An abused woman (Lopez) discovers that the dream man (Campbell) she married isn’t who she thought he was. She and her daughter try to escape (aided by her previous boyfriend, played by Futterman), but he pursues her relentlessly. Fearing also for the safety of her daughter, she decides that there’s only one way out of the marriage: kill him. Fred Ward has a guest-starring role. Written by Jess {jess.2000@ic24.net}

Wes Block (Eastwood) is a detective who’s put on the case of a serial killer. His victims are young and pretty women, which he rapes and murders. The murders are getting personal when the killer chooses victims who are acquaintances of Block. Even his daughters are threatened. Written by Tony Kessen {rhkessen@cs.vu.nl}

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In this action thriller, Denzel Washington plays Nick Styles, the assistant district attorney of L.A. The film opens in his early days as a cop on the L.A.P.D. During a carnival, master criminal Earl Talbot Blake (John Lithgow) creates a scene after a botched drug deal. Styles and Blake confront each other, during which Blake is wounded by Styles and later sent to prison. Seven years later, Blake escapes from prison during a parole board hearing to carry out his revenge against Styles, and what follows is a violent series of events that destroys Styles’ career. This sets the stage for one last bloody duel between Styles and Blake. Written by Stephen Currence {billyc@erols.com}

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The trailer for “The Forgotten” gives too much away and that’s a shame. The less you know going in, the better. It’s tough to thrill audiences when the plot is totally laid out in advance. All the anticipation is ripped away when the best scenes from the film are played over and over again on TV and on the Internet. With “The Forgotten,” knowing too much going in ruins the enjoyment you might have gotten out of the moviegoing experience.

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Bridget Gregory has a lot going for her: she’s beautiful, she’s intelligent, she’s married to a doctor. But all of this isn’t enough, as her husband Clay finds out. After she persuaded him to sell medicinal cocaine to some drugdealers, she takes off with the money, almost a million dollars, and goes undercover in a mid-American smalltown. Because Clay has to pay off a loan shark who’ll otherwise damage him severely, he keeps sending detectives after her, trying to retrieve the money. When Bridget meets Mike Swale, a naive local who is blinded by her beauty and directness, she devises an elaborate, almost diabolical scheme to get rid of Clay once and for all. Written by Peter Zweers {peterz@pi.net}

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Writer/director Takashi Shimizu took his Japanese blockbuster “Ju-On: The Grudge” and along with screenwriter Stephen Susco, revamped it for American audiences. The filmmakers cast familiar American actors, fleshed out the English-language version with unneeded extraneous scenes, and in a sense, dumbed it down. Plot points that were left up to your imagination in the original Japanese film are explained in detail in the new version. And while the original was creepy/spooky, the new one offers only a scattering of scary moments surrounded by scenes that only serve to test your patience and kill time.

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Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney/”Leave It to Beaver”-esque family-man. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? Fourteen years, ago Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady’s rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey, bibliophile Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss. Written by James Craver

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A wave of kidnappings has swept through Mexico, feeding a growing sense of panic among its wealthier citizens, especially parents. In one six-day period, there were twenty-four abductions, leading many to hire bodyguards for their children. Into this world enters John Creasy, a burned-out ex-CIA operative/assassin, who has given up on life. Creasy’s friend Rayburn brings him to Mexico City to be a bodyguard to nine-year-old Pita Ramos, daughter of industrialist Samuel Ramos and his wife Lisa. Creasy is not interested in being a bodyguard, especially to a youngster, but for lack of something better to do, he accepts the assignment. Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her. Creasy’s new-found purpose in life is shattered when Pita is kidnapped. Despite being seriously wounded during the kidnapping, he vows to kill anyone involved in or profiting from the kidnapping. And no one can stop him. Written by Sujit R. Varma

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A yuppie couple buy a large house in an exclusive San Fransisco neighborhood. They renovate it and plan to rent two apartments on the first floor to cover the costs. A prosperous looking man moves in but is not the ideal tenant. He never pays any rent, drives the other tenants away and systematically ruins the lives of his landlords. Written by Jim Sadur {jsadur@keyflux.com}

I loved the trailer and video clips from “Saw,” so my expectations were relatively high going into the screening. Prepared for a gory good time, I wanted to like “Saw.” I wanted it to make me squirm, make me hide my eyes, and just get lost in a gross-out horror/thriller. But what I couldn’t have prepared myself for was just how horrific “Saw” turned out to be. And that’s not a compliment.

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