(1990)
Dir - Joel Schumacher
Overall: GOOD
After taking a slight detour with the romantic comedy Cousins, Joel Schumacher's near-follow-up to his seminal vampire yarn The Lost Boys was the Brat Pack-esque, psychological horror film Flatliners. Reunited with Keifer Sutherland once more in addition to Julia Roberts, Billy Baldwin, Kevin Bacon, and Oliver Platt, the cast is solid enough to elevate the at times flat, (har, har), material to a higher plane. The script by Peter Filardi poses some interesting questions about life after death, but they end up being just questions as answers are bypassed in place of some very different concepts getting thrown into the mix about reckoning with one's dark, past grievances. These details are a bit vague yet not so much in a detrimental way as Schumacher first and foremost maintains a vibrantly eerie tone even with the minor comedic jabs sprinkled in for good measure. The ending is not the most satisfying in the world, but even with the last act not quite holding up to the first two, it is a memorable, evocative enough work for the duration.
(1992)
Dir - Frank Henenlotter
Overall: MEH
The third and last installment in Frank Henenlotter's increasingly absurd Basket Case series, Basket Case 3: The Progeny picks up right where the last one left off, even opening with said film's final moments just in case anyone watching may have inexplicably stumbled in uninitiated. The practical effects budget seems to have been entirely blown on making the evil title twin look better than ever as no effort was made to even hide the seam-lines on the wigs and masks of the returning assortment of freaks. This, the cartoon level, exaggerated performances, and the purposely moronic script, (this one co-authored by Fangoria editor Robert Martin), all go a long way in making this easily the least horror-tinged and most comedically-focused entry in the franchise. Not that any of the other installment nor really any of Henenlotter's works prided themselves at all on anything less garish in nature or execution, but there is no denying that the lid has particularly flown off here. The humor is so prominent yet the story so exasperatingly odd that many of the jokes are bound to miss their mark, but it is still a hoot by many measures.
(1998)
Dir - Bryan Singer
Overall: MEH
One of the rare Stephen King stories that qualifies as a horror entry without having any supernatural components, Apt Pupil doubly serves as Bryan Singer's follow-up to the crowd-pleasing The Usual Suspects from three years prior. It had undergone production setbacks from within only a few years of being initially published as a novella in King's Different Seasons collection, finally getting green-lit after both Singer and Ian McKellen enthusiastically became involved. While there are a few intense, well staged sequences and its subject matter is sufficiently skin-crawling, some fundamentals with the plotting itself inevitably bring it down a bit in its final act. Up until that point, the audience can stay on board with an overly arrogant, morbidly curious highschooler taking advantage of an even less sympathetic Nazi war criminal, but eventually some eyeball-rolling coincidences stretch the plausibility factor a bit too thin to make the rather stagy finale deliver as well as it should. The characters are not particularly fleshed-out enough to work either, though McKellen and fourteen year-old Brad Renfro give quite evenly matched performances as the disturbed, co-dependent teacher/student duo.
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