We understand Cold Creek Manor because no matter how good a provider Dennis Quaid is to Sharon Stone, you can easily see that she’s up for a little bit of fantasy, imagining how Stephen Dorff would use her in bed. Therefore, when he goes crazy, it’s earned, and we’d all do pretty much the same as she did.

I can’t figure out the same thought process for Thy Neighbor.

Pastor Zach (Nathan Clarkson) has it all. A great family with wife Amber (Jessica Koloian) and son Alex (Michael Johnson), a new church, a published book, and a podcast. But he sees saving people as a project, not a calling. So when he tries to get a man we only know as “neighbor” (Dave Payton) to come to church. He’s soon inviting this dark being into the world of his young family unit.

Everyone in this is flawed: Zach was once a violent man and has now become a prideful one, in love with the opportunities and perks of being a religious leader. Amber feels lost in his shadow and kind of likes it when the neighbor gets attention from her husband. And the neighbor, well, he does the Stephen Dorff moves, but he looks like if Golem was haunting your 7-11, playing the slot machines all day in back, emerging only to chug energy drinks and grab more chew when he isn’t begging for money, depending on how his gambling day is going. He’s no threat to Pastor Zach, looks or even conversation-wise; he seems like a cartoon villain inside the real world.

There’s something here beyond most faith movies, though. The filmmakers hid a toy car and a knocking sound every time we see the neighbor. His dialogue is at once frightening and builds sympathy for him, but he’s a cipher, someone who has a tragic past, or so it’s whispered. We never learn from the past. Yet it feels like Amber treats him as a faithful Christian should, while Zach is in it for the popularity. There’s an interesting message in there: it takes that faith concept and combines it with the strange-neighbor subgenre. 

Also: Big points for ending this not only on a downer note, but one that doesn’t give easy answers or give away what happens next. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

This film begins with firefighter Mark Taylor (Chris Nelson) rescuing everyone from a crackhouse fire, except for one small boy. Ever since, his PTSD has manifested itself as horrific dreams. He refuses to take his meds, retires and struggles with only his wife, Mary Jo (Karen Boles), able to help. 

Every night, he dreams that a demon is trying to drag him to Hell. His wife prays for help and receives it when God talks to her husband, telling him that Donald Trump will be the President. Unfortunately for Mark, Barack Obama got the office instead. 

A decade into his PTSD journey, Mark meets a new doctor, Don Colbert (Don Brooks). He feels well enough to share his dreams with him and ends up speaking with his wife, Mary (Paulette Todd). From here on out, it’s Mary’s movie, as she gets her phone tree activated and works to pray Trump into the White House using a shofar, an ancient horn, to pray into. 

Trump wins, and that’s when the movie turns into “a panel of world leaders, those being notable conservatives and evangelicals, answering political questions.” Those would include Michele Bachmann, David Barton, Lance Wallnau and William G. Boykin. There are also several music videos inside the narrative.

A true story, this is based on Taylor’s book The Trump Prophecies: The Astonishing True Story of the Man Who Saw Tomorrow… and What He Says Is Coming Next. If you’ve ever wondered why Israel is such a big deal, well, the prophecy said that Trump would unite the U.S. and the country. 

Producer Rick Eldridge pitched the idea of a film adaptation of Taylor’s book to Stephan Schultze, who was the executive director of Liberty University’s Cinematic Arts group. The program had previously been involved in the making of five feature films, as it attempted to incorporate one full-length movie every year into its curriculum.”

Prophecy has always been a big thing, but now, it has a name, a Pentecostal evangelical movement called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). C. Peter Wagner, who coined the term, called it “the most radical change in the way of doing church since the Protestant Reformation.” On the other side, the Southern Poverty Law Center said that NAR is “the greatest threat to American democracy that most people have never heard of.” NAR follows dominion theology, which believes that in order for Jesus to return, the world must turn Christian. Trump’s moving of the Israeli embassy is another step towards fulfilling the dominion theology.

Director Stephan Schultze did special effects on Tremors and craft services on The Abyss before directing movies like this and God’s Compass. 

My favorite part of this movie is the montage of numerous Christians reacting to the news that God wants them to pray for Trump, as well as the prayer chain scene on an airplane where a man laughs throughout, and everyone makes fun of religion, but we just know Trump is going to win. This doesn’t get into what he did in office, how he lost the next election, January 6, or anything after that. But you don’t need to think too hard. You just need to give in, give up and get God. 

There is little difference between low-budget horror and this movie. They both have absurd plots, flat lighting and 20 minutes thanks to the credits.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The lost 1934 film The Great Buddha Arrival holds a special place in film history, inspiring tokusatsu and kaiju movies, while intriguing fans and history buffs alike.

In 2018, director Hiroto Yokokawa created a modern reimagining of this story with the blessing of the grandson of the original director Yoshiro Edamasa. Yokokawa also made Nezura 1964, a reimagining of a 1964 Daiei movie that was canceled, connecting the past and present of kaiju filmmaking.

Nearly a mockumentary of the Great Buddha coming to life, this is filled with kaiju stars, including Yoshiro Uchida, who played Toshio Sakurai in Gamera vs. Gyaos; Peggy Neal (Terror Beneath the Sea, The X from Outer Space); Akira Kobu (Son of Godzilla); Yukijiro Hotaru (the Heisei Gamera movies); Yoshihiko Otsuki and Junichiro Nirasawa (Godzilla: Final Wars); Bin Furuya, the original Ultraman and Akira Takarada, famous for his role of Hideto Ogata in the original Godzilla.

While we may never see the original movie, this is still an interesting effort.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Editor’s note: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on January 18 at 7:30 PM ET at The Sie Film Center in Denver and will be co-hosted by Theresa Mercado of Scream Screen and Keith Garcia, Artistic Director – Sie FilmCenter. You can get tickets here. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

Knife + Heart is a true anomaly when it comes to Giallo. It’s from France, a country more given to fantastique films than Giallo, although movies like The Night Caller, Without Apparent Motive, and The Night Under the Throat exist. And its victims aren’t gorgeous women but the actors of the gay porn industry, changing the psychosexual dynamics of the form.

Instead of featuring the sounds of a band like Goblin or a score by Morricone or Orlandi, Knife + Heart has music by Anthony Gonzalez of M83, director Yann Gonzalez’s brother.

A young man is killed by a masked man whose very sex conceals his murder weapon to open the film. Then, we meet Anne (Vanessa Paradis), an adult film director recently abandoned by her girlfriend and editor, Lois. The man killed in the opening was the star of several of her films; now she must find an actor to take his place. That leads her to Nans, who agrees to be in her movie despite identifying as a straight man.

The new film — Homocidal — will be her version of the murders, which continue targeting members of her cast. The police either can’t — or won’t — help. But the movie finished, and as the group celebrates its completion with a picnic, the killer strikes again, just as Anne pretty much assaults Lois in an attempt to get her back.

The true killer is a man whose father caught him making love to another man. He killed his lover and castrated his son, who was also burned in a fire before being brought back from the dead by a blind crow — the fact that this movie isn’t called Call of the Blind Crow speaks to its non-Italian origins — and seeing one of Anne’s movies brought his memories back.

This being a giallo, there’s also a bird expert with a disfigured hand that looks like he has, quite literally, chicken fingers. Plus, the entire end of the movie is explained via voiceover. The fact that so much of this movie is given to style over substance means it lives up to the film that inspired it.

While the murders are in your face, the sex is nearly hidden from view. Anne is an intriguing protagonist — drunken and bitter instead of the normal virginal giallo and slasher ingenues that save the day. She instead brings the killer closer with each scene that she directs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Writer/director Michael S. Ojeda’s The Russian Bride is bound to be a divisive film, with everything hinging on how much fun each viewer decides to have with an effort that starts out with pseudo-heavy, gothic melodrama before going all out with a third act that swings for insane, exploitation cinema fences. My interest levels went back and forth during the movie’s running time, but when it was all over, the film provided enough jaw-dropping, head-scratching moments — peppered with a few unintentional laughs — for me to give it a recommendation.

Almost everything in The Russian Bride is about as subtle as a hammer to the skull — which you are guaranteed in this outing — not the least of which is Corbin Bernsen’s scenery chewing realization of Karl Frederick, a very well-to-do retired physician living in a secluded mansion who chooses single mother Nina (Oksana Orlan) to be his titular wife. Her young daughter Dasha (Kristina Pimenova) is part of the package deal, and viewers sense that has something to do with the plot early on when Frederick sees her on his computer screen for the first time, and gives a less than subdued foreshadowing reaction.

Ojeda’s screenplay is heavy on the tropes, from red herring villainous-seeming sorts, to just-short-of-moustache-twirling baddies, to Nina’s plight going from one cocaine-addicted man to another, to the possibility of supernatural forces at play, to lightning strikes at dramatic moments, especially with a character posed for effect in that particular shot. What makes The Russian Bride worth seeking out is its absolutely nutsoid third act, when Nina, so drugged up by villainous forces that she can barely move a facial muscle, makes a heroic comeback to save her daughter from certain doom. Orlan throws her all into this insane transformation, and truly makes it a blood-soaked blast. She is terrific throughout, wonderfully portraying a loving, protective mother and a woman trying to adjust to a new life in a different set of circumstances, but her furious, frantic turn in the final third of the film is absolutely top notch.

The film is interesting in that it balances a fine line between being hokey and predictable, and being engaging and fascinating. For every negative such as occasionally bad CGI, there is something high quality such as Jim Orr’s gorgeous cinematography. When the story seems to be laying on yet another predictable element, an outré quirk comes along to grab the attention of viewers once again. Another high point of the film is the solid work by the supporting cast members, who know how far to push their characters without wandering into hamminess territory.

The Russian Bride is one to watch for fun, preferably with a theater audience or with friends at home, and not one to overanalyze. For those who wish to do the latter, though, there should be plenty to mine for discussions regarding both the immigration experience in the United States and the current wave of neoexploitation — or perhaps postexploitation? — cinema. As for me, I’m in on this one for the decidedly absurd good time it ultimately provides. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Director Josh Gerritsen delivers a fun, well-crafted creature feature in the independent offering Island Zero, a made-in-Maine movie that is destined to surprise viewers. Though elements of Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and 1950s monster movies are evident, the film builds a dread-filled world all its own.

On a remote island about 40 miles off the coast of Maine, a group of locals, seasonal employees, and a visiting author prepare to return to the mainland. Unfortunately, the ferry they are waiting for never arrives, part of a mysterious pattern in which local fishermen and boaters disappear, their vessels sometimes discovered with bloodstains. As the island residents and guests are further cut off from the outside world because of power outages, the mysterious situation escalates as horrendous deaths begin occurring on land, as well.

Working from a screenplay written by his mother Tess Gerritsen, helmer Josh Gerritsen has crafted a suspenseful monster movie that offers characters and relationships in which viewers can become fully invested. The situations, dialogue, and performances feel naturalistic, so that when victims are being stalked and the ugly truth behind the incidents comes to the forefront, viewers have plenty of reason to be invested in characters and whether or not they will see the occurrences through.

The sizeable cast is solid throughout, including Adam Wade McLaughlin as marine biologist Sam, whose obsessive interest in following up on his late wife’s research is causing strife between him and his girlfriend Lucy (Terri Reeves), and Laila Robbins as Maggie, a doctor working temporarily on the island, who suppresses a tragic past that may actually help with the group’s survival. The supporting players give performances that range from spot-on to downright endearing. 

Alisha Cratty’s makeup work and Eric Anderson’s special effects are commendable, and while body parts and the red stuff are on fine display in Island Zero, the film focuses more on psychological tension and an ever-building sense of dread. Mark Farney’s cinematography captures the gloomy greys of the isolated island and its surroundings marvelously, complementing the foreboding atmosphere.

One area where monster movie fans might be disappointed is the lack of screen time for Island Zero’s beasties, but I feel that Josh Gerritsen and crew did a clever, admirable job of presenting them considering the film’s budget. What makes the attack scenes work is the investment of the actors, the dynamics between their characters, and a good story. 

Island Zero is a taut suspenser that creature-feature fans should find to be a fantastic discovery.

Made by Rumble Dog Pictures,they described this movie in these words: “In this alternate reality of John Carpenter’s characters, Michael Myers is a patient who breaks out of a mental ward on Halloween night that’s run by the more caring yet naive Dr. Loomis. Two months later , we find Myers wrecking havoc on the days leading up to Christmas. For any die hard Halloween fans, check out this new wintery take on your favorite masked killer.”

This starts as the movie Alone In the Dark, as Dr. Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz) arrives to meet with Dr. Leo Bane, who has been clumsily edited by audio to be Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence). He runs a program for those with mental illness in the hopes that they can be healed, including a group of violent criminals that includes Byron “Preacher” Sutcliff (Martin Landau), Frank Hawkes (Jack Palance), child molester Ronald Elster (Erland van Lidth) and John “The Bleeder” Skagg (Phillip Clarke), who hides his face and is recast as Michael Myers.

That night, everyone escapes and we don’t see any of the characters from Alone In the Dark again, other than Dr. Bane who is now Dr. Loomis. This brings us to Black Christmas, proving that Bedford is close to Haddonfield. The movie stays in the world of the Bob Clark effort — reminding us of the urban legend that Halloween was to be a ripoff of this movie called The Babysitter Murders — yet mixing in moments such as Mister Harrison (James Edmond) going to look for his daughter at the frathouse and seeing Flick get his tongue stuck on a pole from A Christmas Story.

That’s enough fan service, as that’s at least a Bob Clark movie. I was also fine with the edit of The Shape killing Clare (Lynne Griffin), as that makes sense within this movie, as well as adding snow effects into moments from Halloween 2.

Where it gets goofy is when Michael is playing a piano for Gizmo from Gremlins or terrifying Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) by acting as the Shovel Slayer from Home Alone. The first of these scenes is so poorly animated that it breaks the good work from the rest of the movie. The needledrop music doesn’t help either, but I do enjoy hearing “Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade.

The last shot, at least, of The Shape standing next to Clare’s dead body in the attic is pretty good. I just wish this stuck to the idea of Michael ending up in Pi Kappa Sigma house. Sometimes, just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Directed by Junpei Mizusaki and with character designs by Takashi Okazaki, Batman Ninja starts with the Bat Family and all of the rogues being taken by Gorilla Grodd’s (Fred Tatasciore) Quake Engine and placed into the past, somewhere in a Japan where modern technology still exists. Batman (Roger Craig Smith) may have the Eian (Matthew Yang King) of the Bat Clan of Hida on his side, but everyone else has become a feudal lord in the two years that have passed since he was lost in time.

This places Catwoman (Grey Griffin), Nightwing (Adam Croasdell), Red Hood (Yuri Lowenthal), Robin (Yuri Lowenthal), Red Robin (Will Friedle) and Alfred (Adam Croasdell) on the side of good, along with Batman, against the Joker (Tony Hale), Harley Quinn (Tara Strong), Bane (Kenta Miyake), Two-Face (Eric Bauze), Deathstroke (Fred Tatasciore), Poison Ivy (Tara Strong) and the Penguin (Tom Kenney).

American writers Leo Chu and Eric Garcia rewrote the film from the original Japanese script that was written by Kazuki Nakashima, ultimately making two very different versions of the same film with different voice casts.

The animation is pretty crazy, giant robots and monkeys battle and this gets pretty far from the world of Gotham City, but I enjoyed it. It definitely takes chances.

This will have a sequel next year, Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League.

You can watch this on Tubi.