Zac Efron's done an excellent job of erasing his squeaky-clean Disney Channel image in recent years. If his fratboy roles in "Neighbors" and its sequel commenced the process, then his turns as a paint-huffing pyromaniac in "The Beach Bum" and serial killer Ted Bundy in "Extremely Wicked, Shocking Evil And Vile" completed it. Efron nonetheless retains his best asset in both of those roles: his distinctive good looks. Sure, Bundy was a handsome chameleon; that's part of his terrifying charm.…

A typical all-American family from Cleveland takes a detour on their cross-country trip to Los Angeles and has to fight for their lives against a troglodytic clan of mutant cannibals in Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes. Craven’s supplied subtext should be apparent already, and it’s just as shoddy and exploitative as the film’s form, direction, acting performances and production values. To (sub)textualize: a white middle-class nuclear family, blinded by the comforts of their own domestic privilege, briefly leave the…

Penny Lane makes this talking-heads documentary as engaging as it can be, but "Hail Satan?" remains a frustrating viewing experience. That frustration has less to do with Lane's directorial abilities than the paradoxical identity of the Satanic Temple (TST) itself. While the group and their spokespeople promote their tenets eloquently and use the right buzz phrases like "religious pluralism" and "sociopolitical countermyth" to lend their actions intellectual credibility, at the end of the day their activism amounts to a series…