Well, maybe Weirton made. This was shot in West Virginia, about 36 miles from Pittsburgh, but when it comes to something made that close, the Steel City will claim it. Super 8 is set in Lillian, Ohio and if you’ve been to the place where PA, WV and OH all touch, it’s hard to tell when you’re in each state. It’s such a nexus of all realities that there’s still a Sam Goody — one of two in existence — in St. Clairsville.

Directed and written by J. J. Abrams, who produced with Bryan Burk and Steven Spielberg (who this movie is beyond in debt to), Super 8 is about Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) and his friend Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths) making a zombie movie in their backyard. Their friends Preston Scott (Zach Mills), Martin Read (Gabriel Basso), Cary McCarthy (Ryan Lee) and Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) play the various roles, with Joe and Alice growing close despite the hatred between their fathers. This is due to Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard) showing up drunk to work and Deputy Jack Lamb’s (Kyle Chandler) wife Elizabeth (Caitriona Balfe) having to cover his shift and dying in an accident. Jack blames Louis and as a result, Louis won’t allow his daughter to see Joe. Small town drama, let me tell you. It’s still real, as my mom just informed me of so many crazy things she just learned getting her hair done.

One night, the kids sneak off and film at midnight. They accidentally see a pickup truck driven by their teacher Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman) ram the train and cause it to explode. They try to help him as he pulls a gun and tells them to forget what they have witnessed.

Soon, people are disappearing, dogs are running away and the military — led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich) — have declared martial law. When Alice disappears, the kids all had to their school where they find a film that Woodward made when he worked in the government. They learn that the Air Force captured an alien which eventually formed a psychic connection with Woodward, asking him to help escape our planet. The Air Force wanted to make it into a weapon, so Nelec destroyed Woodward’s standing and discharged him.

I really loved this movie and what follows, a harrowing take on the Spielberg kids racing round their backyard to save the world, a storyline that would become much better known when Stranger Things ran with the idea. The kids look like kids, their love of making movies is something I felt at the same time in my youth and it’s awesome seeing a neighborhood that looks like the one I grew up in on film.

That said — no movie has more lens flares. Seriously, there’s even an extended one at the end that twinkles out. Another takes up the middle of the frame. Lens flares for everyone! You get a lens flare! You get one! Look under your seat! Everyone is going home with a lens flare!

Somehow, someone, somewhere decided that a remix of Striking Distance — a movie that means more in Pittsburgh than anywhere else in the world — and The Fog should star a bunch of pro wrestlers and our world is all the better, particularly because they decided that Kurt Angle should play the lead, Sheriff Will Logan.

That someone is probably director and writer Bruce Koehler, who also made American Ouija. He cast Sid Vicious and Kevin Nash as the spectral Jacobs brothers, as well as the one-time Glacier Ray Lloyd and local Pittsburgh wrestler Jason Winn “J.B. Destiny” Bareford, once an assistant to George Romero and the 2007 Guinness World Record holder for the Most Consecutive Kicks To One’s Own Head in Sixty Seconds, which he won by kicking himself 57 times in the head in one minute. He plays Angle’s deputy in here. And that Dave Hawk guy in the credits? He was Angle’s manager when this was filmed.

Pittsburgh movie fans will probably more excited to see first zombie — and the maker of FleshEater — S. William Hinzman as well as noted Steel City stage legend Bingo O’Malley.

It’s shocking that this movie has an IMDB estimate budget of $3 million dollars, a budget I would be keen to dismiss. But who knows? It’s not the first movie that Angle made with Koehler, as End Game was the first. There’s also Death from Above, which adds Tom Savini and Robert Z’Dar to the yinzer and pro wrestling cast. Oh yeah — Matt Morgan, Rhyno, ODB and James Storm are all in that, so the TNA influence was heavy. Seeing as how it was also shot in Pittsburgh, I guess I’ll have to watch that too.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Mill Creek has released this DVD set of three 2000s comedies that is totally worth your money. You can get it from Deep Discount.

Directed by Christopher Olen Ray (yes, his son) and written by Eric Forsberg (Mega Piranha), this Asylum film debuted on SyFy on May 10, 2011. If I can say anything nice, it’s that Kevin Nash plays Odin. And oh yeah, Richard Grieco as Loki.

The god of deception has destroyed Valhalla itself to steal the Hammer Of Invincibility and only Thor (Cody Deal) — with the help of the valkyrie Jarnsaxa (Patricia Velásquez, The Curse of La Llorona) — can save everyone.

Released at the same time as the first Thor movie from Marvel, this is another Asylum movie that prominently features brick walls substituting for cities. But hey — Detective Dennis Booker and Big Daddy Cool fighting during Ragnarok. The MCU isn’t giving you that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Decades ago, Matteusz Gdula invented an acting technique that made his students the best in the world. Of course, a bunch of them also died mysteriously and he ended up killing himself, so his method was banned. So why is there now a school devoted to his teachings? And why would they invite Stella (Susen Ermich), a driven if unaccomplished actress?

If you weren’t thinking Suspiria already — remote performing arts school, young girl unsure why she was asked to attend, mysterious past — the fact that Stella arrives just as Britt (Franziska Breite) is running away from something. To hammer it home, no one is warm to our heroine at all — not the students, not headmistress Yolanda (Teresa Nawrot), director Janowska (Magdalena Ritter) or Dr. Braun (Michael Balaun). Only Cecile (Julita Witt) — a young actress who teaches Stella how to open up her emotions while creating new emotions of her own that she doesn’t quite understand — is kind, but then why is her body covered with bruises?

Someone attacked Britt. Cecile disappears. And Lydia (Katja Lawrenz) has shown up dead. Maybe going to far off-performing schools run by dead people isn’t necessarily the best of higher education.

Then again, Stella is becoming a better actor. Instead of only using the pain in her past to become angry, now she can draw on it to become someone else. Perhaps this is the place for her. But at what cost?

Where films like The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears copy the look of the giallo, Masks goes further and understands the story and pacing of the best films in the form. Plus, the idea of a hidden part of the school where you must literally allow a mask to take over your mind so that you can become a role is a great one and the film does so much with it. It also understands something that the new school of giallo has forgotten: the kills must be as spectacular as your camera angles, your lighting and color theory. This is filled with genuinely shocking murders that stay within the giallo world without resorting to being torture porn.

Director Andreas Marschall also made German Angst and Tears of Kali, as well as music videos for Coroner, Moonspell and Sodom.