“Initiation” (** out of four) was a hollow horror thriller about a college university which is under siege from a serial killer while the students (Froy Gutierrez, Patrick R. Walker, and others) are all but tripping over the bodies and a hard-nosed detective (Yancy Butler) and the dean of the university (Lochlyn Munro) try to unravel everything. Not the worst of this genre but too routine and formulaic to really have any impact and liberally rips off both “Scream 2” and “Urban Legend.” Munro’s casting is ironic since he played the berserk roommate in “Dead Man On Campus.” Filmed in only 16 days.

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“Locked In” (**1/2 out of four) was a relatively engaging suspense thriller about a feisty single mom (Mena Suvari) who must protect herself and her daughter (Jasper Polish) and fight for survival during a heist gone wrong at a high-tech storage facility and she has to outsmart both a corrupt cop (Costas Mandylor) and a criminal mastermind (Jeff Fahey). Overall gripping enough and moves fast and has enough tension and suspense to make it worthwhile although lacks the fire and precision that would have made it really satisfying. Suvari is strong in the lead.

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“Painkiller” (** out of four) was a muddled thriller melodrama about a middle-aged father (Bill Oberst, Jr) who loses a child to an opioid overdose and goes on a one-man campaign and vigilante quest to go after a corrupt doctor (Michael Pare) and various politicians and pharmaceutical agents who flood the market with opioids. Give director/co-writer Mark Savage points for trying to make a thought-provoking story about the opioid epidemic and the various machinations that profit from it but his points are blunted by scattershot script and unfocused story. Both Oberst and the always-reliable Pare do what they can to keep film on track.

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“Blue Call” (**1/2 out of four) was a reasonably engrossing pulp melodrama about an EMT worker (Katie Leclerc) suffering from severe PTSD who makes the moral decision one night on the job to kill a woman who is suffering but this opens a pandora’s box of consequences that leads her to being plunged into a rabbit hole of drugs and the underworld and she is then targeted by a sadistic killer. Starts to become overly (and unnecessarily) cerebral and unpleasant in its final third but does capture the tension and duress of working as an EMT and also those suffering from PTSD with raw fervor. Leclerc’s strong work in the lead makes this “a call” overall worth answering.

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“Await The Dawn” (** out of four) was a flashy but flimsy horror thriller about a family (Dee Wallace, Bruce Davison, Courtney Gains) travelling cross-country who are hijacked by a man (Josh Server) in desperation but they soon find out he’s on the run from ghoulish and otherworldly zombies who are bent on worldwide destruction. Proficient enough with a reasonably zippy pace and some occasional jolts but film itself amounts to nothing more than a pastiche of “Night Of The Living Dead” and “The Howling” (which also starred Stone). Even still, this won numerous awards at the 2020 MMXX Foreman Empire Productions International Film Festival and the Pasadena Horror Film Festival.

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“Wrong Place / Wrong Time” (** out of four) was a forgettable horror thriller about a team of mercenaries (Franziska Schissler, Alex Ryan Brown, Chase Garland, and others) who conspire to steal $14 billion in laundered money; they’re subsequently double-crossed and have to seek refuge with a family in the middle of the nowhere and find that the patriach of the family (Mike Markoff) is a bloodthirsty zombie intent on killing them all. Some scares and decent visual effects but a definite feeling of deja vu hangs over the proceedings. By this point, the horror zombie genre needs a transfusion of fresh blood and right ideas.

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“My Husband’s Killer Girlfriend” (** out of four) was an overly routine suspense thriller about a dedicated mother (Cindy Busby) who hires a nanny (Chelsey Reist) to watch her child over the weekend when she goes out of town but subsequently finds out she’s the girlfriend of her ex-husband (Lane Edwards) and tries to frame her for child neglect and she has to go on the run to sort out the mystery and prove her innocence. Efficiently directed and made but you’ve seen this done before and better many times by now. Lucia Walters adds some spice and style as a hard-nosed detective on the case.

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“Hoodman” (*1/2 out of four) was a dreary horror thriller about the title urban legend who haunts a small New England town; when a young woman (Madison Spear) discovers her young daughter is missing, her and a hard-nosed detective (Brock Morse) link ties to a suspected killer (Jack James) who may or not be involved and who may have ties himself to the hoodman legend. Moody cinematography by Jack Parker is a definite plus but the story is dead in the water and never comes to life. Watch “Candyman” (or even “The Bye Bye Man”) instead.

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“Zombie With A Shotgun” (*1/2 out of four) was an artless adaptation of the popular web series about a couple (Brandon Baade and Kathrine Kuhn) on the run when he gets seemingly infected by a zombie virus during a worldwide pandemic but his virus symptoms never progress and he remains in the transitional phase which makes him sought after by both ravenous zombies and shadowy government operatives (Foster Davis and Robert Bella) who want to study him. Cheesy and lame pastiche of zombie cliches doesn’t give you anything that Romero didn’t do- and do better- decades earlier. For hardcore fans of the series only.

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“Eat Wheaties” (*1/2 out of four) was a synthetic comedy about a middle-aged blowhard (Tony Hale) who finds his life gradually starts to fall apart when he tries to prove he was friends with a particular celebrity in college and this leads to his close friends and job to find out that he’s full of it. Failed attempt to cross-pollinate a moral melodrama with sitcom humor; a paper-thin premise stretched well beyond its limits at nearly an hour-and-a-half. Hale tries his best but you’ll likely be starving for laughs and fulfillment.

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