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.

Directed and written by Mark Beal, Marginalia is about Sister Trista, who comes to Karnstein Abbey to help her fellow nuns mourn the recently departed abbess. As often happens in movies like this, the sisters all end up being devil worshippers, and Trista must stop them from their sinister ways.

There are also killer rabbits — rendered in stop-motion — in this black-and-white Eurohorror-style movie, which has way more art direction and sound design than the films that inspired it. Filled with practical effects and dripping with atmosphere, this is the kind of movie that I wished I’d seen in a theater instead of on my laptop. Hopefully, it plays here, and I can rectify that situation.

This is the kind of church that I always thought the nuns in my Catholic school went back to after they taught us. But yeah, it only exists in the movies. Additionally, the demon in this bears a striking resemblance to Patch in Santa Claus.

The President (“Chicken” George Zupp) believes that a nuke is going to drop on Texas, so he brings in Dr. Calypso (Furly Travis), who is in the middle of making women pregnant and killing Saddam Hussein. so he knocks up his assistant (Rebekah Porter)  and pulls a baby out of her throat because babies are innocent angels and the atomic bomb is Satan. Meanwhile, Natty (Shauna Nunn) is cheating on her gambling husband, Leo (Steve Jones), who is in trouble with the mob. There’s also Junior High (Paxton Gilmore), whose girlfriend (Laura McKee) got so upset when he got sick of her that she did drugs and got caught in a deadly wreck with a bad boy. At the same time, his father (Tayer Cranor) and a barber named Bosco (C. Paul Cardoza) both try to make love to the somewhat innocent kid.

This all feels like it was shot on video, so I should love it. It’s filthy and has lines line, “I fuck to live and I live to fuck.” I know what Jeffrey Garcia, the director and writer, is going for. He also made Bubblegum, a movie that I said “was probably more fun to make than watch.” This maintains the same feel, with garish colors, plenty of wigs, gross-out humor, and people swearing more than in a Rob Zombie movie. It’s like how some people enjoy Troma movies; I’d rather enjoy a film that is weird because it’s naturally that way, rather than being intentionally odd. There is a way that can happen, I assure you.

But if you like that kind of Tim and Eric kind of feel, well, I won’t stop you from watching this.