Kill List (2011)

Having gone to this with the least amount of expectation despite the glowing reviews, I bow down and admit my ignorance and prejudice: this is every bit as good as it's made out to be. Not only is this one of the best hitman films I have ever seen, it is also a cracking horror.

Jay (Neil Maskell), 8 months since his return from Iraq, is reluctant to return to his pre-war occupation, mostly because of his ailing back. His beautiful wife Shel (MyAnna Buring) thinks it's all in his head and frequently reminds him that they are running out of money. They fight constantly, but theirs is not a relationship to be rocked by a global financial crisis. Not only held together by their devotion to their young son, they are well and truly in love with each other. But times are tough and Jay needs to take care of his family. Enter Gal (Michael Smiley), Jay's comrade-in-arms and best friend. After a double date dinner night at Jay and Shel's home (and a rather nasty argument between the hosts), Gal convinces Jay to join him for a "job".

Julia's Eyes (2010)

Julia's Eyes is another presented-by-Guillermo-del-Toro horror that derives too heavily from genre clichés. However, just like The Orphanage before it, this is a highly entertaining and effective film, with a final 30 minutes of pure adrenaline-inducing madness.

Belén Rueda (also from The Orphanage) plays the eponymous Julia, whose eyesight is preogressively getting worse. She is mourning the suicide of her twin sister (Sara), who was suffering from the same degenerative disease. Yet, Julia feels (rightly so) that there is something iffy about the whole suicide scenario, starting with the question of why she would kill herself now. Her amateur investigations reveal an important detail that she was not aware of about her sister: a new boyfriend. Who is he? And why doesn't anybody know anything about him, other than that he somehow exists?

We Are What We Are (2010)

"Tupi or not Tupi".

Brazil and Mexico had differing pre-, during, and post-colonial experiences, so drawing the above maxim from Oswald de Andrade's Cannibal Manifesto and applying to Jorge Michel Grau's disturbing cannibal drama may be misleading. But Grau must have been all too aware of de Andrade's manifesto when he picked the title of his debut feature which never asks why people resort to cannibalism, but that they just "are".

Saw 3D: The (Bullshit) Chapter (2010)

Once upon a time, Saw (2004) was a movie. A movie on the forefront of a new wave in horror. A movie that knew how to build to terrible, fantastic scenarios with rewarding moral implications and a knock-you-down twist. A movie that challenged your heart and your mind, in addition to your stomach. Now… it’s a torture-porn piece of shit with the tact of a masochistic teenage boy and the skill of a dog chained to a typewriter.

There have been seven of these films. Seven. Seven films in seven years, and over that time the once pseudo-creative story has devolved into a series of grotesque puzzle sequences, the story itself eroding as it’s cycled and transferred from tape to tape to tape. In this SEVENTH and hopefully final installment, the folks over at Twisted Pictures tried to spruce things up with a 3D shine. But here’s the thing about 3D – it looks like crap. Even James Cameron can’t make this gimmick look like much more than a really vivid video game. So the dirt and scum and grime that establish the world of Saw now take on the visual quality of a Kurt Cobain coloring book.

Let Me In (2010)

With Let Me In, writer/director Matt Reeves has created a modern horror classic… or rather, he has taken a modern horror classic in the foreign market and domesticated it, with honor, respect and ingenuity. Working from the 2008 Let the Right One In foundation established by novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist and director Tomas Alfredson, Reeves’ film is on the forefront of what could be (with the Dragon Tattoo remakes hot on its heels) a discouraging new trend in Hollywood cinema – the appropriation of still breathing foreign films, recreated for American audiences. Except it is not discouraging. It is, in fact, refreshing, in its own bloody and unsettling way.

The Crazies (2010)

I never saw George Romero’s original take on The Crazies (1973), so I can’t comment on this latest rendition as a remake. I do know Romero’s film about a town accidently infected by a manmade combat virus – and the military’s outlandishly extreme attempts to contain that mistake – was a deeply rooted reaction to Vietnam and the then recent Kent State shootings. And that same social paranoia would seem to translate rather appropriately to the now.