A troubled stop-motion animator battles her own macabre creations in what turns out to be a fight for her sanity. That’s the general premise of the aptly titled “Stopmotion”, a chilling psychological horror film and the feature-length debut from director Robert Morgan. There was some good buzz surrounding the movie following its release earlier this year. I can certainly see why.

“Stopmotion” stars a captivating Aisling Franciosi who was so good in last year’s criminally underrated period horror gem “The Last Voyage of the Demeter”. Here she plays Ella Blake, the daughter of an accomplished stop-motion animator, Suzanne (Stella Gonet). Their mother-daughter relationship is a key component of the story. Suzanne is unable to use her hands due to severe arthritis, so she instructs while Ella does the work. “She’s the brains and I’m the hands”, Ella says at one point.

After a severe stroke leaves Suzanne in a coma, Ella determines to finish her mother’s final film. With the help of her boyfriend Tom (Tom York), she rents an apartment and sets up a studio. But making the movie without the overbearing Suzanne in her ear proves difficult. “I don’t have my own voice” she says, revealing the insecurity and lack of self-confidence brought on by her mother’s constant belittlement and lack of support. Things only get worse from there.

While at her apartment, Ella encounters an overly curious and unmannerly young girl (Caoilinn Springall) who takes an immediate interest in her film. The girl calls Ella’s story boring and encourages her to tell a new one. I won’t spoil where things go except to say Ella finds new inspiration in some dark and troubling places. Her stop-motion creations grow more macabre with each iteration and her work of fiction begins to meld with her painful reality.

Morgan’s patient pacing stands out in the first half, but his imagination really kicks into overdrive during the third act. He hits us with crude yet exquisite stop-motion animation sequences. We also get jolts of gruesome body horror that will make even the most hardened horror fan wince. As far as technique, he uses a fascinating assortment of close-ups and shifts in focus to ratchet up the tension and discomfort.

But perhaps most vital is Franciosi’s hypnotic performance. She offers a transfixing portrayal that claws away at Ella’s suppressed emotional trauma, slowly exposing a psychological peril that takes the character to the brink of madness. Franciosi works at just the right temperature – patient yet revealing early on; terrifyingly deranged later. She’s a perfect fit for Morgan’s morbid vision which, like the mortician’s wax used to create Ella’s puppets, takes more sinister forms as the movie descends deeper into its dark and gory depths.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

Elizabeth Banks kills it in “Skincare”, a sleek and savvy crime thriller and black comedy hybrid from director Austin Peters. Banks (who also serves as a producer) is the film’s centerpiece and she gets some juicy material to work with from the screenwriting trio of Peters, Sam Freilich, and Deering Regan. The tonal gymnastics aren’t always seamless, but Peters manages with enough verve to make those things easy to look past.

Framed as as fictional story inspired by true events, “Skincare” is loosely based on celebrity facialist Dawn DaLuise. In 2014 DaLuise was wrongly arrested and charged with ordering a hit on competitor Gabriel Suarez who she (also wrongly) believed was behind a plot to sabotage her business. Unable to afford the $1 million bail, DaLuise was forced to spend ten months in jail while awaiting trial. When her trial finally began, she was acquitted in under one hour.

“Skincare” borrows a lot from the true account while adding its own incisive spin. Set in 2013, Banks plays Hope Goldman, a celebrity aesthetician and the owner and namesake of a Hollywood skincare studio. Hope is in full promotional mode as she’s only days away from launching her own line of skincare products. But underneath the glamorous facade, a cash-strapped Hope struggles to maintain her high-end salon while dodging her landlord Jeff (John Billingsley) and his attempts to collect past-due rent.

Things take a more dire turn after an up-and-coming facialist named Angel (Luis Gerardo Méndez) opens a boutique across the plaza. It doesn’t take long for Angel to become the talk of Tinseltown and soon Hope starts losing high-profile clients to her new rival. She even loses her guest spot on a popular daytime television talk show hosted by a schmoozing and appropriately slimy Nathan Fillion.

But what really turns Hope’s world upside down is when her email is hacked and a humiliating fake message is sent out to all of her clients. Shortly after, vulgar and aggressively explicit posts start popping up online in her name. The harassment turns even more menacing after she discovers her tires slashed. Hope immediately suspects Angel, but without any evidence the police won’t act. In the meantime she steadily hemorrhages customers while Angel’s business booms.

Hope has a chance encounter with a peppy Hollywood newbie named Jordan (Lewis Pullman). He’s a self-proclaimed life coach and wellness guru who agrees to help her counteract the intensifying attacks and rebuild her image. But things only get worse from there as Hope’s obsession with success is only rivaled by her fixation on Angel. It spins the knotty yet comical yarn into a pulpy cautionary tale about the lengths people will go to get what they want and how an out-of-control desire for notoriety can have damaging consequences.

As the story unwinds Peters shrewdly immerses us in the upscale Hollywood milieu while also dipping our toes in the city’s seedier side. A variety of supporting characters fill it all out with the best being an underused Michaela Jaé Rodriguez as Hope’s assistant and head of PR. But the movie works thanks to a committed and perfectly tuned Elizabeth Banks whose textured performance is the glue that holds it all together.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

With “Sting”, writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner uses one of the most common fears shared by people of all shapes, sizes, ages and colors. For many it’s a petrifying fear that trumps all others. I’m talking about the fear of spiders. My own family isn’t immune from it (neither my wife or daughter would stay in the room after hearing what “Sting” was about). So right off the bat, Roache-Turner has the kind of material that will automatically get reactions.

But “Sting” isn’t some lazy attempt at cheap scares. It’s a self-aware creature feature that knows its audience and caters to their appetites with plenty of skin-crawling frights and nearly as many laughs. It’s a movie that wears its inspirations on its sleeve and tips its hat to several easy to spot properties (fans of James Cameron’s phenomenal 1986 classic “Aliens” will see its influence all throughout “Sting”).

Roache-Turner wastes no time kicking things off. As a meteor passes dangerously close to New York City, a tiny fragment crashes into a rundown brownstone apartment building. The small egg-like fragment hatchets a tiny spider which is discovered by an unruly 12-year-old named Charlotte (Alyla Browne). She puts the spider in a Mason jar and names it Sting. From there she slips her new pet into her bedroom, hiding it from her loving mother Heather (Penelope Mitchell) and her hardworking step-father Ethan (Ryan Corr).

Over the next few minutes we’re introduced to several other tenants who will soon find themselves in a B-movie nightmare. Among them is Helga (Noni Hazlehurst), Charlotte’s elderly grandmother who is struggling with dementia; Heather’s battle-axe great aunt, Gunter (Robyn Nevin); a grieving young window, Maria (Silvia Colloca); and a nerdy biology student, Erik (Danny Kim). Throw in a local exterminator named Frank (Jermaine Fowler) who adds some well-tuned comic relief.

As Charlotte feeds Sting a heavy diet of cockroaches, the spider begins growing at an alarming rate. Before long it has busted out of its jar and made its way into the building’s vents. And as its appetite grows, the massive space arachnid goes from munching on roaches to feasting on people. Its insatiable craving for flesh and blood leads to some squirm-inducing scenes that are sure to have people with spider phobias covering their eyes.

The movie does struggle to maintain a consistent tone. In between the gory creature kills and comic self-awareness is a family drama that has its poignant moments but never quite has the impact it clearly wants to have. It leads to some tender interactions and it manages to add some emotional weight to the film’s big finish. But sometimes it feels at odds with what the rest of the film is going for.

Still, Roache-Turner deserves a lot of credit for both recapturing and poking fun at the throwback creature features of old. He’s able to have us laughing one minute while making our skin crawl the next. And the wizards at Wētā Workshop do a superb job with the creature effects, making something that is effortlessly terrifying whether spiders scare you or not. “Sting” in available on VOD and home video.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

Emma Roberts dreams of blasting into space in her new film “Space Cadet”, a harmless yet ludicrous comedy written and directed by Liz W. Garcia. It’s a movie that (I think) wants to promote female empowerment and it has a hearty message about second chances when it comes to pursuing your dreams. But it’s hard to take those things seriously when the film makes suspending your disbelief this difficult.

“Space Cadet” feels like a movie that did the bare minimum when it came time to research our space program. Yes, it throws in some proper terminology and portions were shot at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. But it’s all so silly and far-fetched, especially its depiction of NASA. I get that it’s just a movie and realism probably wasn’t a priority. But you can’t help but wonder what country would support such an inept space program? Suffice it to say NASA won’t be using “Space Cadet” in any of its recruitment drives.

Among the film’s few bright spots is Roberts who does her very best with what she’s given. She plays Tiffany “Rex” Simpson, a flighty Florida party girl who once had big dreams of becoming an astronaut. These days she works as a beachside bartender and saves manatees in her spare time. She lives with her father Calvin (Sam Robards) who leads ghost hunting tours and still struggles with the loss of her mother who died ten years earlier. Oh, and she has an eccentric best friend Nadine (Poppy Liu) because these movies always have an eccentric best friend who exists solely for comic relief.

After a rather out-of-the-blue epiphany, Rex decides she wants to be an astronaut again. So she fills out an application to the NASA Training Program (as if that’s all it takes to be an astronaut). Nadine gets ahold of the application and secretly spruces it up a bit, wildly embellishing Rex’s achievements and qualifications. And wouldn’t you know it, this comically incompetent NASA chooses Rex to be a part of their exclusive program (so I guess that is all it takes to be an astronaut in this world).

Rex travels to Johnson Space Center in Houston where she joins the supposedly elite group of trainees chosen to compete for jobs at NASA. The handful of finalists will take part in a mission to the International Space Station. Of course the bubbly and buoyant Rex sticks out like a sore thumb among all of the legit serious-minded geniuses. But she quickly begins to win everyone over including her superiors. Among them is the hunky but incredibly dense Logan O’Leary (Tom Hopper). He’s the Deputy Director of Operations and an astronaut, but he’s mainly there to serve as Rex’s eventual love interest.

It may surprise you, but all of that is the movie at its most realistic. Things only get more preposterous from there. So much so that it’s impossible to look past the absurdity no matter how hard you try. As a result, not only does the story suffer but the characters do as well. They’re all so thinly written and as unconvincing as the silly tale they’re handcuffed to. It’s unfortunate, especially when you see Roberts giving it her all. To her credit, she makes the movie endurable. But as with any actor, she can only do so much with bad material. “Space Cadets” is streaming now on Prime Video.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it’s a bit amusing to have a third installment in a film franchise that’s titled “Chapter 1”. Yet here we are with “The Strangers: Chapter 1”, a prequel to the 2008 original film that was written and directed by Bryan Bertino. I really enjoyed the first Strangers movie for a number of reasons. It was a simple and straightforward psychological horror film yet soaked in atmosphere and tension. It was genuinely frightening and earned its status as a cult favorite. There was a sequel, 2018’s “Strangers: Prey at Night”, but that one is better left forgotten.

“The Strangers: Chapter 1” is set to be the first in a trilogy of films, all of which were shot together over a three-month stretch in late 2022. All three are directed by Renny Harlin who’s perhaps best known for helming the early 1990s action hits “Die Hard 2” and “Cliffhanger”. And all three are written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland working from a story by Bryan Bertino. It’s meant to be a relaunch of sorts, but it’s hard to say how much excitement it’ll generate. Especially considering how this one turned out.

“Chapter 1″ pulls much of its inspiration from the 2008 original. In fact too much. You could say it’s a carbon copy but minus the thick tension and steady sense of dread. But the film’s biggest problem is that it’s barely half of a movie stretched out to feature length. There’s about 30 minutes of material which means we spend a lot of time spinning our wheels and going nowhere. It’s made worse by a flat “To be continued” ending that does nothing to entice us with what’s to come.

To its credit, the movie does a decent job setting up a story that takes place “somewhere in Oregon”. Lovebirds Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) are on a three-day cross-country roadtrip from New York to Portland where Maya is set for a big job interview. While passing through the tiny town of Venus, the couple stops at a diner to get some food. They’re greeted by your garden-variety backwoods locals – weird and a little creepy (as they’re often depicted in the movies).

As bad luck would have it, Ryan and Maya find themselves stranded after their car won’t start and the mechanic can’t get the part he needs until the next day. They’re able to find a rustic Airbnb deep in the woods just outside of town where they settle in for a quiet romantic night. That is until three masked psychos begin terrorizing them – first with annoying yet seemingly harmless harassment. But once they break out the axes and butcher knives things get much more serious.

Much like the 2008 film, the setup is pretty simple. But where “Chapter 1” flounders is in its lack of scares and in its inability to create and sustain suspense. Outside of a few lazy jump-scares, Harlin relies on a steady diet of frightened closeups and the psychos roaming around the house knocking on doors, peering through windows, and standing in the shadows. There are a couple of scenes of action but not nearly enough of it.

Meanwhile Ryan and Maya prove they’re not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Some of their choices will have you shaking your head and shouting at the screen. This is especially true later in the movie where you won’t find a hint of good judgement. Yes I know this isn’t unusual for the horror genre. But here it felt especially maddening.

But that seems like a small gripe when compared to the more glaring issues. Namely that “Chapter 1” is just a stripped down version of 2008’s “The Strangers” that feels like a 30-minute pilot episode drawn out to feature length. We spend most of our time waiting for something to happen…anything. And when it finally does, the payoff isn’t worth the wait. Even worse, it struggles mightily to muster up any anticipation for the movies to come. “The Strangers: Chapter 1” is out now exclusively in theaters.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS

The bluntly titled “Something in the Water” hearkens back to those good old days of perusing the horror section of my local mom-and-pop video store, carefully examining the VHS boxes of movies I’d never heard of, in search of some fun late-night entertainment. For better or worse, “Something in the Water” plays a lot like some of those weekend rentals that teenage me would pick out and watch.

First-time feature film director Hayley Easton Street takes the reins for what is essentially another shark thriller. Most of these movies follow a similar path – something goes wrong while out at sea and our unfortunate protagonists find themselves fighting for their lives against man-eating sharks. “Something in the Water” is no different. To her credit, Street does try to cook up some side drama. But the one-dimensional characters and their lightweight relationships don’t give us much to cling to.

It all takes place in the Caribbean where five friends gather at a swanky beachside resort for a weekend wedding. Meg (Hiftu Quasem) arrives and joins the hyperactive Cam (Nicole Rieko Setsuko), the thoughtful Ruth (Ellouise Shakespeare-Hart), and her former partner Kayla (Natalie Mitson) to party with their buddy and bride Lizzie (Lauren Lyle). The movie tries to give them each their own personality but there’s nothing that makes them stand out. The only real sense of drama involves Meg and Kayla who haven’t spoken since a traumatizing event split them apart one year earlier.

One afternoon Cam rents a rust-bucket boat and whisks the ladies away to a remote island well off the mainland. But what’s meant to be a fun and leisurely day on the beach quickly goes south after a shark bites a chunk out of Ruth’s leg while she’s playing in the water. Unable to stop the bleeding, the girls load their friend into the boat. But in their panicked rush back to the mainland, their boat strikes a reef gashing a hole in the bottom. And just like that the five friends are stranded in the middle of the ocean. And as you can probably guess, it doesn’t take long for that pesky shark to reappear.

It all makes for a harrowing scenario and Street squeezes out some pretty good tension, at least early on. But as it moves forward the film has trouble sustaining any real sense of terror or suspense. And it quickly begins to run out of gas despite clocking in at under 90 minutes. There are a couple of good character moments that earn the emotions they’re going for. But outside of that the movie sputters on its way to a silly ending that it could have done without.

“Something in the Water” is a competently directed first feature for Street who does her best with a thin story and fairly modest budget. The setting is beautifully shot and the performances are solid enough. But the story (written by Cat Clarke) doesn’t have the dramatic heft, suspense, or self-awareness to make it into any of the several movies it could have been. It’s moderately entertaining but falls victim to its generic characters, rather routine storyline, and a lack of energy to push it across the finish line.

VERDICT – 2 STARS