You know when you start hanging out with someone and they tell you that they have a band and when you go see them they’re horrible and you wonder, “How can I still be friends when this band is so bad?” and then you just never talk about it and it gets awkward?

Well, Ben Dietels is half of the podcast Neon Brainiacs with his friend Gregg Harrington and they watched Silent Scream and Disconnected with us on the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature and Ben told us about this movie that he made and his taste seems pretty solid, so I was kind of worried if the movie that he co-directed, co-wrote and co-stars in with Blake O’Donnell would play out like that Rage Against the Machine cover band — Rage Against the Machine 2 — that used to practice above us in that storage place in Allentown.

Whew. This movie’s awesome. I feel so good about that.

Flynn and August Bergeron (Ben and Blake) are obsessed with being the best wedding videographers they can be, which means living next to a Pittsburgh toilet in a basement, and non-stop training themselves — and filming themselves — as they prepare for their first wedding. Nothing goes right at all, which is expected, but the emotional story under all the humor was.

I kind of love that the idea of this movie exists, because when you wonder, “How did the guy who shot my wedding learn how to do it?” your mind reels. As for my wife and me, when she got to the altar and asked, “Where’s the guy shooting our wedding?” and I had to quickly explain that he no-showed, the end of this movie rings so true.

And even if I never met Ben, I’d still laugh at this movie for the right reasons.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Emily Fear is a librarian in Western PA. You can hear her weekly on the women’s wrestling podcast Grit & Glitter, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all major platforms.

What defines a horror movie? What characteristics are required, what plot or thematic elements are necessary? Is horror defined by its monsters? Its suspense? Its violence, implied or explicit? Its gore? Its ability to manipulate, disturb, compel or horrify its audience?

The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, isn’t bothered by genre definitions. It exists in a murky zone between domestic drama, international intrigue and vacation horror. It plants the audience right in the middle of a dozen variations of tense, yet universally relatable stand-offs: having to interact with strangers on vacation, endless and chaotic fights with small children, conversations with people that suddenly become too intimate too quickly.

These scenes, especially the ones involving small children, are designed to make the audience itch with discomfort. Who hasn’t felt their shoulders tense up at the sound of a toddler’s tantrum, its immediate intensity coupled with dogged, almost-supernatural persistence? Who wouldn’t clutch themselves a little tighter in the presence of vaguely menacing, possibly-organized crime-involved men idling by their car for no reason?

Leda (Olivia Coleman) is on vacation in Greece and becomes entangled with a fellow group of beach goers, a large family with local roots and more than a little sinister energy. Among the family is Nina (Dakota Johnson), a young mother to a three-year old daughter, Elena. Observing the pair invokes memories of her own experiences raising her two daughters, memories more bitter than sweet.

When Elena goes missing, Leda assists in the search, eventually bringing the girl back to her mother – but not without absconding with Elena’s treasured doll. The missing doll causes the girl to collapse into an endless fit – one that extends beyond the afternoon into the following days and nights. 

Leda observes the destructive impact that this has on Nina, but continues to keep the doll regardless, all the while befriending the young woman to the point of intimate confessions from both parties. 

Flashbacks reveal Leda to be a short-tempered, emotionally distant mother, unequipped for the turbulence and neediness of two young daughters. Impulsive reactions give way to deliberate choices that ripple into the present, Leda all too familiar with the lasting unhappiness and suppressed rage of motherhood. 

This would be a punishing slog of a film were it not for the performances. Coleman is, as usual, perfect at making an imperfect character simultaneously deeply relatable and incredibly loathsome. In her creation, Leda is like a poorly assimilating alien creature, awkward at best and carelessly destructive at worst. She can’t feign maternal warmth, but she does emanate a certain understanding to Nina and others, one that clearly says, “I’m not a good person and don’t expect you to be one either.”

There’s a freedom in dropping pretenses that this movie plays with in compelling ways. But what if those pretenses, those little polite acts of social contract, are all that keep the horrors at bay? 

The Lost Daughter is available to stream on Netflix

The Richardson family have a home that a Satanic cult wants. When real estate offers don’t work, leader Henrik Brnadr (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, House on the Edge of the Park, Stagefright, Cannibal Ferox and the reason I watched this movie) decrees that his followers make the lives of our protagonists difficult. So difficult, in fact, that they have to turn to magic. And to researcher Lon Carlson, who is played by Cradle of Filth’s Dani Filth via Facetime.

You know how some movies are full of talking and nothing happens? This is not one of those movies, instead packing 72 minutes with dead birds, snakes, cursed wells, demons, naked women being sacrificed and no small amount of gore.

And you know what? It’s ridiculous in the best of ways, a movie that promises a demon on the cover, delivers a demon and also gifts you with the heads of occultists getting blown up real good. Sometimes, that’s all you need.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Thomas Hamilton, who directed this movie and co-wrote it with Ron MacCloskey* (also the writer of Karloff and Me), had a big task when making this movie. Horror fans love Boris Karloff, so what new things can we learn about someone that we know so much about? And is what we know merely his roles and not the real man behind the mask?

To tell the story, there’s a tremendous cast of people on hand, everyone from Caroline Munro, Christopher Plummer, Stefanie Powers, Lee Grant and Ron Perlman to Guillermo del Toro, Peter Bogdonovich (who directed what Karloff wanted to be his last film Targets) and John Landis. Oh there’s more — Roger Corman, Jack Hill, Joe Dante, Leonard Martin, Donald Glut and even Bela Lugosi Jr. and Sara Karloff.

I learned from this film the fact that Karloff — born William Henry Pratt — was an Anglo-Indian who dealt with prejudice for his looks and a family scandal, two subjects that he would never discussed. Or that he struggled until 1931’s The Criminal Code, a Howard Hawks movie, and of course Frankenstein.

Even before he was a star, he was once waiting for the bus in the pouring rain and was picked up and given a ride by an actor he didn’t know: Lon Chaney Sr., who told him “to find something different that will set you apart and is different from anything someone else has done or is willing to do and do it better.” At the time, Karloff was working backbreaking — literally — manual labor jobs to subsidize his family when acting wasn’t paying.

Karloff acted in eighty movies before the “overnight success” that came from being discoverd by James Whale and cast in Frankenstein. The part may have typecast him for life, but Karloff even had the opportunity to play Broadway in Arsenic and Old Lace and played non-monster roles for Val Lewton in The Body Snatcher, Bedlam and Isle of the Dead. Karloff said Lewton had the man “rescued him from the living dead and restored his soul.”

Beyond a litany of the roles that Karloff played so well — TV like Thriller, Bava’s Black Sabbath, Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers, Corman’s The Raven, the voice of the Grinch, the Jack Hill directed Mexican films Isle of the Snake People, The Incredible Invasion, Fear Chamber and House of Evil and many more — the film shows you who Karloff was as a person, including a moving appearance on This Is Your Life.

There’s so much more to discover — how Karloff felt about the Fu Manchu movies, the fact that he wasn’t even invited to the premiere of Frankenstein, the pain he was in at the end of his life yet how he could still turn it on and perform — in this delightful movie. A man that didn’t become a scar until 44, who overcame racism, a lisp and the tough world of Hollywood rejection was able to become not just a star, but a legend.

Trust me — this is more than recommended watching.

*McCloskey travelled internationally to conduct research for the documentary for over a period of 23 years!

You can watch this exclusively on Shudder and learn more at the official site.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this wild trip during Fantastic Fest on September 25, 2021. Now that it’s available, we hope that everyone gets a chance to get their mind blown by it!

Kato lives above the shop that he owns in Kyoto, Japan and spends whatever time he has left after working playing in a band and thinking of the Megumi, who works at the shop next door. Somehow, in the midst of the ordinary that is his life, Kato learns that the computer screens within his cafe and apartment allow him to receive messages from himself two minutes into the future. Calling this strange experience Time TV, Kato and his friends begin to explore what they can do with this power.

Years ago at San Francisco MoMA, there was an installation that captured moments of time as you walked through it and redisplayed the time that you appeared and interacted with the art, so that it seemed like you were appearing and disappearing at times that didn’t match up to your short term memory. It was incredibly disconcerting and probably what Kato feels like as he shouts messages to multiple versions of himself minutes apart from one another.

Somehow, this movie was made with an iPhone, some Apple TVs and the amazing directing, editing and cinematography of Junta Yamaguchi. This comes from Third Window Film, who also made One Cut of the Dead, and this continues their one cut style, as the film seems to be one continuous shot, which is astounding when you get to the scenes where mirrors extend the future messages into the near-infinite (or at least ten minutes).

This movie absolutely flies through its near 70 minutes but it never feels too fast, never gets boring and gives plenty of time for its characters to display emotion, heart and the joy of discovering something strange and new — pretty much just like any viewer who tracks this down.

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is now available on Digital HD and Cable VOD from Indiecan Entertainment, as well as on iTunes. You can learn more about this movie at the official site.

Dark family secrets. The kind that no one wants to discuss, the ones that change and color every holiday from times to make memories to occasions that make one dread every exchange, eggshells strewn amongst the gathering.

Gammy (Aloma Wright, Scrubs) and her daughter Charlene (Andrea Bennett) have one of those secrets to deal with. And this movie gives a unique look into — in the filmmaker’s words — “how the black experience sometimes deals with secrets and trauma.”

So how do you break a cycle? Is it through more violence? More deceit? Subterfuge?

And what does mixing the perfect glass of lemonade have to do with all of this?

Director and writer LaCora Stephens has done what every short should: tell enough of the story to leave you wanting more, hungry for what happens next, interested by where these characters go next.

You can learn more about this movie on the offical site.

The directorial debut of Kateryna Gornostai, this film finds an introverted high schooler named Masha, who is only happy when she’s hanging out with two other ousiders, Yana and Senia. Yet how will young love change everything? After all, Masha is in love with Sasha, Yana is in love with Senia and Senia is in love with Masha.

Even though this takes place a world away — much less a world in danger of Russian troops coming into its borders and possible igniting World War III, which is hinted at in this movie when Senia attends a class explaining how to load an AK-47 — the lives of these teens don’t seem all that different from our country. And it reminds me — I’m glad that I am not growing up today with the pressures of identity, social media and nonstop harassment. It all seems so confining and full of anxiety even in comparison to my teen years in the 80s.

Gornostai started in documentaries and this movie uses that style throughout. It’s a really earnest and nuanced take on the perils of growing up. But yeah, I’m totally good with never being a teenager ever again.

Stop-Zemlia is available on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play and Vimeo from Altered Innocence.

Directed and written by Isaac Rodriguez, Last Radio Call is a found footage movie all about the night that officer David Serling went missing inside an abandoned hospital. When she recovers his body cam footage, his wife tries to put together what happened to him on the night of June 30th

While David’s partner has amnesia, he’s never come back home and after a year is listed as deceased, with the ceremonial Last Radio Call sent out to him by dispatch. Rodriguez had made a previous short called Cop Cam that forms that footage we see if what happened that evening.

I’ve let it be known more than a few times how little I like found footage movies, but this has some decent camera work and build to its scares. It’s an intriguing concept and while I think it would have been better as a narrative film, if you’re a fan of movies like this, you’ll definitely find something to enjoy here.

Last Radio Call will be available across digital and VOD platforms on January 21 and will be available a week later on the Terror Films AVOD Channel on YouTube. You can learn more on their website.

Desperate to escape an overturned ambulance after what should be a normal prison transfer, Melina, some cops, other paramedics and two criminals find themselves being hunted by something in the woods — a costumed hunting party led by Caine and filled reasons to kill everyone — as the survivors have just a hundred feet to climb out of a ditch to escape.

For a movie that takes place in the small region of the crash, this film ramps up the intensity and shows that even though this is his first film, director and writer Christopher Donaldson creates a pretty decent horror movie. His skills as a storyboard are obvious in the way that he sets up a lot of his shots and keeps the action moving.

It’s not perfect, but the constantly flashing ambulance and police car lights, as well as the garish costumes and the incredible levels of gore, set this movie apart. I really liked the performance by Marika Sila as Melina, a woman who just wants to get home to her daughter.

Ditched is available from Dread on VOD January 18th and on blu ray February 15th.

Three friends — Michael, Sarah and Danny — reconnect in a secluded mountain town after going through a long quarantine. Yet while they take a hike, the friends stumble upon something dark and terrible in the deep woods.

At just a bit over an hour, Old Strangers doesn’t eat up much of your time in its tale of odd things in the wood and friends being changed by what they find. Perhaps it’s the times that we’re surviving, but the idea of time away with people we’ve known before, only to have that taken away, seems like the worst of all horror. This movie does a decent job of showing just how bad that would be.

I really dug the space shots of this, as it pushes the film toward the otherworldly.

You can check this out on streaming from Gravitas Ventures. For more information, visit the movie’s official Facebook page.