People are voting emotionally.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Fresh and Exciting

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Five people play poker after hours in the upstairs of a liquor store, only to be picked off one by one by a serial killer. Much of the first half is centred around this game, frankly very boring. The acting isn't great, especially Duval as the heroin addict going cold turkey. The temptation to hit the FFWD button was great. Once the killing starts there is an attempt, with some success, to substitute gore for tension. Many slasher fans will feel short changed however, with only one killing near the end producing the gory goods. I guess making a film in pretty much a single location takes skill, so credit to them for trying. Could've been better, I'd pretty much lost interest after the first half.

While gathering together for a card game in their convenience store, a group of friends find themselves the latest victims of a serial killer's rampage against similar employees in town and race to escape before they all succumb to his fury.This one turned out to be quite exciting and enjoyable. Well, supposedly this was going to be a hybrid slasher/comedy but instead, it didn't really do either all that well and still came away rather enjoyable. The comedy elements are the biggest miscues, being not at all funny and really just lame that tend to make the film far longer than it really should be because the middle section is just so boring and dull that not a whole lot really registers. Once they come aware of their being stalked and hunted, it turns into a rather enjoyable affair with some big suspense scenes set within a location that really doesn't set itself up as being capable of doing so, and a rather nice twist that allows for some brutal kills to come along. While the killer isn't that threatening and it does have some other flaws, this one does become a lot more watchable as it goes along.Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence

Cornered! (2009) * 1/2 (out of 4)Pretty bad slasher flick about a serial killer stalking convenient stores in Los Angeles. A store owner and his friends sit down to have a poker game after hours one night and sure enough, the killer shows up and starts to pick them off one by one. There are countless direct-to-DVD horror releases out there so you have to pick them with caution but I decided to give this one a go since Steve Guttenberg has a small part. I'm sure those who grew up watching POLICE ACADEMY wondered what he was up to in his recent movies and this here was my shot of seeing him again but it frankly wasn't worth the trouble. This screenplay is without question one of the strangest I've seen because it features a lot of bums and the reason for this is beyond me. We have the store owner who is obviously a cheap, rude jerk. We have his nephew who runs the cash register and just happens to be a meth head. We've got a prostitute trying to pick up some extra cash. We have one lady who works as a phone sex operator. We even have an overweight guy hooked on donuts. Umm....what the hell? Have we really gotten to the point in horror films where one of the characters needs to be addicted to donuts? I'm not sure if this was meant to be part of the humor but the laughs certainly never work and this is painfully obvious in a scene early one where another bum, this time a homeless man, tries to steal some alcohol. I'm really not sure what the point of this comedy was but it certainly doesn't work but then again neither does the horror or mystery aspects. The killer was rather obvious within the first five minutes so the entire mystery gets flushed right down the toilet. With the comedy and mystery gone you'd think we'd at least get some gory deaths, right? Well, wrong. The violence for the most part is rather tame and the bloodiest scene is actually a quick edit to part of a jelly donut dripping onto a table. The performances in the film were fair and that includes Guttenberg who at least proves he still has some nice comic timing. With that said, CORNERED! is a low-budget slasher film that doesn't work on any level and should certainly be skipped.

It's been a while since I've seen such an engrossing and engaging thriller. This is a great, slow burning film about a group of people stuck in a liquor store. I'm glad to see Steve Guttenberg back on the screen, and in a different character than usual (he's a bit nasty here), and his scenes really move the film forward and give it some heft. I also have to mention James Duvall, who is awesome here as a hallucinating drug addict. There are some cool scenes here, but this isn't Hostel, by any means, so it has less gore and more suspense. The story focuses more on the individual characters to let us into their world. The claustrophobic single room setting really sets the mood for the entire movie, and when the characters lock themselves in, it only gets more interesting. If you like slasher films and suspense, this is definitely the film for you. Give it a chance. Forget anything else you saw this year and go get Cornered! I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.