan’s body are physically understated. Super strength, four-legged speed and a nimble agility are hidden under patchy fur and a gangly body, ready to make mincemeat of victims ignorant of the moon’s full appearance. Where The Devil Inside vomits nothing but wretched staleness, Wer remains authentically fresh, viciously engaging and hauntingly memorable – the stuff new legends are made out of.

While werewolf design alone impresses, Wer rockets uncontrollably into a nightmare realm where escape is not an option, nor are deaths painlessly swift. This can’t be the same William Brent Bell, can it? Talan’s killing spree savagely pulls every punch possible with an intensified fury werewolves haven’t felt in some time, ever since Twilight ‘s shirtless wonder doghoused an entire subgenre. Heads splatter against walls like rotten fruit, fangs tear through weak flesh and characters fear werewolf attacks once again, kicking into an intensified overdrive once Bell’s sinister vision unleashes itself. Wer brings the thunder in terms of werewolf horror, and becomes one of the more thrilling watches once Kate is forced to hunt down the elusive creature she unknowingly releases, as Bell makes sure all the horror excitement actually happens ON screen this time around.

Then again, watching A.J. Cook’s uninspired lawyering doesn’t exactly replicate the feel of O.J. Simpson’s trial – and that’s going to be the dividing factor among audiences. More patient horror fans will be in for a rare treat once all the murky investigations turn into energized, bloody splatterfests, but Wer  doesn’t exactly muster the gusto of a horrific  A Few Good Men  rendition. There’s an inevitability while watching Cook sift through medical records, crime scene footage and torn-up carcasses, knowing that a werewolf movie will bust out at any moment, and it’s this anticipation that downplays the severity of Talan’s judicial trial. A conflict is established, legitimate attempts are explored to suggest the hairy manbeast’s innocence, but Bell and Peterman rely heavily on “found footage” boredom – quick cuts, soulless excitement and overburdening redundancy. Don’t get me wrong, Wer is a MASSIVE step forward as far as horror is concerned from our stigmatic filmmakers, but their storytelling aspects still require much more tightening of the screws if true brilliance is to be achieved.

I tend to be more on the forgiving side, and in that breath, Wer shocked the hell out of me. Dumped straight to VOD without any notice, I was certain Bell and Peterman were setting me up for another superfluous horror experience – but a wasteful snoozer  Wer  is not. Far from it. Dare I say Talan’s werewolf incarnation provides a genuinely unique werewolf character unseen by horror watchers, traversing grounds and legends never dreamed of? Wer embraces a human, daringly underdeveloped creature who plays off of our own unbridled aggression, not a sinisterly bloodthirsty mean streak, making for an infinitely more harrowing – and understandable – monster. Of course, there’s also a more mundane criminal story one has to take part in before Bell and Peterman flex their beastly muscles, but  Wer is good enough to curiously make you wonder if The Devil Inside is worth a redemptive second chance.

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Film review: wer (2014).

The Black Saint 06/26/2015 Uncategorized

A defense attorney begins to suspect that her client, who is charged with the murders of a vacationing family, might be more than meets the eye.

Although this is subject to debate, there hasn’t been a good werewolf movie in decades in my slightly skewered opinion. There are those of you reading this who’ll immediately bring up the usual suspects, films like An American Werewolf In London & The Howling (Both 1981), some of you will bring up Wolfen (1981 again. A really good year for werewolves I guess…). But I said “In decades” a sentence or two back so those are covered. I’m willing to bet that there’s a couple of you knuckleheads that’ll say The Wolfman (2010) was a shining example of a film featuring a hairy dude who kills people. Needless to say, most if not all of the free world wholeheartedly disagrees with you. My personal favorite werewolf flick is called Bad Moon (1996) and while it’s really nothing to write home about and its transformation scene is pretty crappy, its got a really good script/performances to make up for the rest of its deficiencies (of which there are many). Call me wacky, call me crazy, call me Ishmael – I don’t care, I just really dig Bad Moon .

Well, I just finished watching a new movie featuring werewolves called Wer (crappy title) that I might think is better than all of the aforementioned flicks. Hell, I might just be thinking that it’s the best damn werewolf flick I’ve ever seen, but since this is coming from someone whose favorite movie of all time is The Manitou (1978), you might wanna keep reading a bit further before you go running to your local Redbox to rent it.

Wer takes place in France and the film opens with an American family camping out in the woods. Of course, they just happen to be filming themselves as they go through their late night shenanigans before hitting their sleeping bags and their camera catches the moment when something suddenly emerges from the woods and savagely tears both the father and his young son to ribbons. The mom is badly disfigured in the attack as well, but she survives and tells the police that they were attacked by a hairy man with big hands. Shortly afterwards, a man named Talan Gwynek (Brian Scott O’Connor) who fits the given description perfectly is found and summarily arrested. Talan is assigned a public defender, Kate Moore ( A.J. Cook ) to handle his case & she brings along two assistants with her, Eric Sarin ( Vic Sahay ) & Gavin Flemyng ( Simon Quaterman ). The three of them have to put up with a lot of resistance from detective Klaus Pistor ( Sebastian Roche ), who seems to know a lot more about Talan than he’s letting on.

During a test to see if Talan is actually a sufferer of a disease known as Porphyria, he escapes (savagely slaughtering the doctors surrounding him and it’s up to Kate & Klaus (along with a gaggle of French policemen, to capture him before he kills again. And while all this is going on – unbeknownst to everyone, Gavin is beginning to show symptoms very similar to what Talan is going through, all because he was wounded during an earlier outburst from Talan.

Let’s talk about the cast here for a second, A.J. Cook ( Mother’s Day, Wishmaster 3: Beyond The Gates Of Hell ) might not look like your idea of a defense attorney but she nails the determination & doggedness that they use in their jobs. The fact that she’s easy on the eyes doesn’t hurt too much either. Vic Sahay underplays his role a bit but there’s a method to his madness and it works here. Simon Quaterman ( The Devil Inside, Scorpion King 2 ) doesn’t seem to have too much of a role at first but as the movie progresses, that changes up big time and he’s terrific. Sebastian Roche looks a lot like Chef Gordon Ramsey and has the same attitude as well, but it works for the character. But Wer would be nothing if it’s title character had a weak actor playing the role, luckily Brian Scott O’ Connor was cast. He doesn’t say too much in the film (mebbe 3-4 words total) but his physical presence is so overwhelming that whenever he’s on screen you can’t help but marvel at him. I was just at the Mad Monster Party convention in NC last month and I witnessed Richard Kiel putting his enormous hands over people’s faces as if his hand was a baseball mitt & their faces were baseballs. O’ Connor’s hands are bigger. Much, MUCH bigger . He cuts a mean profile also, and he’s so naturally hairy that it’s pretty easy to look at him and wonder…” Werewolf “? All performances here are first rate.

The EFX work here is pretty spectacular as well save for one glaring problem – CGI blood. Although it’s used sparingly, it looks so fake that it nearly took me out of the moment whenever it reared it’s ugly digitized head. Unfortunately, the two best scenes in the film (Hospital massacre/Cops Vs. Talan massacre) are the ones with the most CGI blood in them and that’s a shame. he hospital slaughter in particular might’ve been a scene for the ages save for that damned phony looking blood. But besides that one little issue, the EFX here are first rate. Talan doesn’t so much change into a wolf as he does into a very big angry man who just happens to have talons, fangs and is covered in hair. The idea to shadow his face with his hair throughout the film is a good one. It makes Talan look vaguely lupine the second he’s introduced into the film. In the scene where he escapes from the police inside a tall building, Talan jumps out of a 10th story window, crashing (& perfectly landing) down to the street below like he was Spider Man . It’s a terrifically set up chain of events that leads us to this scene and the payoff for it was epic.

The script (by William Brent Bell & Matthew Peterman ) gets a little bogged down in the middle when it’s discovered that a bad land deal might’ve been the impetus for the werewolf attacks but it doesn’t slow the film down too much. Bell also directed Wer and you might recognize that name from the last film he directed, it was called The Devil Inside (2012) and although it’s on my “ Worst films ever produced ” list, it made a friggin’ fortune and I have to admit that now I’m glad it did because its success led Bell to Wer and Wer just kicks all kinds of ass.

There’s something of a surprise ending here and a veiled promise of a sequel. I really hope this comes to pass because Wer is just a great popcorn movie with terrific performances, outstanding direction & one hell of a big dude playing a werewolf. It’s hardly perfect (Those script issues kill a bit of its momentum) but it’s the best damned werewolf flick I’ve seen since Ginger Snaps (2000). It’s also one of the best films I’ve seen so far this year and a must to watch. Congratulations cast & crew of Wer for bringing scary werewolves back to the cinema!

Wer is now available on VOD.

Wer – 4.5 out of 5 shrouds

Tags A.J. Cook Angelina Armani Oaklee Pendergast Sebastian Roché Stephanie Lemelin Vik Sahay WER William Brent Bell

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12 comments.

If you don’t mention “Ginger Snaps” as an example of a good werewolf movie then the review goes in the pile of “bad reviews”.

Sorry Greg, but I mention “Ginger Snaps” as the last great werewolf movie I’ve seen in the last paragraph of the review. Read the whole review.

Thanks Santos, The Black Saint, for an excellent review. My favorite is WOLFEFN; however, I’d really like to catch this one. You mention it is available on VOD (what is VOD & how can I access it)? Mick

VOD stands for Video On Demand Mick & your local cable company should have a VOD channel available to their subscribers. Films usually range from $4.99-$9.99 depending on when they were released and can be watched as many times as possible for up to 24 hours.

Great review. I’m not a horror fan but enjoyed the movie. Not the lower jaw being ripped off but, as I say, I’m not a horror fan.

I agree about the title. How did that get through committee stage?

Loved the Gordon Ramsey comparison – spot on.

RIP Richard Kiel.

PS. Look out for those unwanted apostrophes!

I think this movie was more realistic then those where they turn into a wolf. The changes were few but believable. I for one think it is well worth renting or owning. 2 thumbs up! Still wondering how tall Brian is and have looked online to find more information on him to no avail. I know this is his first role, but would like more information on him, I think he did a great job!!

Agreed Angel!

Vik Sahay is the best thing about this movie. Subtle. And real. The rest of the movie was flat.

I’m glad to read this review I saw the trailer for it and have been curious about it since while I have one quick question for you what do you think of the werewolf movie dog soldiers?

Hi Lupy, Glad you enjoyed the review. As for Dog Soldiers, I thought it was a nice change from your average everyday werewolf movie. It had a memorable spin to it that I enjoyed a great deal. That being said, I’m not looking forward to the forthcoming sequel.

Thanks for reading!

Well made horror fim..the films villian reminds me of the xmen villian sabretooth. Aj cook is great.

i believe there should be a sequel to this movie to me its one of the best movies ive seen in a long time and its truely realistic and i like that need a part 2 !!!

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Wer (Review)

A fresh take on the werewolf theme.

by Nav Qateel

These past few years we’ve had nothing but shiny, YA friendly vampires, thanks to the likes of Twilight , but there have also been a few decent films, like Let Me In and Byzantium . Then there have been the limitless number of films about zombies, with Brad Pitt doing the over-budgeted World War Z , in an attempt to have the zombie genre taken seriously. Warm Bodies tried to do for zombies what Twilight did for vampires, by making them all cuddly and nice. However, by now the public must be sick to death of zombie films, because I know I am.

What a pleasant surprise it was to see a film about Werewolves, which is a sub-genre of horror that’s been pretty much neglected these past few years. Apart from the classic Ginger Snaps made in 2000, starring Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle, the only other movie of note was the Oscar-winning The Wolfman , released in 2009. Now we have Wer , a Werewolf film by William Brent Bell, whose last effort was the low-budget The Devil Inside , a lackluster affair that cost a mere $1 million and grossed over $50 million. Wer , on the other hand, is an excellent film which actually brings something new to the table, giving us loads of realistic effects and creating an authentic-looking beast.

Wer is set in France, and we begin with an American family camping near woods at night, and while filming with the obligatory hand-held camera, the family are brutally attacked by something unknown, but the camera fails to catch anything worthwhile. The husband and small child are slaughtered but the mother survives, and gives a statement to police telling them it was like a man with big hands that attacked them. It just so happens that an extremely tall and hairy man, Talan Gwynek (Brian Scott O’Connor), lives near where the attack took place, and because he closely fits the description is immediately arrested for the gruesome murders.

Talan refuses to speak to anyone until his newly appointed American lawyer, Kate Moore (A.J. Cook), turns up at the police station. Talan has a strange body and mouth guard to protect the police from his bite, but Kate insists the police remove his cuffs and the gag. The cop in charge, Detective Pistor (played by Sebastian Roché, who bares an uncanny resemblance to Chef Gordon Ramsay) gives her only 5-minutes with the suspect. Talan talks very briefly and when the police rush in to put him back in his restraints, Kate’s co-worker, Gavin Flemyng (Simon Quarterman) is scratched on the arm by Talan. Eventually Talan is on the loose with predictable results.

Talan was played by first-time actor, Brian Scott O’Connor, who put on a good performance. His transformation was minimal as he already had a lot of the characteristics we expect Werewolves to have. This made it more realistic as he didn’t need to turn into a large dog, but only grew large fangs and gained superhuman strength. He was able to toss his victims around like ragdolls, which was very effective looking. A.J. Cook handled her character well with a convincing performance as Talan’s lawyer. Vik Sahay also managed his role well, however, Simon Quarterman gave a standout performance as he began to change into a Werewolf, and really committed himself to his confused character Gavin, who didn’t want to hurt Kate, as he still had feelings for the lawyer.

The music helped elevate the material, and the special effects and makeup were first-rate. Especially the makeup used to create the victims of the werewolf attacks, as these effects were very realistic, demonstrating a high level of skill. Between that and the way Talan killed people really made Wer one of the most exciting films of the genre I’ve seen in years. The only part of Wer where I felt let down was the lack of character development. I never really connected with any of them, which was a pity, because if they were fleshed out more and given greater depth, I feel this film had the potential to become a future classic. As it is, though, it’s still a gem of a horror that I strongly recommend. I doubt we’ll see a Werewolf film of this calibre for some time to come.

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All ‘The Omen’ Movies in Order to Watch

T he 1976 horror movie The Omen was one of the ten highest-grossing movies of its release year, the biggest movie of that summer, and the inspiration for three sequels, a remake, and a new prequel. Yet for a lot of people, the Omen series exists in a kind of post- Exorcist haze, far less iconic than that horror smash despite an instantly recognizable title and character. Well, sort of: As a classic Seinfeld side exchange shows, the nature of Damien, the antichrist child whose antics help fuel the movie’s sequels, is a little fuzzy, especially early on. He’s exactly a classic bad seed in the vein of, well, The Bad Seed , nor is he a child possessed by the devil as in The Exorcist . (He’s not even a “mischievous, rambunctious kid,” as Kramer refers to him.)

The universe’s timing that this scene just appeared in my latest SEINFELD rewatch. I always laugh that none of them know what Damien was. pic.twitter.com/JqaqpAVks8

No, Damien is more of a bad vibe incarnate: a little kid, then tween, then adult who will help bring about an apocalypse, but doesn’t get around to actually doing much about it until the third movie. Before then, unseen forces of evil appear to come together, smiting Damien’s potential enemies without quite implying that Damien himself is directly responsible. That’s part of what makes the first movie’s signature line – “It’s all for you, Damien!” his nanny cries before enthusiastically hanging herself in public – so disturbing. The devotion seems stronger and more supernatural than a more traditionally evil little boy could truly inspire.

This slippery quality also means that the Omen series isn’t locked into the same routines as, say, every exorcism movie that’s followed The Exorcist . Its mix of supernatural horror and slasher-style kills brings to mind the Final Destination series that would flourish a quarter-century later, while some of its casting weirdly harkens back to earlier days of Hollywood, giving the series a time-trippy quality. Though the sequels were not particularly popular or well-reviewed, and maintain the original’s tradition of eluding any truly powerful ideas or statements, they kept the series going long enough to cover the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, and now the ’20s, imperfectly grasping at various anxieties of various decades. Here’s a walkthrough of how to go through the series in chronological order.

There are a few good reasons to watch the most recent Omen movie first, counterintuitive as that may seem. Most surprising, it’s arguably the best of the bunch – certainly the most formally accomplished of the series, and a totally fine choice if you want to limit yourself to sampling one movie from a mid-to-lower-tier horror franchise. Director Arkasha Stevenson, making her feature debut, isn’t working with especially surprising material; the story of Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), a young woman about to take her nun vows at a convent in Italy who detects something untoward going on around her, can also be seen right across the hall in any multiplexes also playing Immaculate . Yet Stevenson builds the standard sense of religious-tinted unease with careful, exacting attention to her imagery – much of which involves keeping her camera fixed on Free’s face for a few beats longer than antsier directors would. Free has an expressively Amy Adams-ish quality, and there’s something authentically touching about the moments where you can register, on her face, the moments where she starts to drift from piety – and there’s something striking about how Stevenson often repeatedly her with her dark hair splayed out behind her, as if reaching for wildness.

The way that The First Omen attempts to flip and complicate the good-versus-evil dynamic of the earlier movies isn’t particularly clever on its own, but in the context of a series that often goes out of its way to avoid centering women despite its focus on child-bearing, it hits significantly harder. (An unspoken creed of the bad guys: No exceptions granted for the life of the mother.) With several genuine shocks amidst the standard church-murk storytelling, this is easily the most visceral and emotionally affecting Omen . The movie’s major drawback also makes it a good choice to watch first: It is very much a prequel to the 1976 film, and the neatness with which it needs to slot into the series undermines its falling action; the characters are essentially stranded in a continuity void. But watching it as a genuine first installment turns that quality into a garden-variety sequel tease (or a perfectly acceptable place to quit entirely). Bonus points for being possibly the only Omen movie to not shrug its shoulders and throw out some growling dogs for auxiliary menace.

Is the original Omen good, or just lucky? It certainly must have benefited from the popularity of The Exorcist , and it’s nowhere near as shocking or effective, a decidedly squarer and more lumbering take on Catholic horror. Though director Richard Donner would go on to make Superman and Lethal Weapon , his first big hit has one foot in an earlier, stodgier era of horror. So rather than digging into the psychology of, say, a woman who has unknowingly lost her newborn baby and raises a replacement child who has been planted with her family to take advantage of their enormous privilege in order to better-position the antichrist for world domination, the movie instead features a lot of older white men discussing religious rituals their upper-class jobs. It’s an evil-child movie for half-checked-out, disengaged fathers.

Sometimes this lends the movie a fascinating ambiguity and even anticipates certain horror trends: Because Damien is never shown as clearly and maliciously responsible for any of the deaths that befall people who try to stop him, the movie creates some real unease about how conscious an under-five boy could possibly be about his evil origins, and how some greater evil power is interacting with this unknowable boy (even as you suspect that it may be waffling as much as evoking doubt). The deaths themselves are highlights of the movie – “cool kills,” in the parlance of horror fans, in an era where that wasn’t a yet a fully codified part of the horror experience. The biggest moments – “it’s all for you, Damien” and a particularly memorable decapitation – go pretty hard, perhaps especially because they’re mixed into a movie that doesn’t exactly pulse with danger. Similarly, the presence of an aging Gregory Peck in the leading role (at one point going on a decidedly different Roman Holiday ) is simultaneously an intentionally undermined comfort connecting the movie back to an older Hollywood (things couldn’t possibly go wrong with Gregory Peck at the helm, could they?) and an awkward throwback distraction (why is this sixtysomething having a baby? Why is he the main character at all?). That’s the movie all over: Dabbling in provocation, but ultimately concluding that adoption is scary, abortion is bad, traditional childbearing is best, and if an old movie star can’t save us, no one can.

So here’s where the standard creepy-kid bad-seed thriller kicks in, right? Not exactly. Though Damien , the direct sequel to The Omen , picks up with the antichrist kiddo approaching adolescence as the moneyed adopted son of Richard Thorn (William Holden), only part of its narrative actually follows little Damien (Jonathan Scott-Taylor) as he attends a prestigious military school. The movie also spends a lot of time with wealthy industrialist Richard, as if audiences wouldn’t accept an Omen movie without a Hollywood star of an earlier era guiding them through the proceedings. Holden isn’t bad in the movie, but he’s not as steadying a presence as predecessor Gregory Peck, and the narrative is further diffused by other story threads, mostly involving those racing to destroy Damien before he can unleash his full antichrist potential. These people tend to meet with gruesome accidents; even more than the original film, Omen II pre-visions the Final Destination series, where the villain isn’t a corporeal presence that can be seen and physically stopped. It’s not exactly Death who stalks Damien’s enemies and dispatches them with crows, trucks, poisonous gases, hypothermia, or combinations of the above, but it’s not strictly Damien, either – even when he seems more unambiguously aware of the latent power he carries. There are also notes of The Good Son in Damien’s relationship with his non-evil cousin; Omen II may not hold together particularly well, but it does keep the series lurching toward the future.

The Final Conflict – it wasn’t actually released with Omen III in the opening credits – jumps ahead to find Damien Thorn as an adult, following in the footsteps of both his late uncle (as a wealthy businessman) and his late father (as a newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom), now fully cognizant of his own nefariousness. Final Conflict has a bad reputation; it drops the creepy-kid angle that people vaguely remember from the second movie, and Sam Neill’s performance as the adult Damien is relatively subdued. (There’s also the fact that if Damien is now in his 30s, the movie should be taking place somewhere around the late ’90s, which doesn’t appear to be the case.) Granted, the movie does still suffer from weird narrative diffuseness that became a series trademark, wandering through different and not especially compelling points of view. But as it turns out, a horror movie about a businessman moving into the political realm and hoping to exploit fears and unrest over social change feels pretty prescient 40 years later. If Neill’s performance doesn’t match those present-day parallels, he’s also the perfect picture of apocalyptic evil as a slick manager type, outsourcing a ghastly, horrifying plan to various underlings, and later, able to summon a group of heretofore unseen mindless followers to hang on his every doomsaying word. (Again: Sound familiar?)

The fourth Omen movie, the only entry from the 1990s, is actually just a TV movie that aired on Fox (though it was theatrically inflicted upon some other countries). Just to be clear, this is not a gem hidden in the disreputable, largely forgotten art form of the made-for-network-TV-movie; it’s mostly as bad as it sounds, sometimes literally as the cartoony score portends less antichrist-assisted doom than zany Hocus Pocus -style antics. Though it does reveal itself as an actual sequel in its more agreeably ridiculous final stretch, this mostly functions as a drawn-out gender-swapped remake of the original, with some truly terrible acting. It’s also a great example of how vague cultural memories of The Omen are; this kid is pretty much portrayed as a classic deceptive bad seed (sucking up to her clueless #GirlDad while her mother grows increasingly suspicious), even when later story turns would make the original film’s relative ambiguity make way more sense.

A remake of The Omen would appear to make perfect sense; back in 2006, there hadn’t been a theatrically released Omen movie in a quarter-century, and the studio was able to secure a thirtieth-anniversary release date on, yes, 6/6/06. Yet the ’06 version is largely marketing sizzle and 2000s-era slickness, with so little deviation from the original that screenwriter David Seltzer received sole credit despite not actually working on the newer film. So what, if anything, does bring the movie into the new century beyond icy-blue filters and less soft-focus cinematography? It does foreground the mother’s somewhat experience more, with Julia Stiles allowed to reflect a greater ambivalence toward her child of the sort that was starting to become less taboo to express in the 2000s. (This comes to a head in horror with movies like The Babadook .) At the same time, the movie amps everything up enough to diminish some of those gains, which is to say little Damien’s glowering is more pronounced here (he’s aged up slightly, enough to malevolently make himself a late-night sandwich). Reflecting that guild ruling, most of the novelty here comes from casting: Stiles leaving behind her YA past, the noble scenery-chewing of Pete Postlethwaite and David Thewlis, and the metatextual element of casting Mia Farrow, star of Rosemary’s Baby , as a Satanist nanny. The weird politics of the original – where only natural childbirth is above suspicion – aren’t fully retained, but they aren’t really replaced with anything else, either.  A pointless, proficient remake, though, is probably about right as the capper for this series, which has long been more of a fun brand-name curiosity than a horror essential.

Jesse Hassenger ( @rockmarooned ) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com , too.

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Scary Movie Franchise Resurrected with Newly Announced Sequel: What We Know So Far

The raunchy comedy franchise launched in 2000 starring Anna Faris and Regina Hall

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More horror films are set to be skewered by the parody Scary Movie franchise.

At CinemaCon 2024 on Thursday, April 11, Paramount revealed that a new entry in the series is in development, produced by Neal H. Moritz. Filming is expected to begin later this year.

Moritz is a producer behind movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer , which was one of the films spoofed in 2000's Scary Movie . He also helped make several Fast & Furious films, I Am Legend and Cruel Intentions .

Anna Faris and Regina Hall were breakout stars from the first Scary Movie , which poked fun at popular slashers like Scream , plus The Blair Witch Project , The Sixth Sense and more.

The original and its 2001 sequel, which both also starred Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans, were directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans. 2003's Scary Movie 3 and 2006's Scary Movie 4 were directed by David Zucker, and the most recent, 2013's Scary Movie V (starring Simon Rex and Ashley Tisdale) was directed by Zucker and Malcolm D. Lee.

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Faris, 47, said on The Wrap's UnWrapped podcast in 2023 that she at first "went through a whole lot of internal agitation with being associated with comedy" after Scary Movie launched her career.

"I did not feel like comedy was ever my strong suit. And it felt confusing," she said, adding, "I’m really, really grateful now, in my 40s. I was reflecting on what comedy … has really given me, which is the freedom to to be f---ing goofy and self-deprecating. And to, like, laugh when I fall, or laugh if there’s something in my teeth, or if I’m being an idiot. It’s given me a freedom that I didn’t fully recognize."

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19 Best Movies New to Streaming in April: ‘Zone of Interest,’ ‘Anyone but You,’ ‘Late Night With the Devil,’ ‘Wish’ and More

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Oscar-winning dramas and box office genre hits are making their way to streaming platforms this month. Far and away the best movie set to premiere is Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” a disturbing masterwork about the Holocaust that picked up two Academy Awards last month: best international feature and best sound design. Distributor A24 inked a streaming deal with Max last year, so “Zone of Interest” now joins other must-see recent A24 films like Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” on the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned streaming platform.

For viewers looking for a much lighter offering, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s romantic-comedy “Anyone but You” arrives on Netflix this month and should be just as much of a blockbuster on streaming as it turned out to be in theaters. Opening ahead of Christmas last year, the film was a box office sleeper hit and has grossed close to $220 million at the worldwide box office. No wonder Sweeney and Powell are already in talks about what to team up for next.

Another box office hit, albeit on a smaller scale, coming to streaming in April is IFC’s “Late Night With the Devil,” a found footage horror throwback that broke the record for the studio’s biggest opening weekend ever with $2.8 million. The film is now nearing $7 million at the domestic box office and could surpass $10 million by the time it becomes available to stream this month on the horror platform Shudder.

Scroll below for a full list of the biggest titles new to streaming in April 2024.

The Zone of Interest (April 5 on Max)

Jonathan Glazer’s masterpiece Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” picked up two Oscar wins last month for best international feature and best sound design. The film was also named one of Variety’s best movies of 2023 by chief film critic Owen Gleiberman, who wrote: “A movie that channels the horror of the Holocaust should hit you with the force of revelation. Yet too many movies with this subject matter do not; Jonathan Glazer’s quietly shocking drama assuredly does. It’s set in and around the stately German bourgeois home where Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), an SS officer, carries on a comfortable domestic existence with his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and children. The catch is: He’s the commandant of Auschwitz — and the concentration camp is literally right over the wall next to their garden. Glazer creates an unnerving true-life fairy-tale nightmare of evil, using the distant sounds of Auschwitz (the fire from the ovens, the screams) to evoke a monstrousness we can’t see.”

Scoop (April 5 on Netflix)

“The Crown” may have ended last year, but Netflix has another royal drama in store. “Scoop” is the streamer’s feature-length dramatization of Prince Andrew‘s toe-curling interview with “Newsnight” anchor Emily Maitlis. Maitlis is played by Gillian Anderson in the film, while Andrew is played by “The Diplomat” star Rufus Sewell. Keeley Hawes is also on board as Amanda Thirsk, Andrew’s former private secretary, and Billie Piper stars as Sam McAlister, the “Newsnight” producer who secured the interview with Andrew. The interview with Maitlis in November 2019 was dubbed a “car crash” after the British royal, who settled a sexual assault suit with Virginia Guiffre two years ago, said he had no regrets about his friendship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Strange Way of Life (April 12 on Netflix)

Pedro Almodóvar’s lavish Western short film “Strange Way of Life” debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last year and pairs Pedro Pascal opposite Ethan Hawke as two aging cowboys who were once secret romantic partners. They are reunited after 25 years when Hawke’s Sheriff Jake seeks out his sister-in-law’s murderer. The tension of the present and the eroticism of the past converge. 

“This is a queer western in the sense that there are two men, and they love each other, and they behave in that situation in an opposite way,” said  Almodóvar last year . “What I can tell you about the film is that it has a lot of the elements of the Western. It has the gunslinger. It has the ranch. It has the sheriff. But what it has that most Westerns don’t have is the kind of dialogue that I don’t think a Western film has ever captured between two men. And now I think I’m telling you too much.”

Anyone but You (April 23 on Netflix)

After becoming a surprise box office sensation with more than $215 million at the worldwide box office, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s romantic-comedy “Anyone but You” makes its streaming debut on Netflix this month, where it’s bound to keep being a big hit. The actors play former flames who reluctantly pose as a couple during a wedding weekend in Australia to keep their friends and family off their backs. From  Variety’s review:   “It’s a gloss on ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ but Will Gluck’s formula romantic comedy is most likable for the brash way it lets its two up-and-coming stars channel the age of antipathy… It is, in many ways, as prefab as a lot of the rom-coms of the ’90s and aughts, but there’s something zesty and bracing about how it channels the anti-romanticism of the Tinder-meets-MeToo generation.”

Late Night With the Devil (April 19 on Shudder)

After breaking box office records for IFC Films, the horror movie “Late Night With the Devil” arrives on Shudder this month to keep the scares going. The third feature from Australia’s directing duo the Cairnes Brothers is a clever construct in which a late night network broadcast devolves into supernatural chaos on Halloween night. David Dastmalchian leads the film as the Johnny Carson-esque host, whose desire for big ratings leads to terrifying consequences when he invites an allegedly possessed girl onto the show. From  Variety’s  review:  “This isn’t the scariest movie, but neither is it entirely a self-conscious joke. The Cairnes maintain an astute balance between pop-culture irony, familiar if not always predictable thrills (including some creature/gore FX), and a kind of hallucinatory mass-media surrealism.”

Migration (April 19 on Peacock) 

From the toon studio behind such widely appealing hits as “Minions” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” comes “Migration,” a family comedy about a group of mallards struggling to find their way south. The movie was a box office sleeper hit over the holidays and should compete with Disney’s “Wish” as the top choice for families on streaming this month when it debuts on Peacock. The movie, written by “The White Lotus” creator Mike White, features the voices of Kumail Nanjiani, Elizabeth Banks, Keegan-Michael Key, Awkwafina and Carol Kane, among others.

Wish (April 3 on Disney+)

Disney’s animated musical “Wish” did not exactly set the box office on fire last year, but the movie’s streaming debut on Disney+ is bound to increase viewership. Oscar winner Ariana DeBose voices Asha, who makes a wish so powerful that it is answered by a cosmic force — a little ball of boundless energy called Star. The two new friends team up to put a stop to the evil magic being conjured by King Magnifico (Chris Pine). From  Variety’s  review:  “‘Wish,’ Disney’s lavish animated musical, doesn’t look like the studio’s other animated features. The images resemble softly drawn calendar-art paintings, without the usual splashes of kaleidoscopic color — here, a more muted palette of blue, green, gray, pink, and lavender creates a pleasing storybook texture. And Chris Pine’s punchy performance certainly gives you someone to root against.”

Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scavenger (April 19 on Netflix)

Critics be damned. Zack Snyder’s first “Rebel Moon” was widely panned when it debuted over Christmas, but the second part arrives this month in its continued CGI-heavy glory. The franchise follows a lone soldier named Kora (Sofia Boutella), whose quiet life and community on a farming moon called Veldt is threatened by the evil royal empire the Imperium. Kora’s new life is tragically interrupted and she’s thrust back into war when the menacing Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) visits her planet on behalf of the Imperium’s leader, Balisarius (Fra Fee). Kora recruits a band of fighters, including Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), Darrian Bloodaxe (Ray Fisher), Kai (Charlie Hunnam) and a robot named Jimmy (voiced by Anthony Hopkins), to lead her resistance.

Tiger (April 22 on Disney+)

Disney is celebrating Earth Day this year with a new nature documentary, “Tiger.” Narrated by Priyanka Chopra Jonas, the film “lifts the veil on our planet’s most revered and charismatic animal, inviting viewers to journey alongside Ambar, a young tigress raising her cubs in the fabled forests of India,” the film’s synopsis reads. “Curious, rambunctious, and at times a bit clumsy, the cubs have a lot to learn from their savvy mother who will do all she can to keep them safe from pythons, bears, and marauding male tigers.” The movie, directed by Mark Linfield and co-directed by Vanessa Berlowitz and Rob Sullivan, was shot over 1,500 days of filming and combines fast-paced action with remarkably intimate moments of the tigers.

She Came to Me (April 5 on Hulu)

Indie comedies have often come in one of two flavors: sincere or quirky. Rebecca Miller’s ardent ensemble comedy “She Came to Me” has the off-kilter deftness to be both at once. Its central figure is a celebrated composer of operas, played by Peter Dinklage at his most broodingly magnetic, who stops into a dive bar in the morning and gets picked up for an erotic adventure by a sexaholic tugboat captain, played with lived-in charm by Marisa Tomei. What follows is a cracked bedroom farce that’s really a story of salvation. Miller’s films, in their delicate humanity, are frail blossoms that have too often gotten lost. This one is worth finding.

Girls State (April 5 on Apple TV+)

A spiritual successor the 2020 Texas-set documentary “Boys State,” Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s “Girls State” follow teenage girls attending a week-long democratic camp in Missouri in which they work together to build a new kind of government in their image. The synopsis for the movie from Apple reads: “What would American democracy look like in the hands of teenage girls? A political coming-of-age story and a stirring reimagination of what it means to govern, ‘Girls State’ follows young female leaders — from wildly different backgrounds across Missouri — as they navigate an immersive experiment to build a government from the ground up.”

Musica (April 4 on Prime Video)

Pairing internet personality Rudy Mancuso with “Riverdale” favorite Camila Mendes, the romance “Musica” is billed by Prime Video as “a coming-of-age love story that follows an aspiring creator with synesthesia, who must come to terms with an uncertain future, while navigating the pressures of love, family and his Brazilian culture in Newark, New Jersey.” The film is written and directed by Mancuso. Mendes just had a Prime Video hit with the rom-com “Upgraded,” which debuted on the streaming platform during Valentine’s Day. Prime Video is surely hoping that success bleeds into “Musica,” which will keep the rom-com views coming on streaming this month ahead of the arrival of “Anyone but You” on Netflix.

The Holdovers (April 29 on Prime Video)

Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” arrives on Prime Video this month at no extra cost to subscribers after debuting on streaming last year courtesy of Peacock. The film won the Academy Award for best supporting actress thanks to the performance by Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Paul Giamatti leads the period comedy-drama as an ornery school teacher who is forced to chaperone students staying over at his prep school during the holiday break. From  Variety’s  review : “Peer beyond the perfectly satisfying Christmas-movie surface, and ‘The Holdovers’ is a film about class and race, grief and resentment, opportunity and entitlement. It’s that rare exception to the oft-heard complaint that ‘they don’t make ’em like they used to.'”

Happy Gilmore (April 1 on Netflix)

With news that a sequel to “Happy Gilmore” is in the works , is it just a coincidence that Adam Sandler’s 1996 sports comedy classic returns to Netflix this month? The comedian plays the eponymous Happy Gilmore, a hockey player with anger management issues who discovers he’s also got a talent for golf. Happy joins the golf tour circuit to win money to save his grandmother’s house and faces off against an arrogant pro named Shooter McGavin, played by Christopher McDonald. The supporting cast includes “Modern Family” favorite Julie Bowen and the late Carl Weathers. “Happy Gilmore” opened in 1996 and made nearly $40 million at the worldwide box office. The movie helped Sandler become one of the biggest comedy stars of the decade along with titles like “Billy Madison,” “The Waterboy,” “The Wedding Singer,” “Big Daddy” and more.

The Matrix (April 1 on Netflix)

“The Matrix” celebrated its 25th anniversary on March 31, and now it’s back on Netflix alongside sequels “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions.” Variety calls it one of the greatest action movies ever made : “Synthesizing everything from cyberpunk sci-fi to video games to Hong Kong action movies, the Wachowskis rewired what had come before, introducing a sleek new aesthetic that not only represented the future, but influenced fashion and filmmaking codes for decades to come. After ‘Star Wars,’ this is the film franchise that has come the closest to establishing a religious cult in its own image, as fans seized on the movie’s quasi-spiritual/philosophical elements.”

Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (April 2 on Prime Video)

Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy, the “Saturday Night Live” trio better known as Please Don’t Destroy, become movie stars in their Judd Apatow-produced feature “The Treasure of Foggy Mountain,” which arrives this month on Prime Video at no extra cost to subscribers after launching last year exclusively on Peacock. Here’s the official logline: “John Goodman narrates the adventure of Ben, Martin and John, three childhood friends turned deadbeat co-workers, who fend off hairless bears, desperate park rangers (played by Meg Stalter and X Mayo) and a hypocritical cult leader (Bowen Yang) in the hopes of finding a priceless treasure, only to discover that finding the treasure is the easiest part of their journey. Oh, and Conan O’Brien plays Ben’s dad in it.”

The Exorcist: Believer (April 9 on Prime Video)

David Gordon Green’s “Exorcist” reboot was designed to kick off a new trilogy for Universal Pictures, but those plans are now iffy after the movie nosedived with critics and at the box office. The film, which made its streaming debut on Peacock last December, will be available for Prime Video subscribers at no extra cost starting this month. The sequel follows Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.), a photographer trying to find answers after his daughter and her friend go missing, only to return possessed by evil forces a few days later. Fielding seeks help from Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), who experienced a similar possession 50 years earlier. The movie also stars Lidya Jewett, Olivia O’Neill, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Ann Dowd and others.

Harry Potter Series (April 1 on Max)

As a TV series based in the Wizarding World is in the works at Max, the “Harry Potter” movie franchise is back on the Warner Bros. Discovery streamer this month. All eight movies are now available to watch: “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone Harry Potter,” “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.”

Men (April 18 on Max)

With Alex Garland’s latest directorial effort “Civil War” set to be one of the buzziest theatrical releases of April 2024, it’s smart for distributor A24 to make their last Garland collaboration “Men” available to stream on Max this month. An eerie slice of folk horror, “Men” stars Jessie Buckley as a grieving woman whose isolated trip to the country takes a sinister turn. From Variety’s review : “The ‘Annihilation’ helmer puts the ‘men’ in ‘menacing,’ conjuring a town where the locals intimidate an emotionally traumatized woman trying to escape a bad marriage… audiences are all but guaranteed to leave this folk-horror bizart-house offering feeling disturbed, even if no two viewers can agree on what bothered them about it.”

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The 10 best horror movie remakes of all time, ranked

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Though this has been the case for many horror movie remakes, some have defied expectations and reinvented films for the better. There are even films that have surpassed the versions that came before them.

10. Dawn of the Dead (2004)

9. the ring (2002), 8. let me in (2010), 7. nosferatu the vampyre (1979), 6. cape fear (1991), 5. the fly (1986), 4. the invisible man (2020), 3. invasion of the body snatchers (1978), 2. it (2017), 1. the thing (1982).

Since the trend of cinematic remakes is here, filmmakers should take cues from these 10 horror films that lived up to the source material.

When zombies start popping up around the world, a handful of survivors fight for their lives as they take shelter inside a shopping mall. This remake by Zack Snyder and James Gunn injects new life into the zombie apocalypse with its distinctive brand of gory, frenetic action.

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George A. Romero’s original movie may have taken its time with its terror and social satire, but this newer version captures the unbridled chaos in its premise, immersing the audiences in a horrific war against the undead.

Based on the Japanese film Ringu , this modern classic tells the story of a woman (Naomi Watts) who investigates a mysterious videotape that kills anyone seven days after they watch it.

Unnerving and spine-tingling, The Ring had a new generation of horror fans watch the screen through their fingers. The success of this movie also brought greater attention to Asian horror films, leading to similar remakes from American studios.

Based on the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In , this Matt Reeves-directed film follows a 12-year-old boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who befriends a little girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) who turns out to be a decades-old vampire.

In a beautiful marriage of gothic horror and childhood angst, this chilling remake captures the magic of the original film while forging its own identity by exploring the darkness buried in Reagan’s America.

Long before Robert Eggers thought of remaking Nosferatu , director Werner Herzog did so with Klaus Kinski ( Aguirre, the Wrath of God ) starring as the titular vampire alongside Isabelle Adjani ( Possession ) and Bruno Ganz ( The Manchurian Candidate ).

While it is somewhat more faithful to Bram Stoker’s novel, this film builds upon it by exploring the lonely and tragic nature of Dracula’s cursed character. And with its extraordinary visuals and a chilling score, Nosferatu the Vampyre truly stands the test of time.

Directed by Martin Scorsese , this film shows a violent rapist (Robert de Niro) who leaves prison seeking vengeance against his former lawyer (Nick Nolte) for knowingly sabotaging his defense. In this nightmarish spiral into hell, Scorsese invokes a classical cinematic style while unleashing his unique brand of dread and violence.

Combined with de Niro’s Oscar-worthy performance and Bernard Hermann’s still-effective reused score, this remake sent the 1962 original down the river by being a terrific film from a legendary director who added depth and terror to the source material.

When audiences think of The Fly , they now likely think of the ’80s remake starring Jeff Goldblum. Director David Cronenberg ‘s film captures the bizarre terror of Seth Brundle’s experiment gone wrong as it blends quirky humor with horrific tragedy.

The film’s grotesque practical effects also make the horror all the more realistic, getting under the audience’s skin with Brundle’s jaw-dropping transformation into the titular monster.

In this ingenious retelling of the 1933 monster movie of the same name, Cecilia ( Mad Men ‘s Elisabeth Moss) finds herself tormented by her abusive ex-boyfriend ( Surface ‘s Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who stalks her in an advanced invisibility suit.

Adapting this tale for the modern age, The Invisible Man tackles domestic violence and the trauma that lingers even after a person like Cecilia escapes from their abuser. And with its clever scares and suspenseful thrills, this remake took an iconic character and created a horror classic in its own right.

When alien plants begin sprouting up on Earth, a group of friends find themselves targeted by emotionless duplicates of the people around them in a full-scale invasion of San Francisco.

Like Cronenberg’s The Fly , this movie reinvigorates a ’50s horror classic for a new age, transforming a Cold War allegory into a cautionary tale about conformity. Such sheer hopelessness grabs audiences by the heart as the heroes get picked off one by one until the infamous final scene, ultimately implanting itself into the viewers’ minds forever.

Despite its flaws, the 1990 version of Stephen King’s It holds a special place in many fans’ hearts. And when considering Tim Curry’s iconic performance as Pennywise the Clown, the 2017 remake had a lot to live up to.

However, this modern interpretation usurped the original on many fronts, with Bill Skarsgård elevating the shapeshifting clown to a new level of terror. Unsurprisingly, It won over critics and audiences alike, becoming the highest-grossing horror movie of all time.

Though it is a remake of 1951’s The Thing From Another World , John Carpenter’s masterpiece is the most loyal to the novel both films adapt. The shapeshifting creature’s designs and effects alone top what was seen in the original movie.

However, the overwhelming sense of dread and paranoia that permeates the film makes this a harrowing tale of people turning against each other in the face of an unknowable and unstoppable threat.

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• The 7 best opening scenes in horror movies

Death continues to be a core aspect of the horror genre, as it has long been among humanity's greatest fears. But in the many cinematic battles against unspeakable terrors, there have been heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defeat their enemies and protect their loved ones.

So in honor of these fallen heroes, here is the list of the seven most valiant deaths in horror movies. Of course, there are major spoilers below, so read at your own risk! Helen Lyle in Candyman (1992)

Cinema has experienced a rising trend of what audiences call "social" horror/thriller movies, which use terror and suspense to discuss important issues of race, gender, politics, etc. This isn't to say horror movies aren't socially conscious, as many films of the genre have addressed important issues and ideas about society since cinema's early days.

Calling a horror/thriller film "social" or "elevated" may seem elitist, but it has brought greater attention to the true potential that movies like these ten have displayed by making such commentaries. 10. The Stepford Wives (1975)

Some cinema snobs are openly rooting for the wave of superhero cinema to go the way of the Western. Well, we say, “Keep waiting!” The superhero movie trend has been running strong for over two decades now, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. If anything, Marvel and DC are only pumping out more movies than ever. And that’s not even counting the independent superhero flicks like Hellboy. It would take a long string of flops to make superhero movies go away. But we prefer quality, so this list is focused on the best superhero movies of all time. It’s hard to go wrong with these heroes.

More interested in TV series? How about our picks for the best superhero TV shows of all time? Or, if it's just superheroes that aren't your thing, we've got lists of the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime, and the best movies on Disney+.

Civil War 2024: A Road Trip Through a Fractured America

Craving a suspenseful character study that explores the dangers of political division amidst a second American Civil War? Look no further than Alex Garland’s “ Civil War ” (2024). A24 delivers a visually stunning dystopian thriller perfect for fans of thought-provoking films with a unique blend of political commentary and pulse-pounding actionThis dystopian thriller takes viewers on a harrowing journey across a fractured America, following a team of journalists embedded with the resistance during a terrifying second Civil War. Packed with stellar performances, “Civil War” 2024 will leave you thinking about the dangers of political division and the human cost of conflict.

Strap yourselves in, moviegoers, because Alex Garland’s “Civil War” 2024 is a wild ride. Let’s unpack what makes this dystopian thriller a must-watch.

This is just one example of Dunst’s stellar performance, which perfectly captures the dedication and grit of a seasoned war photographer. Wagner Moura delivers a powerful performance alongside Dunst, and Cailee Spaeny , while occasionally frustrating, portrays a rookie journalist perfectly. Even the supporting cast, including Stephen McKinley Henderson, shines in their roles.

The film masterfully utilizes silence to heighten tension during action sequences and showcase the devastating human cost of war. There are also some breathtakingly beautiful shots scattered throughout the movie, making it visually stunning.

However, the film shines when it focuses on its core strength: the characters. Early in the film, Kirsten Dunst delivers a raw and emotional performance as Lee Miller, a seasoned war photographer with nerves of steel (well, most of the time). Dunst captures the chaos of a conflict between police and a desperate crowd in the NYC area. The scene is eerily reminiscent of recent protests, and Lee’s intense yet beautiful photographs showcase both the brutality and the resilience of the moment. This is just one example of Dunst’s stellar performance, which perfectly captures the dedication and grit of a seasoned war photographer.

Finally, Cailee Spaeny’s character, Jessie, is the definition of annoying. Her constant bad decisions and damsel-in-distress moments will have you wishing for the fast-forward button. What’s really bothering me is her complete arc and her impact on other characters.

The Verdict

“Civil War” 2024 is a visually stunning film with a phenomenal cast. While a misleading premise and a confusing soundtrack hold it back, the film delivers a powerful character study set against a war-torn backdrop. If you’re a fan of A24’s unique style and character-driven stories set in dystopian worlds, “Civil War” 2024 might be worth checking out. However, if you’re expecting a traditional war epic, you might be disappointed.

• Acting - 8/10 8/10
• Cinematography/Visual Effects - 9/10 9/10
• Plot/Screenplay - 5/10 5/10
• Setting/Theme - 7/10 7/10
• Watchability - 7/10 7/10
• Rewatchability - 6/10 6/10

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About Anthony Whyte

Content Manager | Senior Editor | Daydreamer | Keep your head on a swivel and don't blink

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