Meat Friend, a short that director and co-writer (with Steve Johanson) Izzy Lee made, is one of the best short films I’ve seen, so I was excited about this feature.

Mia (Fayna Sanchez) has lost her husband and her baby, which has led to her being jailed in her home, as she lives in a state where miscarriage is murder. Under house arrest, she moves in with her new boyfriend, Marc (Vincent Stalba), and tries to get through things with her sanity intact.

But ah, that Bava lighting clues us in that this is in no way paradise. And Marc isn’t a dream partner, either.

So what happened with her husband, Adam (Mason Conrad), who was found in their animal clinic with a syringe in his neck, a death that caused her to lose the baby and be arrested for his murder, until it was learned that Adam had killed himself? Marc soon loses it over her memories of Adam, demanding she destroy everything with a memory of him attached and then drugging her despite her being on probation. To make things worse, her probation officer (Lee Boxleitner) continually calls her a murderer, and social media personality Lexi ShokToks (Laura Dromerick) is stalking her, hoping to push her into creating viral content.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where this film no longer feels entirely horror. Yes, the ghosts are from the fantastic, but the lack of body autonomy for women isn’t just speculative fiction. This adds a darkness to this film that haunts every frame.

Directed and written by Michael Smallwood — who also shows up in the beginning of the story as the host; he was Marcus the doctor in the recent Halloween films, the same name he uses in the film — this is about a party at the end of the world.

Within this strange time, Addison (Shivam Patel) and Cass (Shivam Patel) decide to turn it into their first date, making sandwiches together and trying to figure out that now, as the world is running out of time, they’ve finally decided to connect. As that happens, the party goes on as people process what the end of the world means. Is there anything after it? Or is this really how the world fades away?

This has an interesting idea and a cast capable of pulling it off. It’s not perfect, but I think that’s precisely how one of these endtime events would feel. Kind of happy, pretty sad, totally drunk.

What if you rediscovered the script you wrote when you were 12? And what if you performed it with real actors, without changing a word?

In Michelle Iannantuono’s First Drafts: The Outcasts, actors including Iannantuono, Maddox-Julien Slide, Evan Michael Pearce, Gregory Howard Jr., LG Wylie, JJ Schaeffer, Anna Lin and Michael James Daly do exactly that, bringing these hilariously bad childhood tales to life, while the teacher — Michael Smallwood — reacts to it all.

Iannantuono wrote, “In the most unique film you’ll see all year, First Drafts: The Outcasts, witness the earnest-yet-cringe rebirth of my very first screenplay. From the unhinged team behind Livescreamers, this comedy experiment was simple: dig up the script I wrote when I was 12, hire the best actors I knew to read it cold — no rehearsals, no dialogue changes, just raw reactions — and add in one Michael Smallwood for commentary along the way. This trailer is just a taste of every baffling line, sudden plot twist, and ounce of pre-teen masterwork within First Drafts: The Outcasts. This one is for everyone who has ever looked back at their early work and wondered, “What the heck was I thinking?” Or, if you like The Room as much as I do…maybe this one is also for you. The best news? You can watch it right now! Visit http://octopunx.tv and see the madness for yourself.”

This may be funnier for you if you were a theater kid, but as it is, it’s pretty amusing. It’s definitely a unique idea and I’d like to see even more of these.

Candy (Chloe Macleod) used to be a good girl until the ice cream man delivered to her work and violently took her into the back room, injecting her with something this film never explains, an illness that makes her so sweet that her body becomes cake that everyone wants to devour. How strange that the sickness isn’t venereal disease; it’s a child that makes every secretion taste like dessert, and that no man wants to help her abort it. Instead, they want more of her, from her boyfriend Sid (Drew Forster) to Dr. Herschell Gordon (Charles Lysne)

Directed, written, edited and co-produced by Beca Kozak, this is body horror in a scumbag film made to upset people for a reason. And that’s fascinating, a film that takes bits of The Stuff, rape revenge films, John Waters and the name-checked Herschell Gordon Lewis to present a movie where a woman cuts into the cake that is her stomach to slice away the thing inside her as no one will help her. She must deliver this child, she must become the doll that Dr. Gordon wants, she must endure the plastic surgery ads that promise mothers that they can quickly become sexy again. The only reason people wish to consume her is to enjoy her, and like any good dessert, she’s melting and has a limited shelf life. That’s a great metaphor — better than calling the punk guy Sid — and points to something more here than just a film made to shock.

The most striking aspect is how this movie exploits the male gaze. The women are gorgeous in it, but as Candy starts to fall to pieces, the film does more to objectify her. There are moments where, as her body changes and she becomes larger, she worries that she’s losing her beauty or the ability to be seen by men. The opposite is true, even if it’s not for any good reason.

Another movie that I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

Check out Joseph Perry’s review of this film here.

Directed and written by Michael Fausti, this film takes place in 1968, 1983, and 1992, starting with Alice Kyteller (Ayvianna Snow) in 1992, telling the police that her husband, Austin (Adrian Viviani), has gone missing. The problem? When Detective Franc Alban (Amber Doig-Thorne) asks when she last saw him, the answer is eight years ago. And how does this tie to a series of murders in 1968 that Iris Young (Alice Stevenson), the daughter of TV psychic Cassandra Young (Dani Thompson) — who is now a professional dominatrix — claims to know the answer to?

Shot by Kemal Yildirim, this looks incredible, a film noir serial killer movie that transcends time and space to bring together seemingly unconnected people and times. There are so many questions. Why is Austin in photos with Detective Alban’s mother?  Is every cop corrupt? And is every woman a femme fatale?

This is a movie set in a world that I would greatly enjoy living in, but I know I would never survive. It’s worth a visit.

“On January 8th, 2015, a man with a black umbrella broke into 818 Hilltop Drive at 3:38a.m., committing a double murder. The investigation that ensued proved that some murders shouldn’t be solved.”

Directed and written by Ricky Umberger (Project Eerie), this found footage film concerns a man being haunted by, well, precisely what the title promises: a man holding a black umbrella. There are numerous urban legends and creepypastas online about people seeing umbrella men, so this concept feels like it has a great idea behind it. However, generally, found footage becomes a movie with one person’s name repeatedly screaming or running while trying to hold a camera, and my brain shuts off. That’s on me, not this movie. If this is your thing, maybe you can find something in it t

You can learn more about this movie on the Instagram page.

Sally Harkley (Ellie Church) has recently lost a baby after a car accident and is at a career crossroads, having written two of three books in a planned trilogy. Her publisher wants to send her away to a cabin in the woods to get away from it all, but between her mental state and ruined marriage, it isn’t working. Then she meets her muse (Alyss Winkler) and things start to make sense, if by make sense you mean someone who will dance while you write and kill people for you.

Directed and written by Scott Schirmer (Found, Plank Face) and Brian K. Williams (Time to Kill), this film demonstrates that creation and destruction are closely intertwined. Sally blames her husband for much of her current situation and is sure he’s cheated on her; she’s less bothered when her demon lover jerks him off in the shower in what might be a fantasy or could be true. This is one of those films where a lot of what it’s about can be made up by you. Can the flow of menstrual blood be the flow of creativity? Can the loss of a cat — maybe not the movie for those who have recently lost an animal — help you process the death of an infant? Can lesbian scenes be in a horror film without feeling like exploitation and instead drive the narrative?

The answer to all of these questions is yes, and I’m surprised. I wasn’t expecting anything, and yet I came away with a film that has kept me thinking.