Horror films

Whether you go to see it now or wait until it begins streaming, A Quiet Place Part II is likely to make you a little jumpy. It doesn't have the same claustrophobic intensity as its predecessor, but it's just as taut, suspenseful and beautifully made.

The film is about a teenage girl who sleeps with a boy and is suddenly under a curse. Critic David Edelstein says he didn't enjoy feeling "sick with dread," but the ending is unexpectedly moving.

In the Australian chiller, a bogeyman announces himself in a rhyming, pop-up book on a 7-year-old's shelf. But the real horror is that the boy's mom, a grieving widow, is battling psychic demons.

In an age of werewolves, hormonal vampires and endless sequels, horror movies have lost some edge. But Mama, starring Jessica Chastain, is an entertaining step in the right — which is to say backward — direction.

On its 50th anniversary, Robert Aldrich's classic horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has just been released on Blu-ray. Though it's far from a musical, classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz says its musical elements are crucial to the film.

The less you know about the unnerving thrillers Source Code and Insidious the better, says critic David Edelstein. But only one of the two films "has so much emotional heft that it never loses that exhilarating jitter."

Vincenzo Natali's sci-fi thriller stars Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley as two scientists who splice genes together to create new animals. But when they add human DNA to the mix, they get a new creature that develops into a deadly chimera. Critic David Edelstein says the film combines a "high-tech Frankenstein" with "a freaky vein of low-tech Gothic psychodrama."

It's a double feature from critic David Edelstein, who says Pixar's sublime new film Up reaches heavenward, while Sam Raimi's deliciously gory Drag Me to Hell crawls in the opposite direction.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews The Mist, which is based on the Stephen King novel.

The film stars Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden and Andre Braugher.

The zombie comedy Fido offers satire along with splatter; Fresh Air's film critic says it's "the blood wedding of George Romero and SCTV, and it's a treat for those who don't mind gnawed-off limbs with their hijinks." It's set in a '50s-flavored, Fiestaware-colored retro society, which can be a bit tiresome, because the decade's father-knows-best archetypes have been picked clean. Still, Edelstein says, "director and co-writer Andrew Currie treats his characters with so much affection that even the stereotypes have a fresh life."