EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this movie as part of Salem Horror Fest on October 3, 2021 and are happy that it’s finally going to be playing select theaters and streaming from Dark Sky Films. 

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 long after it was over. That’s the mark of a movie that works.

Filmmaker Brad Abrahams has just a little more than twelve minutes to try and make sense of David Dees, an artist who once painted Sesame Street book covers until 9/11 and doing his own research led the artist to discover that there was another world — at least in his world — beneath the reality that he knew. When this film finds him, he’s alone but surrounded — perhaps truly — by ghosts of everyone he’s known and a joke online, an artist of conspiracy culture in a world that either believes that Democrats eat babies or worries that climate change is about to make our horrible world that much worse.

Dees believed in every conspiracy theory, all at once, while also meditating, which kind of warped my brain, because so many religious see that as Satanic. But who can say? Kudos to this film for not simply shooting fish in a barrel and abusing its subject, basically allowing him to do that himself.

It’s hard to make a rational exploration of a man who believed that a Zionist cabal was moving his shoes. But this movie does a good job of things, even forcing its subject to confront the fact that the filmmaker who has been spending time at his house is Jewish.

Dees died from melonoma. This movie made me wonder why a man who raises bunnies, sings to elderly people and their families to give comfort when they are in hospice and meditates in a hope to experience universal love could be filled with such hate.

Do you see what I see? is playing with The Last Frankenstein during MidWest WeirdFest on Sunday, March 6 at 6:30 PM CST. You can get tickets and more information on the MidWest Weird Fest website. You can learn more about Do you see what I see? and see the movie for yourself at the official page.

Imagine if Critters with crabs, shut your mind off and just have fun, because Crabs! was the kind of goofy fun I was looking for at the end of a long week. It’s prom night, a nuclear accident has turned some horseshoe crabs into death machines and things are about to get awesome.

Phillip McCalister (Dylan Riley Snyder) and Maddy (Allie Jennings) are getting ready for the big dance, which Philip will use as an opportunity to test out the braces that he’s invented that will allow him to walk. His brother, a cop named Hunter (Bryce Durfee), discovers a half-eaten whale — a great effect — and before you know it, the brothers, Maddy, her mother (Jessica Morris) and exchange student Radu (Chase Padgett) go up against an entire army of three different crab monster species.

The first full-length movie from director and writer Pierce Berolzheimer, Crabs! is the kind of movie that has its hero make a shark mecha to battle a crab kaiju and you know, I don’t need any more than that. Allow it to chase away your bad week too.

Crabs! plays MidWest WeirdFest on Friday, March 4 at 6:00 PM CST. You can get tickets and more information on the MidWest Weird Fest website.

Mira (Vivian Ólafsdóttir) and Pétur (Gunnar Kristinsson) have left Nashville and are about to open an air bnb way out in the wilds of Iceland. Should be a peaceful escape, right? But something dark is there, something that won’t just stalk them in the daylight, something that makes Mira lay an egg and Pétur face madness, a hole in the house and warnings that his child will be evil.

The first full-length movie from director and writer Elvar Gunnarsson — and co-writers Ingimar Sveinsson and Magnus Omarsson — It Hatched plays with time and space throughout, as colors intrude to create monochromatic images of terror and dream logic takes over the normal way that reality should work.

There’s something in here about how Mira loves her child no matter what, while her husband goes from unsure to utter paranoia. It’s also a movie completely unconcerned with being normal, feeling like some type of alien comment on humanity and I mean that with the absolute highest of compliments. It’s weird and wonderful and singularly interested in being very much its own thing.

It Hatched plays MidWest WeirdFest on Saturday, March 5 at 10:00 PM CST. You can get tickets and more information on the MidWest Weird Fest website. You can learn more about It Hatched on the official Facebook page.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this movie as part of Fantastic Fest on October 1, 2021. We’re re-rerunning this as the film is now playing in theaters.

Issachar & Zabulon, two scumbag brothers, have lost just about everything including a place to get food, now that they’ve lost one more thing — January Jack, their mother’s beloved dog. And unless they get it back in 24 hours, they’re out of her house.

Starring — as well as written and directed by along with his brother Lenny — Harpo Guit, this movie starts with the two leads (Maxi Delmelle plays the other brother) cooking their mother human feces for breakfast and her throwing up the film’s title. If you don’t run away at that point, maybe this is the film for you.

Debuting in the U.S. as part of the Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival, this film is a barrage of scatological humor that is either going to be the hardest you’ve ever laughed or seventy minutes that feels stretched out beyond infinity.

There is one scene that made me laugh out loud, as one character repeatedly licks and sucks on a loaded gun, then starts gagging because he claims that someone rubbed peanuts all over it. It hit me just right, even if most of the rest of the movie didn’t. But you just might find something that you like here.

The other positive that I can bring up is that the filmmaking is frenetic and full of energy. That said, if you’re a dog person, you might want to skip the end of the movie.

Mother Schmuckers is playing select theaters March 4 and is available on demand March 15 from Dark Star Pictures.

Returning to his hometown in Upstate New York — yes, I know, nothing good happens when we go back home — Dr. Issac Blake (Jake Pirkkanen) has the psychic notion that his sister Sue (Nicki Clyne, Cally from Battlestar Galactica). So he grabs a crowbar, steals a car and prepares to battle with the Lunamancer (Cliff Tulis).

Is it weird to say that the sound design is one of the stars of this movie? Because it totally is. This film sounds amazing and looks beyond what its budget should. There aren’t many budget superhero movies, but this one does it right.

Director Noah Mucci (who co-wrote this with Matt Patterson, who wrote This Film Is Not Yet Rated and played the devil in Warlock: The Armageddon), who was the cinematographer for The Last Blockbuster, does a great job with a much, much smaller balance sheet than a Marvel or DC movie. Definitely worth keeping an eye on what he does next.

Lunamancer plays MidWest WeirdFest on Sunday, March 6 at 8:30 PM CST. You can get tickets and more information on the MidWest Weird Fest website. You can learn more about Lunamancer on the official site.

Five talented San Francisco-based filmmakers (Scotty Cornfield, Donna Mae Foronda, Tony Jonick, Alisha McCutcheon and Dana Moe) have come together to create five interconnected stories about the city, a place that the filmmakers describe as “a city of dreamers and immigrants, of old gold money, and new tech schemes, of people living under tarps by the side of the road, and young artists finding new neighborhoods, of bridges to the past and future.”

Narrated by Peter Coyote (who movies from New York City to Iowa to the city this movie takes place in, getting his masters at San Francisco State University and starting so many artistic programs; he also sings over the closing credits), the main narrative of this movie is how newcomer Nina (Linnae Dosumu-Johnson) discovers the town — and how to ride a bike — from her friend Mikey (Robert Henningsen), who takes her through the many neighborhoods, meeting outsider homeless artist Plato (Chris Marsol), a depressed performance artist named Andy (Carlos Flores, Jr.), art dealer Grace (Bettina Devin), his workaholic public defender cousin Marwan (Alessandro Garcia) and a couple who has just met on a dating app, Connie (Adrienne Marie Thomas) and Adam (Tony Gapastione). There’s also Mel (Andrea Martzipan, her famous author grandfather Ulee (Bert Van Aalsburg), her refugee roommate Saadi (Nicole Azalee Danielle) and Saadi’s daughter Zarah (Poppy Sanchez), all of whose stories move and flow together until things end up at a farmer’s market, which is, one assumes, a very San Francisco way to achieve an ending.

The movie is an anthology film with five interlocking stories, which was shot as five individual short films because the directors all belong to a short-film creating co-op. Actors returned several times to reprise their roles from previous films, which makes this flow pretty well, despite how it was made. If you enjoy Altman-esque movies that bring together multiple lives into one narrative, then you’ll definitely find something to enjoy here.

San Francisco Stories is now available on demand. You can learn more on the official site

Beyond releasing the astounding UHD of Dune, Arrow Video now has The Sleeper Must Awaken on its ARROW Player streaming service. Visit ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

Frank Herbert’s Dune seems like the type of book that is either unfilmable or would need a madman like Alejandro Jodorowsky to make, creating a film out of something he’d never read and still changing the world even if his movie never got made (see Jodorowsky’s Dune).

Dino de Laurentiis seemed like he wanted to blow Star Wars out of people’s minds with sandworms and spice and still suits, spending $40 million ($108 million in 2022 money) to attempt to get this film to the screen, bringing in David Lynch and getting folks to read a glossary of terms before they even watched the movie.

This movie has no talking heads, which is a departure for films covering films, and we hear Herbert and Lynch via old interviews, as one is dead and the other claims that the movie is dead to him.

If you’ve never seen Dune before, I’m not sure that this movie will get you wanting to see it. But for those of us fascinated with how a movie that seemingly had no chance of connecting to mainstream audiences and didn’t and yet became a movie that people still love to watch, well, this is the kind of movie that shows you how it happened, what went wrong and how audiences reacted.

Derek Braasch, Matt Cannon and Marcelo Fabani are the directors and writers of this horror anthology which has several well-known horror actors such as Debbie Rochon, Ari Lehman and Shawn C. Phillips.

Eighteen years ago a burglar broke into an author’s house and discovered a computer filled with forbidden stories, which one assumes is the storyline of 2003’s original HorrorTales.666.  the burgler was played by Joel D. Wynkoop in that film and now he repeats the past, breaking into another house and reading more stories, all while someone keeps telling him that he plans on dragging him to hell.

There are five stories:

“Open House”: dDrected by Cannon, this has a home being prepped for the real estate market — I mean, everything is selling these days — on the anniversary of the double himcide that happened in the house. When two of her co-workers try to prank her, things don’t go so well.

“The Last Farewell of Mr. Perez” was written and directed by Marcelo Fabani, who also stars as Perez, a man living his last day.

“Slay Ride” was directed by Derek Braasch, who co-wrote this chapter with Nina Trader. If you like Christmas themed slashers, get ready for what happens when Mrs. Claus gets to spend some time with the South Pole of one of the elves.

“The Present” by Joe Sherlock has even more sex and nudity than the previous segment, if that’s what you’re looking for. Roxxy Mountains, who plays the wife in this chapter, was also in Things 5 and Things 666.

Finally, My Life” by Phil Herman gets meta as he and Dustin Hubbard play themselves as people bother them for a chance to be in this movie.

While this movie has beyond a small budget and even relies on mannequin parts for special effects, you can’t say that everyone didn’t put their heart (and other organs) into it. If you love horror that was made with the budget of most film’s soda line item purchase, you’ll absolutely be obsessed with this.

You can learn more about this movie on its official Facebook page. You can order this from The Sleaze Box.

Andrew and Jon Erwin are Christian film directors, screenwriters and film producers who have made movies such as Woodlawn, I Can Only Imagine, Octover Baby and Mom’s Night Out. Andrew says that their goal: “Our focus is still firmly rooted within the church, but it’s focused out. And so our goal is to reach out beyond the church walls to engage a generation that’s walking away from the church — as an introduction to Christianity.”

That would be telling the story of Kurt Warner, who career saw him take the hero’s journey from undrafted free agent to a two-time Most Valuable Player and Super Bowl MVP. After playing at Northern Iowa from 1990 to 1993, Warner spent four years without being picked by an NFL team until signed by the Packers and released before the season started. He played three seasons of arena football for the Iowa Barnstormers before getting signed by the Rams.

Of course, this movie doesn’t really tell the entire truth, as it shows his first Rams game as the 1999 season opener against the Ravens. The truth is that it was actually the Rams’ week 17 game of their 1998 season against the 49ers, during which he only completed four of his eleven attempts for 39 yards. And Trent Green, who the movie claims is the established quarterback, signed after Warner, who was allocated to NFL Europe and brought back.

But does that matter to someone who doesn’t know anything about football? Zachary Levi (Chuck, Shazam!) is really charming as Warner, Anna Paquin is good as his wife and I’m always happy to see Dennis Quaid in a film.

If you do know football, having Ray Lewis be the bad guy of Warner’s first game in the NFL is pretty awesome. And regardless of how you feel about religion, the lesson that Warner learns — success is only found by how you overcome failure — is one that works no matter your belief system. The way that he becomes part of his wife’s family and cares for her children is exemplary and this film turned me into a fan of Warner the person.

American Underdog is now available on DVD from Lionsgate.