“In October 2006, the community of Briar, Alabama, was terrorized by a series of gruesome killings. This film is an account of the horrors that unfolded during that fateful autumn.”

That’s all that Joe Meredith is telling you about his latest film.

At times, this feels like a true doc. At others, a slasher. And then it feels like nothing else —a movie that approaches the SOV fuzz haze I love, a town filled with darkness, conspiracies, lost in a world that believes in nothing but decay.

There’s a moment when the strange mutant children of Briar are shown in artwork form, and it’s more frightening than any big-budget CGI that you will see this year. And now, there’s also an axe killer, heads getting sliced clean off their bodies and just a sense of dread in every frame. 

People always ask, “What movies scare you?” Joe Meredith’s movies scare me in the best of ways. Instead of falling back on his video game-infused future splatterpunk explorations, this is a totally different tone for him. There’s a final girl named Jax (Cidney Meredith) who is absolutely perfect here; I feel like Chris Farley reviewing this movie. “Remember when you cut off that head, Joe? Yeah? That was awesome.”

This begins and ends with video-distorted Halloween imagery, yet even in those, an evil baby is crying. It’s funny, because in so much horror, I see people walk toward monsters, and I never want them — or the camera — to stop getting closer. In Meredith’s films, I want a distance. I want to stay away, and yet I keep creeping closer, and when that little girl screams upon confronting the cojoined twin baby doll carrying a mutant, I feel like crying too, and the catharsis reminds me why I keep watching movies.

This is pure SOV black tar movie drugs, the kind that I wake up in another room, in the dark, thinking I’m back at my parents’ house, but no, I’m just high in the basement and don’t know how to get back upstairs. Thanks for dosing me, Joe.

You can watch this on YouTube.