The Amityville Horror (2005)

Given the entire series is built upon the premise of providing a paranormal 'out' for a real-life family massacrist, I shouldn't be surprised Ryan Reynold's George Lutz gets such an easy reprieve for dog murder, a wanton and unnecessary Russian Roulette axe game, and emotional and physical spousal abuse ("It was just a bad bout of pinkeye, honey - I won't do it again," you can imagine him saying as the boat speeds away to the non-satanic side of the lake where men like him continue these behaviours of their own accord), but apart from this unchecked male violence, this update of the 1979 horror classic incorporates some great improvements: a thankfully truncated 89-minute runtime; a terrifically improved, gleefully sinister babysitter scene; a sculpted Ryan Reynolds waddling around in pajama bottoms (unless you prefer a sculpted James Brolin waddling around in his y-fronts), and gone is all that "I've gone blind," twaddle with the priest.

★★★☆☆

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Greta (2019)

At one point, Isabelle Huppert as the title character, an older piano-playing French woman much too keen on developing a mother-daughter relationship with Chloë Grace Moretz's student waitress Frances, does some balletic boxing footwork to Chopin that will make you laugh because it is like the actress knows you know the actress knows how silly everything is in this Neil Jordan thriller, and it is silly but nonetheless the thriller manages to overcome this excessive silliness (and several glaring plotholes and a far too low-affect heroine) by once - no, perhaps two or three times - veering away from what viewers are expecting of this sort of throwaway Single White Female psycho-thriller and delivering instead some shocks and surprises and - yes, I'll say it - moments, fleeting moments, of good old-fashioned Hitchcockian thriller fun (namely some Psycho-inspired flourishes).

★★★☆☆

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Carrie (2013)

The two problems with this 2013 remake of Carrie, the 1976 movie based on the Stephen King book are, one, the wildly inconsistent state of mind of the title character who one minute sobs and screams inconsolably, the next calmly employs expert conflict resolution skills in negotiations with her neurotic bible-bashing mother about how unfairly she is being treated only to immediately revert back to hysterical, incessant screaming; and two, the horror movie wants us to sympathise with Carrie and who really has sympathy for a school massacrist, bullied and telekinetic or not?

★★☆☆☆

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