“The Upside” is a remake of the 2011 French comedy, “The Intouchables,” which conquered the box office during its initial European release, but failed to find much monetary action in America. Perhaps this is why director Neil Burger has decided to try his luck with a do-over, tapping into the material’s audience-pleasing ways to deliver a perfectly mediocre version of a lukewarm dramedy. “The Intouchables” wasn’t high art, but it delivered flavorful performances without completely giving itself over to broadness. “The Upside” tries to show the same restraint, but Burger is stuck between delivering a thoughtful take on friendship and fear and giving the world yet another Kevin Hart comedy. There’s not much to bungle here, but Burger doesn’t push the material with any noticeable creative force. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

1993's "Body Melt" is one of Australia's rare forays into gross-out territory during the decade, with co-writer/director Philip Brophy aiming to generate is own swirling brew of liquefied body parts, social commentary, and regional extremity. Brophy's backed by quite a varied cast and a solid team of energized tech departments, aiming to make the feature appropriately disgusting and slick for a B-movie, with the effort retaining all sorts of disgusting visuals while maintaining a professional edge, missing the questionable grunginess this type of entertainment usually provides. "Body Melt" isn't big on story or connective tissue between subplots, but it does maintain menace, often the cheeky sort, giving the viewer exactly what the title promises, tricked out some with a defined Aussie sensibility. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

A BBC production, "The Miniaturist" is an adaption of Jessie Burton's 2014 novel, which explored the mystery and shock of a young woman pushed into an arranged marriage in 1686, experiencing a rush of turmoil in Amsterdam while dealing with an enigmatic craftsman using miniature dolls and furniture to communicate with the new bride. The material has been hammered into place over three episodes of crisis and suspicion, with Burton's plotting making an easy transition to the ways of BBC programming, which always seems to favor period settings, tight corsets, and characters experiencing all types of strife. "The Miniaturist" starts out very strong, but it struggles to maintain energy and shock value as it distributes horrors to most of its players, often electing to go the soap opera route out of fear of losing its audience with a more sophisticated take on an interestingly bizarre tale of stalking and identity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Perhaps writer/director Ken Wiederhorn just wasn't in the mood to manufacture an intense sequel to 1985's "Return of the Living Dead," possibly fearful that he couldn't recreate the limited magic helmer Dan O'Bannon brought to the original picture. The first film wasn't a sobering look at the birth of a zombie apocalypse, but a grungy, gory genre romp that dived into complete goofiness from time to time. 1988's "Return of the Living Dead: Part II" does away with any seriousness, becoming a slapstick comedy that just so happens to detail the premier horror experience of running away from the undead. Wiederhorn goes wild with "Part II," invested in making a gut-buster, not a fright machine, offering a rather severe tonal change that demands viewers relax a lot of expectations, especially for anything even remotely scary. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

We all know Eugene Levy as an ace comedian with a lengthy history of dynamite performances, even securing legend status with his work on "SCTV." However, in the 1990s, Levy was looking to build a directorial career for himself, stepping behind the camera to try his hand at crafting funny business using his distinctive sense of humor. 1992's "Once Upon a Crime" is Levy's big feature-length helming debut, and to secure some interest in the creative endeavor, he's collected quite a cast to help bring the screenplay (co-written by Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers) to life. Trouble is, "Once Upon a Crime" fails to follow through on its initial promise, with Levy so concerned about achieving the speed of a proper farce, he misses nailing as many jokes as possible. The picture isn't very funny, which feels like a crime itself, wasting considerable talents on fruitless mischief often performed at top volume. One can easily sense Levy's intent with the project, but the results are disheartening to watch. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The average escape room is meant to provide a fun ride for competitors, often used as a team-building exercise that requires a sense of camaraderie to help solve complex puzzles with tactile clues. Making a horror move out of the setting is relatively easy, and a few productions have already employed the tight confines and panicked sleuthing to fuel some nightmare scenarios. “Escape Room” is perhaps the highest profile offering of the bunch, putting pressure on the production to come up with something amazing to attract audiences already used to watching a perversion of gamesmanship. What “Escape Room” offers is repetition, atrocious editing, and screwy plotting, with director Adam Robitel (“Insidious: The Last Key”) not satisfied with the simplicity of frenzied people fighting to crack codes and scramble for objects. Instead, an epic is attempted, with the faint hope of a franchise-starter for a first chapter that never knows exactly what it’s doing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

“Rust Creek” pulls a bit of a switcheroo on its audience. It’s being marketed as a nail-biter, offered up as a chilling tale of survival in the deep woods of the American south. There are sections of the picture devoted to such irresistible thrills, but the endeavor is content to leave the nerve-shredding stuff behind for long stretches of screen time. The screenplay (credited to Julie Lipson and Stu Pollard) is more interested in character-based entanglements than straight scares, which gives “Rust Creek” a more intriguing dramatic pull, juggling the needs of genre entertainment with a deep psychological inspection of the crisis at hand. It’s not a tightly constructed endeavor, which hurts it in the long run, but the movie has a vision for something different while still tending to expectations. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Meredith Danluck has some observations on the state of marriage and the depths of discovery when dealing with a loved one. She touches on grief and longing, self-absorption and confusion. “State Like Sleep” samples a bit of everything from its cinematic plate, but it never remains anywhere for very long. In fact, the feature feels very long, with “State Like Sleep” not just a title, but a description of the picture’s atmosphere, with Danluck dropping a dose of Ambien into her detective fiction, often making the viewing experience frustratingly inert while it deals with potentially fascinating details concerning cohabitational betrayal and the loneliness of love. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com