Long nights, short days, and Escape Room 2 — yep, it’s January again! Traditionally the dumping ground for movie studios to quietly dispose of films they’re contractually obliged to release but don’t expect to do well, the first month of the year has long had a reputation as “Hollywood’s very own leper colony, a hot zone of cinematic contagion.” In a good year, the average Rotten Tomatoes score of movies released in January might hover in the 40s; in a very bad year, like 1989, when DeepStar Six and something called Gleaming the Cube were on the calendar, it can be as low as a dismal 16 percent.
