By Rex Reed 10/23/12 7:51pm

movies

Tosar in Sleep Tight.

Sleep Tight, Don’t Let The Doorman Bite: This Everyday Joe Will Have You Reaching for the Dead-Bolt

Sleep Tight is a creepy—but highly effective and superbly made—horror movie from Spain in which the monster is spine-tinglingly human. The logo in the ads reads “Someone Is Watching Over You,” and they’re not just whistling Vaya Con Dios. Set in an otherwise upscale apartment building in Barcelona, everything looks inviting. It’s the doorman you want to beware of.

The keeper of the keys—who goes bump in the night, in more ways than one—is César (Luis Tosar). As the super as well as the concierge, he’s privy to the needs, secrets and problems of every tenant in the building—and victim to all their complaints. He feeds their dogs. He changes their locks. He fixes their plumbing. It’s time to get even. Read More

By Rex Reed 3/28/12 8:45am

movies

Owen.

Intruders’ Stylistic Similarities to Guillermo Del Toro Fail to Fill Hollow Homage

Movies about the profound effects of cold-blooded nightmares on sensitive, impressionable children should not be dull, or arty at the expense of a good hair-raising yarn, but a benign horror flick called Intruders is nothing more (or less) than ludicrous, esoteric hokum. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, a Spanish director so unabashedly infatuated with the films of Guillermo del Toro that he even imitates the shadowy lighting and copies the same jittery camera angles as Pan’s Labyrinth, has done nothing to enhance the genre of thrillers that prey on the vulnerability of children and a great deal to cheapen it.

In Spain, before bedtime, a little boy named Juan makes up a story to entertain his mother, Luisa (Pilar Lopez de Ayala), about Hollow Face, a hideous monster shrouded in a cadaverous hooded cape who rips the faces off children and attaches them to his own blank head so people will love him. Read More