Festival Aims to Slay Zombie Record

Joss Whedon-produced horror-comedy defies convention

(NEWSER) - Critics are applauding Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods for its delectable mixture of horror and humor. From a familiar premise—five college students alone in the forest—come all kinds of surprises.

• "A fiendishly clever brand of meta-level genius propels The Cabin in the Woods," writes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post . It's "a pulpy, deceivingly insightful send-up of horror movies that elicits just as many knowing chuckles as horrified gasps."

12 zombies hurt on ' Resident Evil' Toronto set

(NEWSER) - Emergency workers called to the site of an accident on a film set in Toronto yesterday morning initially thought there had been a gruesome catastrophe, but soon realized that most of the people there were meant to be hideously mangled: It was the set of the next Resident Evil movie. A dozen zombies who took a 5-foot tumble to the ground when a platform shifted were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, the Toronto Star reports. More»

Even naked Christina Ricci can't save ambiguous horror flick

(NEWSER) - Critics are absolutely burying After.Life, a dull horror flick about a woman who may be dead. And no, the stupid dot in the title is never explained. Here’s what they’re saying:

• What seems like it ought to be a vaguely silly movie “takes itself so seriously it’s practically embalmed,” writes Stephen Whitty of the Star-Ledger . Liam Neeson in particular “seems to have convinced himself that he’s in some rare, rediscovered Beckett play—Krapp’s Last Autopsy.”

These film plots are so ridiculous, they deserve props

(NEWSER) - Some movie plots are so absurd, you have to award credit for achieving a spectacular level of ridiculousness. Based on the title alone, it’s obvious Hot Tub Time Machine (trailer at left) fits into this category. Here are nine more from Olivia Allin of The Frisky :

• Snakes on a Plane: Again, the title alone is enough to land this Samuel L. Jackson flick on the list.
• I Know Who Killed Me: “This movie is a great reminder that if you’re having really weird memories and feel like you have a split personality, you might just have a stigmatic twin you didn’t know about and could be suffering sympathetic resonance from her plights.” Right.

Alien-abduction mock-doc delivers lame premise with laughable framing device

(NEWSER) - The Fourth Kind attempts to combine dramatization of true events and fake-documentary alien abductions in Alaska, and falls horribly flat. Here's what critics are saying:

• The ludicrousness of the grainy archival footage, presented as "real," and a lousy performance by Milla Jovovich, whose "notion of serious acting seems to be speaking very slowly in a halting monotone," make it hard to suspend your disbelief, writes Stephen Holden for the New York Times.