Polaroid (2019)

When misfit teen Bird Fitcher (Kathryn Prescott) is gifted a polaroid camera, she starts taking pictures of her friends. Alas, this is a cursed camera and before long people start dying off, targeted by a monstrous entity in the order that a shadow appears behind them in the polaroid photo Bird takes of them. Think of it like Goosebumps' "Say Cheese and Die" spliced with "Final Destination", only it's devoid of humour, lacks interesting characters, and is the epitome of modern day visual drabness in horror movies. And did I mention the complete lack of blood and gore? Because this movie epitomises PG-13 toothlessness too, all jumpscares and blue ball cutaways. Maybe if the characters were worth spending time with, the absence of actual horror in this movie wouldn't be so big a problem, but these kids don't have a personality between them and there's no investment in their fate. If "Polaroid" isn't quite as bad as the similarly derivative and bland "Countdown" (also released in 2019), it's still almost aggressively mediocre and soulless. I will give it credit for one thing, however: casting Grace Zabriskie in a supporting role as a lore-dropping old woman with links to the camera's evil origin was inspired, and she's just great. Unfortunately, that's all the inspiration the movie has to offer.

The Haunting of La Llorona (2019)

A La Llorona movie that's more in the spirit of "The Exorcist" via Tubi but lacks any of the actual qualities of that movie, "The Haunting of La Llorona" works well as a defence of 2019's "The Curse of La Llorona" but is a disaster of a movie. Fortunately, it's just barely 70 minutes long and the actors, although bad, aren't totally unbearable, so it kinda flies by while making very little sense and offering no rewards. With all lore reduced to an afterthought, its 'La Llorona' figure is a vengeful spirit who has a thing for a morally imperfect priest but focuses most of its wrath on others, most notably Cassandra (Kaylin Zeren), whose defining traits are jogging and suspecting her partner is cheating on her. Cue the same unconvincing makeup/VFX work on loop and acting performances to match. Most tragically of all, there are zero laughs; just pure shit.

The Requin (2022)

Still traumatized by the stillbirth of their baby, married couple Jaelyn (Alicia Silverstone) and Kyle (James Tupper) try to enjoy a beach holiday in Vietnam, only to find that a change of scenery doesn't mean a change of luck. When a tropical storm hits, their villa is swept out to sea, where a combination of bad decisions and even more bad luck make this a bloody holiday to forget. Of course, Alicia Silverstone and James Tupper are but miscast actors playing roles they probably shouldn't have taken; we the viewers are the real victims. "The Requin" is a terrible shark movie with distractingly bad VFX work worthy of a lesser Syfy original, which isn't helped by a lame script that spells everything out for the viewer (an argument between Jaelyn and Kyle in which they offer a play-by-play of their shared backstory almost has to be seen to be believed) and does a fine job of stretching a threadbare plot over 89 looong minutes. I loved Alicia Silverstone back in the "Clueless"/"The Crush" days, but try as she might, she isn't built for the Blake Lively role, coming off as far more annoying than she is endearing as the movie's central protagonist. Nor is director Le Van Kiet possessed of the same talent that Jaume Collet-Sera brought to the comparatively, uh, lively "The Shallows". Don't get me wrong: "The Requin" is good for a few laughs, but nobody involved seems to be in on the joke.

Room for Rent (2019)

Lin Shaye's been in so many bad movies throughout her career that it's pretty commonplace to see claims she's being wasted, but sometimes she does perform at the level of the crap she's in. Case in point: "Room for Rent", director Tommy Stovall's slow-burn stinker about recently-widowed Joyce (Shaye), who starts renting rooms in her house and naturally becomes obsessed with the first attractive man (Oliver Rayon) to enter the fray. You know it's all gonna go tits up eventually -- especially when author Sarah (Valeska Miller, giving the movie's only good performance) becomes entangled in Joyce's one-way idea of domestic bliss -- but the getting there is pretty dull and just when the movie feels like it might be arriving at its most explosive point it ends. Along the way there's a couple of anticlimactic kills and a not-quite-vintage Shaye performance to put up with, but precious little excitement or interest. Maybe if Joyce was a bit more of a Dorothea Puerta kind of landlady and the movie less sedate, it might have worked. As is, even at 80 minutes it's a bit of a slog.