Director and co-writer Alice Maio Mackay is just eighteen years old, but across her last two films — So Vam and Bad Girl Boogey — she’s improved from an already solid start. Now, with T-Blockers, co-written with Benjamin Pahl Robinson, there’s another leap forward.

Sash VO (Joni Ayton-Kent Sash) is a young horror filmmaker with a cop dad that lives in a town that doesn’t seem too open to a trans girl. Yet Adam (Stanley Browning), who she goes out on a date with, does seem unfazed, even if whatever secret he tells her is so upsetting that she runs home and drinks, smokes and does coke with her roommates to the point of sickness. And Adam? Well, he’s taken into a cult of men who have been rejected and indoctrinated into their sinister ways.

The entire town is becoming contaminated by something evil in the water, something beyond just passing laws against trans kids, something supernatural. And Sophie has gained the ability to grow sick any time she’s around people who are under the influence of this darkness as they transform into zombies.

There’s also a movie within the movie, monologues by Australian drag performer Etcetera Etcetera and a budget of around $6,000, which blows my mind, because it’s all on the screen and then some. I loved how each side of the battle has their own unique color scheme and yeah, some people are going to be put off by how stereotypical so much of this movie is, but it’s a teenager making the movie she wants to make, telling it on her terms, so when you can say you’ve made three movies and a TV series by 18, then you can show how it’s done too.

T-Blockers is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Directed and written by Nathan Blackwell, this film finds Marshall (Adam Rini) at the end of the world, deciding that he should bring together a group of friends and strangers — and his ex-wife Audrey (Megan Rini — to make the movie he never finished in high school.

How does everyone discover that the world will end? A voice in their head, giving them thirty days, as the simulation that is our reality is ending. That’s what makes Marshall look up his old friends Lance (Ryan Gaumont) and Arthur (Craig Curtis) to finally complete their science fiction movie in the face of a very science fiction reality.

This could be a dark film, yet it has so much heart — and joy in the power of movies — that I couldn’t help but love it. It seems like the making of this movie was the same labor of love as the film that Marshall puts together. A movie that finally gets him past his issues and has him grow up. Sure, it’s in time for the world to end, but I’d like to think everyone escapes because the movie ends before the world does.

The Last Movie Ever Made was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Hoping to find a cure to the disease that is destroying him from within, The Professor follows Agatha on a strange and risky journey into a forgotten but not entirely deserted urban wasteland. Sure, that’s the logline, but this film makes getting there so different, so trippy and so intense.

Kelly Bigelow and Roland Becera did just about everything in this movie from directing, writing, editing, costumes, casting, effects and animation. It’s a truly singular work that presents an ever-evolving series of images that creates a dark mood while presenting what it calls “the disintegration of nature, institutions and people.”

It’s more a series of imagery and tone than an actual narrative film, so if that’s what you’re expecting, well…then this just isn’t going to work for you. If you’re feeling adventurous, however, this movie has a rewarding look and feel. It’s like exploring a series of dark paintings and nearly falling through them, unsure if what you’re seeing is either live action or animation or something in the middle.

You can learn more at the official site.

Agatha was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Les Hackel (James Marsters) is down on his luck. Maybe even worse when he wakes up to find that an explosive device has been implanted in his neck. Now, he must carry out heinous crimes in order to stay alive while trying to identify the mastermind ordering him to keep killing.

Also: This is a puppet movie.

Director and writer Evan Marlowe said, “We resolved (for some insane reason) to use only realistic lifelike hand puppets in actual settings, just like any other movie. No CGI backgrounds or actors wearing prosthetic makeup. This sort of thing has never been done. The Dark Crystal comes close, though there, the designers weren’t bound by the confines of reality. We’ve had a few incredibly skilled people helping out. Jeff Farley has been our lead puppet fabricator. Again, this kind of work isn’t common, so some amount of trial and error has been needed to find the balance of aesthetic, durability and function. Meaning, the heads need to look great on camera, hold up well under shooting environments that are often hostile,and let the puppeteer emote without too much effort. When it comes to the actual shoot, our puppeteer Danny Montooth lip syncs with each line, played on loop on my magical iPad until all the aspects (lighting, camera movement, mouth motion, eye line) are just right. Once I’ve got the footage, I edit it up and then our visual effects guy John Sellings smooths out any problems. When a scene is done, it gets color-corrected and graded, and then the sound and score are added.”

It took six years to make this movie.

It also has an incredible voice cast, including Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Jordan Peele and Christopher McDonald.

There hasn’t been a movie ever before that looks or feels like this.

For those that can get past just how strange it looks to have human-sized puppets in every role, this movie is pretty awesome. Reality pretty much falls apart as Les has to place poison gas in workplaces, watches assassination TV shows and even is forced to slice the head off a baby, one which soon sprouts tentacles. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Can we even be sure after the end?

If you want to see a movie that goes all the way and beyond, Abruptio is for you.

You can learn more at the official site.

Abruptio was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Let’s do some science.

The quantum suicide thought experiment is a lot like Schrödinger’s cat. In that, a cat, A cat, a Geiger counter, and a bit of radioactive poison are placed in a sealed box. Quantum mechanics believes that after some time, we can consider the cat to be both alive and dead. If you were to look into the box, you would find out the truth, but for now, you must assume that the cat is in both states.

A quantum suicide is an experiment where the box kills an occupant in a given time frame with a probability of one-half due to quantum uncertainty.

The difference?

The person inside the box is recording their observations of what is happening.

The significance?

This person is in a life and death situation and realizes it, unlike the cat.

There are also three rules, as written by Max Tegmark in Our Mathematical Universe:

1. The random number generator must be quantum, not deterministic, so that the experimenter enters a state of superposition of being dead and alive.
2. The experimenter must be rendered dead (or at least unconscious) on a time scale shorter than that on which they can become aware of the outcome of the quantum measurement.
3. The experiment must be virtually certain to kill the experimenter, and not merely injure them.

Man, I hate math.

Directed and written by Gerrit Van Woudenberg, Quantum Suicide is about a physicist on a quest for the Grand Unifying Theory of Physics.

You know, the Theory of Everything.

He builds a particle accelerator in his garage and begins his research into the nature of reality. In the process of his experiments, he suffers radiation poisoning, loses his vision and causes his partner to leave him. Yet in his obsession, which has seemingly destroyed his life, he finds some level of understanding and clarity. Only one test remains to finish his work.

This isn’t the kind of movie filled with action. It requires plenty of thought and attention. I really liked the messages within it, but trust me, it’s not for everyone. But for viewers ready to experience this film, it has plenty to reward you with.

You can learn more about this movie on the official site.

Quantum Suicide is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Hilarie (Jennifer Harlow) and Steve (Mark Reeb) are on the way from Texas to as mountain town in Colorado that is supposedly safe from a mysterious viral disease that makes people disappear or turn become murderers. They try and stay isolated from everyone else in the small town that they are hiding out in, as they don’t want to trust anyone. But after Hilarie is attacked by a man in the woods, he refuses to allow her to leave the house. This makes her lose her sanity and soon, he starts finding her just wandering with no idea how she got there.

This film is of our times, as there’s a battle between those wearing masks to protect themselves from the virus and those who think that makes them weak, including a talk show host who uses the radio to drive his followers to violence.

Director and writer Dalila Droege gets in all of the moments that we have lived through: isolation, racism, lack of reason and people just plain disappearing. If you want to live through that again, this movie goes even further, as it seems like nature itself is rebelling against man and all our folly.

No More Time is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

You know, I kind of like something in this movie. Like, I know it’s really bad but there’s something in it — and not just a young Demi Moore — that made me enjoy it. I have no idea what that was, but sometimes a movie just makes you feel like you’re taking a relaxing swim.

Sometime after the bombs got dropped, America is run by a criminal organization called the Merchants. To better control the population — and no, I have no idea how this plan is supposed to work — they get Dr. Paul Dean (Robert Glaudini, whose roles in movies like this and Cutting Class led him to somehow write the play Jack Goes Boating, which became a movie directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman) to create a parasite. Also, because this movie has no plan for what is about to happen, he infects himself to study the parasite, yet is upset when it infects the gang in the small town he finds himself trapped in.

And Demi plays the young lemon grower who helps him.

Actually, I’ve totally figured out why I like this movie. That’s because it cast Cherie Currie (the ex-Runaway who was on a run of scream queen roles between this, The Alchemist and The Twilight Zone: The Movie) as a post-apocalyptic gang member and Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith as a slave girl. And it was made by Charles Band between Crash! and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn in a time when he wasn’t yet making puppet movies.

A section 3 video nasty, this was in 3D in its original theatrical run. It owes just as big a debt to Alien as it does to Mad Max.

Parasite 3D played in 3D at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Dan (Max Woertendyke) and Jen (Dana Berger) are in the type of relationship where you start to wonder what it would be like without the other person. He’s embarrassed her yet again and as she runs to clear her head, he tries to follow her. The only problem? It feels like they keep going around again and again, around the same path, going through the same motions, the paranormal version of what it’s like to be with each other.

They’re not alone, as the trail around the pond has others who are trapped and doomed to wander in circles as well. Can they escape?

Based on director and writer Dane Elcar’s short film The Pond, this is a dark story that progressively gets grimmer. Some couples are like that, endlessly going through the motion, one trying to stay ahead of the other, both realizing that they are locked into this endlessly repeating unreality.

If you think your relationship is bad, imagine being forced to stay within the same time and place as your partner in a never stopping loop.

This film is big on ideas and low on budget, but when is that a problem?

Brightwood was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

There’s a Trim Season comic book that came out in 2022, which was based on an original concept from Megan Sutherland, Sean E DeMott and Cullen Poythress. They were inspired by the story of several women who went missing in Humboldt County, CA during a marijuana harvest. That turned into a screenplay, written by David Blair and Ariel Vida, and then the comic book by writer Jake Hearns, pencils and inks by Mara Mendez Garcia and colors by Lorenzo Palombo.

Directed by Ariel Vida, Trim Season is about Emma (Bethlehem Million) and Julia (Alex Essoe), who get recruited by James (Marc Senter) to head up into Northern California for trim season and make $5,000 cash. They’re joined by Harriet (Ally Ioannides), Dusty (Bex Taylor-Klaus) and Lex (Juliette Kenn De Balinthazy) and when they get there, things already seem odd. There are guns everywhere carried by masked men. None of those men join them, because the only trimmers are women.

Then they meet their boss, Mona (Jane Badler, still terrifying me ever since she ate a rat in V), who looks like the kind of female villain that would once have battled and bedded James Bond. And as they work 16 hours days, they start to learn that this isn’t the job they were promised, what with Mona having some kind of magical powers thanks to a strain that only he can inhale and survive.

Somehow folk horror meets Suspiria meets body horror, Trim Season exceeded any expectations I had for it. Balder owns every moment she has on screen and man, how many costume changes did she get? As many as she wanted, that’s how many.

Subject was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Geoff and Rich Brewer (Graham Weldin and Andy Phinney) have always tried to outdo one another, but Geoff always finds himself in second place against his older brother. For example, Rich will always be the anchorman on camera and Geoff will always be the one holding the camera, never seen. Yet after Rich dies in a woodcutting accident, Geoff searches for help from his friend Colin (Cameron Perry) and a mysterious cult. Soon, not only will his life be changed, but so will the lives of everyone in the town of Eldritch.

That’s right. They have the Necronomicon and use it to bring back Rich, who instead of being the one who does everything right is now a flesh-eating zombie.

Also: This is a musical.

Thanks to music by the band Fox Royale, this has some catchy songs and tight directions — with near dayglo colors at times — from Ryan Smith (who also wrote the script) and Tyler Foreman. Geoff and Colin struggle to get Rich to remember human morality as his need to consume blood and brains begins to overwhelm him.

It’s a cute idea done well and also done on a small budget. There’s a ton of heart — and other organs — in this movie and I think it definitely has the potential to be loved on a big scale.

Eldritch USA was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.