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[REC]
If you saw Quarantine and thought, 'Hey, that wasn't so bad,' have I got a movie for you! The best moments of the Hollywood remake were all done first (and better) in the Spanish original, which is more intense, more grueling, and more graphic. (Scott Weinberg and William Goss agree with me.) A light-hearted news reporter accompanies firefighters on a routine call that quickly turns deadly when they're trapped in an apartment building with something far more terrifying than burning furniture. Buy it.

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The Haunting in Connecticut
If you like your horror much less intense, this haunted house tale is more spooky than scary. Supposedly "based on true events," Virginia Madsen stars as the mother of a very sick teenage boy who comes to regret her decision to rent a place with an unsavory past. It offers no big surprises (as William Goss scoffed), but I thought it trod familiar territory with a fresh eye. Available as a Single-Disc Edition, Unrated Special Edition, and on Blu-ray. Rent it.

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Horsemen
Dennis Quaid stars as a cop on the trail of a serial killer somehow inspired by the Biblical 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.' With Zhang Ziyi and Lou Taylor Pucci. Horsemen received only a token theatrical release from Lionsgate, which isn't a good sign, but possibly in its favor: the cast, the very Seven-ish premise, and the lack of much else new. Rent it.

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Also out: Mad Men: Season 2, The State: The Complete Series, Grey Gardens, Van Wilder: Freshman Year - Unrated, The Bracelet of Bordeaux.

After the jump: Keira Knightley, Blu skycraper on fire.

Okay, so for months and months, we've yammered on about the merits of [REC], the Spanish-language horror flick that inspired the moderately successful Quarantine, and how we'd yet to see a proper domestic release of it (with Canadian retailers coming to the rescue in that regard).

Well, worry no more, all two of you that held out, because Sony's home entertainment department has seen fit to release the movie this July 14th, according to Fangoria and DVD Active. Apparently, the movie will come with a single making-of featurette, though I find the inclusion of an English-language dub track a bit superfluous in the wake of the (virtually) identical remake.

I haven't been able to check out Quarantine yet on home video, though I hear that the commentary track by the filmmakers makes no mention of this film, but does name-check their previous work, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, which has still yet to hit shelves. Maybe they'll get it out once they're done remaking [REC] 2...

So after years of wondering and months of alleged deals, it finally looks like Universal is dusting something off for a remake. SomeTHING I should say, so if you're a fan of Christian Nyby's The Thing (From Another World), John Carpenter's The Thing, or John Campbell's source material Who Goes There?, then you should be suitably elated to learn that Universal has tapped a writer and a director for the new-fangled version. Me, I'm fine with it. But if you come into my house and mess with my The Thing DVD, I may have to cut you. (More from Pete right here.)

Sam Raimi's long-awaited return to horror is called Drag Me to Hell, and while I won't get to see it for a few more weeks (sadface), the early buzz from the L.A. horror hounds is nothing but enthusiastic. I refuse to read ANYthing about this movie, but you can click around Bloody, Shock, and Dread to see what those gorehounds thought.

Oooh, next week we get a bunch of new Friday the 13th DVDs! (I wonder why.) Check out my little report on those platters right here. Directly opposite of next week we have last week, which is when we saw a few new horror flicks at Sundance. Those films were Grace (Snider's review / mine at FEARnet), The Killing Room (mine), and Dead Snow (Snider's / mine), and while it's not horror at all, Moon is just damn cool enough to warrant another mention. Here's James' review and here's mine. (It's old-school science fiction, in that it's about ideas AND technology. How very cool.)

Random bits on: Joss Whedon's Cabin in the Woods; that remake of The Crazies; the availability of the awesome [REC] on R1 DVD; and our multiple affectons for Sean Ellis' The Broken. (Ooh, the Martyrs DVD cover!)

Everybody loves evil children! Judging from its trailer, the wide release of The Unborn this weekend promises to unleash a new terrifying tot upon a nation of unsuspecting teens. But the idea of scary juveniles extends far beyond the expected audience for David Goyer's jolt-fest.

One writer suggested that the idea of evil children originated "in the biblical tale of Elisha's mockery," in which 42 small boys disrespected a prophet of God -- and were promptly torn to pieces by two bears. The silver screen featured dozens of bratty kids in the 30s and 40s (e.g. the Dead End Kids/Bowery Boys) but none as murderously terrifying as 10-year-old Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack) in Mervyn LeRoy's The Bad Seed (1956), a rebel yell against a conformist generation of "perfect" suburban families.

The 50s also produced Jerome Bixby's short story "It's a Good Life," featuring a three-year-old with more super powers than anyone at Marvel or DC could dream up. First adopted as an episode of The Twilight Zone (with Billy Mummy), Joe Dante added layers of suburban subversion when he used it as the basis for his segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (with Jeremy Licht as the kid).

Which tots, tykes, and teens have terrified you? Here's my personal countdown of evil children that have inspired nightmares or, at least, made me shiver.

7. Darby O'Gill and the Little People

I was five or six years old and had never seen little people before -- I freaked out because I couldn't understand why kids my age had wrinkles and beards, and were dancing and drinking liquids my Dad said never to touch. The wailing banshee gave me nightmares, but those little people made my hair stand up.

Every generation needs its own (emotionally) tortured teen horror movies. I had Brian DePalma's Carrie; will The Haunting of Molly Hartley be the torchbearer for the current generation? Err, hard to say, judging by the trailer MTV has unveiled. Molly Hartley has the religious nutjob mother, the cute caring boy (Chace Crawford), and a blond nemesis for our bruised brunette heroine (Haley Bennett), but we'll have to wait until October 31 to see if debuting director Mickey Liddell can deliver genuine thrills and chills. It doesn't bode well that the trailer fairly screams PG-13.

At least Molly Hartley will be shown in theaters. Despite Scott Weinberg's well-reasoned and thoroughly researched note to Lionsgate, it looks like Gregg Bishop's great Dance of the Dead will still be heading straight to DVD on October 20. While you rail at the heavens and place your pre-orders, take a moment and check out the age-restricted trailer that IGN has posted. Consider the trailer a true tease, in that it gives you just a hint at how funny, gory, and clever Dance of the Dead is in its feature-length glory.

Scott has also raved about the Spanish horror flick [REC], which has been remade into Quarantine, due out on October 10. William Goss echoed Scott's praise for the original, while slamming the remake's trailer. Well, [REC] directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza told Fangoria that they aren't too happy their film wasn't even given a chance in American theaters. Plaza said: "I would prefer them to release our movie as an art-house film in the U.S., and not to make a fool of themselves by copying it." Love that brutal European honesty!

Which film are you most excited about?

My affection for the fantastic Spanish horror flick [REC] has been well-documented at this very website (and elsewhere), but now it's time to throw a little spotlight towards (you guessed it) the remake. I refuse to allow my enthusiasm for the first movie to foster an unkind perspective towards the remake, but basically ... if Quarantine is only half as good as [REC], then it's already twice as good as most studio-sponsored horror flicks.

Second studio flick from newcomer John Dowdle (his The Poughkeepsie Tapes is complete, but currently stuck on a shelf at MGM right now), Quarantine is about the horrors that go down when a news crew, some rescue workers and a bunch of clueless tenants are locked inside of an apartment building. (I'm not spoiling a thing, but let's say things get zombiefied.) The directors of the original flick had a lot of fun playing games with the "found footage" approach, and I'm hoping the American version will been able to capture some of [REC]'s choppy charm.

Quarantine doesn't arrive until October, but you can check out the brand-new teaser trailer over at UGO.com. You won't see much of the cast in the teaser clip, but trust me when I say the movie features Jennifer Carpenter, Johnathon Schaech, Greg Germann and Jay Hernandez. (And here's a photo gallery!) Regarding the new promo clip, I'd say this: Those who've seen the original film will find little here that's new -- nor will they find anything to get all irritated about, either. And that's a good thing.