It’s the eve of Christmas in northern Finland, and an ‘archeological’ dig has just unearthed the real Santa Claus. But this particular Santa isn’t the one you want coming to town. When the local children begin mysteriously disappearing, young Pietari and his father Rauno, a reindeer hunter by trade, capture the mythological being and attempt to sell Santa to the misguided leader of the multinational corporation sponsoring the dig. Santa’s elves, however, will stop at nothing to free their fearless leader from captivity. What ensues is a wildly humorous nightmare – a fantastically bizarre polemic on modern day morality.

RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is a re-imagining of the most classic of all childhood fantasies, and is a darkly comic gem soon to be required perennial holiday viewing.

Crazy evil bitch.

Inspired by true events, “The Rite” follows skeptical seminary student Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), who reluctantly attends exorcism school at the Vatican. While in Rome, he meets an unorthodox priest, Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins) , who introduces him to the darker side of his faith. Directed by Mikael Hafstroem (1408), “The Rite” is a supernatural thriller that uncovers the devil’s reach to even one of the holiest places on Earth.

In the sleepy town of Riverton, legend tells of a serial killer who swore he would return to murder the seven children born the night he died. Now, 16 years later, people are disappearing again. Has the psychopath been reincarnated as one of the seven teens, or did he survive the night he was left for dead? Only one of the kids knows the answer. Adam “Bug” Heller was supposed to die on the bloody night his father went insane. Unaware of his dad’s terrifying crimes, he has been plagued by nightmares since he was a baby. But if Bug hopes to save his friends from the monster that’s returned, he must face an evil that won’t rest… until it finishes the job it began the day he was born.

Six years ago previously, a NASA probe returning to earth with samples of an alien life form, crashed over Central America. Soon after, new life forms began to appear, and half of Mexico was quarantined as an INFECTED ZONE. Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain “the creatures”… The story begins when a US journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through the infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border.

Set in an office building, five strangers enter an elevator that suddenly stops between floors. As they try to find a way out, even as the building’s security works to free them, strange and inexplicable things begin to happen. As the events increase in violence, the five prisoners realize one of them is the Devil.

I consider that a good thing. Centipede, on the surface, may turn stomachs, but you know what they say about books and covers. Beneath the screams and horror lies an enlightening tale about a lonely man who has a dead-serious passion for his work. And despite violating the cardinal rule of you “never go ass to mouth” — thanks Clerks! — Centipede wriggles and nests warmly in your brain in a way few movies can.

Said man is Dr. Heiter, played by Dieter Laser, who delivers a pitch-perfect crazed German surgeon with a reptilian stare and Dr. Mengele-like tendencies. Heiter doesn’t undress you with his eyes, he dissects you with them. Are you the right addition to his experiment in biological carpentry? Really, he’s just an elderly gentleman who wants to bring people together. Really together.

It’s the man’s methods that are most objectionable. While it isn’t explored much, Heiter’s first “centipede-ial” creation involved his three rottweilers. They eventually died, and a broken-hearten Heiter committed to moving on, and up — to humans. Discovering that success lay in having a shared digestive tract, Heiter brings together a trio of strangers, and teaches them to work as a team, leveraging their new-found connectedness. Having one’s face sewn to another’s posterior creates interesting mechanics, so it’s not an easy journey for either party.

Outside of Laser’s sharp performance, there is little acting on which to judge the film. Early dialogue (i.e., when certain characters could talk), proved flat and tedious, but this and other related shortcomings are quickly forgotten. Centipede is expectedly terrible in many ways, and unexpectedly awesome in others. The film is wonderfully shocking in proving that there are, indeed, things worse than death. Many horror films have too narrow a focus and dangle that mortal carrot over its victims.

But which is actually worse: Bleeding out at the hand of a masked villain, or taking the middle in a three-person human centipede? Heiter relegates one of his female victims — an appropriately cliche lost, aloof American tourist — to that position in line after she attempted an escape. That, however, is just the beginning of her suffering. The film forces you to evaluate what really makes your skin crawl, at the same time surfacing an undeniable depravity that can be felt (and feared) universally. See. Centipede brings people together. Whether they want to or not.

This was a creepy catchphrase when the original A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in 1984, but one that might be tough to heed while watching the drab, rebooted version.

With a rash of slasher film remakes in the past decade, it was inevitable that Nightmare would get its own update. In the company of more conventional films like Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and countless imitators, there’s probably no other horror movie of the era more worthy of a fresh look by a new audience.

When the first Nightmare premiered, the Friday the 13th franchise had already been four times around the chopping block, releasing its inaccurately named “Final Chapter” that same year. But director Wes Craven took the genre to a new place – more menacing, more psychological, blurring the very lines between fantasy and reality. This was the kind of horror movie that could actually, well, cause nightmares.

Burned stalker Freddy Krueger kept to the shadows, and was one of the few crazed killers who actually talked back, taunting his victims in their dreams. While later sequels (Craven never intended it to become a series) descended into camp, and Krueger eventually lost both his mystery and menace, the original still holds up quite well in terms of suspense and creepiness.

When not terrifying us, Craven actually posed questions about the meaning of dreams, and the nature of the bogeyman himself. In addition, he served up pre-Scream irony, character development, girl power, and not least of all, the introduction of Johnny Depp.

Sadly, all of those elements are missing in director Samuel Bayer’s re-imagining of the film. None of the main characters are particularly appealing or memorable, least of all protagonist Nancy, who is less terrorized every-girl and instead is portrayed as a damaged, goth high school student who happens to be both an amateur artist and a night-shift waitress.

The opening scene, which takes place at the diner where she works (and which conveniently introduces all the characters you need to know), is part of what’s wrong with the new movie.

The sleep-deprived teens of Springwood are starting to experience micro-naps as they go throughout their day, dropping into dream sleep virtually anytime and anywhere, often without warning. While this allows Freddy Krueger to terrorize them whenever and wherever he wants – crowded diners, drug stores, highways – it takes away some of the suspense and the ritual of sleep. It feels a bit like cheating.

And while the original built the plot slowly, fueled by black coffee and No-Doze, the remake is pumped full of adrenaline and Red Bull from the beginning, not surprising for the first feature film by a former music video director.

The plot loosely follows the original, and there are homages to Craven’s film throughout, including some iconic lines and shots (notably absent is the blood geyser scene that famously dispatched Depp in the first movie). But this time around, there’s a reason that Freddy is stalking this particular group of teens, which becomes apparent as Nancy and her friends begin discovering that their pasts are all linked.

One glaring difference from the original is Fred Krueger himself. It turns out that Robert Englund‘s sweater and fedora are hard to fill. Despite the same sharp claws, the new Freddy is much more of a blunt instrument. His burned features are a bit more realistic, but allow for a lot less expression. And Jackie Earle Haley’s monotone voice, while creepy, seems to be recycled from his character Rorschach in Watchmen.

More disturbing, the new Freddy is not just a former child murderer, but a child molester. This adds a bit of uncomfortable realism, and the equating of bad dreams with repressed memories is a different kind of horror for the teens, who all start to dream of what went on years ago in the same abandoned school.

But mostly, there is nothing truly new here, and a lot that is truly bad – including the dialogue, the performances, and the story itself. The film depends on the typical cheap surprises and a bit of gore to jolt the audience (although most elicit laughs rather than shrieks). The ending, which is equally jarring and disappointing as the original’s, leaves the door open for a sequel, if only this one makes enough money to warrant it.

For me though, the most personally disturbing part of the film had nothing to do with the violence. It comes when one of Nancy’s friends searches for clues in the attic above her garage. Looking through old photographs, toys, and children’s clothes, she rummages through a box labeled from the year she was in first grade – “way back” in 1996. Now that’s scary…

From director Alexandre Aja comes the new action thriller Piranha 3D. Every year the population of sleepy Lake Victoria explodes from 5,000 to 50,000 for Spring Break; a riot of sun and drunken fun. But this year, there’s something more to worry about than hangovers and complaints from local old timers; A new type of terror is about to be cut loose on Lake Victoria. After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the area’s new razor-toothed resident