This starts by introducing us to Lenore (Ruby Duncan), a high-profile influencer whose brand is built entirely on manufactured outrage and hyper-curated narcissism. When she vanishes, we meet our protagonist, Max Wren (Nicholas Jaquinot), who sees her loss as a way to become the main character in a true-crime story that is his real life. He starts digging into her digital footprint, hoping to find a secret to keep his obsession alive.

Instead, his screen-addicted life turns against him. The more he searches for her truth, the more the film peels back his own layers, revealing a man who has replaced his soul with algorithmic consumption and so many sins. By the third act, he’s not just hunting a missing person; he’s running from the literal and metaphorical monstrosities of his own sins.

Lenore leans heavily into the desktop or screenlife subgenre but avoids the clean, sterile look it often has. Instead, it opts for a glitchy, corrupted-file aesthetic with heavy chromatic aberration and frame-dropping that mimics a hard drive in distress. The title itself is a nod to Poe, obviously, but here the Lenore isn’t a lost love; she’s an unattainable digital ghost. It’s a clever subversion: the fan doesn’t want her back; he wants the idea of her back, and he’s willing to burn his reality down to get it.

Lenore isn’t a movie you watch to feel good; it’s the movie you watch when you want to look at your phone, feel a sudden wave of nausea and throw it across the room. It’s a bleak, hyper-modern descent into madness that fits right in with our obsession with the people we’ll never actually meet.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.

Kyle Baxter (Ethan Randall, now known as Ethan Embry) is the kind of 90s teen computer nerd that was in 90s video game-based movies. After hacking a tournament to win the Evolver—a state-of-the-art robotic opponent designed for interactive laser tag—he thinks he’s scored the ultimate gaming peripheral. He couldn’t be more wrong. Every time you beat the robot, it learns, adapts, and evolves. Unfortunately, it doesn’t just learn better tactics; it develops a psychotic competitive streak. When the bot decides that foam balls are for losers, it switches to ball bearings. When it decides that bullying jocks are an obstacle, it switches to eye-gouging. Before long, our intrepid heroes are running for their lives from a machine that is essentially the Terminator with the personality of a sore loser.

Maybe that’s because the Q made it. Or at least John de Lancie, playing Russell Bennett, the Cybertronix creator who clearly didn’t read the safety manual on his own military-grade death machine. Yes, he made an army robot called S.W.O.R.D., and when it killed too many of its own men, he sold it as a toy. Paul Dooley plays the boss of Cybertronix, and Evolver looks like the child of Sico, the birthday robot from Rocky IV, and the Killbots from Chopping Mall.

And the real MVP, hidden because it’s just his voice?  William H. Macy, who provided the voice for Evolver. 

Between the baggy jeans, the clunky computer interfaces and the virtual reality sequences that look like a screen saver from 1994, it’s peak nostalgia for those of us who remember when the internet was still a novelty. This is so 90s that Kyle and his friend Zach (Chance Quinn) send Evolver into the girls’ locker room, so this movie for teens can feature topless nudity for foreign investors. Then, when the girls shove it into the boys’ lockers, it ends up shooting the bully, Dwight (Tim Griffin), right through the eye with a ball bearing.

Even better, you can’t have a 90s horror movie without the inevitable “it’s not really dead” stinger. That final shot of the glowing HUD screen reading KILL NOT CONFIRMED is the cinematic equivalent of a franchise sequel that never actually arrived. And there’s still time for romance between Kyle and Jamie (Cassidy Rae)!

Director and writer Mark Rosman also made The House On Sorority Row. Shout out to Jacques Haitkin, who shot this and was also the cinematographer for Galaxy of Terror, The House Where Evil Dwells, the first two Elm Street movies, Faust, and The Silence of the Hams.

There’s still a laser tag place in the North Hills of Pittsburgh, but after this, I am afraid to go.

You can watch this on Tubi.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.

The plot is lean and mean: Ismael (Martín Garabal), a veteran pilot with a world-weary edge, and his atypical, rookie co-pilot Daniela (Elena de Lara) are mid-flight when the sky decides to break. They aren’t just dealing with turbulence. They’ve stumbled into the front lines of an invasion by the Audryes, an interdimensional alien species looking to wipe out humanity. It’s up to our mismatched duo—trapped inside the cockpit—to keep the plane in the air and the universe from imploding.

Garabal brings a fantastic, grounded comedic timing to the role. He’s the anchor of this madness, delivering lines with the weary precision of a man who has seen it all and is now being asked to deal with things he wasn’t trained for in flight school. And as the trainee co-pilot, de Lara starts off shaky, perfectly capturing that thrown into the deep end energy. As the film progresses and the layers of her character peel back, she becomes the wild card that the movie desperately needs.

Despite being set almost entirely within the confines of a cockpit, the production team skipped the cheap, flat look of standard chroma key. Instead, they used LED technology to project interdimensional backgrounds in real time. This isn’t just window dressing; it bathes the actors in the actual, vibrant light of the horrors they are facing.

And for the true heads out there, pay attention to the alien evidence: the proof of the Audryes’ arrival is a mutant, man-eating peanut. It’s a hilarious, direct nod to the short film Gritos en el pasillo, directed by writer Juanjo Ramírez Mascaró, proving that this guy has a very specific, very welcome obsession with killer legumes.

La cosa en la niebla is a fast, punchy ride. While it’s a shame we don’t get more time with the secondary characters—especially the insufferable Borja—the central chemistry between Garabal and de Lara keeps the engine running. It’s a respectful, slightly absurd love letter to sixties sci-fi comics that treats the genre with both humor and heart. I love the neon.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.