Directed and written by Chris Stokes, this feels like his most giallo film yet, one in which a maid named Cassandra (Zulay Henao) tries to escape her past but falls for Erik (Flex Alexander), a co-worker who is already dating their boss, Helen (Shalèt Monique). However, Cassandra is an unreliable narrator, and things aren’t as they seem.

In her mind, she and Erik share a deep, clandestine passion. Cassandra believes they are forbidden fruit and is actively planning a future together to escape Helen’s control. Only the wedding and their romance are real, even if they aren’t. This is erotomania, a delusion in which someone believes that a person, usually of higher status, is in love with them.

At one point, a voice tells Cassandra, “Your mom is going to be so happy to see you,”  as she returns to a new phase of her life. However, Cassandra is shown in deep isolation, often talking to herself or reacting to things others don’t see. In many giallo-style thrillers, a sickly mother figure often represents the protagonist’s fractured psyche or a past trauma they cannot let go of.

This has a pretty good story, but the acting and camerawork aren’t good. But the more Stokes leans into giallo, the more he can get away with plotholes, which are actually part of this genre.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict 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.

Official synopsis: Executive produced by J.A. Bayona, directed by Martín Mauregui, and starring Carmen Maura, the horror genre film follows Pedro (Daniel Hendler), after receiving a call from his ex-girlfriend asking for help looking after her senile mother for the night, Alicia (Maura). But what seems like a simple task soon turns into his worst nightmare: when Pedro arrives at the house, Alicia suggests they play an extremely sadistic game, and what happens next leaves you in SHOCK (this film contains explicit scenes which may be disturbing to some viewers).

Dear readers, the Shudder folks who wrote up that synopsis are not exaggerating about the shocking and disturbing aspects on display in this film, and the main two that I’m thinking about as I write this review don’t involve explicit gore. I don’t want to give anything away because Crazy Old Lady (Vieja loca; Argentina/Spain/U.S., 2025) absolutely lives up to its title and the reasons why are jaw-dropping. 

Suffice it to say that if you care for either humans or animals, or perhaps even both, something is bound to disturb and perhaps even offend many viewers in writer/director Martín Mauregui’s darkly comedic horror film. His work at the helm is one of aplomb, and the production values are terrific. The pacing and chilling set pieces are spot on. The cast is incredible, naturally with the great Carmen Maura rocking the titular character role of Alicia with fierceness and fearlessness, and Daniel Hendler as Pedro, the hapless ex-boyfriend of her daughter Laura  (Agustina Liendo), who is driving far away from Alicia’s home with her own young daughter Elena (Emma Cetrángolo).

The film’s depiction of a character with dementia is questionable, and that’s just the beginning of what some viewers will find upsetting. But those who are willing to take the challenge should find plenty of entertainment with Crazy Old Lady. It doesn’t quite reach the anxiety-inducing heights or pitch-black humor of the Spanish shocker The Coffee Table or its remake The Turkish Coffee Table, but darned if it doesn’t try.

Crazy Old Lady streams on Shudder from February 27. 

Olivia (Rosemary Idisi) is an influencer, but her latest product demo has gone wrong. Seeking to escape the chaos and the negativity of her digital life, she organizes a glamping trip to a remote cabin to reset. However, the tension isn’t just external; the group is rife with internal friction, with friends openly admitting they are pretending to enjoy each other’s company.

The group finds the rental highly unsettling from the start, with one character noting that the vibes are off and another observing that they are all determined to ignore the warning signs of the spiritual plane. I just wish this had the slasher moments happen faster; you’re going to spend the first forty minutes with people you hate.

There is a twist at the end that somewhat redeems this. Directed by Niki Koss (Blood, Beach, Betrayal and Crushed) and written by Alexa Garster, this was inspired by an award-winning short of the same name by star Idisi. She is really great in this, much better than the movie that she finds herself in.

David Hernandez from American Idol is in the cast, and if the house seems familiar, it’s the Jarvis house from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Fresh out of prison for murder, a ruthless woman named Justinee schemes to replace her twin sister Jordyn and claim her flawless life by any means necessary. Both roles are played by Drew Sidora from The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Even better, this is another film by the always dependable Chris Stokes and Marques Houston.

While Jordyn has built a “flawless” life complete with a handsome husband and a beautiful home, Justinee has spent the last decade (or twenty years, depending on which part of the movie’s internal logic you follow!) behind bars for the murder of her husband.

Ten years ago, Justinee killed her husband and ended up in jail. Then, she shows up — surprise! — at her sister’s house, just in time to either try to kill herself or kill her sister and take over her life. This gets a bit confusing at times — the on-screen super claims Justinee was in jail for 20 years, the film says 10; is Jordyn an attorney or a delivery room doctor? — and if you were married to someone or someone was your mother, wouldn’t you be able to tell if they were a twin, even if they were identical? 

Anyways, after the attempted unlifing, as the kids say, a doctor explains that the injured twin has lost the last 40 years of her memory. Taking advantage of the medical emergency, the “healthy” twin integrates herself into Jordyn’s family. The husband, Adam (Jensen Atwood), even notes that something feels off, yet the charade continues as Justinee works to reclaim what she believes she is owed. That said, maybe Adam is happy getting some strange, even though he doesn’t know it. Life’s weird like that.

Then again, so many of Stokes’ movies are nearly giallo and most of the ones I’ve watched make no sense, and I still love them, so allow me to give this film a little breathing room. As we didn’t see which twin survives, I know we’ll get a sequel.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A bachelorette getaway at a mansion gets wild when the maid of honor is found dead, and everyone is a suspect.

Directed by Jhayla Mosley, who co-wrote the script with Regine Coney, the weekend begins with Joi (Elizabeth Foxx) celebrating her upcoming wedding with her bridesmaids: Morgan (Amerrah Garrison), Katrina (Deborah Lane Spencer), and Zoe (Kayla Von). The Maid of Honor, Angel (Sydni Janeé), is a social media influencer and none of the other bridesmaids like or trust her.

So yeah. She’s toast. Whodunnit?

Angel is shown demanding $30,000 from one of the guests, revealing that she has already been receiving hush money. The bridesmaids realize they are all being blackmailed by her, leading to a collective sense of dread and a total lack of privacy, as they even fear she is monitoring their phones.

While the official story suggests that she overdosed on drugs, the tension among the survivors suggests something much more calculated. And we even hear directly from Angel, the narrator, who tells us everyone here has a secret, including herself.

This has way better acting than you would expect from a Tubi Original, along with a major twist you may or may not see coming. For that, it’s definitely worth a watch.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Thanks again, Occult Demon Casestte.

“They come from another dimension. They have an agenda we are not aware of. They are already here, and they look just like us. How would you react if you met your double, and knew only one of you could survive?”

In the year 2284, bestselling author Alex (Stan Weston, Professor Wilson from The Power) meets his dopplegangers, all of whom want to use his face and fame to publish The Book, which they claim can save humanity through alchemy. 

“Is it a formula for Utopia? A secret group of dissidents determined to remain unchanged thinks otherwise.”

Directed, written, and shot by Ø (or Richard Weiss), this used to have a Facebook page, now covered with warnings about hackers and the “I don’t give permission” post that your high school boy or girlfriend’s MAGA mom has posted several times. 

The official site is down too.

People talk about lost media all the time, and if you think about it, all these old cult films, lost in time, their Geocities websites left empty, social media no longer communicating, are also lost media. When a creator’s social media is replaced by boomer-scam warnings and “Facebook doesn’t own my posts” copypasta, it creates a meta-narrative: the film about a disappearing reality has itself been swallowed by the digital void.

We focus on the films themselves, but the ecosystem around them, such as the fan theories on 1998 message boards, the Geocities sites with flickering “Under Construction” GIFs and the dead links are the Gnostic ruins of our modern age.

This movie looks absolutely INSANE. I can’t be more hyperbolic about this.

You can watch this on YouTube.

If you’ve ever dropped a tab of acid and stared at a Steve Ditko panel until the colors started screaming, you might have an inkling of what was brewing in the 1970s. But behind the neon mandalas and the “Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth” lies a rabbit hole that connects Silver Age ink to the darkest corners of occult history.

“Almost everyone is unaware of the true history of one of today’s most popular Marvel characters, Doctor Strange. What is the connection to Satanist Aleister Crowley, Satanism, the ancient heresy of Gnosticism and Doctor Strange? To truly understand the spiritual foundation of Marvel’s cosmology, one must first understand the influence of many comic book writers. These same influences were brought into the first iterations of Doctor Strange, beginning in 1961, when he was introduced as Dr. Droom, and then as Dr. Druid in 1976. Journey with us as we pull back the curtain further in Part 2 of Marvel & DC’s War on God to discover how the top movie franchises are continuing to indoctrinate and perpetuate Satanic lies to hundreds of millions of young people among their unsuspecting audience.”

A major point of this video is the story of Doctor Strange vs. Siseneg, which started in Marvel Premiere #13. Sise-Nig, Genesis backward, took both Dr. Strange and his enemy Baron Mordo on a journey through time, trying to add power to his already formidable grimoire of spells.  As they continued to move through time, they battled Shuma-Gorath, the chaos lord responsible for the death of Strange and Mordo’s teacher, the Ancient One.

The story ends with Sise-Nig heading to the literal dawn of time. Sise-Neg stands there in the nothingness, pulsing with the power of a thousand suns, and drops a truth bomb that would make Nietzsche weep. He realizes his plan to “improve” the cosmos is a fool’s errand. Why? Because after attaining total godhood, he figures out that humanity—with all its messy, flawed, beautiful chaos—is already the peak of perfection. A blinding flash of light, a roar that echoes through eternity, and a Big Bang that sends Strange and Mordo hurtling through the timestream like cosmic pinballs, sending them back to modern time. Mordo’s brain is short-circuited by seeing the fact of the creator, while Strange wonders if this was really the first Big Bang or a cosmic reset.

Stan Lee found out about this story and was pretty upset, but writer Steve Englehart and artist Frank Brunner scammed him. Take it from Brunner: “We had just completed Marvel Premiere #14-well, I had just completed the pencils, most of the art, but for some reason or another, nobody took notice of what we were doing. When the book came out, Stan finally got a hold of it, and I don’t know, somebody pointed it out, or he read it, and he wrote us a letter saying, “We can’t do God. You’re going to have to print in the letters column a retraction saying this is not the God, this is just a god.” Steve and I said, “Oh, come on! This is the whole point of the story! If we did that retraction of God, this is meaningless!” So, Steve happened to be on his way to Texas for something, this is when we were in California, and we cooked up this plot-we wrote a letter from a Reverend Billingsley in Texas, a fictional person, saying that one of the children in his parish brought him the comic book, and he was astounded and thrilled by it, and he said, “Wow, this is the best comic book I’ve ever read.” And we signed it “Reverend so-and-so, Austin, Texas”-and when Steve was in Texas, he mailed the letter so it had the proper postmark. Then we got a phone call from Roy: “Hey, about that retraction, I’m going to send you a letter, and instead of the retraction, I want you to print this letter.” And it was our letter! We printed our letter!”

Thanks to CBR, here’s the letter:

“Dear Mr. Lee,

The other evening at our Church’s Christmas social, a young member of my congregation showed me a comic book you presented, Marvel Premiere (#14, March). He told me it dealt with God.

I borrowed the comic from him, thinking that I would find another denigration of our Lord in the manner so fashionable these days. However, after reading this issue, I must commend you on the taste and perception you, your editor, and your writer showed in handling a very difficult subject. It is magazines such as yours that truly perform the Lord’s work and open new eyes to His majesty.

I have since recommended Marvel Premiere to many of my congregation and friends. Thank you, Mr. Lee, for your fine work.

Rev. David Billingsley

8794 East-West Highway

Denton, Texas”

As Englehart was a member of the OTO, a group founded by Aleister Crowley, you can only imagine how this movie views him.

This goes into the origins of Dr. Droom, who first appeared in Amazing Adventures #1 and was seen as a sort of trial run for Dr. Strange. Anthony Droom is referred to as a psychiatrist, lifelong learner and physician and is independently wealthy, as all comic book heroes should be. He meets a lama in Tibet who transforms him into an Asian man — the film claims he looks exactly like Crowley — and gives him the magic he needs to protect Earth.

Over a year later, artist Steve Ditko — who inked Jack Kirby’s five Droom stories — approached Stan Lee with a new magic character called Mr. Strange.

As for Druid, according to Wikipedia, he “is often ranked amongst the worst Avengers members, worst leaders of the team, and often considered a B-list hero. The original origin story for the character has also been cited as problematic due to the race-swapping aspect.”

Also: Dr. Druid is relatively unknown, despite what this film would have you believe.

As with all Good Fight Ministry docs, this goes all in on Gnosticism and then details how The Scarlet Witch is the Whore of Babylon. Strangely — pardon that pun — I don’t see Dr. Stephen Strange looking like Jack Parsons, but I did appreciate this getting him in, as well as Marjorie Cameron showing up in other films by these folks.

Between the child sacrifice allegations leveled at Crowley (which many historians dispute) and his rumored Nazi ties (despite his work for British Intelligence), the history of Dr. Strange’s influences is just as murky as the Dark Dimension itself. I liked how they got across Ditko as a drug-addled lunatic staring into space and dreaming up comics; nothing is further from the truth.

Whether you see Strange as a harmless psychedelic hero or a gateway to the OTO, one thing is clear: the history of the Sorcerer Supreme is far weirder than any movie has dared to show.

You can watch this on Fawesome.

JESUS IS COMING SOON… and you need to know the end time signs exploding NOW IN ISRAEL! It was the beginning of the end! No one knew when it would happen…Advent II – a chilling, realistic account of the end times – a foretaste of history’s incredible climax! This film vividly and dramatically shows how Israel – The Fig Tree – has blossomed, and the end times hour is near…and that Jesus will come in this generation!

I found this on Occult Demon Casette, and man, I want more people to watch it. Deep within the Middle East, Morris Cerullo explains how the end of the world will occur there. This is interspersed with imagery of people disappearing, like a family looking for their grandmother who has gone to Heaven and left her clothes behind. 

There are then news reports of 747 pilots vanishing mid-flight and massive automobile collisions caused by driverless cars. It gets better — we see a cemetery that has been shambled, with graves literally burst open as if a giant magnet in the sky pulled the bodies toward Paraadise.

Cerullo was a Pentecostal evangelist who traveled extensively around the world for his ministry and hosted a TV show, Victory Today. In 1990, he purchased the assets of Jim Bakker’s PTL ministry and the Heritage USA theme park.

This stars Don Galloway, who played Sgt. Ed Brown on Ironside), Claudette Nevins (from The Mask?), Tracie Savage (young Lizzie Borden from the TV movie?) and Israeli singer Irit Bulka.

I really wish there were more of these movies. This has a SOV look that I love and is genuinely frightening. Cerullo explains that in the Bible, the Fig Tree symbolizes the nation of Israel. He points to the rebirth of the country in 1948 and the reclamation of Jerusalem in 1967 as the blossoming” of that tree. Based on the Biblical promise that this generation shall not pass away until all is fulfilled, Cerullo argues that those who saw Israel become a nation will see the second coming of Christ.

The reason this film feels so strange today is the contrast between the sunny, 80s suburban family life and the sudden, silent transition into a world of martial law, looting and supernatural disappearances. It’s the ultimate What If story, told with the absolute conviction that it wasn’t a story at all, but instead a warning of what might happen about this time tomorrow evening.

You can watch this on YouTube.

There are supposed to be seven of these; I’ve been through three, so I am ready for what comes next. 

This time around, here’s what’s on the menu: 

• Anti-Christ Themes: The documentary contends that these media franchises normalize or promote anti-Christ themes.

• Glorification of Occult and Violence: The series alleges that storylines often glorify violence, the occult, blasphemy and sexual perversion.

• Satanic Imagery: It investigates whether comics and movies reframe Satan or demonic figures as heroes or saviors.

• Influencing Children: The film argues that leading writers use manipulation and occult themes to alter how children view the God of the Bible.

• Occult Roots: The series explores the influence of occult figures like Aleister Crowley on popular media, specifically in relation to characters like Doctor Strange.

I was wondering when these guys would get to Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis. After all, Morrison openly admits to practicing occult rituals to fuel his work. The documentary views this not as creative quirkiness, but as a literal attempt to use Sigil Magick through comic panels to alter the consciousness of young readers.

You can only imagine what they thought of Preacher.

And wow, that reveal in Avengers #31 that — in the words of We Got This Covered — when Tony Stark was investigating the mysterious appearance of a million-year-old Iron Man helmet, he teams up with a talking snake, who’s actually Mephisto, the Marvel Universe’s devil. The talking snake reveals to the hero that Howard Stark made a deal with him: if Howard was to become the most intelligent man on the planet, he would give his son to the devil.”

It’s hard to tell whether the stories in this are What If or Elseworld stories, and so many of the upsetting tales have been retconned. This also recycles a lot of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby hate. 

The series often takes a hard line on the creators, suggesting that the Jewish-Christian roots of early comics were a facade for deeper occult interests. By recycling the hate, the film attempts to show that the industry’s foundation was flawed from the start, moving from Kirby’s Celestials (space gods) to the overt Satanism of modern runs.

You can watch this on Fawesome.

Directed, written, and featuring Joe Schimmel, as well as David Jeremiah, this explains the idea that all Hollywood films are based on Gnosticism, a syncretic religious movement centered on dualism. They believed in two forms of God: one a transcendent, true God, and the other a lower Demiurge responsible for the material world. In this framework, salvation is redefined as the intellectual and spiritual recovery of the divine spark within the individual.

This breaks down The Matrix, The Truman Show, Donnie Darko, Pleasantville, V for Vendetta, Vanilla Sky and more. I mean, The Matrix has a ship called the Gnosis, Neo becoming the one after his mind is opened to forbidden knowledge, cities and people named after Biblical figures, and so much more. 

Also: The Architect in The Matrix or Christof in The Truman Show are totally the Demiurge. The Pleasantville allusions in this are pretty spot on as well.

This wants you to understand Luciferian inversion, which is when Satan becomes the good guy and the religious world is the villain. That’s because they’re often cast as the enforcers of the Demiurge’s rules. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. When the faithful act like the moral police, they fit the Gnostic villain archetype perfectly.

A good way to stop doing that would be for most Christians to stop being assholes, but I digress. 

Will this mention Crowley and Helena Blavatsky? You know it. 

People can believe whatever they want, but wow, this is quite the movie. They should add commentary tracks to films so I can hear their views while I’m watching the actual film.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.