This trailer almost makes me too giddy to even think straight, let alone to write about it. I mean, come on: It's a dream come true for anyone who's followed Robert Downey Jr.'s career -- not to mention his life -- to see him get a plum role like this one. Not because he necessarily deserves it, but because he's certainly worked for it. Usually superhero roles come to you earlier in life, but this is no typical superhero movie. The trailer starts with rock music in the desert -- looks like it must be Iraq, or some other desert nation in which our troops are stationed. Downey Jr. is a genius weapons designer/arms dealer over there to demonstrate and sell some new technology. All does not go well, though, as he is taken prisoner, presumably so that he can build them some sort of amazing weapons. Instead, he builds himself a magical mask that makes him a superhero, helping him escape. He gets back home, but don't worry: He isn't ready to stop being a superhero. He keeps designing cool stuff for his alter ego, and gets to say cool superhero lines like, "Yeah ... I can fly," in the most nonchalant manner. There's also a seriously evil-looking Jeff Bridges, who's both bald and bearded. I'm not sure what it is about transporting the hair from his head to his chin that makes him the scariest thing ever, but it does. So, Iron Man: He's totally a new breed of superhero. And the best part? He wears armor instead of tights, so he doesn't have to overcompensate in order to look truly kick-ass.

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:

Richard Roeper
Variety
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This one's from Harmony Korine, the wonderfully weird director who brought us Kids, Gummo, and Julien Monkey Boy. It starts out strong, with a Michael Jackson and a Marilyn Monroe impersonator sitting at a table together. No, it's not the setup to a joke. It's really how the trailer starts. She says, very seriously, "How long have you been Michael?" He guesses he was born this way. She's been Marilyn since she first got her boobs. She invites him to her magical world where everyone is famous. On closer look, it turns out Michael is Diego Luna, from Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Marilyn's played by Samantha Morton. In her magical world of impersonators, Michael falls somewhat in love with Marilyn (even though she's married to Charlie Chaplin with a Shirley Temple child). There are colorful costumes, circus acts and nuns jumping out of airplanes, so if nothing else, this movie's going to provide you with more visual stimulation than most anything else you've seen in awhile.

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:

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Jakob is a man who seems to have quite a lot going for him: He has a lovely girlfriend who wants to marry him; a successful career as an author; sunny weather. But it turns out he's not happy because of that nagging memory of witnessing his family's deaths during the Holocaust. He wants to be able to forget, but understandably, he can't. And that gets in the way of his happiness and of living, in general. He's carrying guilt that's driving away the woman he loves and keeping him from experiencing joy. So, he realizes he needs to embrace these memories and he does so with the help of what looks like a scruffy old man and possibly a little boy (or maybe the little boy is just Jakob in the past). And he does find love, but not with the blond woman from the beginning of the movie. It appears that getting over his past involves moving on to another woman. Yeah, that always helps.

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The trailer opens with chanting over shots of a sunset, cliffs, someone's feet hitting the dirt as they exit a car, a waterfall from above, birds lifting off from a field, and then: Michael Vartan?! What? That is not where I thought this was heading at all, but he's pretty so I'll take it. Apparently it was his feet exiting the car, and now he's looking around. I believe the chanting is supposed to make us realize he's in an unfamiliar location. We get some pretty shots of a swamp, more Michael looking hot in his sunglasses and then we see typed words under dirty glass being rubbed clean by someone's fingers. We only get the middle part of a few lines of text but what we see says, "The 12 year old boy was devoured whole," "was shot by rangers before the croc's power" and "stomach acids had time to fully digest." Again, this is not at all what I was expecting. At least this trailer is surprising me. Vartan is going on a boat cruise. This can't be good, can it? But he is on a tour with a pretty tour guide (Radha Mitchell), who assures everyone on the tour boat that, while the saltwater crocodiles are extremely dangerous, they're safe in the boat, because they won't attack anything bigger than themselves. But then, the crocs do attack. The people go crazy. They scream and freak out, understandably. They're on dry land now, but it's a tidal river, so apparently the tide will rise and cover the land mass they're on. An obvious solution would be to get to actual shore, but I'm sure there is some perfectly logical reason they can't, such as: the crocodile ate their boat. At any rate, there's lots of scary action in the dark and the trailer even shows one guy being swallowed alive -- and pretty much whole -- by a croc who is about five times as big as him. It's from the director of Wolf Creek, if that means anything to you. I mostly just want to know what effects were used to create the crocs, because they terrify me.

Reviews by people who have actually seen it:
Variety Rotten Tomatoes

Am I the only one who's sick of TV and movies about poker? I mean, I get it: It was something sort of new and fun for awhile, but now it's just boring. There are only so many stories that can revolve around the world of poker, and they've pretty much been played out 100 times already. So, why Deal? The short answer would be: I have no idea. But it's here anyway in all of its glory, with a trailer and everything. It turns out Bret Harrison is a "young amateur" "with a lot to learn" (thank you, trailer title cards, because we could not have figured that out based on the smart-ass comments people were making about his game play). Then enters "former champ" "with a lot to prove" Burt Reynolds, looking -- if it's possible -- more plastic than ever. He thinks Bret has a lot of potential. And thank goodness he does, or we wouldn't have much of a mentor-mentee poker movie, now, would we? He wants Bret to win under his instruction so it will be like he's winning again, too. Especially since he gave up his life, including his wife, for this addiction ... oops, I meant, amazing game! He teaches Bret about "tells" (I think Bret has not seen as many poker movies as the rest of us), and Bret starts to win. Now if only we had a hot, young vixen in the mix, this movie formula would be complete. Oh, there's Shannon Elizabeth to fill the bill. And Burt has a lot to teach Bret about the ladies, too: It's just like poker, after all. Except, yeah, why did your wife leave you again, Burt? The twist is that Burt apparently paid Miss Shannon to pretend she liked Bret, so he's still just as sad and awkward with the ladies as before. Only now he doesn't have his mentor anymore either. But don't worry: They'll face off in a great big poker tournament to find out who really is the man here. The moral is: Winning at poker = winning at life. Any questions?

Reviews by people who have actually seen it:
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This trailer starts out on a low note with, of all things, a lawyer joke: Hugh Jackman asks, "So you like this work?" Ewan McGregor: "It's all right if you like working with numbers. Do you like being a lawyer." Jackman, with the punch line: "It's all right if you like working with asses." It's possibly the most tired joke on the planet, but they somehow thought that would suck viewers into the trailer. From there, though, it actually gets sort of interesting (no more lawyer jokes; I promise). It seems slick lawyer Jackman takes geeky numbers guy McGregor to some sort of secret sex club, and ultimately unravels McGregor's previously buttoned-down life. See, there are rules at this secret sex club, and McGregor breaks them all when he meets Michelle Williams' character and falls for her. Then she somehow disappears, and it Jackman seems to be the one to blame. Or is he? And McGregor will stop at nothing to find her, apparently. Because their one night, when he was paying her to be with him, was so magical. What makes this trailer halfway decent is that it's unclear what this secret sex club is all about, who the bad guys are, what Michelle Williams has to do with all of it, and what happens in the end. There is something about Jackman putting on glasses and impersonating McGregor, and at least two of the main characters have a gun at some point in the movie. Oh, and there's the fact that McGregor is an uber-geek who can solve mathematical things easily, which helps him in this situation for some completely inexplicable reason. All in all, not bad.

Reviews by people who have actually seen it:
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For the sake of full disclosure, I should preface this by saying that I have never seen Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, the movie. But I have seen the trailer, and I give it a solid A. Very funny stuff, especially since it brought about the comeback of one Neil Patrick Harris. Having seen that trailer, I'm as qualified as anyone to review this trailer, then, so let's begin: Harold and Kumar decide to go even farther than White Castle this time. Their target destination? Amsterdam. But where they end up, thanks to Kal Penn (who is Indian) looking and acting like a terrorist (don't try to apply logic to it, or it stops being funny)? Guantanamo Bay. And then, you really have to suspend your disbelief, because they escape. And end up at some guy's "bottomless" party (because he's really tired of the whole "topless" thing). From there they have another run-in with Neil Patrick Harris, which seems more been-there-done-that than funny at this point. There is such a thing as overusing a good thing until it's not all that good anymore. There is a pretty funny appearance by Rob Corddry, and a slightly less funny appearance by Ed Helms. It's mostly a lot of jokes about race and politics (they even end up in President Bush's home, where the Prez (obviously an actor; not the real guy) laughs with them and says, "They thought you were terrorizers?"). This one's going to have a few laughs and more than its fair share of trying-too-hard-to-repeat-the-past moments. But with John Cho and Kal Penn, it's bound to be at least as funny as any other comedy sequel. Which is to say, not that funny.

Reviews by people who have actually seen it:
Variety
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With a name like Baby Mama, it has to be good, right? Okay, yeah, not so much with the title or the movie. I love Tina Fey. And Amy Poehler. So I hope this trailer is just, like, the worst material they could find, and they used it because of some sort of reverse psychology advertising or something. Truthfully, the trailer doesn't start out that bad: Tina Fey is funny in her usual dry way, as she tells a guy on their first (and likely only) date all about her adventures in trying to have a baby, ending with the clincher, "I could be pregnant right now." That always brings the guys back for another date, doesn't it? But then she runs out of options and starts looking for a surrogate. They are usually very expensive, it turns out, so Tina turns to her good friend Amy Poehler, who, sadly, sort of ruins the movie. Okay, we obviously expect Tina to play it straight next to Amy's zaniness, but some of this goes beyond her usual zany into one of two camps: 1) Really, really stupid. 2) Utterly disturbing, and not in a funny way. I honestly don't know what to hate more: the stupid stuff (Tina should get used to Amy because she's going to have a kid soon anyway, and Amy's like a big kid; Amy's Tina's baby mama -- hence the movie's title; get it?; and a really ridiculous birthing class scene) or the disturbing stuff (Maura Tierney licking her kid's arm to determine "chocolate or poop?" and Tina's bewildered, "What if that had been poop?!"; and Amy peeing in the sink because she can't open a child-proofed toilet seat). What I do know is that my abiding affection for these two ladies isn't going to get me to shell out money for this nightmare -- and that they might have just dropped a little bit in my esteem.

Reviews by people who have actually seen it:
New Yorker
Variety
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Meet the Plumm family (William Baldwin, his wife and two sons). They're a happy-go-lucky crew living their lives in a lazy little town. Youngest son Rocky (who is adorable, by the way) loves his hometown kids show (starring Henry Winkler) about a character named "Froggy Doo." It feels very Little Miss Sunshine until, all of a sudden, it becomes more like Death to Smoochy. See, Froggy Doo is kidnapped (or, more accurately, stolen, since I think it's actually a doll/puppet and not a living being), turning the whole world upside down. Kids are crying, parents are puzzled, even the FBI gets involved. This is all fairly unbelievable and even more unbelievable: The trailer claims this is based on a true story. I haven't been able to verify the accuracy of this but, either way, it's certainly a strange little thing to make a movie about. What happens next is just as bizarre. Apparently, the FBI agents are incompetent, or "clueless" as their crossword puzzle would have you know. So Rocky and his high school-aged brother, Elliot (and Elliot's love interest), set out to find Froggy Doo themselves. Everyone wants them to stop searching and leave it to the authorities, but surely they won't. After all, "Goonies never say die." Oh, sorry, wrong movie, but you get the point: Kids never give up, and are smarter than their parents and all of that. The trailer doesn't give away whether the kids, or anyone else, finds Froggy Doo, but we do see an ominous scene in which a kid is floating down a raging river trying to grab hold of a metal chest (possibly containing our dear Froggy?). It's a little indie that could be pretty fun, but also begs the question: Do we really care this much about something called Froggy Doo? And, if we do, why?

Reviews by people who have actually seen it:
Variety
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This Bollywood film's trailer is very Ocean's 11 with a cast of presumably big stars walking toward the camera in slow motion as their names appear on the screen. The problem for me, as an ignorant American, is that I don't know who these actors are so I have to take the trailer's word that they're stars. They do look menacing and sexy, and there are guns being loaded and gunshots and bullet casings dropping to the ground interspersed with the slow-mo celebrity intro walk. And then there's an angry (and apparently rich, based solely on appearances) man saying what sounds similar to "First impression is last impression." But he's not speaking English, so I'm sure that's not what he's saying. Anyway, cool music, cool-looking people, and only a 45-second trailer? Enough said. I'm there.

Reviews by people who have actually seen it:
Rotten Tomatoes

It's hard to snark on a documentary about the role of photography in the Abu Ghraib mess. We all obviously realize the role of photography, since photos were what the entire scandal was about. But this documentary (from the director of The Fog of War) takes a deeper look, with interviews from many of the soldiers involved, even Lindy England, the woman you might remember holding the leash in the most famous of the photos. She blames her actions on being in love with the corporal in charge at the prison, and doing whatever he says. I don't think he speaks in the doc, and it might have been even more complete if we could get that perspective, but still: It looks fascinating and enlightening, if you can stomach seeing any of those photos again (although, in the trailer at least, they only show tiny snippets of the photos)

Reviews by people who have actually seen it:
Variety
Hollywood Reporter
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Milo Ventimiglia is all serious and brooding here. He's so not typecast or anything, I know. But here it's different: He plays a pathologist -- well, actually a pathology intern, who works with a bunch of other pathology interns under apparently no supervision. They are introduced to each other by a professor in the beginning, but that's almost all we see of any authority figure. And you know what happens when college-trained pathology interns have no supervision: They become obsessed with death (they even make a toast, "To the dead"), and this obviously leads to them killing people. The moral of this tale seems to be that working in a morgue is like joining a murderous cult. But Milo's the good guy, so he wants to stop them. Especially since they start threatening his fiancée, Alyssa Milano. But it's not easy to stop these guys. As creepy voiceover trailer guy says, "The only way to stop them is to beat them at their own game." Uh, okay. Whatever that means. The good news is that the professor does show up again at the end of the trailer, to ask Milo very menacingly if there's anything he'd like to share with him. Milo, of course, says no. Because telling on the mass murderers he's working with would be too easy. He has to beat them at their own game!

Reviews by people who have actually seen it:
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Whoa! They got Jackie Chan and Jet Li to do this movie. And Jackie Chan isn't being wacky? I'm already sold. Why they had to cast the dopey-looking kid you've seen in about 100 TV shows is beyond me. But, other than that (and Jackie Chan's horrifying wig), it's looking pretty good. Oh, wait ... the trailer's not over yet. Yep, there it is: Jackie Chan does have to be wacky. They're teaching the dopey-looking American kung-fu, after all. Despite the silly hijinks, Jet Li manages to keep a straight face (clearly playing the straight man in Jackie Chan's uproarious comedy act). Then they send in a lady with a long white wig to fight the guys, because that is the most practical hairstyle for a fighter. She wouldn't, you know, put it up in a bun or anything. Of course not, because then it wouldn't flow and fly around her as she jumped and kicked and otherwise looked bad-ass. Speaking of wigs, did I mention Jackie Chan's? It's long and dirty-looking, and really just serves to make him look like a kung-fu version of Falstaff. Hair is such a main character in this movie that the trailer ends with the white-haired dominatrix spinning and her shiny white hair turns into the shiny words "Coming Soon." I have no idea what the point of that was -- but, then, that fits pretty well with the movie, which can't decide if it wants to be Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Shanghai Noon.

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
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Morgan Spurlock, the guy who brought us Super Size Me and 30 Days takes on an entirely different project this time: He sets out to find Osama Bin Laden. By himself. Because, as he says, "If I've learned anything from big-budget action movies, it's that complicated global problems are best solved by one lonely guy." The documentary shows Spurlock being safety trained before leaving, then heading into various countries walking up to people asking where to find Osama. He sits down with Bin Laden's uncle and asks him if he'd turn him in for the $25 million. There is at least hesitation before he answers, and we don't know if he says yes or now. Spurlock is told it's an impossible mission, but that won't deter him; there's a big-budget action franchise named after impossible missions, right? That just fuels the fire. It looks funny and more than a little scary (he of course travels into Taliban territory). You can view Spurlock as either brave or stupid for doing this, but if it makes people take a new or different look at the parts of the world he travels to, it's more than served its purpose.

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
Hollywood Reporter
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You might think, based on this movie, that Al Pacino is returning to his roots. His character -- a forensic psychiatrist and professor, who is used as an expert witness and singlehandedly sends someone to death row (we later find out there's not a shred of other evidence in the case) -- has that same frantic nature of so many of Pacino's characters, from Dog Day Afternoon to The Insider. But this isn't such a movie. Because ... let's see ... where should we begin? Let's start with the entire premise of the movie: that Pacino's character has 88 minutes to live and has to solve his own murder before it happens (I won't give away who's behind the plot to kill him, but the trailer seems to). Supporting players include Ryan from The O.C. and a handful of pretty young ladies who seem to want nothing more than to be at this forensic psychiatrist's side. But of course: He saves them from being hit by cars, after all. They might also end up dead at the end of the day, but that's a small price to pay for a night with such a famous professor/expert witness. Yeah, don't blame me: I already told you the premise was silly.

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
Hollywood Reporter
Variety
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This trailer is lovely and touching, but leaves you wondering what exactly the movie is. In other words: the best kind of trailer. The movie's from the director of The House of Sand and Fog, which I'm not really sure is that big of a selling point for most people, but I guess they use what they have. We start with Evan Rachel Wood and Eva Amurri (also known as Susan Sarandon's daughter), happy and carefree BFFs in high school. But then, tragedy strikes in the form of a school shooting. It appears that Evan and Eva have to choose which one of them lives and which one of them dies (because school shootings are so often like Sophie's Choice rather than just angry adolescents shooting every which way), and Evan is the survivor. She grows up to become Uma Thurman, apparently, who is still struggling with the memory of her friend and that choice. Her husband tries to comfort her, but can't. She also has a little blond daughter, who she gazes at with fear? Longing? Heartbreak? Suffice it to say she has some sort of concerns about her little girl. The movie all has something to do with destiny, and with Uma/Evan's character being wild as a teenager. And then Uma's husband is caught with another young blond, and it looks like she leaves him. Uma is approaching a door, with flowers, about to knock on it, right as the trailer ends. And I'm left with this one question: Are they allowed to end trailers with such a cliffhanger? That's just not fair, because I'm going to actually have to see this movie now.

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
Variety
Hollywood Reporter
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It's another movie from the Apatow mill that brought us The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad. This time, Judd Apatow himself isn't so much involved. But we do have Jason Segel (who also wrote the movie), and a mean and sexy Kristen Bell (is there any other kind?) as the title's Sarah Marshall. The trailer actually makes it look like a lot of lame jokes without much of the heart or poignancy that the Apatow mill usually churns out. That said -- and I am ashamed to admit this -- I don't think it's safe to judge this movie by the trailer (I know, I know, that's the whole point of this blog, but...sometimes I just can't, okay?). The thing about the Apatow folks is that their jokes aren't usually the kind of quick, on-the-nose one-liners that trailers need (that, or they're too dirty for the trailer). So I'm going to ask you to give this movie a chance despite the sort of dumb trailer. It's sure to be filled with lengthy setups and jokes too dirty for TV, just like its predecessors.

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
Richard Roeper Variety Rotten Tomatoes

Meryl Streep and Aidan Quinn join forces for this feature debut from an opera and theater director. Both actors appear to be college professors working with a gifted college student from China. The trailer starts with Meryl asking, "Looking at the stars?" and said student, Liu, responds, "I'm looking at the dark matter." He then scores higher than anyone else ever on the qualifying exam and is welcomed to the program. It looks mostly serious, but there's some silliness with Liu misunderstanding crazy American expressions (he says "Up the bottoms" instead of "Bottoms up" when toasting at a crowded gathering) and crazy Americans misunderstanding Liu (when he says he's in cosmology, his possible girlfriend says, "Wow. Maybe you can give me a makeover"), but it heads quickly back into serious territory. It seems Liu does well in the program, but that he ultimately doesn't understand university politics and he does something that pisses off Aidan Quinn (who had sort of taken him under his wing), and everything falls apart for Liu. The girlfriend leaves him. Aidan turns on him. He ends up alone in the universe, although it looks like Meryl is still pulling for him. The trailer makes it look like he doesn't come back from the chaos, but if there's one thing I've learned in my years watching movies, it's that Meryl Streep is capable of overcoming, so I have hope she'll bring poor Liu back into the fold and out of the darkness.

Rotten Tomatoes

Since this is the longest trailer in the world, you really don't need to watch this movie once you've seen it. Here's what happens: Scruffy-haired Dennis Quaid is a brilliant but sort-of depressed college professor. His daughter (Ellen Page) is excessively driven (Young Republicans, model U.N., and she's aiming for a perfect SAT score, natch). Then he has a seizure and can't legally drive for six months. Thankfully, he gets stuck with lovely doctor Sarah Jessica Parker, which would be enough to make this just a romantic comedy. But enter even scruffier (adopted) brother Thomas Haden Church, who decides he'll move in and chauffer Dennis around (since the daughter's too busy). It's a movie about bonding with the people you love, new and old. Sort of like other recent movies that all of the stars of this one were in (The Family Stone, Sideways, Juno, In Good Company). It's likely to be the feel-good indie success story of the year, and you have all the scoop without having so much as watched the trailer. Lucky you. -- DeAnn Welker

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
Variety
Hollywood Reporter
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Another movie about the ripple-effects that each of our actions have on everyone we come into contact with and everyone they come into contact with and so on, but this one actually looks to be worth watching. Richard Jenkins of Six Feet Under fame looks devastating as a lonely guy who returns home to find strangers living in his apartment. He lets them stay, of course (because that's what we all do when we find squatters living in our apartment), and his actions have consequences: He learns something about the world -- in a good way, at first, but then in a bad way when one of the squatters is arrested. As an illegal in the country, he's sort of screwed. But Richard keeps visiting, and learning, and the repercussions are surely to be more in the realm of putting good into the world than the other thing. The inspiring strains of the trailer music tell me so. Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
Variety
Hollywood Reporter
Rotten Tomatoes

It's the concert event rock 'n' roll fans have always dreamed about: The Clash, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, Coldplay. Wha...? No, the trailer's just kidding with you; it's not really that sort of legendary lineup. It's a senior citizens group that performs covers of rock songs. And it's actually sort of rocking. Granted, they're not the greatest singers on the planet, but you can't fault these folks for trying--for getting out there and doing it. And as their instructor warns, if we're lucky, someone might pass a kidney stone. The voiceover guy isn't helping things with the talk of how inspiring and standing-ovation-worthy this documentary is. The old folks sell it perfectly fine by themselves, with their humor, their love for music, and, yes, even their bravery to get up and perform. It really might be the best concert film you'll ever see. At the least, it will be unlike any of the others. -- DeAnn Welker Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
Variety
Rotten Tomatoes

This trailer starts out strong: gritty music, gritty filming, close-ups of guns and badges, confusing crimes, tattoos. But then it all changes, because: Keanu Reeves. Really? We're supposed to buy Keanu in a gritty cop drama? I mean, I know he was Neo and everything, but those movies worked (and, really, only one of them did) on the strength of special effects, not on his acting. Specifically, his performance worked on the strength of costumes and hair stylists, not on his acting. Even Bill and Ted worked on the strength of Keanu being Keanu, not on his acting. Are you noticing a trend here? Well, this is a movie that needs to be carried by its lead, and as good as everything else about it might be, I'm just not buying it. They ratchet up the tension with gunshots and screaming, but even Keanu's one-liners in the trailer (which is supposed to be selling the movie, right?) are embarrassingly bad. Take, for instance, "So what do they call ya?" to which the supposed criminal responds, "Quicks." Keanu: "Not quick enough." And: "We're the police. We can do whatever the hell we want." And let's not forget, when he's asked, "So we're just going to go in there and kill 'em?": "No, I'm gonna ask 'em some questions. Then we're gonna kill 'em." If it's ludicrous line reading you're looking for, this is your Best Picture of the year. Otherwise, steer clear. Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
Variety
Rotten Tomatoes

This movie is so much like every other horror movie starring hot, young things that it's almost embarrassing to review. But I'll try. Basically, every TV-actor-who-is-not-yet-a-movie-actor is in this cast (I can forgive Jason Street for this decision, since he's sort of new; but Stringer Bell? I expected more from you), led by Brittany Snow. They do a good job throwing us back to the 1980s original on which this is based with the remake of Time After Time playing over the trailer. It's unclear whether this one will have the creepy backstory that the first one did, in which Jamie Lee Curtis and all of her friends were involved in the death of a child and that's why they're being stalked on prom night now. You know, because in a horror flick, if the crazed killer doesn't have a reason, it's just...well, horror flicks as usual. -- DeAnn Welker

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
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Because there clearly aren't enough current cultures for us to stereotype and exploit on film, the enemy in this latest horror flick: ancient Mayans. I mean, hello? They had ritual sacrifices. And they still do, according to the trailer, which looks and sounds sufficiently creepy without giving much away. The creepiness includes: worms (or vines?) literally getting under people's skin, a group of natives not allowing the white folks (our heroes, obviously) to leave the ruins, and a very creepy, disembodied voice pleading for help. Of course, anytime you set any part of a scary movie underground or in dark caves, the freak-out factor is dialed up a few notches. And, come on, if we applied contemporary issues and politics to the horror genre, we wouldn't be able to enjoy many of them. So forget about the fact that this is pitting an ancient civilization as the bad guys against this poor group of fun-loving white kids, and just prepare to be scared to death. It's based on a book, but feel free to spare yourself some time and -- if you need to know how this story turns out -- see the movie. You'll get all the spooks without having to exert brain cells.

Reviews by people who've actually seen it:
Rotten Tomatoes