Toby Poser, John Adams, and their daughters Zelda and Lulu made The Deeper You Dig, a movie that divided Becca and me. For their follow-up, the Adams family has created a movie all about 16-year-old Izzy (Zelda), whose mother (Toby Poser) keeps her isolated due to a rare illness. Yet as Izzy begins to grow as a woman — beyond playing metal songs (written by Toby and Zelda) as the band H6LLB6ND6R without an audience may not be enough — she escapes to another home in the woods where she meets Amber (Lulu), who gives her a bikini and the chance to drink with teenagers.

Yet when she consumes a live worm, the hunger of being a hellbender opens her eyes and she soon learns exactly why her mother keeps her from others.

At first, I felt like this movie was kind of like seeing an opening act at a show and not feeling the first few songs that they play. It feels inauthentic. Not metal? Silly facepaint? And then before you know it, you’re nodding your head and feeling the urge to headbang by the end of the set. This film took some time to grow on me — The Deeper You Dig had some of the same issues — but when it works, it works.

The effects either look great for the budget or remind you of the budget, yet never feel like they’re organic to the film. That’s fine — this is a very DIY effort — and it actually becomes charming. I’ve never really trusted homeschooled kids who are too close to their parents, but maybe this is one of those families that gets the dynamic right.

The Arrow Video Blu-ray of this movie has extras including audio commentary with filmmakers Toby Poser, John Adams, Zelda Adams and Lulu Adams, a video essay by filmmaker Jen Handorf, a featurette on the visual effects by VFX artist Trey Lindsay, behind-the-scenes footage, a short film by Zelda Adams, four music videos, a trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Beth Morris and original artwork by Sister Hyde and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Natasha Ball and Kat Hughes. You can order this from MVD.

According to Glowstream, “Forty percent of all missing persons are people of color, according to the Black and Missing Foundation. However, only 13 percent of the US population is African American. The stark contrast between the amount of people of color missing in the US and the population number is why the state of California created the Ebony Alert system, a resource available to law enforcement to alert the public about suspicious and unexplained disappearances of Black people.”

This movie opened my eyes about this.

This documentary focuses on Brittany Clardy, Shamari Brantley and Krystal Anderson, three Black women who were killed after their status as being missing was botched. Often, police believe that women of color have just run off with their boyfriend and make excuses, while white women become national news stories.

Hearing the pain of the family members is hard, but knowing that they’re doing something is inspiring. The family of Clardy has been working with Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar and New Jersey representative Bonnie Watson Coleman to establish an Office for Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls within the Department of Justice.

Black women are murdered at a 300% higher rate than white women and make up 40% of missing persons cases, “a disproportionately high number relative to population size,” according to Teen Vogue.

I’d never heard of White Girl Missing Syndrome until this, and again, this entire doc by Jan Hendrik Hinzel, Alexis Johnson and Arlissa Norman is so informative. I’m glad it’s on a free streaming service like Tubi, as I feel it must be seen.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I hate the elf on the shelf. It creates an early message for children that we live in a police state, a place where you are constantly under surveillance and even the cutest things you see hide a way to keep you docile.

The Polonia Brothers directed this and it was written by Aaron Drake and Eric Wilkinson. An antique Christmas elf decoration is the way that a spirit communicates with the world, one filled with anger from beyond the grave. Three paranormal investigators — Damon Satchele (Titus Himmelberger), Lennie Barnes (David Fire) and Max Simonetti (Mark Polonia) — have been hired to cleanse the property of demonic entities so it can finally be sold.

This is a movie of Mark Palonia walking around with a thermometer trying to talk to the ghost of a child and nobody hearing anything correctly and enraging that ghost by sitting in his chair. I have a weakness for the Polonia films, as they’re more fun to make than watch, but then if you keep that in mind, you end up liking the movie more.

Seriously. Screw those elves. You put them on the mantle and they can become the conduit for evil, making your house up to six degrees colder in different parts, not to mention teaching your kids to hide stuff from you instead of building communication and trust.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

You know, some people do great things. They invent things that help their fellow man. They write words of sheer beauty that move people to tears or songs that people have in their weddings or teach people things that change the world.

I watch Amityville movies and write about them.

Such is my albatross.

Stanley DeFeo has come back to Amityville and there’s this whole story of his parents coming there to run a bank and his mom fell for a dude named Asmodeus because you know, it was the sixties. But now there’s a cult in town and our hero is doomed.

Except it’s in Amityville, Texas.

Let’s have that sink in.

Amityville.

Texas.

Birthright: An Amityville Horror was the original title and this cost less than a used car and has a scene where a lawyer agrees to a meeting within minutes, not months, so it’s also science fiction. This is also known as Amityville Secret.

So yeah. Our hero comes home — don’t do that — reads his mother’s diary — don’t do that — tracks down his father — don’t do that — and tries to set things right — don’t do that — and then a bunch of hooded robed people end up on his porch, which is pretty awesome and I wish they would come over here and party with me because I’m kind of lonely tonight.

At one point, a character talks about getting to dance with the devil and I thought about that and kind of wished that this movie was about a woman finding her groove in the late sixties and escaping her boring husband through Satan, but that would be probably something only I’d want to see and not something that would fool you by being a new Amityville movie on the shelves at Walmart and the digital racks of Amazon Prime and Tubi.

I almost wrote, “You could have put a legit turd into my DVD case and I would have enjoyed it more,” but that just seems mean.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

Is Amityville Cornfield a better title? I don’t know. Nor can I comprehend how one family can have so many unmatching accents, but if I have learned anything, it’s don’t watch sixty Joe D’Amato movies in a week followed by three Amityville movies because you start to see the world as a very weird place. Don’t follow my path.

Tina and Mary are sisters who can’t agree on what to do with the land their mother gave them when she died, land that could never grow corn and was probably haunted and will surely end everyone’s lives. Then again, Tina did steal Mary’s husband, so you can understand why they are fighting.

There’s a scarecrow that gets possessed by the spirit of a child-touching handyman so…you know, I guess there’s an Elm Street in Amityville. That said, the scarecrow looks pretty scary in a few scenes, which is more than you can usually expect from these films.

You can watch this on Tubi.