Three friends — Stephanie (Elizabeth Grullon), Alex (Damian Joseph Quinn) and Bryan(Clayton Farris) — are on a road trip when they run across a cult that likes to take the heads of its victims and always seems to show up when someone is engaging in the vehicular application of phallically obtaining a throat culture.

As Stephanie tries to get over a breakup, she joins Alex and Bryan, who are a couple, on a vacation to Isola Lake, which is now dry. That’s just the first bad thing that happens and things get worse when The Executioner shows up looking like he emerged from an Italian sword and sorcery film.

I don’t want to give too much away, because there were moments in this movie that genuinely surprised me, including the secret society that The Executioner belongs to. It’s not a perfect film — there aren’t too many people to root for — but the moments that work, like Stephanie hallucinating her ex. Not all of it comes together, but the parts that do work pretty well.

Director David Del Rio has acted in several movies, but this is the first that I’ve seen him create. It was written by Justin Xavier, who also wrote another Del Rio-directed movie, Sick for Toys. I’ll be keeping my eyes open to see what they do next.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We first shared this entertaining and innovative film on May 7. Now that Arrow Video is releasing it on blu ray, we’d like to remind you of it so that you don’t miss it.

After years of no contact, a phone call reconnects Leo (Joey Millin) with his sister Virginia (Madison West). Their estrangement comes from her years of drug abuse and when he finds her, she’s seemingly going through an overdose. However, she tells him that she’s been clean for eight months thanks to a mysterious group that has revealed themselves to be a cult. Worse, they have tied her emotions and feelings to a dark man that she has never met. She begs Leo to help her find him. She agrees that if her story is not true, she will finally go to rehab. Yet in the midst of this emotionally charged time, Leo starts to realize that Virginia may be finally telling the truth.

Threshold was improvised and shot on two iPhones over the course of a 12-day road trip with a crew of just three. It’s the second movie by co-directors Powell Robinson, Patrick R. Young and producer Lauren Bates. It’s not a traditional horror film, but builds to a dense and dark ending. And hey — it’s 78 minutes, which is pretty much the perfect length.

You can now get Threshold on blu ray from Arrow Video. It comes with two different commentary tracks (the first with directors Powell Robinson & Patrick R. Young, producer Lauren Bates and lead actors Joey Millin and Madison West as well as a second one with the directors Powell and editor William Ford-Conway); a making-of documentary; a color correction breakdown; an indie director roundtable moderated by Scott Weinberg with directors Robinson and Young along with Brandon Espy (We Follow You), James Byrkit (Coherence), Zach Donohue (The Den) and Elle Callahan (Witch Hunt); another roundtable about acting in indie horror moderated by Zena Dixon with the actors West and Millin (Threshold), plus Kelsey Griswold (Followed), Gabrielle Walsh and Ryan Shoos; the soundtrack to this movie; the script; the trailer and orginal teaser; and an image gallery.

Brother Billy (Richard Rossi, who also wrote, directed, produced, ran the camera, composed the music, edited and performed most of the songs for this movie) is a con man who has found his way into becoming a man of the Lord thanks to falling in love with Sister Sara (Rebecca Holden, who was April Curtis on Knight Rider and also appeared in Loverboy and The Sisterhood), whose preaching comes from a much more sincere place.

Rossi was a minister in Pittsburgh when he discovered televangelists faking miracles for money. I can only imagine he learned this during the making of His Place at WPCB-TV40 outside North Versailles. He turned the story of that moment into a play and after making two documentaries — Sister Aimee about Aimee Semple McPherson and Baseball’s Last Hero: 21 Clemente Stories — he decided to film Canaan Land.

According to the film’s website, this is a movie that answers a few questions, such as “What happens when a traumatized Christian who is a talented showman takes out his hurt and anger on God’s people by swindling them? What happens when he falls in love with a woman who loves God and wants to help people?”

This is a faith-based movie, but I’ve watched plenty of those, so I was sure that this would get way too preachy. Actually, it’s the opposite and does a great job of pointing out the bad parts of evangelism while showing that so many actually do have their hearts in the right place.

What’s really surprising are the cameos this film has, including Cindy Williams, Sally Kirkland, Elvis’ last fiancee Ginger Alden, Louis Gossett Jr., Karolyn Grimes (the real Zuzu Bailey!), Kathy Coleman (Holly from Land of the Lost) and Lynda Carter. It also has a packed cast, including Dawna Lee Heising, who has been quite good in several recent horror films I’ve seen (and this movie as well).

You can give it a try on Amazon Prime and learn more at the film’s official site.

Skull: The Mask, known as Skull: A Máscara de Anhangá (Skull: The Mask of Anhangá) in its native Brazil has an incredible trailer, an awesome poster, plenty of goretastic practical effects and, well, that’s about it.

That should be enough, but this movie never gets to the sheer level of intensity and madness that it hints that it’s ready to achieve.

Beatriz Obdias is a bad cop who has stumbled on the titular mask, which was on its way to a museum when it was stolen. Now, dead bodies are piling up, as the mask has possessed a crime scene cleaner (pro wrestler Rurik Jr.) and is using him to satiate its unending bloodlust, because after all, Anhangá is a pre-Colombian spirit that wanders the Earth after death. This version of the spirit has a gigantic meat cleaver and is constantly covered in blood.

There’s also the museum owner who wants the mask for himself and a man named Marco who wants to protect the mask, which his family has a long history with. He walks around with a severed hand, which ties in to the bloody prologue.

I really wanted this movie to succeed, because the effects look incredible and I can overlook so much in a slasher. But it just drags and just when you think things are going to go fully off the wall, it slows down again.

Skull: The Mask is currently streaming on Shudder.

The game of 100 Candles has trapped a group of friends, who find themselves forced to tell one another horror stories in front of a magical mirror. One story must be shared for every candle and the group cant’t leave until all of the candles have been extinguished. If they do, they will fall to a witch’s curse.

100 Candles uses this storytelling engine to enter into the anthology conceit while taking content from several other shorts, including The Visitant, Blight, When Demons Die, Black Eyed Child and A Little Taste. No, there are not a hundred stories in this movie.

Of these stories, The VIsitant has the most star power, as it features Amy Smart (The Butterfly Effect, Road Trip) as a mother trying to protect her children from a demon played by Doug Jones. It was directed by Nicholas Peterson, who has made several music videos for bands like Bad Wolves, Sixx AM and Five Finger Death Punch.

Buried Alive has one of my most fearful themes. Obviously, it’s being buried alive, but since this story is all in Spanish, it loses some of its power with Western audiences.

As usual with anthologies, not every story works, but those that do are pretty powerful. The framing sequence is well-filmed and sets things up quite well. Of the modern portmanteaus that have been released, this is one of the better I’ve seen.

Devilworks has released 100 Candles with a day-and-date DVD and Premium TVOD, followed by a full digital release.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally reviewed this movie on March 26 of this year, but now that Arrow is releasing it on blu ray, we hope that more viewers will find it.

Based on Jill Gevargizian’s award-winning short of the same name, The Stylist reunites the director with actress Najarra Townsend. She stars as Claire, a hairstylist who becomes obsessed beyond with her clients. One of them, Olivia (Brea Grant), is a bride with has made the horrible mistake of hiring Claire for her big day.

Let me sell this movie in the best way that I can: Becca hates nearly every modern horror movie that we watch together and she liked this because of how dark and strange that it was.

Claire styles hair by day and at night, she kills and takes the scalps of her victims, becoming them for a short time. She becomes obsessed with Olivia’s perfect life as she becomes more of a friend than just a stylist and tries to hide her collection of scalps and stop killing. But can she change who she is as easily as she puts on new bloody masses of hair?

Be warned: my wife also has an incredibly strong stomach when it comes to slashers and there were moments in this film that nearly upset her. The scalping scenes are on par with Maniac for their bloodletting, which is pretty much as high as I can praise a film.

It’s astounding that a modern film can synthesize the slasher with the color theories of the giallo while not playing the story for laughs at all. It allows us to sympathize with a character that we should despise. It also has a female point of view about a woman attempting to navigating her way through the world and the issues she faces as a female by, you know, murdering nearly every woman she gets close to. It’s one of my favorite movies that I’ve watched so far this year and definitely recommend it with that caveat — there is a fair amount of blood. But hey — you need it for an ending this in your face.

You can buy The Stylist directly from Arrow.

A trucker (Pamela Jayne Morgan)  has just pulled her rig into a state park to rest when a hysterical young woman (Juliette Alice Gobin) accosts her, claiming that she’s fleeing from being a kidnap victim. She doesn’t believe a word the younger woman tells her, which leads to a fight between the two of them that ends with lost keys, a broken phone and nothing but the dark of night around them both.

After this bad beginning, the women start bonding over their shared history of abuse and trauma. But if they want to make it out of this dark night of the soul alive, they better learn how to trust one another.

Writer Todd Rawiszer and director Max Strand have put together a taut thriller here that starts with high tension and doesn’t let up until a late in the story reveals that makes all of the coincidences of the story a little hard to swallow. Luckily, the two leads carry this movie over that barrier and deliver a rewarding film that shows that the talent that made this film may be unknown, but it won’t be that way for long.

Goodbye Honey is available on demand from Freestyle Digital Media.

David wanted to be a football player before an injury. Now he’s in love with a nurse named Shona and the concerts and disco he’s running – with his buddies Scot and John — have all been to impress her. After a few successes, our hero decides to go all in on a hugely ambitious Iron Maiden show. However, to make that happen, he has to throw in with a gangster named Fergie, which means that the biggest show of his life may just be his last one.

This film is based on truth, as the early years of Dave Mclean’s life in the music business really did have him promote a Maiden show at Dundee’s Caird Hall on June 12, 1980. For Maiden fans, they opened with “Sanctuary.”

This is Mclean’s first movie as a writer, director and producer. He brought plenty of American grunge and punk bands to the UK, including Nirvana, Mudhoney, The Smashing Pumpkins and Green Day before managing Placebo.

He’s to be forgiven for making his film look, feel and play a lot like Trainspotting, because both films cover a lot of the same ground. It does have a good soundtrack going for it, including Saxon, Hawkwind, Dead Kennedys, The View, Placebo and, of course, Iron Maiden.

You can learn more about this movie on the official Facebook page. It’s available on demand on multiple streaming services.

EnfantTerrible is the story of filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who dreams of making movies about the cold-hearted, archaic Federal German society whole achieving the love and respect of the outsiders of society. As he rises to become among the most important directors in Europe, his body and mind decline and he dies an early death.

Director Oskar Roehler and writer Klaus Richter have a tough task on their hands: how to take the unlikable and caustic hero and make him someone we want to learn more about and care for.  Oliver Masucci, who has the lead, is easily able to take on this task, as he’s played someone even more unlikable — Adolf Hitler himself — in the 2015 comedy Look Who’s Back.

It’s to the filmmakers credit that they did not shy from controversy. However, when the material is well-known, that’s usually not a worry. I loved the play-within-a-movie conceit of this, as so many of us only associate Fassbinder with film.

Enfant Terrible is currently playing theaters these theaters:

This film tells the story of three survivors of forced marriage in America. Fraidy Reiss is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish teen from Brooklyn who was coerced into marrying an abusive man. Meanwhile, in Michigan, Nina Van Harn’s Christian father forced her to marry a man he chose for her. And in California, Sara Tasneem was just fifteen when she was kidnapped by her father and forced to marry a 28-year-old man.

Even today, forced marriage cuts across state lines, ages, religions and social strata. Even worse, they are occurring legally across the United States every day.

Knots: A Forced Marriage Story will be released via The Laemmle both theatrically and on their digital platform on May 7 followed by a wider digital release on June 4.