Nick Murphy makes his feature film directorial debut with The Awakening--a supernatural period thriller that seemed like a pretty solid piece of ghost cinema until it sadly veered towards common territory towards the end.

The story is set during WWI and follows a female ghost-debunker who travels from one place to the other proving false supernatural claims. Her recent gig takes her to a faraway prestigious boy's school that the staff says has been haunted for years by the eerie spirit of a deceased young boy. The skeptic that she is, she goes in thinking it'll be another easy job, but soon realizes that there may be more to these stories and sightings than she thought.

This is more of a ghostly drama than anything, as it's a very slow-building supernatural tale that's kind of in the vein of older pics that relied more on character development, storytelling and atmosphere than anything. Some may be turned off by this, but I found it refreshing compared to most of the shit that comes out of the supernatural sub-genre now, specifically with all these unimaginative found footage efforts.

Another year, another shitty unnecessary Wrong Turn sequel--that's pretty much how I feel about the franchise at this point. The first two films were enjoyable, while the three that followed were pretty much a waste of time. Though, I'll admit that the previous flick had its moments. Despite the fact that Declan O'Brien wrote and directed the worst of the films, the studio keeps bringing him back for more. Such is the case with Bloodlines, yet another worthless installment in the needless straight-to-DVD Wrong Turn series.

The story takes place after the events of the previous movie, meaning it's still a prequel and gives an excuse to once again bring back the same old inbred mutants we've grown tired of seeing. We follow a typical group of 20-somethings as they head to the "Mountain Man Festival" at a small West Virginia town for some boozing, drugging, and sexing. Unfortunately for them, they nearly hit a man along the way. While attempting to help the man off the road, he brandishes a knife in an attempt to take out one of the guys, but a police car arrives just in time to take the man into custody.