Pulse barely has a beat of its own. An inferior American remake of the 2001 Japanese hit, this Wes Craven adaptation fails as a cautionary tale for the Internet age. Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) is Mattie, a college student whose semester, like, really sucks when her hacker boyfriend (Jonathan Tucker, The Ruins) fatally hangs himself with a phone cord. Not long after, she and her circle of friends receive the same string of instant messages from his computer, all reading, “helpme.”

With the help of the grease monkey (Ian Somerhalder, TV’s The Vampire Diaries) who bought the departed dude’s computer, Mattie learns that her BF accidentally had loosed a virus that unleashes pixelated specters that suck souls and/or leave its victims with an inky skin fungus. The damage is not consistent, nor the use of the Ring-esque clips that terrorize those who log on to the web, causing mass suicides across campus and beyond.

The best sequence has one unfortunate supporting player melting into an apartment wall; a runner-up gives us a human spider emerging from the laundry. However, these scenes and others are purposely too dark or too quick-cut, as to hide the budgetary seams. Directed with pallid blue-greens by debuting Jim Sonzero, Pulse overall presents its effects as lousy as it does exposition. The finale in particular, which lifts a plane crash directly from its source material, looks more green-screened than a leprechaun-managed Rent-A-Center.

One of Dimension Pictures’ last gasps at prolonging its post-Scream gravy train of teen-oriented horror pics, Pulse flopped, but somehow expelled two direct-to-DVD sequels in 2008, Pulse 2: Afterlife and Pulse 3. It’s tough to imagine anyone wanting to revisit the scene of this cybercrime. —Rod Lott

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From the Marble Hornets web series most responsible for popularizing the Slender Man character as the YouTube generation’s go-to bogeyman, Always Watching expands the paranormal construct into a feature-length film. From first-timer James Moran, the found-footage horror pic also unfolds in an environment more frightening than its villain: the Great Recession’s housing crisis!

While doing a story about foreclosed homes for the local news, a WZZC reporter (Alexandra Breckenridge, TV’s American Horror Story), producer (Jake McDorman, Live Free or Die Hard) and cameraman Chris Marquette (The Girl Next Door) enter an abode vacated by its residents, yet the place still looks lived-in. Within a stairwell hidey-hole, our TV news crew finds a box of videotapes.

Naturally, those tapes tell the tale behind the Whitlocks’ vanishing act, as well as pin the blame on a blank-faced, well-dressed figure (Doug Jones, Hellboy’s Abe Sapien) who cannot be seen with the naked eye. Only by looking through a camera lens can this mute creep be seen. As audience members, we’re either watching the Whitlocks’ home videos or the WZZC cameraman’s footage; regardless of the source, whenever the ghostly figure is about to appear, the picture jumps with static or other distortion, which is as much a warning to scaredy-cats as it a suspense-killer.

Admittedly, the idea of Slender Man is creepy. He looks creepy. But Always Watching is a little too like him, in that his movie just kinda stands there and wants you to do all the work, Where’s Waldo?-style. It’s not enough to sustain a feature — at least not this feature. It’s simplistic, but not in a way that Moran would dare trot out the ol’ cliché of “cat suddenly leaps into frame” just for a cheap jump-scare. He’s too smart for that.

Nope, he uses a dog. —Rod Lott

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There is one thing I liked about TBK: Toolbox Murders 2, and although it arrives at the end of the movie, I’m going to reveal it. Skip this paragraph if you must, but c’mon — we all know the sequel is and always was going to be as formulaic as a 12.5-ounce canister of Enfamil. Anyway, having survived days as a serial killer’s hostage, our heroine is told she forgot something … and is handed her cellphone. Still charged, the device has something like 150-plus missed calls on it. D’oh! Trust me: That’s the only horror cliché TBK:TM2 dares subvert.

A belated follow-up to Tobe Hooper’s Toolbox Murders, which itself was a remake of the notorious 1978 grindhouse “classick,” TBK:TM2 turns out to be awful, and not even in a fun way. Hooper’s 2004 redux is, to me, a memorable gem unearthed from the Walmart $5 DVD bargain bin, so I was all for another trip to its historic Hollywood hotel setting. Hooper was not, apparently, so in steps Dean C. Jones, graduating from the makeup department to the director’s chair. Since Jones also comes credited as co-writer and a producer, he gets the blame for turning in work that screams made-for-TV, yet is full of gory (and good) effects the tube wouldn’t touch.

Stuntman Chris Doyle reprises his role as the mute Coffin Baby, the Darkman-looking dude who does all the stabbing, slicing and cooking; he’s like, says a cop, “Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez, all rolled into one,” and it’s obvious from some of the framing choices that Jones is trying to turn Coffin Baby into a “thing.” No need — if the rights holders can’t settle on a name (see the title moniker of “TBK,” a tasteless pun on/anagram of Wichita’s real-life BTK Killer), fan-favorite status is well out of reach.

The cannibalistic psychopath kidnaps a previous victim’s sister (Chauntal Lewis, Séance), cages her like an animal and makes her watch as he tortures other prey with this tool and that. But at least he cooks her a tub of Jiffy Pop so she’ll have something to snack on while spectating. Toward the finish, she encounters another captive, played by poor Bruce Dern (Nebraska), for whom I felt sorry — not for his character, but the two-time Oscar nominee himself. I know a man’s gotta eat, but geez, Bruce! There’s always ramen.

I’d like to think it’s not coincidence that this return to the Toolbox leaves us with this message: “If you can’t be something great, do something terrible.” Mission accomplished. —Rod Lott

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Billing itself as “Nuttier than a Squirrel Fart,” Hillbilly Horror Show makes one long for the subtlety of Elvira. The mixed-mailbag showcase of horror shorts takes a comedic approach to its very brief host segments, although the four featured films are serious on the whole. The Hillbilly clan’s Hee Haw sensibility hardly meshes well with the contents it purports to champion.

Doing those duties from the innards of a mobile home are trailer-trash bumpkin Bo (Bo Keister, The Taking of Deborah Logan); his mumbling cousin, Cephus (Scott Geiter, Midnight Matinee Psycho); and Bo’s “kissing” cousin, Lulu (Maxim model Rachel Faulkner). In a stereotypical thick-hick accent, Bo does most of the talking: “You know whut that means? We gettin’ piss-ant drunk and watchin’ movies!”

Four “movies” play, with Lulu sporting skimpier clothing — star-spangled bikini included — between each one. First up is Franky and the Ant; not only is it questionable to qualify it as horror, but the story struck me as pointless and, worse, its two hit men annoyingly speak as Quentin Tarantino rip-offs. Next is the wordless Doppleganger, a fine, stop-motion animation with two skeletons. Although wonderfully executed visually, it also leaves the viewer wanting in all other departments.

Almost free of dialogue, Amused is another inconsequential bit, this one of a woman fleeing a zombie in a snow-covered rural area. Finally, there’s The Nest, the lengthiest segment of all. Its primary special effect — of killer bees stripping their victims to the bone — is excellent, but wears out its welcome, much like Hillbilly Horror Show itself. —Rod Lott

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Wracked with guilt and grief over the “fast driving” that caused the death of his wife, businessman Fred Saunders (Barry Coe, Jaws 2) believes his beloved Laura (Jo Morrow, 13 Ghosts) will return to him from her tomb. Eager to speed that process along, he resorts to visiting a séance and a secret society, both of which are revealed to be a sham. Fred’s chances of a spousal reunion seem slim until he meets … Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls!

An amateur magician with G.I. Joe hair, Doctor Death (John Considine, The Thirsty Dead) possesses the power to transfer the soul of a freshly departed body into a corpse, thereby reviving the latter. This trick he demonstrates to a small audience (with elderly former Stooge Moe Howard seated in the front row) by sawing a suicidal woman with hideous facial burns in half: “As she requested, she must — as we call it — ‘die.’ And so we shall gladly fulfill her request, and in so doing, why not be entertaining at the same time?” Ergo, the girl is split in two, and her life force stuck into a busty blonde (Sivi Aberg, The Teacher) who will come to wear flimsy nighties to meet the doc’s desires. Sold!

Fred agrees to pay the $50,000 cash fee in advance. But no matter how many women Doctor Death kills and orders, “I command you! Enter that body!,” he is unsuccessful at fulfilling his end of the deal. Fred, meanwhile, starts dating his pretty secretary (Cheryl Miller, TV’s Daktari), so you know how the lines of that triangle will intersect.

The only film directed by career A.D. Eddie Saeta, Doctor Death is yet another variation on Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, but without any airs of artistry or metaphors; in garish colors, he pumps up the exploitable elements for all they’re worth. The movie is, I think, rife with self-awareness; Considine’s gleeful performance is simply too chewy for this not to be the case, and raises Seeker of Souls above a made-for-TV look to tongue-in-cheek enjoyability. —Rod Lott

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