There doesn't seem to be any middle of the road for people who have seen The Blair Witch Project; either you love it or hate it. Personally, it was one of the scariest movie-going experiences of my life, and I have seen a lot of allegedly scary movies. I recall an e-mail to my brother saying I had found the <bleep>ing Holy Grail of horror films. The pseudo documentary style drew me into the film in a way a dramatic narrative couldn't, and a packed opening weekend audience filled with similarly riveted people made for a highly memorable experience.

As reported back in October right here on Cinematical, Blair Witch co-director Eduardo Sanchez's new film Altered is heading directly to DVD on December 19 thanks to Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Dread Central reports (by way of Fangoria.com) that the trailer for Altered is up and running on Youtube. I'm inclined to think the second directorial effort from one of the guys behind Blair Witch would be worth a look, but the trailer doesn't do much to inspire me. The film is about four men who were abducted by aliens several years ago. A fifth person who was abducted at the same time has never returned. Now the four survivors have captured one of the aliens and it's payback time. It's a premise with some merit, even if it does remind me of Fire in the Sky, but if I hadn't read the synopsis I would have been totally lost, as the trailer does nothing to explain what the film is about. On the strength of Sanchez's first film, I'll still be checking out Altered, but I don't see this trailer convincing anyone to watch the movie.

[Via Fangoria]

I'm a film critic and I love horror movies. According to the studios, I do not exist. This year they have decided that horror movies (among other types) don't need reviews, and they have opened some dozen of them without press screenings, the latest batch being Pulse, Snakes on a Plane and The Wicker Man. Now, it may be that these movies are terrible. Or perhaps they just require a certain sensibility to understand them. In any case, they deserve a shot, and to show the studios that we critics are capable of getting horror movies, I worked on a list of the seven best from the past seven years. Surprisingly, my master list came out to more than 30 titles, which I painfully pared down to this final seven (I even had to leave out Saw and Ravenous!). Significantly, each of these films was made available to the press prior to their openings.

1. Pulse (2001, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
This, the scariest movie I've seen in years, gave me the creeping tingles. Like Lynch or Bunuel, Kurosawa has the power to tap right into our most nightmarish fears, but does it subtly, normally, like something lurking just outside the periphery of our everyday existence. Released in the U.S. in 2005.

2. Land of the Dead (2005, George A. Romero)
Romero adds another chapter to his legendary, brilliantly masterful zombie series, evoking all manner of classical imagery to build a harrowing portrait of the way we live today. And that's really scary.

3. Audition (2001, Takashi Miike)
Three words: watch the bag.

4. The Blair Witch Project (1999, Eduardo Sanchez, Daniel Myrick)
Pushing through the hype, the money, the buildup and the backlash, one can find at the rocky center a really good, quite imaginative and gripping film done with an eye on the unseen and the unknown.

5. The Descent (2006, Neil Marshall)
The second-scariest movie I've seen in years features incredible use of total darkness as well as a surprising look at the darkness of the soul.

6. Session 9 (2001, Brad Anderson)
This underrated, barely noticed film is perhaps the most intelligent haunted house (or rather haunted hospital) movie I've ever seen.

7. The Devil's Backbone (2001, Guillermo Del Toro)
This creepy flick, improbably set in an adobe school smack in the middle of the bright Spanish desert, may be Del Toro's finest hour.

Sure, you'd like to audition for a movie. Heck, you watch lots of movies, and you know you could act better than half those losers they cast in them anyhow. But you don't live in New York or Los Angeles. Maybe you live in Duluth, or Oklahoma City, or Juneau, or Addis Ababa, and it's not so easy for you to get to an audition. Now's your big chance.

Daniel Myrick, one of the creators of the hugely successful The Blair Witch Project (which, I swear, still creeps me out even to this day), is casting for his new film, a supernatural thriller called The Objective -- and he's doing his casting online, all the better to find "real people," hopefully with real talent. They're casting for the following roles:

• Warrant Office Wallace "Wally" Hamer (age 45)
• Captain Matt McCarthy (age 34)
• Peter Sadler (age 36)
• Corporal Timothy Cole (age 25)
• Master Sergeant Ben Kitch (age 33)

Interested? Go check out the official casting site for the film. Sounds like the parts they're casting are all for men but hey, if you're a woman and you want to give it a shot, it's no skin off our nose. And hey, if you end up getting cast in the film, drop us a line and let us know.

The reason that many film festivals have a "midnight" category is that they need somewhere to throw the horror films, and they're sure not going to include them in the competitive sections. And yet, horror earns a place at most FIlm Festivals. The genre is a big part of independent filmmaking, partially because horror films can cost so little to make, and partially because they are so easy to write. No other kind of film allows for nearly as much suspension of logic and belief, and many errors, inconsistencies and far-fetched twists can be excused by either paranormal subject matter or by just plain pardoning of horror in general.

The annoying thing is that with so many films being made, so few have anything to offer. The horror genre, primarily divided into either the slasher or the haunting variety, basically only has one plot: characters run from something frightening and try to stay alive. As long as there are shocks and scares, there is no need for surprises. As your typical ghost story, The Gravedancers is pretty straightforward and predictable, but it has something that I -- a longtime enthusiast of paranormal true-crime but never a fan of horror fiction -- could appreciate and enjoy. It gives its ghosts their own back stories.