A natural disaster breeds man-made treachery in this suspense thriller. Severe flooding threatens an Indiana town after a massive rainstorm taxes dams to the breaking point. As part of an emergency evacuation effort, armored car driver Tom (Christian Slater) and his uncle Charlie (Edward Asner) are recruited to collect cash from the town’s banks and drive it to safety. However, a gang of thieves led by Jim (Morgan Freeman) plan to lay siege to the truck and steal the $3 million on board. After Jim attempts to ambush the truck, Tom hides the cash and reports the attempted theft to the local sheriff (Randy Quaid). However, the sheriff’s lack of honesty soon becomes apparent; he puts Tom in a lockup and sets out to take the money for himself. As the flood waters rise, Tom has to escape from jail if he is to save both the townspeople’s savings and his own life. Meanwhile, Jim and the sheriff are locked in a race to see who can find the $3 million first. Minnie Driver, Richard A. Dysart, and Betty White highlight Hard Rain’s supporting cast.

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Patrick Marber’s acclaimed stage drama about the romantic interactions of four people has been given a reverent screen adaptation by director and producer Mike Nichols. Dan (Jude Law) is a writer in London who wants to finish a novel, but in the meantime supports himself by writing obituaries. One day he chances upon Alice (Natalie Portman), a beautiful young American expatriate, working as a stripper, when he sees her get hit by a car. Alice immediately falls for Dan, and gives him her love without reservation. Dan is initially enchanted with Alice, and returns her affection, but while she inspires him to write his novel (based on her life), her neediness begins to wear on him. Anna (Julia Roberts) is a photographer who is hired to take a portrait of Dan for the dust jacket of his book; Dan is attracted to her easy confidence, and while the two of them flirt, Anna soon (inadvertently through Dan’s playful machinations) meets Larry (Clive Owen), a dermatologist, and marries him. Dan can’t get Anna out of his mind even though she’s married, and the two become lovers, but Dan is frustrated by the fact that Anna is reluctant to leave Larry for him. Patrick Marber wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of Closer; it was the playwright’s first feature-film credit.

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Out of the Blue, New Zealand writer-director Robert Sarkies’ long-awaited follow-up to his 1999 feature debut Scarfies, recreates the events that led up to and surrounded David Gray’s November 13, 1990, mass murder of 13 locals in the town of Aramoana, New Zealand. Sarkies, however, approaches the material not as exploitation or as an action picture, but — like Terrence Malick in his 1973 true crime picture Badlands — as an understated and detached drama. Sarkies uses a contemplative and reflective approach and a small-town pace and resists gratuitousness, intersecting several tales of casualties and survivors and downplaying the brutal violence. One story involves the contentious relationship between fiftysomething Jim (Timothy Bartlett) and his mother (Lois Lawn); another has a mom, Julia Anne (Tandie Wright) informing her daughter Rewa (Jacinta Wawatai) and her beau’s children that they plan to share a house; and in a third, eccentric gun nut David Gray (Matthew Sunderland) cracks and guns down Julia’s boyfriend, Gerry (Simon Ferry), in cold blood. These only represent the first three threads in a complex narrative tapestry; the story ultimately gives way to tense hours as the locals, realizing that a predator is on the loose and will kill anyone he can find, barricade their homes and cower in fear. Cinematographer Greig Fraser gives the picture a chilly, wintry aesthetic, rich with whites and blues. The film co-stars Karl Urban; Graeme Tetley co-authored the script with Sarkies.

Housed inside the grimy walls of a horrific New Zealand asylum there sits a serial killer waiting to be determined sane enough to stand trial. The mental hospital is run by the sinister Dr. Marlowe, who looks the other way when his thuggish orderlies occasionally rough up the inmates. Into this hellish place comes the cocky Dr. Karen Shoemaker, a psychiatrist famed for having made major breakthroughs with another murderer. Though Marlowe thinks that no one could reach Simon Cartwright, the killer, Shoemaker is determined to try, so, with Marlowe watching behind a two-way mirror, she begins the first of many chilling sessions with the unrepentant Simon. A horror film that draws some of its best bits from other slasher movies, while also adding a few interesting twists of its own, this directorial debut from New Zealand director Scott Reynolds follows the winding course of these sessions, presenting pieces from Simon’s grim life and graphically gory murders via flashback. As time passes, Shoemaker comes to trust the placid-seeming Simon and asks that his shackles be removed. Shortly thereafter she learns that he hears voices urgently telling him to kill and kill again. Dr. Shoemaker must then work even harder to control her dangerous patient and her growing terror.

A genetic engineering experiment gone horribly awry turns a large flock of docile sheep into unrelenting killing machines in this rural horror comedy directed by Jonathan King and featuring special effects designed by Weta Workshop. When the death of his father and a stress-induced fear of sheep pushes him toward the edge of a nervous breakdown, skilled farmer Henry Oldfield leaves the family farm behind in a desperate bid to achieve inner peace. Upon returning to the farm following a 15-year absence, Henry discovers that his brother Angus has been performing genetic experiments on the sheep. Unfortunately for both the brothers and the rest of the humble farmers who make their living off of the land, these experiments have produced a strain of sheep that crave human flesh and will stop at nothing to satisfy their diabolical hunger.

Adapted for TV, this is a Stephen King story in which an aspiring writer and an alcoholic poet (with a metal plate in his head, no less) literally stumble over a long-buried spaceship while walking in the woods. It starts glowing green when uncovered and soon everyone in town has green eyes, their teeth fall out and they act out all of their fantasies (violent or otherwise). Guess who’s immune to the power of this alien spaceship? You got it—our good old metal-headed poet can save the day if he can get it together enough to do so. Really more of a B movie than most King horrorfests.

The horror film Ferryman stars John Rhys-Davies as a man who has cheated death for centuries thanks to the shifting Blade, a weapon that allows him to kill a person in trade for his own life. As the title character, death itself, appears again, the old man must find his next victim among a number of unsuspecting tourists.

A woman who joins the undead against her will seeks vengeance against the ghouls who transformed her in this thriller. Sadie Blake (Lucy Liu) is a journalist who becomes acquainted with a group of beautiful but doomstruck partiers while following a story, led by the charismatic Bishop (James D’Arcy). While Sadie is taken with Bishop’s good looks and sinister charm, she senses there’s something dangerous about him, but it’s not until she wakes up in the city morgue that she learns his secret — Bishop is a vampire, and Sadie has joined his underlings as one of the undead. Angry and betrayed, Sadie is determined to stop Bishop and his compatriots, and she prowls the city with bow and arrow, ready to stake them from a distance when she spies them. Sadie finds an unlikely ally in her crusade in Detective Rawlins (Michael Chiklis), a police investigator whose daughter was transformed into a night creature by Bishop. However, Sadie is finding it increasingly difficult to resist her growing thirst for the blood of the living, becoming the sort of being she has grown to hate. Also featuring Carla Gugino, Robert Forster and Nick Lachey, Rise: Blood Hunter received its World Premiere with a special midnight screening at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.

Hard Candy director David Slade took the helm for this adaptation of Steve Niles’ terrifying comic-book series of the same name. In Barrow, AK, one night can last an eternity. One month every year, this town is plunged into darkness for 30 days due to its location on the far north of the Arctic Circle. While extended periods of darkness are something that the locals have become accustomed to, this year something sinister is about to emerge from the long and unforgiving night. As a maniacal horde of vampires assume control of the city streets and commence to freely feasting on the terrified citizens, the local sheriff (Josh Hartnett), his wife (Melissa George), and a small but resilient band of survivors will be forced to choose between saving themselves or helping the few remaining members of their community survive the blood-soaked siege. Original comic creator Niles collaborated with screenwriters Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson to pen a film produced under Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures banner.

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A talented tattoo artist (Jason Behr) discovers that his attempt to master the Samoan tatau tradition has awakened a vengeful supernatural force in a first-time feature filmmaker Peter Burger’s New Zealand-based horror film.