Frozen Ground (2013)

The action is heightened and some of the events clearly can't have happened in real life exactly as they play out here, but this based-on-a-true-story movie is gripping viewing with Nicolas Cage playing a cop who needs to first convince dismissive colleagues and officials that there is a serial killer active in Anchorage, Alaska before he can bring to justice Robert Hansen, a man whose real-life existence and crimes you"ll probably wish you'd stayed unaware of.

★★★☆☆

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1408 (2007)

In this Stephen King short story adaptation, John Cusack is perfect as the drily funny, cynical paranormal investigator and professional skeptic who checks into room 1408 of New York's Dolphin Hotel wanting to debunk claims the room is somehow evil, but both he and the viewers soon have the smiles wiped off their faces once the supernatural terror kicks in, though these chills and jump scares wear thin a good time before the movie's oblique, that'll-do, "whatever" ending.

★★★☆☆

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Reclaim (2014)

While in the Dominican Republic, an American couple - one of the pair, Ryan Phillipe in a defiantly white tee - falls victim to a human trafficking scam that proves so dull a badly animated and wholly unnecessary cgi car-dangling-from-a-cliff sequence is thrown in towards the movie's end in an effort to liven things up, but it doesn't and nor do the repetitive oh-no-the-bad-guy-(John-Cusack)-rises-again (and chases the couple through the forest again) endscenes.

★☆☆☆☆

Identity (2003)

Melding elements of film noir, slasher horror, and whodunnit (specifically Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (not a spoiler)), this unusual movie has John Cusack and Amanda Peet investigating a growing number of grisly deaths at an isolated motel, all of them linked by impossible coincidences, and while whodunnit purists may not appreciate it, the mystery is surprisingly, satisfactorily, and creepily concluded.

★★★☆☆

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