For pleasing pre-Halloween viewing, you could do a whole lot worse than The Dead Center. Just don't expect too many nightmares afterward.
Read full articleThere's a lot of excellent atmospherics here that are more unsettling than the actual violence, which in turn is all the more effective for largely being kept just off-screen.
Read full articleDirector/writer Billy Senese didn't have a ton of money to work with but "The Dead Center" wisely eschews gore and special effects in favor of setting a dark, malevolent mood.
Read full articleThe film is in tune with the need to remain lucid and empathetic while in the maw of human extremity.
Read full articleThis is a horror film - in the sense of horrific - through and through, a grim mystery which grows ever and ever nastier.
Read full articleAs riveting as it is fresh it's a slow and dreadful burn that, despite its detrimentally short run-time, manages to be one of the more intriguing, effective indie thrillers as of recent memory.
Read full articleMediocrely entertaining and repetitive in the procedures, The Dead Center lacks guts and never coheres into something special.
Read full article[Billy Senese's] second feature feels exceptionally authentic - no trace of medical soap operatics here - and is well played by a roster of newcomers, allowing it to build to a genuinely impressive clinical crescendo.
Read full article