Friday’s openings: comedy and mother-bear horror

Friday's national movie-release schedule boasts only two offerings, and both fall into familiar categories: Comedy and domestic horror. In other words, movies based more on a concept that anything remotely original.

The two films are:

"Life of the Party": Melissa McCarthy stars as a woman, abandoned by her husband, who decides to return to college — and comedy mayhem ensues. Think "The House Bunny" meets "Back to School."

"Breaking In": Gabrielle Union stars as a woman whose children, threatened by home invaders, need her to become a force of nature. And, apparently, she obliges. Think "When a Stranger Calls" meets "Panic Room."

And at the Magic Lantern (which is known to change suddenly and at the last moment):

"The Endless": A pair of brothers, raised in a cult that they fled from years before, return to the fold only to discover that the group's doomsday scenario might not have been wrong.

The Lantern will also open a second-run screening of "Lean on Pete," which has been playing at AMC River Park Square.