Seeds is the second feature by filmmaker Skip Shea. An avid fan of folk horror films, Shea decided to follow up his first feature Trinity with a story about a pagan cult that is about to go to war with the Catholic Church. It’s also a very personal story Macha and Andrew both process the death of their daughter in very different ways. She’s lost and adrift, seeing images of her daughter, while he is driven to make a statement by writing a book about New England cults. And when one of them informs him that his uncle has passed on and left him a legacy, the opportunity to live his dream is closer than ever.

The cult’s religion is based around the metaphysical properties of the apple, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge from Genesis and the symbol of man committing original sin while gaining knowledge. As Macha discovers that she has a gift for seeing more than most people, her husband is being ensnared by the machinations of this secret church.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, worried about the growing power of this secret cult, has sent a priest into its midst to learn all it can.

Shot on location in the Blackstone Valley, Seeds also uses the same locations that were used in another American folk horror film, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death. It’s shot in black and white, which works for the darkness of the story, and features Suspiria actress Barbara Magnolfi.

Seeds is unafraid to take things slow, to build tension and to have conversations that feel improvised and fresh along the way. This movie is why independent horror exists; this isn’t a quick cash-in horror to get on the shelves of WalMart and content on Amazon Prime. This is a work of art and a labor of love.

Seeds is now playing Salem Horror Fest as part of the Showcase of Massachusetts Filmmakers series. When we have streaming info, we’ll share it in this post. For now, you can follow that link to buy a festival badge and check out several other films during October. You can learn more at the Facebook page and official site for the movie.

Take Back the Night makes a pretty astounding choice as its main character Jane Doe isn’t completely heroic. I’ll explain in a moment.

She’s just finished her first art show, selling every work she’s created and enjoying the benefits of being a social media influencer and young person in the middle of a hustling and bustling art scene. She even helps a few people in much worse shape than her get home, but when it’s her time to leave, she’s all alone and in the exact situation women are warned to avoid. She walks down a dead-end alley and gets assaulted.

By a dark cloud of smoke and flies, no less. So when the cops ask her to detail what happened, she keeps referring to her attacker as it. But she also discovers that despite claw marks across her stomach and enough physical damage to land her in the ER, she can’t quite convince the police that she’s a victim.

And here’s where that narrative choice I began with kicks in.

Jane doesn’t tell the cops every detail. And by claiming that she was attacked by a monster — and not a man — her family’s past issues of mental problems come back in a bad way. Even her sister fails to believe her, but that may be because Jane doesn’t exactly go about things the right way. She demands attention, she rallies her social media followers, she goes to the news when the cops can’t help her. And the thing is, she just may be relishing all of the attention.

This film makes a big shot by naming itself after an organization, by tacking a hot button issue and by having a heroine who is not always reliable. That’s fascinating because this movie could have very much been a simple I Spit on Your Grave thriller instead of a movie that associates the lack of memory that assault causes and associates it with a monstrous shadow. The police and the way they handle things are just as brutal, if not more, than the creature.

Director Gia Elliot and writer Emma Fitzpatrick have taken some chances here. I really like how everyone other than Jane Doe is only known by their role or their job, as the facelessness of this situation reduces everyone to their most basic roles. This is a movie that made me think love after it was over. That’s the mark of a movie that works.

Take Back the Night is now playing Salem Horror Fest. When we have streaming info, we’ll share it in this post. For now, you can follow that link to buy a festival badge and check out several other films during October. You can learn more at the official site.

While the logline for this movie says, “After a moment of total teenage angst, a young punk finds himself at odds with a psychedelic monster of his own creation,” the truth is that this film is a film within a film inside, well, maybe another film.

While the script started as Cop Killer, which followed Officer Pete Chambers as the film’s lead, it changed to be about Dood, a young punk who takes way too many dummy gummies, which has perhaps permanent psychotic effects, sending him into a tailspin of cops on his tail, romantic entanglements and even a monstrous creature that looks like a Boglin crossed with a Frank Henenlotter creature along with plenty of goo and teeth.

Rocko Zevenbergen wrote, directed, edited, produced and probably drove everyone back and forth to the set. This is his vision and with how dark things get, it feels like the act of creation may have taken its toll on him at some point. The film keeps breaking from the main narrative and revealing the pains of the creation of the movie inside the movie.

Just a warning to those with sensitive ears, this movie plays with some drone and whirring tones that may unsettle you. They totally fit the film, but the audio tone of this is incredibly abrasive in parts.

While not a perfect film — what movie is? — this is a great experimental narrative and really deserves to get a bigger audience to see it. Zevenbergen is definitely talented and I’m excited to see what he does next.

I Need You to Die! is now playing Salem Horror Fest. When we have streaming info, we’ll share it in this post. For now, you can follow that link to buy a festival badge and check out several other films during October.