With Day of the Mummy, it’s tough to tell who had it easier: William McNamara (Chasers), since his role is largely offscreen and spoken? Or Danny Glover (Saw), who literally sits behind a desk for the entirety? No matter your answer, the loser is clear: We.

That’s because the movie is as wretched as the Day is long. And damn, does this ever feel like director Johnny Tabor (Eaters) took the time of the title to heart. His horror flick is so lazy that its opening credits present a pair of (no-)names in a typeface that has defaulted from the fancy one everyone else gets. If they didn’t bother, why should we?

McNamara’s Dr. Wells seeks a big ol’ diamond from an Egyptian king’s tomb, rumored to be cursed and of course it is. To get his hands on the goods, he joins a team of archaeologists — who look like they’d be on such an adventure only if MTV crafted a reality show around such a concept — and together, they penetrate the tomb. I hate to spoil it, but with just a few minutes left in the movie, our asshole archaeologists find a CGI mummy.

Because Wells’ eyeglasses have a built-in camera, we see what he sees. Given that much of Day of the Mummy takes place within narrow cave paths in the dark, the POV gives viewers the feel of watching — but not playing — a first-person shooter. In the corner of the screen, Glover’s character sits and watches and guides and comments and occasionally gets flustered. (For proof of the latter, check out the eight-second clip below from the final scene, which I shot with my iPhone. Doesn’t it seem like he’s having a stroke while pitching a fit?)

If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the movie; I wish I had not progressed past that first step. —Rod Lott

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Directed by the fallen-from-grace Tobe Hooper, who did the killer-croc thing before in 1997’s Eaten Alive, Crocodile kicks temporary-escapist ass for one simple reason: It does not skimp on the bloody croc attacks. So many animal-attack films seem to miss this point entirely, resulting in utter disappointment, but Hooper gives nearly 10 violent on-screen deaths! Yes!

The rote story puts several drunken frat types and their so-hos on a houseboat during spring break. The lake they visit should have a sign posted reading, “DO NOT FUCK WITH CROCODILE EGGS,” because once these immature bozos do, it’s feedin’ time! And that’s what Hooper does right. What he does wrong is put a poodle named Princess in jeopardy at least three times, yet ultimately lets her live. (I’m also curious why he let the croc vomit up the annoying punk kid at the end, but that’s beside the point.)

Members of the cast are unremarkable and unmemorable — they’re just croc food, after all — with the possible exception of Caitlin Martin (When Billie Beat Bobby), playing the kindhearted Girl Next Door who charms the screen with her crooked-eye-and-bit-lip routine. She did not return for 2002’s expected sequel, Crocodile 2: Death Swamp, but neither did Hooper. —Rod Lott

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Part of what made Nicholas McCarthy’s The Pact so effective was its twist — one not of plot, but overall structure. Without spoiling its secret, the 2012 indie chiller cleverly led viewers to believe it belonged to one horror subgenre, only to reveal itself as another. Without spoiling the sequel, either, it is disappointing to see The Pact II undo that trick. It’s tough to tell for certain, but if it hasn’t fully embraced its predecessor’s initial path, it has blurred the line.

Although Caity Lotz (The Canary of TV’s Arrow) returns for what amounts to an extended cameo, the central character this time around is June (Camilla Luddington, TV’s True Blood), a crime-scene cleaner by day and aspiring graphic novelist by night. One of her freelance scrub-downs of gray matter is, believes no-nonsense FBI Agent Ballard (Patrick Fischler, 2 Guns), the work of a serial killer. To say more would ruin everything I warned against in the previous paragraph.

I can say that co-directors Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath (Entrance) do their best to stay true to the tone established by McCarthy in the original Pact — and carried through to his similarly eerie follow-up, 2014’s At the Devil’s Door — but their screenplay ultimately keeps this reverent-in-intention sequel from being nearly as good. Luddington and Fischler deliver big nonetheless. While the film is spooky in places, The Pact II cannot replicate its big brother’s feat of eliciting real scares. At least it tried. —Rod Lott

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Where, oh, where would Mick Garris be without Stephen King? The unemployment line? (I’m asking for a friend.) The number could change between the time I hit the “publish” button and this sentence hits your eyes, but Garris has directed seven movies scripted by and/or adapted from the superstar horror author’s work. Although Garris already had achieved mild acclaim with his two first features, 1988’s Critters 2 and 1990’s Psycho IV: The Beginning, once he brought King’s first original screenplay to theaters in 1992, it’s as if he never looked back.

He should, because sorry to say, he’s just not very good at it. The slumber-inducing Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers is stunningly awful, in part because it exudes that bush-league feel of made-for-television pictures, but mostly because Garris clearly enables King’s worst inclinations as a screenwriter, including a reliance on jukebox rock, cringe-worthy quips (“Cop kabob!”) and King’s own cameos.

High schooler Charles Brady (Brian Krause, Naked Souls) moves with his mother (Alice Krige, Ghost Story) to a small town in Indiana, where he immediately sets his hormonal sights on a classmate who happens to be a virgin (Mädchen Amick, TV’s Twin Peaks, forever biting her bottom lip). Her inexperience is A-OK with him, because his mom loves virgins. In fact, she feeds upon them.

See, the Bradys are vampiric shape-shifters — half-human, half-feline and all-silly — and Charles’ job is to procure fresh meat for Mama … when he’s not serving up some of his own. (Translation: Incest. We mean incest. These two cannot keep their paws off one another.)

If scares were top among Garris and King’s goals — and they were — the hokey effects ensure that goal would go unreached. The catchpenny-CGI morphs from human form to were-kitties or whatever are wretched enough; Krause and Krige are forced to don makeup appliances that look like ThunderCats characters short a single chromosome. As a viewer, you can’t help but laugh at it — all of it — and if Garris and King intended chuckles, too, they don’t let you know they are in on their own joke. And Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers is nothing if not a joke. —Rod Lott

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While the hero of Cry_Wolf runs for his life roughly halfway through the movie, he passes his school’s cafeteria menu board touting the dish of the day: “TOASTED CHEESE.” It’s the perfect summation of the film itself: well-done junk.

Newly transferred to Westlake Preparatory Academy, British high school student Owen (Julian Morris, Donkey Punch) is befriended immediately by cute redhead Dodger (Lindy Booth, 2004’s Dawn of the Dead), who invites him to join her bored, rich, mostly deplorable friends to play a “lying game.” Owen’s victory and a recent unsolved homicide in the nearby woods sparks a bigger idea in Dodger: Convince the student body that the murderer is a prep-school serial killer who has made his way to Westlake and is just getting started. The budding lovebirds concoct an entire backstory and outfit (orange ski mask, camo jacket, hunting knife) for “The Wolf,” and let one mass email do the rest.

Anyone can guess where Cry_Wolf goes from there, in part because director Jeff Wadlow (Kick-Ass 2) flat-out shows you, flashing-forward with quick clips of students encountering The Wolf — scenes which play out in full an hour later. That baffling choice defuses some of the suspense … but not all, as Wadlow and fellow scribe Beau Bauman (who later co-wrote 2007’s Prey) planted twist after twist after twist. That’s not to say all of the curves pay off; the exposition-packed final scene in particular collapses under its own weight.

Cry_Wolf came too late in the teen-slasher cycle beget by Wes Craven’s Scream a decade earlier to make a mark, yet it’s a better effort than most of the imitators. That includes 1998’s Urban Legend, which Cry_Wolf resembles in theme. Wadlow’s work is now dated, with quaint plotlines reliant upon the Nokia 3300 mobile phone, AOL Instant Messenger and Jon Bon Jovi. —Rod Lott

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