How do you mix supernatural horror with an earnest environmental message? The answer is, you don't, but that hasn't stopped director Larry Fessenden from trying. A low-key shocker about global warming, The Last Winter (IFC) pits an Alaskan oil scout (Ron Perlman) against an environmental scientist (James LeGros) when the former's experiments in a remote tundra outpost give rise to a monster in the form of a vengeful Earth spirit. It's the thinking person's chiller, theoretically…
A savvy, suspenseful cross between Michael Clayton and the Joseph Conrad book Heart Of Darkness, the superior French thriller Heartbeat Detector (New Yorker) stars Mathieu Amalric as a "human resources psychologist," a corporate position in which he studies deficient workers to figure out why they aren't productive. His latest case tests his reputation as a master motivator, but it also opens his eyes to the company's dealings with some very bad people and throws his loyalties in question…
Americanized J-horror is the deadest subgenre this side of the lambada movies, yet the films keep on coming, as steady and relentless as an army of pallid-faced, hitch-stepped ghouls. Though Shutter (Fox) is based on the Thai film, the usual J-horror tropes are unmistakably present, centering on another vengeful ghost in the form of a spurned Japanese waif who appears in photographs and gets her ethereal message across in the most indirect, passive-aggressive way imaginable…
Omnibus horror films are usually a mixed bag, but Trapped Ashes (Lionsgate) doesn't even manage that, in spite of a pedigreed list of directors that includes Ken Russell, Joe Dante, and Monte Hellman. Dante handles the thankless task of directing the wraparound story fairly well, but Russell's puerile contribution, about a would-be Hollywood starlet with killer breasts (literally), could not be a cruder example of camp horror.
