Three Semi-Recent Horrors, Easy on the Spoilers

Scraping the bottom of the 2010-and-later barrel for a good scare:

And Soon the Darkness (2010): Commercial-grade xenophobic travel horror narrative seemingly designed by people from the US in order to make other people embarrassed to be from the US. Also, did they just use the term "white slavery"? Bad case of remake syndrome. Unremarkable. Pass.


Don't Go into the Woods (2010):  Maybe it's the War of the Vincents, maybe it's daddy issues, but some of us stubbornly follow Vincent D'Ononfrio into whatever crap he rolls around in. Take your advice from the first word of the movie's title: Don't. Just don't. Unless and maybe even if you are a D'Ononfrio crap archivist like me, please, I cannot warn you enough: Don't. This is the first feature-length film in which he directs, and I am so sad to report: it is a carbon-copy coeds in the woods horror whodunit, with song. You heard me: with song. Coeds who sing their feelings in indie rock harmony = a vapid musical and a lousy horror move that somehow also manages to be unfunny. (Oh, Vincent, method acting the same crazy guy from Law and Order: CI for ten years has really taken it out of you, hasn't it?)


The Pact: (2012): A ruthlessly understated, tense indie horror flick that adheres to its own supernatural rules and brings a little more to the table. The characters (all unknown actors, with one well-disguised exception) strike a balance between blank enough to be relatable but interesting enough to die. All the severed limbs and evil monster ghosts in the world can't be as frightening as this scoreless, hybrid little gem. 


Worth multiple viewings, and integrates the technological more so than the usual "Twenty minutes to explain why the cell phone got lost" sequence. Here, the supernatural is so perfectly and astutely poised in relation to the dysfunctional. I'm going to go ahead and call modern scary classic on this one.