Lions Gate has been, in the past, a substantial source of direct to video horror titles. And while the number of these films has somewhat fallen off in recent months, it’s good to see they’re still trying to keep up the trend. And that’s what we’ll be tackling today with Siren, a copy of which Lions Gate sent out for us to review.

Siren follows a group of friends who’ve set off on a boating adventure that starts to go badly wrong when they try to rescue a girl who’s waving for help on an island off the coast of where they’re doing their boating. This young lady is pretty much everything a guy could want to run into on a secluded island…the problem, of course, is that she’s also a lot more than any guy would want to run into. And we’ll all find out  just how much more when the group of friends starts abruptly dying off. Now the group will have to risk it all to get off the island in one piece.

And yes, before you start wondering, this is a modern-era psuedo-monster movie retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey. This actually makes it just a bit more endearing, to see what they do with one of the great literary classics of Western literature by putting it in a setting better suited for direct to video horror.

The interesting thing about Siren is that it’s actually a lot more subtle than you might expect. This doesn’t turn into some kind of SyFy monster movie slop–this actually works more like a series of ends playing against the middle, and it’s fairly interesting. We don’t even really know just what’s going on for most of the first hour of the movie, though we can make some reasonable inferences and it will turn out that most of these inferences aren’t too far off from the truth.

Even up until the last few minutes, it’s going to stay pretty subtle, with some interesting mind games going on, and that keeps this one in the level of the, at least as far as direct to video horror film goes, fairly cerebral.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Lions Gate a real tip of the hat in terms of effort for Siren, which will garner it an eight out of ten. It’s not quite scary enough to really get the top marks, but it will make the effort to be at least somewhat original, and frankly, I call that pretty good.

First of all, I like this poster of Adrien Brody looking mighty beat and for forsaken. There is still a handsome quality about him, though. Directed by Michael Greenspan, Brody plays a man who awakens in a mangled car-wreck at the bottom of a steep cliff. Injured and trapped inside, with no memory of how he got there or who he is, he must rely on his most primal instincts to survive. But as he attempts to free himself from the carnage and escape an impossible situation, a darker side is revealed. Even if he manages to survive, the man may have to face the horrible consequences of an earlier, forgotten life.

The movie is being billed as horror-thriller, which also includes Caroline Dhavenas as the co-star. The film opens on April 1, 2011 in New York and April 8, 2011 in Los Angeles. The film is currently available on-demand.

I am going to the midnight run of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. My daughter and I went the to the midnight run for Part 1. It was fantastic watching a sold out movie, packed theater of Harry Potter fans. Everyone in the theater loved the movie.

For the final film, my expectations are ten-fold. In January asked if the IMAX theater had started selling midnight run tickets. The concessions stand girl look at me like I was crazy. I guess she’s not a Harry Potter fan.

Now, this behind the scenes featurette seems more like a teaser featurette. I love what the producers and the director are saying about the film. I mean, here we are in March with the movie opening in mid-July. According to the usual methods of promoting a movie, the behind the scenes clips are closer to the opening day of a movie. Frankly, I’d love to see a full-length trailer of Harry Potter 7 – Part 2 with all the bells and whistles.

Something else to note: Harry Potter has a Facebook, of course, and a similar featurette is posted there with pictures from the movie. So, you might want to check that out if you are true Harry Potter fan.

Screenhead has five copies of Dying God to giveaway!

The search for a brutal serial killer becomes other-worldly in the suspenseful horror film Dying God, available wherever DVDs are sold from Green Apple Entertainment.

The science fiction-thriller follows a series of bizarre and violent killings that haunt a dark and decadent city. Along comes a corrupt cop, Sean Fallon (James Horan, Flags of Our Fathers), who must face his own demons to put an end to the brutal string of rape-murders.

With the help of an unsavory band of pimps, headed by Chance (Lance Henrickson, The Terminator) – his only allies – Fallon tracks the mysterious assailant … who just may not be human!

Directed by French director Fabrice Lambot (Le Sang du Chatiment, Insanity), Dying God is presented in widescreen with an aspect ratio of 16 x 9 (1.2.1) and stereo. Bonus material includes trailer.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winners March 31, 2011.

I think–and I just think, mind you–that the folks at The Asylum, who sent over a copy of Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes for me to review, may well have found their stride, finally, in the found footage subgenre. Doesn’t take a lot of cash to make a found footage movie, and if you do it right, you can get a freaky little package that is even downright fun in spots.

Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes is purportedly found footage of the original story that kicked off The Exorcism of Emily Rose. It’s about a young German girl, Anneliese Michel, who ends up possessed by demons. Midway through her experience, she reportedly had a vision of the Virgin Mary who told her that she would need to carry on in a bid to get the word out about the devil and the various forces working against mankind. This is, supposedly, her story.

Not surprisingly, this is not actual footage, though it is pretty convincing. And even more, they’ve thrown in what is, as far as I can tell, actual audio of the recorded exorcism of Anneliese Michel.

Admittedly, most of the cast is kind of wooden, but the girl they got to play Anneliese Michel turned out to be a great casting maneuver–she’s a whole bundle of freaky, and does a great job of veering wildly between ominous, normal little girl, and demonic rage.

There are many portions of the movie that are in German, which doesn’t help and actually makes things a little creepier for not knowing what will happen next. And of course, there are plenty of surprises in the video–think of it as a primitive, medieval version of Paranormal Activity, and you’re really not too far off of what you’re actually dealing with–so watch the playback carefully for stutters and other artifacts.

It’s weird in parts, an incredibly good knock-off in others, and outright authentic (again, as far as basic research has been able to tell) in others yet. The Asylum has done well with found footage movies before–look at 8213: Gacy House–and this one will be no different. It’s some reasonably scary stuff, and you’ll want to at least give it a rental if you’re a horror buff.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes a thoroughly surprised eight out of ten–it hit me just right, and I can definitely suggest it to you guys if you’re looking for a nice creepy experience in the dark of night, possibly with some friends.

I just took a look at Rainn Wilson and Joshua Homnick’s short film The Blitzen Trapper Massacre, which is now live at SundanceNow and cost nothing to watch. The film had its world theatrical debut last night at SXSW, and is now playing on SundanceNOW.com for an exclusive, one-week run.

Everyone has been obsessed with the music of a favorite band at one time or another, but in The Blitzen Trapper Massacre, writer and director Rainn Wilson (The Office) takes hero worship to a comically frightening new level.

One night, the actor shows up backstage to meet indie rock stars Blitzen Trapper before a big show. Initially excited to meet their most famous fan, the band grows concerned when Wilson produces his own guitar and invites himself to join their performance. The group quickly turns down his offer of backup, but this won’t be the last they’ve heard from the deranged Wilson. Will the band survive to play the show? If they don’t, there’s one fan waiting in the wings to take over. After all, the show must go on.

The short is kind of crude but funny in its own diabolical way.

Bread Crumbs DVD cover says “Mama was wrong … some fairy tales are true in Bread Crumbs, a heart-pounding thriller.”

This movie is for horror hungry fans, and Screenhead is hosting a giveaway of (5) Bread Crumbs DVDs. The horror story follows an aging star, Angie (Marianne Hagan, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Perfume), who reluctantly goes on one last shoot for a seedy, B-movie producer.

On location – lodging in an enchanting, old cabin deep in the shadowy forest – the cast and crew encounter Henry (Dan Shaked, Counting to Infinity) and his little sister, Patti (Amy Crowdis, The Melancholy Fantastic), two odd children who mysteriously seem to live in the woods.

A violent attack on the second evening of shooting sends Angie, her handsome lead Billy (Steve Carey, Jack and Jill vs. the World) and the rest of the crew into a frightened frenzy. Barricading themselves in the secluded cabin, they are trapped by an unknown assailant and, one by one, being horrifically slaughtered.

Could these two children be responsible for such brutal slayings? A roller coaster ride to the terrifying conclusion, Bread Crumbs is a fairy tale of terror, the classic fable of Hansel & Gretel re-imagined. Eat the candy, if you dare! You can check out a decent review here.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winners March 26, 2011.

Strap in and get ready for some fun, folks–the IFC sent out another one of theirs for me to review, no less than We Are What We Are. We all know the IFC has put out some real winners in its time, so the odds are definitely with us going into this one.

We Are What We Are follows a family of cannibals in crisis. The family patriarch has died, and that’s left the family in no small state of turmoil. But they decide to do what they’ve always done–sometimes, status quo really is the best decision in a tragedy–and go get themselves some fresh pre-processed Soylent Green. But it’s not going to be that simple…nor that easy…as the cannibals find people aren’t as easy to catch and eat as previously believed.

If that sounds a little too much like The Hills Have Eyes for your tastes, I can see that. But this is a Spanish horror title, and the Spaniards have given us some fine pieces in the past like the [Rec] series. But there are some really strange features about We Are What We Are that bear mentioning.

One, this is not so much of a horror movie as it is a drama with some horror elements. There’s a lot of family turmoil and societal drama and whatnot going on in here, and frankly, the cannibalism really doesn’t come into play until about the last half hour or so.

Two, the title is absolutely right. They are…what they are. Just about everybody in this movie is a ragingly unsympathetic character that’s impossible to really get to know or care about. The cops are corrupt, the medical examiner is a loon, there’s a horde of whores just hanging around, and the cannibal family is comprised of entirely, well, cannibals.  And there looks like there might be some incest going on in there, too. They are what they are, take it or leave it.

And that’s the question you’ll have to ask yourself before settling in with We Are What We Are. Can you watch a ninety minute Spanish horror romp, in the original Spanish, that has an open ending and not one character that you can actually engage on an emotional level?

If you can, then you’ll want to check this out. If not, then stay away because it’ll be a waste of your ninety minutes. Why the IFC decided to pick up this lump of useless I’ll never know.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives We Are What We Are a six out of ten–it will be good stuff to just the right sort of people, but there likely aren’t that many of those kind of people out there.

Guillermo Del Toro has experienced yet another setback in what should be his explosion into the mainstream. Last year he was forced to drop out as director of The Hobbit films due to a scheduling conflict. Then came even more exciting news: his long-in-development pet project was being produced by James Cameron. The project was of course At The Mountains of Madness and sadly now this seems to be dead.

At the Mountains of Madness was an adaptation of the HP Lovecraft novella in which a group of Antarctic explorers who accidentally awaken the alien inhabitants of an ancient and hidden city. Cameron backed the project which was to be shot in native 3D. Even more promising news emerged last week when Tom Cruise was rumoured to be the star. But now it appears Del Toro has dropped his pet project and is filming another script later this year. So what happened? According to Deadline, the proposed budget for the Lovecraft horror was in the region of $150 million, which is quite a risky investment. Even more so when the project was aiming for an R-rating in the US. A film with that budget would need to make $500 million worldwide to cover its costs. In an email with Criterion, Del Toro has said the film is “dead”.

It’s a real shame to see this project hit a brick wall. HP Lovecraft is considered to be the grandfather of modern horror, and his mythos of strange creatures is deep and sublimely fascinating. There is yet to be a major film adaptation of any of his works (though there are many straight-to-video duds), and Del Toro’s film could have opened to floodgates to adaptations of one of the most distinct horror writers of all time.

Del Toro is now working on Pacific Rim, a film that Deadline calls a “tent pole-sized project with big monsters and the creation of a new world”. Lovecraft’s work may not be ready to see the big screen, but Pacific Rim sure proves that his influence is present in modern cinema. While there’s no word on what will happen to At the Mountains of Madness, here’s hoping Del Toro will return to it next year.

Yesterday I posted the new official trailer from Brandon Routh’s upcoming film, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. Now, here is the poster, which I like very much because of it’s Italian flare, it looks hand drawn and unique from all the other superhero posters I have seen of late. The rain effect gives a foreboding edge.

Directed by Kevin Munroe and written by Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, the horror-comedy also includes the acting talents of Sam Huntington, Anita Briem, Peter Stormare and Taye Diggs.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is based on one of the world’s most popular comics (60 million copies worldwide). Brandon Routh stars as Dylan Dog, world famous private investigator specializing in affairs of the undead. His PI business card reads “No Pulse? No Problem.” Armed with an edgy wit and carrying an arsenal of silver and wood-tipped bullets, Dylan must track down a dangerous artifact before a war ensues between his werewolf, vampire and zombie clients living undercover in the monster infested backstreets of New Orleans.

The movie opens in theaters on April 29, 2011.