Late Night with the Devil succeeds far more than most of of its ready comparables, telling a dark tale about the fictional never-before-seen filming of a late night show’s final episode. While this not an unfamiliar setup for a horror film, Late Night does an exemplary job of creating the illusion that we’re going back to a broadcast television set on Halloween night in 1977, when hardluck variety show host Jack Delroy and his show Night Owls will roll tape for what will ultimately be their final outing. By the end of the filming, the stage will be an abattoir, the audience fled and traumatized, and Jack himself primed to be the subject of decades-long speculation.

‘Hell House LLC: The Carmichael Manor feels like a distinctly modern found footage movie, not getting waylaid or distracted, keeping the scenes moving and putting plentiful scares throughout. The fourth installment of Hell House LLC has renewed my interest in the series, and comes close to surpassing the excellent original chapter. I believe Cognetti and company really made a creative effort with this film, both to do something new and expand on the work of the original trilogy, and the results are decidedly successful.’

‘While a number of elements give audience members something to appreciate, the ultimate sum of the film’s parts leaves much to be desired. Krawchuk has failed to make his character make the jump from film short to full-length feature, and the Jester, while cool, remains decidedly underdeveloped. The script is tired territory, offering a simplistic, pantomime depiction of emotional trauma, depression, and family relations that neither offers a new angle or does a particularly effective job of presenting familiar ones.’

‘This was a genius idea from conception and it came together at the right time. Animatronic toys were creepy as hell before anyone put a serial killer’s soul inside, and there are few things more quintessentially 80s than watching a struggling single mother sacrifice her financial and bodily security in order to chase the materialistic flotsam of the popular culture by buying a toy doll from a homeless man in an alley.’

‘Pearl is a superior film to its predecessor, telling a bloody but heartfelt story of a young woman who struggled to find her place in the world and bear the starkness of the hand that life dealt. Despite her faults, her outbursts, her patent instability, I felt a tremendous level of sympathy for the title character, and find her only real sin is that of ambition and human need which by its very appetite demanded more than what a North Texas farmer’s life could provide.’

‘X comes together with a lot of exceptional elements and are worthy of consideration and discussion, but the substance ultimately gets muddled, and we’re left with a film that tries on a lot but doesn’t do anything with it…Despite some thematic missteps, there’s a lot to appreciate about X, and it is bound to be an influential horror standby for the next generation of horror creators.’

‘Kills sacrifice style in the name of brutality, and the scriptwriting is a joke. This is horror at its trashiest, for better or worse.’