THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT [2015]

Based on real events, director Kyle Alvarez's The Stanford Prison Experiment, recollects a disturbing university behavioral experiment set in the '70's by psychology professor Philip Lombardo.
A mock prison is set-up where 24 students are randomly selected to play prisoners & guards as a psychological study of imprisonment, however it begins taking a life of it's own and the abusive tactics become very questionable as the subjects being losing a grip on reality.
The subject matter fires all sorts of questions of ethics and reasoning at the audience which will probably result in a wide variety of reactions to the film.  No matter how you feel about it, one can't deny Alvarez's wondefully effective use of the camera, colors and ever-building tension to keep the uneasiness constantly in the foreground.   Without a single weak link in the ensemble cast, everything is craftily glued together in such a way that it all holds together tight enough when it easily could have been a silly and/or boring disaster.

3½ sausages out of 5

TALES OF HALLOWEEN [2015]

Featuring a gaggle of well-known and not-so well known genre directors, including Neil Marshall, Lucky McKee & Darren Lynn Bousman, Tales of Halloween, is an anthology film that seems like it's set out to compete with Michael Dougherty's modern cult-classic Trick 'r Treat for the most amount of fun a Halloween film can be.
Does it succeed?  Almost.
There's a few weak shorts in the bunch but for the most part it's really sick and twisted gory fun that keeps on rolling right up to the final frame.  Even the weaker shorts are enough fun to keep it from ever really losing steam.

3 spooky Mick Garris' out of 5

IT FOLLOWS [2014]

Writer/director David Robert Mitchell crafts one of the most effective horror films to come out in a long, long time with the ominously titled It Follows.
The set-up is simple, a young teen sleeps with the wrong guy and is transmitted with some sort of nightmarish curse that...well...follows her in the form of some pretty nasty sort of folk.  Primarily it's a coming-of-age story that channels John Hughes, if he fancied butcher knives and gouged-out eyes, but it packs the scares something fierce with a refreshing twist with some killer Carpenter-esque camerawork to boot.  With it's stingy synth score, old timey cars and minimal use of modern technology, this could easily be pulled out of the early '80's but it's most definitely this day and age in the dying lands of Detroit.
Bring a couple pairs of clean undies with you because you're guaranteed to be needing them.

4 swimming pools out of 5