Disney should have expected this. After all, when you hand the reigns of a dark, sometimes disturbing fantasy to the man who made The Evil Dead, The Evil Dead 2, and the original Spider-man franchise, you have to expect something a bit…odd? Parents be warned - your wee ones are going to be startled at the level of scares present in this so-called “prequel” to the famous MGM musical. Without access to much of the original Oz material however (Warner Brothers is, apparently, just like the House of Mouse when it comes to licensing out their gold standards) we are treated to a slightly surreal reexamination of the entire mythology. Gone are mentions of Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, The Scarecrow or the Tin Man. In their place are various witches, a wondrous little china doll, and a monkey that makes his evil flying baboon counterparts seem like the aforementioned filmmaker’s diabolical Deadites.

Two damaged people join together to exorcise their individual demons in the dark, sometimes overly somber thriller Dead Man Down. It’s the latest from Danish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev, the man responsible for the ridiculously good Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Bringing said film’s star, Noomi Rapace along to provide creative continuity, he takes a script from Fringe‘s J.H. Wyman that could have been a basic revenge actioner and turns it into a character study with stunts.

Even if he hadn’t been part of one of the most notorious and controversial ‘true’ horror stories of all time, Daniel Lutz would have issues. An admitted victim of abuse and torn between the accidental celebrity he achieved and the Hell he had to live through both during and after, he wouldn’t need the house formerly known as 112 Ocean Avenue to drive his dysfunction. No, Daniel is an angry, angry man, and it’s not just the constant need to defend himself and his family that fuels said ire. Yet for the first half of the frightening, insightful documentary My Amityville Horror, we get one of the few firsthand accounts of what happened during the 28 days prior to the family fleeing their suburban Long Island home. Along the way, however, verification turns to vilification as Daniel decides that his dead stepfather was more of a threat than anything he experienced in that notorious house.

Alternative titles: Where Have All the People Gone?; Defensive Linemen from Hell

POSITIVES:

Cracking good start.

Sense of unease and tension effectively conveyed in first half.

Character “revelations” in latter half of the movie are fairly well done.

It may just be the post-Oscar malaise talking, but 2013 isn’t shaping up to be the best year for films - at least as far as the first two months go. Oh sure, these are the real dog days of cinema, a time where studios dump the contractually obligated star vehicles that fail to meet the Summer popcorn/Fall Awards window, as well as any other distributable dreck hanging around their always overflowing vaults. It’s rare when a good film stumbles out of this four month fizzle. In fact, it was typically a given that nothing viable would come out of Tinseltown until the teenagers started to wake up - around mid-April. Until then, it was failed wannabe franchises, lame leftovers, and more than one example of star chutzpah supplanting viable acting ability.