ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Lux Æterna may well be director Gaspar Noé’s most accessible film so far, but it still demands much of its viewers, including — warning to those prone to seizures — a long and intense strobe light sequence, the use of split screen technique that heightens the story’s chaos, and the barrage of stress it puts on its two lead characters. The film also leads to a great deal of reflection on how women are treated in the film industry.

Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg portray fictional versions of themselves, with Dalle directing a film about witches and Gainsbourg starring in the project. These two top-notch French actors are terrific here, and their first appearance together in Lux Æterna sees the pair reflecting on past roles and experiences on film sets, including some jarring revelations. As the fictitious film’s producer becomes nervous about Dalle directing, he begins undermining her and bringing in crew members to override her, leading to her becoming increasingly agitated and unhinged. Meanwhile, no one on the set seems to care that Gainsbourg is also becoming steadily more upset after receiving some frightening news over the phone from her young daughter. This all leads to a hypnotic climax using the aforementioned strobe effects. 

Lux Æterna is part meta behind-the-scenes filmmaking peek, part horror movie, part social commentary film, part scathing indictment of the film industry, part meditation on art vs. commerce, and all Noé. It’s a discomfiting watch that is not for everyone, but it’s well worth giving a watch.  

Yellow Veil Pictures will release Gaspar Noé’s LUX ÆTERNA on digital platforms including Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, and more from Friday, June 10th in North America, followed by a 2-disc Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray available summer 2022. LUX ÆTERNA is currently available for digital preorder on Vimeo on Demand. 

You can see the trailer here.

Meteors have hit the Earth, but everything worked out. Well, it did until giant ants that sleep inside the planets core are awakened and make their way to the surface. Or maybe they were all in blocks of ice and needed thawed out. Despite a long spoken introduction even this movie isn’t all that sure.

A rich industrialist brings in bug expert John Caine (Mel Novak) to check out the giant insect they’ve captured, but he’s rich and therefore bad and tries to kill our protagonist just as ants begin attacking all over the world. Luckily, John’s daughter Audrey (Tina-Desiree Berg) is able to help the military battle those monstrous picnic ruiners.

If you’ve a fan of bad CGI, tones shifting between gore and a child movie, characters that you actively hope will die, bad editing and a story that never even tries to make sense, you may find something here.

Director and writer Carribou Seto is actually David Huey, who made a whole bunch of movies with Gary Daniels in the 1990s. You know, the dude from the live action Fist of the North Star.

This is on YouTube but I don’t even want to share the link because if you’re like me, hearing how bad it is will make you watch it.

Four friends — Fay, Violet, Wendy and Allison — have taken a vacation at a Louisiana resort, a place where one guest has already been devoured by an alligator and toxic waste has ruined the water. And when Fay’s abusive boyfriend shows up, not even a spell to Ezruile, the protector of women, children and the neglected gets answered.

Then, they find a woman lying by the river who changes everything.

Ezruile isn’t the best horror movie you’ll see, but it’s trying something different. It has something to say about the nature of male and female relationships, about friends and the environment without getting preachy. After all, it’s a movie about a mermaid who is conjured by the four women to solve their problems.

It finds its heroines not only dealing with the vengeance of the titular goddess, but attempting to save her from men who would keep her from her divine path.

Director Christine W. Chen — who co-wrote this movie with Camille Gladney — has been building a resume of shorts and television work. You can see some genuine craft and art here. This isn’t just another streaming cheap throwaway, despite its low budget.

Ezruile is available on demand from Kamikaze Dogfight and Gravitas Ventures.You can learn more at the official site.

Dave Wascavage may be known for Suburban Sasquatch, a movie that has horror on the surface and all heart inside. And while there are moments of mirth in that film, Tartarus presents a different and darker side of the filmmaker.

Its protagonist John (Juan Fernandez, who has been in all of Wascavage’s films, even appearing as the bigfoot in the aforementioned cryptic shot on video wonder that introduced me to the director’s films) is a horrible person. He’s cheated on his wife with her sister and ruined their entire family. He steals money from his clients. He smokes crack. He hits people with his car and just drives away. In no way should he be the hero of any movie.

And yet here we are. Juan is trapped in a nightmare that looks Fire In the Sky in its big black gray eyes and says, “I can make a more frightening movie with effects that look straight out of the Spirit store and a PS1 cut scene.”

This is a movie where a CGI UFO kidnaps Juan so that an alien can puke CGI vomit all over him and then go beyond threatening him with the worst thing that can happen to a heterosexual brute and then go further, abusing him with a strobing phallus and backdoor venturing vacuum cleaner while the lead screams, swears, threatens, begs, cries and flop sweats against the trash bag and discount store created interior of an interstellar vessel.

There are moments of CGI fields of mushrooms in Wascavage’s Fungicide that look like the kind of blacklight posters that I couldn’t figure out in Spencer’s back before it all started to feel safe, strange artwork that I’d see on the backdoor of my insane cousins’ bedrooms that smelled like stolen Pabst and the worst weed that Southwestern PA could belch out. And then those moments are compounded here, extended, injected in the eye, dosed, slapped hard in the face and then screamed at for hours until they achieve a Stockholm syndrome need to convert you to a side they fought against for so long.

West Chester, PA is a wild place, a town where the kids had to pull progressively worse pranks on one another to keep from abject boredom until culture had to notice them. And there, under the rock, waiting to blow your mind way more than skateboard and pills hijinks lies this film, a seventy-plus minute journey into a neon and cathode lit hellscape that I keep thinking and obsessing and dreaming about.

If I start sneezing metal, I’ll know that I’ve been abducted.

You can watch this on Tubi.