Horror

It may not be a good day for Jamie Foxx's movie "Django Unchained" in China . But, hey, at least the actor is getting some love from Syfy. The network announced Thursday that the actor will be executive-producing, writing and directing a five-episode horror anthology for them. The untitled series, produced through the actor's Foxxhole Productions, will roll out this year as part of Syfy's 31 Days of Halloween this October. The episodes will consist of morality tales, according to the release, in the vein of "Tales from the Crypt" and "The Twilight Zone.

People who offer their Monday-morning quarterback opinions in spaces like this -- yours truly included -- like to parse every number, every success or failure, for a larger meaning. And sometimes you have to look pretty hard to see a trend. Other times, like a possessed spirit in a dark forest, it just jumps out at you. Consider the most recent box office numbers. Coming in to the weekend, "Evil Dead" and "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" seemed to be locked in a tight battle. Fede Alvarez's big horror sequel and Jon Chu's big action sequel each had a good shot to win the weekend.

Among the household items put to unintended use in the new film "Evil Dead," a playfully reverent if not-overly-so remake of Sam Raimi's 1981 cult favorite horror movie, are a nail gun, an electric knife, a jerry-rigged defibrillator, and, in an obvious nod to the original, a chain saw. The feature debut of Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez, discovered via a short on YouTube, "Evil Dead" has a gleeful exuberance of its own analogous to the mad invention...

The cast of "The Big Bang Theory" dressed up in "Rocky Horror Show" outfits to sing at Wednesday's "A Night at Sardi's" fundraiser in Beverly Hills for the Alzheimer's Assn. Jason Bateman was host of the evening, which honored Brian Grazer. Other singers included Jason Alexander, Beth Behrs, Emmy Rossum and Christine Ebersole, among others. [Society News L.A.] The David Bowie retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London opens Saturday for a scheduled run through Aug. 11, and already it is reportedly the museum's fastest-selling show ever.

Fans of pulpy British horror novels were dismayed to learn that James Herbert , author of books including "The Rats," "Magic Cottage" and "Haunted," had died at his home Wednesday. The 69-year-old died peacefully in his sleep, according to publisher Pan Macmillan. Herbert was an art director at an advertising agency when he began writing his first novel, "The Rats," which was published when he was 30. His most recent book, "Ash," came out in the U.S. late last year. In all, he wrote 23 novels that have been published in 34 languages, selling more than 54 million copies worldwide.

A pair of terror movie staples - the vacation from hell and the murderous children tale - are combined to OK effect in "Come Out and Play," a remake of the 1976 film "Who Can Kill a Child?" which, like "Play," was based on Juan José Plan's novel "El Juego De Niños. " A one-man band known as Makinov - he wrote, directed, produced, shot, edited and ran sound here - has done a pretty decent job in the chills department using a simple story, small cast and largely contained location.

Whatever happened 37 years ago at the Lutz home in Amityville, Long Island, the extreme spook factor has spawned a cottage industry in books, movies and the online musings of amateur obsessives, both naysayers and believers. Eric Walter's absorbing documentary "My Amityville Horror" stands apart from most Amityville-alia. He explores the hoax-or-horror debate, but his chief concern is the effect of a world-famous haunting on one of the people who experienced it. Daniel Lutz was 10 when he and his mother, stepfather, brother and sister moved into their would-be dream house, the site of a recent mass murder.

In "Snitch," a thriller set in the dangerous drug world, Dwayne Johnson plays a father who goes to work as a drug informant to free his jailed son. The PG-13 film from Participant Media features a street fight, a car chase and a gun battle - high-octane action aimed at attracting the coveted young adult male audience. It's not the kind of movie ordinarily associated with Participant, which has built its reputation on films with social messages, including the global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and "The Help," about racism in the 1960s South.

"The Last Exorcism Part II" is an effectively unnerving, slow-burn supernatural horror tale. The film is smartly different enough from the original to survive on its own, though it lacks some of the first film's sense of surprise. Rather than the disorienting reversals of the first film - a faux documentary in which a team looking to debunk demonic possession comes across a story they can't explain away - "Part II" takes a conventional approach (no fake doc, no found footage) to its story.

There is no cabin in the woods or scary house at the end of the street in "Amour. " There is no ax-wielding Jack Nicholson running around. Yet filmmaker Michael Haneke's examination of the final days of a long life - and a long love - may be the quintessential horror film for our times. It has a remarkable ability to scare the living daylights out of audiences of any age. With five Oscar nominations - including best picture in the overall race and best foreign language film as Austria's entry - "Amour" is one of the finest relationship dramas ever made.