Entering this Decade with the first batch of the last 25 titles.
Mega Piranha (2010)
½One of those stupid modern creature features, but this one doesn’t even understand how silly it all is, with an insanely complex plot, constantly introducing characters in the first 15 minutes, even though most of them have little to do with the story. Takes itself way too seriously to the point where the highlights seem like accidental idiocy. Where’s the fun in that?
Black Death (2010)
* * With a cast that includes Eddie Redmayne, Sean Bean and Carice van Houten, and Dark Ages period detail, this aims higher than typical genre fare. You might not categorize it as Horror until the pagans start graphically torturing the Christians. It’s like a grimy Game of Thrones knock-off, even though it pre-dates the series by a year. The coda reframes the film as a very particular origin story, raising my opinion a lot, but getting there isn’t terribly interesting.
I Spit on Your Grave (2010)
0 StarsAfter 15 minutes of cute/clumsy antics by the lead while the camera leers at her up and down, this uncalled for remake of
one of the most well-known terrible films had the bare minimum of my attention. This premise will always fail because as long as it’s written and directed by men, it will never earn the feminist shield it hides behind, and if it were ever made by a woman, an honest depiction of the horror would be more than any viewer could bear to sit through. This is better-acted than the original, but it also claims a moral superiority that it never earns.
Kidnapped (2010)
aka. Secuestrados
* * * - Okay Home invasion thriller with heavy Gaspar Noe influences. Filmed as a series of long takes, events keep turning for the worst until I became torn between the intense realism of sloppy plans gone awry and the feeling that the film was moving closer towards nihilism. Manages to be as slick as other home invasion movies from this time, while also being more believable. Problem is, that level of believability is more punishing than exciting.
The Last Exorcism (2010)
* * * - Good One of the best ways to tell the quality of a Horror film is the amount of dread I feel towards the end when the lead decides to go back and face the evil. If I know we’re at the climax, then the filmmakers are preparing to empty their bag of tricks and the situation could be worse than anything imaginable. This has one of those moments and while the ending doesn’t match the build-up, it’s still a very effective build-up. Ashley Bell is great as the possessed girl, frail and menacing at the same time, but the film belongs to Patrick Fabian as a jaded minister who sees faith as a magic show. It was a smart decision to build the routine exorcism plot around such an interesting character.