I'm haunted by a Black Christmas

Writer-director Glen Morgan's remake of a cult 1974 horror thriller, Black Christmas, has all of the gore of his Final Destination films but none of their intelligence, style or wit.

The blood runneth over and eyeballs are plucked merrily from the sockets of the pretty cast members. When will these girls learn that if they hear a suspicious noise in the attic, the sensible course of action is to run for help, not venture alone into a cobweb-strewn space where doom invariably lurks?

Venture they must and so it is the girls, glowing with youth and armed with acidic put-downs, who are carved up for Christmas and not the turkey. Slain belles, if you will.

Black Christmas opens with a nightmarish flashback to 1975, in which young Billy Lenz (Cainan Wiebe) endures yet another hellish winter with his mother (Karin Konoval) and father (Peter Wilds). The old man is butchered and Billy is consigned to the loft where he sits menacingly in a rocking chair, allowing the years of psychological abuse and mental torture to take their toll. Having wreaked bloody revenge, Billy is incarcerated and the Lenz home becomes a sorority house. Many years later, housemother Mrs Mac (Andrea Martin) encourages her girls to gather round the tree to exchange Christmas presents.

Among the lovely ladies are Kelli (Kate Cassidy), Melissa (Michelle Trachtenberg), Heather (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Dana (Lacey Chabert) and the slightly tipsy Lauren (Crystal Lowe).

Gathering around the festive spruce, the girls are shocked to receive a series of threatening telephone calls. When it transpires that the calls are coming from inside the house, the friends fear the worst.

Trapped in the house in the middle of a blizzard, the girls must rely on each other to survive the onslaught, aided by Leigh (Kristen Cloke), sister of one of the missing-presumed-disembowelled students.

Little do any of them realise that the now adult Billy Lenz (Robert Mann) has escaped his cell and is coming home for Christmas.

Black Christmas has an extremely sick and twisted sense of humour, including a rather unsavoury incident with a cookie cutter. Morgan orchestrates a couple of shocks and his special-effects team slavers on the viscera, scything down the ensemble with furious abandon before the obligatory final showdown. Violence is unrelenting but there's little in the way of dramatic tension to underpin the carnage. and the characters' aren't fleshed out enough to make them anything other than dead girls walking.

Cassidy plays her feisty blonde with plenty of gumption - "We're sisters, so act like it!" - but her co-stars are almost interchangeable.

The finale strains credibility, not that the film has much to begin with, including the obligatory resurrection of the monster, whom everyone foolishly presumes to be dead.

Intended as the first instalment of a trilogy based on the novels by Christopher Paolini, Eragon is an old-fashioned sword and sorcery epic that cowers in the shadow of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.

Comparisons between the two series are inevitable. Unfortunately, Stefen Fangmeier's modest effort looks cheap and cheerful in comparison, lacking the grandeur, spectacle and intense emotion that characterised the odyssey through Middle Earth. At times, Eragon seems to be using the Tolkien films as its template, with myriad aerial shots of the adventurers on horseback, galloping across the mountainous realm to Patrick Doyle's rousing orchestral score.

A soporific voiceover from Jeremy Irons sets the scene.

Many years ago, the Dragon Riders reigned supreme over the kingdom of Alagaesia. Blessed with the power of ten men, these fearsome warriors took to the skies on their dragons, ensuring peace for everyone in the realm . . . until warrior Galbatorix (John Malkovich) used his gift against the other riders and seized power, plunging Alagaesia into darkness. While rebel forces, the Varden, fled to the Beor Mountains to escape Galbatorix and his evil sorcerer, Durza (Robert Carlyle), the people of the land succumbed to the new king's might, dreaming of a day when dragons would return.

So it comes to pass that young farm boy Eragon (Edward Speleers) from the village of Carvahall chances upon a dragon egg in the forest, which has been hidden by the beautiful warrior Arya (Sienna Guillory).

The egg hatches and Eragon forges an unbreakable bond with the dragon called Saphira (voiced by Rachel Weisz), embarking on a perilous quest to restore harmony to Alagaesia, aided by the sage, Brom (Irons).

The initial five minutes of Eragon do not bode well, introducing Malkovich's pantomime villain with the camp opening gambit: "I suffer without my stone. Do not prolong my suffering!" Peter Buchman's screenplay is an embarrassment of such riches, while littered with unintentionally hilarious dialogue like when Eragon questions his mentor's wise words, "How do you know all this?" and Brom responds, "Because I've been about a bit." Edward Speleers as Eragon has the classic pretty boy looks - a gratuitous topless scene confirms his status as teenage poster boy of the week - but his acting isn't wholly convincing. Malkovich and Carlyle trade sneers while beautiful warrior Arya (Sienna Guillory) squeezes herself into a series of figure-hugging bodices which draw attention away from her expressionless face.

Action sequences are competently directed and the computer effects are seamlessly integrated. with the live action but the editing renders some scenes a blur and director Stefen Fangmeier's penchant for long shots of the battle at Farthen Dur lessens the impact.

A tantalising final shot neatly sets up the second film, Eldest, but with the reported $100m budget of this film, which is unlikely to be recouped at the box office, Eragon's journey may very well end here.

"The time of dragon riders will come again," says Brom confidently. Doubtful.

Have you ever had that eerie, unsettling feeling of seeing someone or something for the very first time, only to experience a momentary flash of recognition., as if you're reliving some memory that lingers tantalising out of reach?

You'll be flooded with nagging feelings of familiarity throughout the latest blockbuster from director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, whose previous collaborations include Top Gun, Days of Thunder, Crimson Tide and Enemy of the State.

Dj Vu appropriates the loopy science of Minority Report and Back to the Future and grafts it on to a thriller about a tenacious cop hunting the terrorist responsible for an explosion on a New Orleans ferry.

Screenwriters Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio don't bother to pretend they know what they're talking about -The time-travelling plot is complete nonsense and the film debunks its own confused logic for the sake of a spectacular finale. Reality creeps into the film every now and then, like the spooky aerial shots of a New Orleans community destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. But for the most part, Scott's film exists within its own deranged parallel universe, where every big action set piece is edited to within an inch of its life and every explosion is replayed in glorious slow motion.

Dj Vu begins with a bomb detonating on a ferry, packed to capacity with sailors and their families.

Special agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington), from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms And Explosives, is assigned the case and he begins sifting through the wreckage, including the lifeless body of a womanClaire Kuchever (Paula Patton), who was apparently killed by the bomber before the explosion. Haunted by the face of the woman, Doug invests his every waking minute in tracking down the killer. His determination brings him close to FBI agent Andrew Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer), who - brace yourselves - heads up a team of scientists with the technical capability to construct a bridge' to events which took place four days and six hours ago.

When Doug makes the shocking discovery that the scientists can actually send objects, and possibly a human being, back into this vision of the past, he resolves to save Paula and prevent the explosion. But how do you avert a tragedy, which has already happened?

Deja Vu plays to its strengths: Scott's directorial brio and Washington's likeability as a good man living on the edge.

In between the babble about folding the space-time continuum, there are myriad impressive action sequences including a mind-bending car chase that takes place simultaneously in the past and present.

Apart from Washington and Caviezel, who invests his mad man with a creepy, twisted sense of purpose, the rest of the cast are largely forgettable.

Have you ever had that eerie, unsettling feeling of seeing someone or something for the very first time, only to experience a momentary flash of recognition, as if you're reliving some memory that lingers tantalising out of reach?

As the title of Paul Feig's comedy warns, Grounded is a punishment - for parents who take their little ones to see this lifeless amalgam of numerous other festive yarns.

Screenwriters Jason Meszaros and Mya Stark throw Home Alone, Jingle All the Way, Miracle On 34th Street and A Christmas Carol into the cinematic blender to create a tiresome game of cat and mouse between resourceful children and bumbling security staff in an airport terminal.

As the quick-thinking ragamuffins run amok, leaving chaos and destruction in their wake, the screenplay drives home wholesome messages about togetherness at Yuletide and the importance of giving rather than receiving. Somehow, I doubt the target audience are going to swallow that for an instant.