You’ve seen it all before, but is it worth seeing again?

Familiar fear can be comforting. So I take on 2:13, Almost Human, and The Canal!

2:13 (2009)

In the tradition of Seven, the Hannibal films, and every other serial killer profiling movie you’ve ever seen, star and screenplay writer Mark Thompson (who played a police officer in Jason Goes to Hell) brings us 2:13. Mark plays a mentally troubled, alcoholic profiler who struggles with female relations while having an unhealthy connection to his latest serial killer.

The film starts off hardcore with a masked killer piercing a woman’s breast with a long rod. In fact, all the torturing and killing scenes in the film are dark, gritty, and gruesome. They are one of the best parts of the film for horror fans. Other than that, it’s pretty run-of-the-mill technical investigation procedure stuff (which isn’t my thing) and a whole lot of questionable details and facts that are hard to get past. Not to mention, the ending is odd and confusing.

But along with the awesome kills, creepy mask dreams the profiler has, and the killer’s love of Shakespeare, we get plenty of familiar faces, including fricking country singer Dwight Yoakam as a sex store owner! But best of all is Mark Pellegrino (Lost, Supernatural, Being Human, Dexter), who is amazing in the film and has a bangin’ bod…and maybe ass, unless that’s a stunt butt. However, Mark Thompson’s hot butt is not a stunt butt.

Lucky park bench….

ALMOST HUMAN (2013)

It’s the end of the 1980s (words it still hurts to say). A lumbersexual ginge is sucked up into the sky by a beam of blue light as his friend and girlfriend watch. Two years later, the same blue light beam spits the lumbersexual ginge into the woods, naked (yes!). He immediately begins a murderous rampage. For a while, it all feels very redneck/hunter/ammosexual killer with a gun and I was thinking, I could read the local Texas news to see this shit.

But then the fun starts. The lumbersexual ginge squeals in true body snatcher style, stockpiles bodies in a barn, sucks face with them using a very long appendage that comes out of his mouth, and turns them into cocoons to be reborn. Only his buddy and girlfriend can stop the insanity.

A Fire in the Sky/Body Snatchers mashup that’s fast-paced, with lots of gore, suspense, and a hot lumbersexual ginge. What more could you ask for?

THE CANAL (2014)

Aside from the fact that the twist in The Canal is ridiculously predictable from the very beginning, it’s a creepy film.

A couple moves into a new home with their child. The husband is a film archivist who finds himself working on a very The Ring type film…that reveals there were grisly murders in his house like one-hundred years ago. Meanwhile, the local canal near his house has a terrifying public bathroom that gives off totally Absentia vibes.

When the wife goes missing, the husband is convinced that some supernatural entity is to blame. He begins filming footage (no, it’s not a found footage film) around his house and the canal that freakishly proves he might be right.

The film is spooky as hell and there is one seriously nasty scene at the end involving a baby (more Absentia), plus a creature climbing out of a hole in a wall being used as a film projection screen (more The Ring), but I really doubt any experienced horror film lover is not going to guess the outcome of this film.