April 30: Visual Vengeance Day — Write about a movie released by Visual Vengeance. Here’s a list to help you find a movie.

In the decaying industrial suburb of Englewood, the historic Grandview Theater is facing its final curtain. But as the last reel of a forgotten, low-budget schlock-fest titled Grave Rot spins, the screen doesn’t just display images. It’s taking over reality.

Disillusioned paranormal investigator Kyle Jennings, a man who spends more time debunking haunted toasters than fighting demons, is hired by the theater’s desperate owner. Jennings expects a faulty projector or a squatter. Instead, the moment the clock strikes midnight, the lobby doors fuse into solid brick. The celluloid on screen tears like flesh, and the grainy, grey-skinned zombies from the film crawl into the velvet aisles. To survive the night, Kyle must physically enter the flickering world of the film to find the director, a vengeful spirit who died during production and is now editing reality to ensure a bloody finale.

The film utilizes a unique visual gimmick: the Bleed. As the supernatural force grows stronger, the theater begins to lose its color, taking on the high-contrast, grainy look of the 16mm film. Characters find themselves tripping over jump cuts and teleporting five feet forward or backward in time as the physical film strip in the booth glitches.

Kyle and Mina, cynical teenage projectionist, are chased through the lobby, but the geography has shifted. The popcorn machine is overflowing with what looks like teeth, and the movie posters on the walls have become windows into other scenes from the film. They have to use a flashbulb from an old camera to momentarily freeze the undead, who react to light like physical film stock.

Kyle realizes the only way to stop the infestation is to burn the original negative. He steps through the screen and enters a surreal version of the theater. In this realm, the laws of physics are dictated by 1990s editing tricks. He has to defeat the Director by cutting him out of the scene with a heavy-duty film splicer and slicing the Lost Reel, a cursed segment of film that contains the Director’s soul. It’s hidden somewhere in the theater’s crawlspace, and Kyle has to find it while being hunted by a creature that can only move when the projector shutter is closed.

Todd Norris, who directed and co-wrote this with C. Wayne Owens, has made a movie where you don’t say, “Well, it’s good for the budget.” Instead, it takes advantage of the cost and the SOV framework to create something stunning, with brains and heart, that doesn’t exist in movies that cost so many times more than this did. I was knocked out by this, another stunning surprise in the growing canon of criminally underseen should-be classics.

Visual Vengeance has LOADED this one up. It has a new director-supervised transfer from original tape elements, two commentaries (one by director Todd Norris and the other with Norris and composer Paul Roberts); new cast and crew interviews; Norris and Todd SHeets interview; bloopers; deleted scenes; The Paranormal Channel 5 TV Airing Bumpers; short films; trailers; a poster; Stick Your Own VHS stickers; a limited edition O-CARD featuring art by Uncle Frank; a Ghost Finder — yes, an actual ghost finder so you can hunt down spirits in your own home — a promo flyer and original sleeve art by The Dude. Get it from MVD.