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When you hear the name Adam Mason followed by Andrew Howard, you instantly are filled with this sudden realization that you are in for a treat, it is almost the same feeling you get Christmas morning as a child, when you look over at your clock and take in what day it is, at least that is how I feel every time I find out they are working together on another project and it was no different when I heard the news that "Luster" was in the works.

I have watched this film now a total of four times, and each and every time I view it, I find more and more to like about it. Once again Adam Mason has a winner on his hands with "Luster" and proves that he is not a name to be forgotten. After a string of classics such as "The Devils Chair", "Blood River" and "Pig" and now "Luster" he has gone way beyond the needed criteria to land a spot on my list of top horror directors.

"Luster" has it all, a solid and entertaining story that is both original and ultra thought provoking, stunning practical special effects that shame most big budget Hollywood releases by sticking to the gritty and raw feeling that Mason has mastered over the years, and to finish the total package an excellent all around cast and convincing top notch acting by all who were involved.

Once again Andrew Howard does an incredible job, this time portraying Thomas Luster, who has found himself on a downward spiral in every sense of the word. Andrew delivers such a realistic and moving performance, you really build up an attachment and sense of honestly feeling bad for his character and what he is going through something that is rarely achieved in the horror genre these days where most characters are nothing more than slabs of meat included for the sake of being dismantled in gruesome ways.

The entire cast of "Luster" did astonishing jobs with their characters, Tess Panzer, who plays Thomas's wife Jennifer Luster was on top of her game, and my personal favorite character Les played by Tommy Flanagan, who you may recognized from his role on the hit FX series "Son's of Anarchy" really stole the show for me, you would honestly believe that he was a homeless vet he plays the role so authentically.

The writing ability of Adam Mason and Simon Boyes, time after time produce truly creepy and most of the times very feasible scenario's in their viewers minds that leave them haunted forever by what they just witnessed. "Luster" is no different in this department, once it all becomes unraveled and you grasp what has been going on you will find yourself desperately craving to find another soul who has seen the film so you can gab about it like a tween girl who just finished the latest issue of "Tiger Beat".

While "Luster" is not your typical Adam Mason style horror film, as it has more thriller, psychological, who did it undertones than his previous films, any fans of his earlier work will not be let down this time around. While there is not as much gore in "Luster" as his previous films either, when it does occur it's done in the familiar gritty fashion that Adam has always delivered in his films.

I guarantee after you watch "Luster" you'll think twice about taking that little chalk flavored capsule in order to get to sleep when a bout of insomnia strikes you again, you'll start to second guess yourself every time you "Misplace" an object in your home and you will forever feel the effects left behind by "Luster", ensuring that there's always a part of you that asks what if? Thanks to an insanely strong script, and characters that are both believable and memorable both main and supporting wise, "Luster" is sure to win crowd after crowd whenever it is released. I highly recommend any fan of the horror genre go out of their way to see this movie upon release and if you are not familiar with Adam Mason's earlier work, I insist that you IMDb his name and go down the list, I would start with "The Devils Chair" and work my way through his impressive library of true horror films.

On Behalf of The Liberal Dead I give "Luster" a very solid and deserving 9 out of 10, and award for best psychological twist in a horror film in a very long time.

Wow, after viewing "The Book of Zombie" I am speechless, we get a lot of low budget zombie films in the mail here at The Liberal Dead, and a large chunk of them are of the comedy hybrid variety thanks to the success of "Shaun of The Dead" and other films such as "Zombieland", sadly most of these attempts turn out being unimaginative and half-a**ed. "The Book of Zombie" is absolutely incredible, it's fun, original, and something that I rarely get to say these days but it is also a very unique and fresh take on the zombie sub genre.

The story is beyond original, this is by far the most fresh take on the zombie film I have seen in ages, it's been a very long time since I had so much fun with an indie zombie flick. For those who have been screaming for something different from the genre, look no further "The Book of Zombie" will leave you satisfied and dying for more Mormon zombie madness. The dialog is all well written and a lot of the time very humorous, I laughed out loud many times during this movie, you can really tell that a lot of effort was put into the script and it shows in the end giving the film a very witty feel when it comes to interaction between the survivors.

The survivors are all interesting in their own ways, and the acting in "The Book of Zombies" while not Oscar worthy comes off very real and it really makes you care about each of the survivors, you honestly spend the entire film hoping that no one gets left behind because each and every one of them become important to the whole package, this is a feat a lot of directors and writers strive for but fall short of.

My personal favorite survivor had to of been Darwin Nedry (Andrew Loviska), I found him to be very easy for me to relate too on a individual level as I was pretty much that kid when I was his age as far as him being a nerdy stoner and armed with smart ass one liners for any occasion.

The relationship between him and his best friend Charlie Cooper (Paul Cantu), sets a very realistic tone when it comes to these two characters, once again the writing in this film really does an amazing job at making the characters feel like real people, making your audience form attachments to characters is something more horror films should work towards, it really makes it that much more effective when you kill someone off if you will authentically miss them in the movie.

Gore, gore, and more gore, "The Book of Zombie" is a blood bath when it comes to good old fashion gore. The special effects while your basic 80's splatter grade, get the job done just perfect. Loads of latex and buckets of blood with very little CGI usage, the only time I noticed outright that something was CGI was a flame effect but overall it took nothing from the experience.

So many scenes pop out when I think back to the gore, I forced myself to keep from using screen shots of the best of the best because I want you all to be as surprised as I was when the blood really started to hit the fan, but trust me gore hounds you will not be let down with "The Book of Zombie".

I laughed, I screamed "hell yeah" thanks to remarkable gore, and I even felt myself feeling bummed out during certain scenes, overall I loved this film and on behalf of The Liberal Dead give "The Book of Zombie" a very well earned and deserved 9 out of 10, don't pass up a chance to view this film as its one of the best indie zombie films to come along in a very long time.

9/10

I'm not sure where to start when it comes to "Resident Evil : Afterlife", I went into this film totally unaware what it was about beyond it was the next Resident Evil film, I had avoided trailers and spoilers and sneak peeks successfully hoping that it would be a solid addition to the franchise, but at the same time was worried it would be more of what the third one served up, to my surprise the situation was much more dire as this is hands down the worse movie of the franchise thus far.

"Resident Evil : Afterlife" moves at such a slow and uninteresting pace that by the time you even see a "zombie" you are half asleep and wondering if you have been duped into a zombie less world. Don't fret this is not the case there are in fact billions and billions of flesh eating horde roaming the streets of the world, but you won't get to see many of them because the only time their interjected into the main story arch is when they need to dispose of a unneeded character, always in a sudden and unimaginative fashion and to the shock of myself with very little gore, but I will go into that later on in this review.

The story felt thrown together and just void of any effort, with so many cases of "six months later"," 2 years later" etc it's hard to figure out the time-line during the first watch. And the ending felt so tacked on I started to have flashbacks from the "House of The Dead" film as quality comparison.

Where the f*#k was the gore? Honestly the only real gore you see is when it comes to dispatching various umbrella baddies, most of the time when anything interesting occurs the camera cuts away and you are thrown away from the action into a new scene, very disappointing for any zombie fans out there hoping to see some people get eaten and such. The movie has a few nice special FX moments but not nearly enough to warrant seeing it, and to be fair some pretty awesome 3D scenes.

The over use of slow-mo, freeze frame, and bullet time made the movie feel like it would of been a better 45 minute short to be released as fan service, I honestly felt like I had been tossed into a time machine and transported to when "The Matrix" was first released and everyone and their mom was using the bullet time and slow-mo gimmick in their action flicks.

Over all I really disliked this film, from the bad use of outdated gimmicks, to the uninteresting disposable characters that felt like they were added in just so they could justify killing someone, to the sporadic time line the film attempts to create , it was all in all just a bad movie. My score on behalf of The Liberal Dead is a very weak and below average 3 out of 10 and award for most occurrences of "jumping the shark" I have witnessed in a single film to date.

• Ted Brown "liberaldead.com"