The title of THE BLACK WATERS OF ECHO’S POND is a tad misleading, inasmuch as the action doesn’t take place around the titular body of water. “Echo’s Pond” is a facet of an ancient board game that causes all the trouble for the characters and is one of the unique features of this indie chiller, whose actual setting (an isolated vacation house on an island off the coast of Maine) is rather more generic.

You won’t remember the TITANS. At least, I won’t. THE INCREDIBLE HULK director Louis Leterrier’s middling remake has plenty of action, but it pales in comparison to the 1981 original. I’m sorry, but when it comes to CLASH OF THE TITANS, I want Burgess Meredith and Bubo!

Bong Joon-ho’s last film, THE HOST, was about a family struggling to stay together as a monster ravaged the city around them, kidnapping loved ones and spreading plague. His new movie, MOTHER, is also about a family with monster problems—but this beast is more elusive, more sinister and, one can argue, harder to fight. If THE HOST turned standard monster-on-the-loose fare on its head by upping the ante on its simple genre demands, then MOTHER (currently playing in numerous cities from Magnolia Pictures, and opening in more this Friday and throughout the spring) continues in that vein to even greater effect by transcending whatever genre labels one tries to put on it.

Ten thousand dollars straight from director James Nguyen’s wallet was all it took to make the “romantic thriller” BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR. And it’s obvious. There are no Michael Bay-esque explosions, no James Cameron-style computerized special effects and no 3-D animation to give the film that extra punch. But there is a fun storyline, lots of birds and plenty of laughs all around. None of the laughs were meant to be intentional, of course, but it’s that unintended humor that has led BIRDEMIC to soar to great cult heights, with some even saying it’s the new PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

REPO MEN, starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker, should not be confused with Darren Lynn Bousman’s 2008 cult rock musical REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA—although, as you’ve no doubt read, it’s very similar. In fact, REPO MEN has had fans screaming bloody plagiarism, as it’s an almost concept-for-concept echo of Bousman’s film—sans the songs, of course.

The remake of THE CRAZIES opens on an apocalyptic setpiece—a small-town main street engulfed in flames—that probably cost more than all of the 1973 George A. Romero film that inspired it. Thankfully, the film that follows makes a case for reworking a low-budget cult fave with a budget that can truly serve the subject matter.

The first thing that should be said here about SHUTTER ISLAND is that it’s not the consistently scarifying horror film that some of the ads are making it out as—and nor is it trying to be one.