JESSABELLE  (2014)

Dir: Kevin Greutert

Jessabelle concerns the young woman of the title, who, following a tragic accident that kills her fiancé, returns to stay with her taciturn father while she regains the use of her legs. Temporarily confined to using a wheelchair, it's not long before the spectres of the past (both real and possibly imagined) come a-haunting...

Dir: James Ward Byrkit

On the night a comet is due to pass close to Earth, four couples gather at one of their homes for a dinner party. These people all know each other, are friends for the most part, though it's clear early on there are underlying tensions, secrets and wavering loyalties. The party begins innocuously enough, with conversation revolving naturally around the comet and partly remembered tales from past celestial events. Small, inexplicable events (phones shattering, internet signal no longer available) are passed off as nothing to worry about. Then, the lights go out and that's when the weird shit really starts to happen...

Based on the supposedly true experiences by New York police officer, Ralph Sarchie (make of that what you will), Deliver Us From Evil follows Eric Bana as the detective himself, who seems to have a knack of knowing which of the dispatch calls will result in violence, no matter the innocuous nature of the incident. His partner dubs this his 'Radar'. When one of these calls leads them to a seemingly 'simple' case of domestic violence, it kicks of a spiral of events that increasingly leads to three ex-US Marines and their encounter with something terrible in the wilds of Iraq...

Blamed for the brutal murder of his girlfriend, a man wakes up one day to discover he’s grown horns. Along with the horns, he gains some pretty impressive, if not disturbing powers that make people tell him exactly what they’re thinking. The people the man with the horns comes into contact with tell him the truth and later, don’t remember any of it.

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) stars as Ig Perrish, the man accused of killing his girlfriend, Merrin, played by Juno Temple.  Max Minghella plays Ig’s best friend and attorney, Lee Tourneau and Joe Anderson plays his drug-addicted, musician brother, Terry.

Something of a mashup, part horror, part Sci-Fi, part natural history film or in other words… a bit of a mess. 

In Taipei we meet Lucy (Scarlett Johansson); she's an ordinary student whom after meeting up with her somewhat pointless boyfriend Richard is tricked into delivering a briefcase to 'Mr Jang' (Choi Min-Sik, of "Oldboy" fame) who then recruits her against her will as a drug mule. Things go desperately wrong when Lucy gets an accidental overdose of what appears to be Heisenberg's finest Crystal Meth but is actually synthetic 'CPH4', the original biological version of which is what supercharges a human foetus with the ability to become us. In this case however it is allowing Lucy access to parts of the brain we aren't generally using. What follows is a movie which isn't sure what it is as it randomly cuts between boring scenario, over-the-top action to natural history footage and back again.

Upon the death of his great grandfather, Brandon Davis (Ben Browder, Farscape, Stargate SG1) a wedding photographer inherits an antique camera famous for taking Victorian death photography. After photographing his subjects they start to die from horrible, bizarre deaths, then reappearing as eerie death portraits. One by one Brandon begins to lose people very close to him as he struggles to uncover the haunting mystery behind the cursed camera. When his eleven year old son goes missing, Brandon discovers the camera has supernatural powers and has trapped his son inside of it. He must now risk all and journey beyond the realm of all imagination, to fight the hideous entities within, save his son and reverse the deadly curse that plagues them before they all become....Dead Still.

There are obvious comparisons between these two versions; after all they are both the same story, for those of you who have never read Stephen King's source material or seen any of the versions it is about a plain girl from a somewhat dysfunctional background whom upon reaching puberty finds out that it's a gift which keeps on giving as she develops extreme telekinetic abilities. It is essentially a horror tale of the consequences of bullying, that's how I see it anyway.

The Last Showing was a slightly weird experience to watch. I feel vaguely guilty saying bad things about it because the premise, on the face of it, is awesome. Robert Englund is a psychotic projectionist who wants to make his own horror movie. The original man who gave us nightmares wants to give us another one – and the setting for it is brilliant. As a Brit, one can get a bit fed-up of horror locations consisting of America or London, so having The Last Showing take place in a Vue cinema (Ellesmere Port, for fact fans) makes a welcome change.