While there's nary a viral video to be found in CHEAP THRILLS, the film is imbued with the culture of now (maybe always) and the fact that despite pleas for peace, we as humans enjoy seeing each other embarrassed  devalued and crushed. It's inherent in reality television and 30 second fail videos, transcends friendships and class, and extends right to the 1% who have so much that the only true entertainment left is the indignities of others.

THE LAST EXORCISM PART II is the second contradictorily titled sequel to come out in as many months, after THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT II: GHOSTS OF GEORGIA. I’m not the first to ask whether this means the original now has to be called THE SECOND-TO-LAST EXORCISM, and I probably won’t be the last to say the first should have remained the only.

One could argue that the goal for any horror or thriller filmmaker is to keep the audience, at the very least, figuring out the story’s twists and turns alongside the protagonist. As wonderful as it is for genre films to stay one step ahead of the audience, ensuring that any surprises along the way are surprising at all, the mechanisms by which suspenseful films run—tension between characters, atmosphere and gradual revelation of story—can still work well when viewers encounter the dread and shock at the same pace as the hero they have invested in.

The name Goblin should mean something to each and every serious (hell, even casual) student of European horror. The band formerly known as Oliver, then Cherry Five, who were mentored by Dario Argento to be the house band for his 1975 giallo* landmark DEEP RED; they, of the throbbing basslines and progressive Emerson Lake and Palmer-meets-Mike Oldfield groove. Goblin went on to become horror’s only real “supergroup” and represented the proto-rock video aesthetic that made the Italian terrors of the period such sexy, slick and visceral treats.

When we last left Dr. Vincent Morrow, the poor man had a demonic parasite swimming around in his body, shadowy ne'er-do-well's following his every move, and a deadline to deliver the Pandoracopeia, a book of harmful spells, to the hooded antagonists who set the virus loose on him. It doesn't seem like it could get much worse for him, does it? Well, it wouldn't be much fun if it didn't.

As news stories about sociopaths whose actions seem unfathomable continue to permeate the media, perhaps it’s inevitable that thrillers concerned more with examining the devolution of their antiheroes’ minds than with the violence of their deeds should become a minitrend. This week’s example, RUBBERNECK, particularly foregrounds character over action, and cerebral thrills over the visceral kind.

The title of and ad campaign for DARK SKIES, not to mention an opening quotation from science-fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke, almost feel like miscalculations. The movie develops a decently teasing sense of mystery in its first half that can only be diluted by foreknowledge of what’s going on.