One of the better filmgoing surprises within the last decade has been the opportunity to watch Taika Waititi develop into one of the finest comedy directors around, displaying his gifts with timing and performance in hilarious efforts such as “Eagle vs. Shark” and “Boy.” “What We Do in the Shadows” is a slight change of pace for Waititi, turning away from a human element to mess around with the undead, sharing helming duties with co-star Jemaine Clement to mastermind a faux documentary about the life and times of New Zealand vampires. Hilarious, with refreshing attention to the gruesome possibilities of the premise, “What We Do in the Shadows” is a creative step forward for Waititi, taking interesting tonal risks while maintaining a steady flow of silly business. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Lazarus Effect” has the unenviable task of trying to assemble a full-blooded horror experience without a significant budget and varied locations. It’s yet another Blumhouse Productions cheapy, but instead of jazzing up the ordinary with some directorial finesse, David Gelb loses his plan of attack quickly, hanging on for dear life as the movie stumbles through junk science and PG-13-level nightmare imagery, with a faint “don’t mess with the beyond” message pinched from a dozen “Twilight Zone” episodes. It’s not eat-your-ticket-stub bad, but “The Lazarus Effect” doesn’t work at all, perhaps most successful at putting the audience to sleep. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Salvation” doesn’t mess around. Leave it to the Danes to make the best western in recent memory, utilizing gorgeous South African locations to make a most American story of revenge and tragedy. Director Kristian Levring (“The King is Alive”) takes extreme care of genre traditions, refusing distractions and superfluous dramatics to charge ahead as a steely saga of leathery men out to prove their dominance. While gracefully made, it’s raw, unflinching work, with simplicity that harkens back the genre’s prime years of darkness. If you enjoy your meat rare, booze gulped out of a dirty boot, and tingle at the sound of jangling spurs, “The Salvation” is the movie for you. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Returning to the times of The Troubles, screenwriter Gregory Burke avoids a history lesson filled with agonized participants and blurred lines of morality. Instead, he builds a visceral experience out of known elements, taking viewers into the heart of panic and paranoia with a unique take on community unrest. Squint and tilt your head to the side, and perhaps “‘71” could even be considered an homage to “The Warriors,” sharing a similar caught behind enemy lines premise. However, this is not flippant movie, but a grim inspection of loyalties and honor during a clouded period of national divide, with director Yann Demange capturing panic and fear with remarkable precision. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

David Cronenberg is a tremendous director, with a filmography filled with ghoulish delights, piercing psychological studies, and classic “body horror” endeavors. The man behind “Scanners,” “The Fly,” and “A History of Violence” isn’t used to stumbling, but Cronenberg hit rock bottom with 2012’s “Cosmopolis,” cooking up a frightfully tone-deaf and miscast effort. “Maps to the Stars” restores a little spring to the helmer’s step, returning interests to the undoing of humanity through the snap of satire. While it lacks outright Cronenbergian pleasures, “Maps to the Stars” repeatedly connects as a dark comedy and insidious display of rancid human behavior. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Out of the Dark” is never going to be celebrated for its originality. In genre dominated by creepy events occurring in shadowed corners, this horror effort generally follows the same routine, offering a ghost story with a South American setting. However, it’s effective work from director Lluis Quilez, who guides an ambitious screenplay through the bob and weave of a fright film while maintaining character through an eco-disaster subplot, allowing some real-world terror to seep into the system. While limited in armrest-gripping suspense, “Out of the Dark” is handsomely made, with an interest in investigating cultural exploitation that elevates it away from the average mouthbreathing endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Trying to create an original alien encounter movie is a difficult challenge, with scores of productions working out ways to depict the horror, fantasy, and, at times, wonder of such a meeting. Unfortunately, “Ejecta” elects to use the found footage aesthetic for at least part of its journey. A highly charged sound and light show, “Ejecta” doesn’t offer much besides screen chaos, laboring to whip up enough torture and terror to cover for its limited budget and strangely one-note script, which tends to recycle the same scenes repeatedly. A few crisp encounters retain pleasing intimidation, but directors Chad Archibald and Matt Wiele are too busy making a visual effects demo reel to care much about the dramatic value of their feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“McFarland, U.S.A.” is a very kind and gentle film. It doesn’t offer a single surprise, but it has feeling, courtesy of director Niki Caro, who made a name for herself with 2002’s “Whale Rider,” and then promptly lost her mojo with the muddled “North Country,” from 2005. Returning to semi-stable dramatic ground with an underdog sports movie, Caro crafts an emotional picture, aided by wonderful performances from the entire cast. “McFarland” isn’t always consistent, and shows strain in the editing department, but when it finds a cozy spot of empowerment and community generosity, it charms in a big way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Released in 2010, “Hot Tub Time Machine” was a nice surprise. While dramatically unsteady, the picture led confidently with silliness, combining a love affair with nostalgia with an absurd premise it committed to wholeheartedly, resulting in an overlong but frequently hilarious effort. Its box office wasn’t stellar, but audiences generally enjoyed the movie, with “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” finally here to pick up where the characters left off. Sadly, the considerable amount of time between installments wasn’t spent perfecting the screenplay. Weirdly stale and unpolished, “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” doesn’t live up to the original’s sense of mischief, going low-budget and crude to squeeze out a few laughs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Zombies are all the rage these days, inspiring countless B-movies and perhaps the most popular television program around (“The Walking Dead”). The possibilities for slow-crawl, brain-munching horror seem exhausted at this point, but then “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” comes around to restore faith in an undead uprising. Messy and heroically violent, this Australian production doesn’t have much of a budget to help realize ambition, but it does have a spunky filmmaking duo in Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner, who whip up a frightfully appealing doomsday, filled with tortured participants, inventive turns of plot, and necessary pit stops of humor. “Wyrmwood” is an original vision worth paying attention to, even when it threatens to spiral out of control. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Accidental Love” began life in 2008 under the title “Nailed.” It was intended to be director David O. Russell’s follow-up to “I Heart Huckabees,” but the production experienced several cash-flow problems during the shoot, causing multiple shutdowns and, eventually, abandonment before the effort could be finished. Seven years later, the picture has finally found its way to theaters, only without Russell’s participation, selecting the pseudonym “Stephen Greene” to mask his involvement in the movie. “Accidental Love” certainly isn’t quality work, best appreciated as an industry curiosity, returning viewers to a time before Russell became a respectable Academy Awards magnet, back when the helmer crafted scattershot endeavors with select moments of enlightenment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

According to director Adam Green, director Adam Green has quite a large, passionate fanbase who’ve slavishly followed his work through films such as “Hatchet” and “Frozen,” while supporting his cult television series, “Holliston.” “Digging Up the Marrow” is the helmer’s attempt to create a faux documentary, giving horror a slight change in direction while it works through its found footage phase. Green has a great idea that’s not serviced to satisfaction here, with much of “Digging Up the Marrow” devoted to circular conversations and iffy “realism” instead of launching a terrifying viewing experience. Perhaps Green’s admirers will embrace his lead performance and insistence on boo scares, but the rest of this limp outing reeks of a missed opportunity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

To start off the movie on a particularly nauseating note, “The DUFF” opens with a reference to “The Breakfast Club,” because, for reasons unknown, nearly every feature aimed at a teenage audience but made by thirtysomething filmmakers is required to attach itself in some way to the legacy of tremendous adolescent cinema. It’s a bad idea, especially when “The DUFF” reveals itself to be a shallow, witless, and bizarrely cast endeavor, always eager to preach about the value of self-acceptance, but just as ready to indulge shallow behavior as a method of empowerment. Perhaps less time aping Hughes and more time building a consistent script should’ve been the priority for this irksome dramedy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There couldn’t be a better release period for the documentary “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry.” With online types spending substantial amounts of time debating the purity of feminism and its many forms, while such fear of empowerment has led to real world horrors, director Mary Dore returns to the beginning of the movement, restoring needed perspective when it comes to the deconstruction of gender politics, oppression, and liberation. Spilling over with news footage, charismatic interviewees, and enlightening information, “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” is an appropriately sobering reminder of progress and sacrifice as a nation of women rose up to claim their voice during a politically volatile time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The swirling angst of teenagedom receives a glossy treatment in “All the Wilderness.” Writer/director Michael Johnson has his heart in the right place, searching out a way to communicate the inner life of his characters, questing to find a John Hughes-style sincerity for a generation that’s forged in cynicism. Johnson is also after a slick visual presentation that showcases his abilities as a stylist, and one that can dream up cinematic wonderlands with a limited budget. Sadly, “All the Wilderness” ends up more of a demo reel than a complete picture, watching the helmer forgo a plot to perfect his lighting, plasticizing the rise of adolescent awareness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com