New Releases for Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Kolobos

Genre: Horror

Directed by: Daniel Liatowitsch, David Todd Ocvirk

Run time: 84 minutes

Rating: Unrated

Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: The latest trend in physical media finds a handful of distribution companies mining the archives of long-lost or overlooked horror gems from the 1980’s and ‘90s to dust off for a high-definition refurbishing, can be a perilous road.

That's great, as long as everyone remembers that not every horror movie released during those two decades is actually worthy of a top-dollar, deluxe edition, complete with newly commissioned artwork and a bevy of special features.

Case in point, Kolobos, a serial killer thriller released in 1999, which was directed by Daniel Liatowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk.

The film focuses on Kyra (Amy Weber), an artist haunted by an ominous, faceless figure, whom she routinely draws and paints, who lands a great job and is thrust in a co-ed living arrangement with a handful of young strangers.

The film basically follows the slow and brutal demise of everyone that Kyra knows.

I’ve seen a lot of horror websites hail this title as being a long-lost classic, but honestly, I don’t get the outpouring of love.

Kolobos plays out like a basic stalk-and-slash variation with a few twists thrown in, but if you’re of a particular age, this may be one of those rare titles that helped define your early love for horror.

The Stuff You Care About: Hot chicks – No.

Nudity – No. Gore – Yes.

Drug use – No.

Bad Guys/Killers – The faceless man is an unstoppable killing machine.

Buy/Rent – Rent it.

Someone to Watch Over Me (Shout! Factory, 106 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): I had forgotten that this 1987 erotic thriller, starring Tom Berenger and Mimi Rogers, was directed by Ridley Scott.

Suffice to say, Someone to Watch Over Me is not a high-water mark on Scott’s impressive IMDb archive of past films.

The film is outdated and clunky with some of the worst dialogue imaginable. Example? “I heard it gives you a boner to shoot a man. But, you know, I think it’s good if a man’s work gives him a boner.”

Worse, Someone to Watch Over Me falls squarely in the pre-#MeToo dustbin of ‘80s erotic thrillers that focused on “good” men behaving badly, usually by having a torrid tryst with an evil woman, who were granted forgiveness and absolution by their overlooked spouses in a sparse 90 minutes, regardless of their sins.

However, unlike films such as Fatal Attraction, where Michael Douglas’ character at least felt remorse, Berenger’s tough cop Mike Keegan completely shits on his marriage to Lorraine Bracco with hardly any resistance, falling straight into bed with Rogers’ femme fatale Claire simply because she finds him funny and edgy.

This is not a title that demanded revisiting. It falls somewhere down near the bottom of Scott’s list with The Counselor and Robin Hood.

Also Available:

Green Book

Life in the Doghouse: Special Edition

Dark River

The Last Ship: The Complete Fifth Season

Phantom Lady

Mortal Engines

London Fields

Then Came You

The Craft: Collector’s Edition

Man’s Best Friend

Now on Video-on-Demand:

Cold Moon (Uncork’d Entertainment, 92 minutes, Unrated, Video-on-Demand): Cold Moon, which is now available to stream for free on Tubi, opens in the fictional Babylon, Florida in 1989 when a young woman named Margaret is attacked riding her bicycle home by a masked assailant in a raincoat.

The girl’s spirit transcends her mortal plane, even after her body is dumped in a river, and her ghost starts appearing randomly to various residents and a laundry list of possible culprits who may have killed her.

What Cold Moon lacks in originality, director Griff Furst makes up for with an impressive show of special effects that depicts Margaret’s ghost flowing above-ground like water whenever she appears.

The film also is populated by a surprisingly strong cast of well-known actors, including Christopher Lloyd, Frank Whaley and Josh Stewart as an evil banker who wants to steal land from Margaret’s family.

Cold Moon chugs along nicely early on but starts to lose steam well before the third act.

It’s a decent, but not great, paranormal thriller that can easily fill 90 minutes of downtime but shouldn’t be considered a must-see.