Tubi is all over this sequel to their movies thing, now with this second installment of The Stepmother. Directed by Chris Stokes (House Party 4, You Got Served) and co-written with Marques Houston, this movie again finds the stepmother  (Erica Menda, Love & Hip Hop New York) moving on to enter and murder her next family. Now she’s both Elizabeth Carter and Diana Valdez and if you think she died at the end of the last movie, well…

Now she has the family of Kevin Smith (Daniel Johnson) in her claws, but when his ex-wife Judi (Janet Smith) and best friend and former cop Chris Harris (Wesley Jonathan) get suspicious, Kevin starts to worry if this is the right woman to raise his son Dustin (LaVell Thompson Jr.). All the same, our stepmother is starting to lose it even more, seeing Frank from the last movie everywhere she goes.

They set up a sequel in this — oh man, can I avoid ever sequels or Tubi? — and the cops are as effective as the ones in any giallo. So of course, I watched this and yelled at the screen the entire time.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Remember Girls Getaway Gone Wrong? Well, Parker (Brittany S. Hall), Bailey (Tanisha Long) and Simone (Crystal-Lee Naomi) are back, this time at New York Fashion Week. When Parker loses her lead model for her show, Simone volunteers to step in and Bailey offers to be her accountant. And oh yeah, there’s an assistant named Johnny (Kalonjee Gallimore) but no matter what, everyone always gets in trouble. Parker gets in a fight with another designer Dalia (Gabrielle McClinton) who claims to be working for a famous designer named Cairo (Brenda Braxton), but her designs look a lot like Parker’s, so tea — as the kids say — gets spilled and then Dalia goes missing and Parker is the main suspect.

Things get worse, as Cairo is found dead and Parker’s boyfriend Steven (Marcus Anderson Jr.) gets arrested. Still, Parker signs a contract with fashion CEO Andre Sessex (Kenneth Israel) but then Dalia reappears to warn her of danger right before her show.

That’s not the end of this story but do you really want me to give it away for you? If you liked the first one, well…this is a very Lifetime caper movie for you to enjoy for free. I won’t judge.

You can watch this on Tubi.

It might be a surprise to some of you that Tubi has a remake of Terror Train on their streaming service. Well, double that because they’re already released the sequel just a few months after their 2022 remake.

Director Philippe Gagnon and writers Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin have returned for what happens one year after the first film, as Alana (Robyn Alomar) and the Magician (Tim Rozon), as well as several other survivors have been talked into boarding the Terror Train one more time on New Year’s Eve and riding it into another dark night. Certainly the new WiFi and improved security will stop another killer from wiping everyone out again, right?

We wouldn’t have a movie if things went right.

Alana has struggled with PTSD over the past year, which has nearly derailed her medical school studies, yet her new best friend Claudia (Nia Roam) has helped her to piece things back together. It’s her idea to kill off the old year and start new on the same train which has damaged her friend so much, yet she may not have Alana’s best interests in mind. Speaking of her mind, Alana keeps seeing visions of her lost friend Mitchy (Emma Elle Paterson) nearly everywhere she goes, which causes major issues when the murder starts all over again, as she can’t be certain of her reality any longer. The same trauma impacts the Magician, who barely survived being stabbed multiple times and has found that he can barely perform and is only on the train at the insistence of Prez (Dakota Jamal Wellman), another survivor piecing his life back together and using this night to get past the, well, past.

There’s also a whole cadre of murder-obsessed mean girl social media influencers, like Pet (Romy Weltman), Morbid Merry (Tori Barban) and Lucy (Lisa Truong) who get off on being on the actual true crime train. The film hits the right notes way more often than the first film, as the exploration of returning back to the train feels like exploitation but it leans in and makes the more troubled — and yet saner — characters question why they’re really here while the clout chasers have no idea that they’re in danger. Hopefully new conductor Sadie (Nadine Bhabha) can erase the stigma of Carnie — the SPOILER WARNING — conductor killer of the first film in this remake cycle.

This has just as many twists as the remake but somehow, I liked this even more. Maybe it’s because the lizard mask is back instead of just keeping the killer as a clown. Maybe it’s just that I love surprises and seeing this show up was one of those. Or perhaps I just love slashers, with a Letterboxd list of nearly 750 of them to show for it. Either way — I think you’ll find something to like here. I could do without the CGI blood, but here’s hoping for practical gore in the inevitable third remake sequel.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Clay Kaytis started as an animator at Disney — he worked on Pocahontas, Hercules, Tangled and more — before directing The Angry Birds Movie and The Christmas Chronicles. He co-wrote this with Nick Schenk, who has worked with Clint Eastwood on movies such as Gran Torino, The Mule and Cry Macho. The story comes from Schenk and Peter Billingsley, who of course played Ralphie in the original A Christmas Story.

For those of you worried that this movie is a sequel to that film with only a few of the original actors, this is the eighth — ninth if you count the live TV movie — film of Jean Shepherd’s Parker family. This is the first without his voice or based on his writing. Melinda Dillon, who played the mother, has since retired from acting and Darren McGavin sady died in 2006.  Returning characters include Randy (Ian Petrella), Flick (Scott Schwartz), Schwartz (R. D. Robb), Scut Farkus (R.D. Robb) and Grover Dill (Yano Anaya).

Instead of Cleveland, this was shot in Hungary and Bulgaria.

33 years after A Christmas Story, Ralphie Parker (Billingsley) has moved to Chicago, married Sandy (Erinn Hayes) and has two children, Mark (River Drosche) and Julie (Julianna Layne). He’s taken a year away from work to try and sell his science fiction novel but time is almost up. Yet it’s Christmas and he’s waiting for his mother (Julie Haggerty) and The Old Man to show up, but then he gets the news that his father has died.

This was a hard movie to watch, as my father passed away a few days before it came out and I feel like I’ve lived the hardest moment of this: Ralphie must find a way to write his father’s obituary and explain just how special he was.

Heading back to Indiana, Ralphie tries to give his kids — and his grieving mother — the Christmas that he remembers. The town hasn’t changed so much — at first — with the Bumpkis family and bullies still next door while Flick owns the neighborhood bar and Schwartz is the one running up a tab. Higbee’s is still open and there’s still a line to tell Santa what you want.

There are still thinks that have changed — what has happened with Scut Farkus is inspirational — and the realitization that he has now become the Old Man to his children is sobering. I love that the story that Ralphie tells his family leads directly into the original movie.

There are also some nice nods to Shepherd, with the casseroles in the Parker refrigerator having the names of haracters mentioned in the original film, as well as Shepherd’s other stories. There’s also the sign in Flick’s Bar that says, “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash” which is the name of Shepherd’s book that the stories “Duel in the Snow,” “The Counterfeit Secret Circle Member Gets the Message,” “My Old Man and the Lascivious Special Award That Heralded the Birth of Pop Art” and “Grover Dill and the Tasmanian Devil” were in, the four short stories that were adapted and turned into A Christmas Story.

I was cautious of this movie and while I realize there’s no real need for it, I didn’t regret the time I spent with it. So much of Shepherd’s work is looking back at the past and seeing the good that you didn’t see at the time and trying to bring that into your present. That’s a hard thing to do with loss is so new and raw and real. There are times that I watched this through tears, remembering how many times I watched the first A Christmas Story with my father who always referred to this movie as simple Ralphie. I hope that what I wrote about him was as thoughtful as the obituary in this.

Tommy Wirkola made Dead Snow and The Trip and somehow, he’s made a Christmas movie — written by Patrick Casey and Josh Miller — that features David Harbour as an exhausted Santa Claus trapped in a home invasion led by John Leguizamo. Just from the trailer, in which Santa destroys a room full of soldiers, you could tell that this would be fun.

It might be a little long, but it’s also inventive, with Harbour totally owning this movie from start to finish. His Santa was once a Viking warrior named Nikamund the Red that found himself part of Christmas magic that he admits that he really doesn’t understand. As the soldiers take over the home of the rich Lightstone family — Beverly D’Angelo is great in this as the matriarch of this spoiled brood — only seven year old Trudy (Leah Brady) is able to reach Santa’s heart and remind him of the magic of the holiday.

That said, this is filled with way over the top violence — a nail in the chin effect actually made me recoil which is a definite achievement — as well as a Home Alone moment where the damage that Trudy delivers to the henchmen is way more horrifying than what Kevin McCallister did to the Wet Bandits.

It ends up pretty heartwarming which is way more than I expected. Who knew the best holiday movie of this year would be the bloodiest?

One year after Amityville Scarecrow, Tina (Amanda Jade-Tyler) and Mary (Kate Sandison) are about to reopen the camp from the first movie, but there could be some evil still lurking about. In England. Not in New York. Yes, Amityville gets like that.

Directed by Craig McLearie (The Killing Tree) and written by Adam Cowie, the beginning of this movie is well shot and made me think that I was actually going to get a quality Amityville movie. Then, the talking begins and never seems to end and the Amityville Scarecrow never really does anything.

This movie is about trailer parks and the legal dealings of trailer parks and you know, I kind of want my Amityville movies to not be about human affairs but whatever. It’s better than the first one, but that’s like being constipated for a few days and then having non-stop diarrhea. They’re both bad and you don’t want go through them, but at least it’s some level of change.

I mean, I’m not going to stop pooping. And I’m not going to stop watching Amityville movies.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Doktor Death comes from Retro Puppet Master and is the second Puppet Master spin-off after Blade the Iron Cross. It’s strange that for some reason, this got to Tubi before I heard anything about it. Even weirder is that it’s only an hour but a taunt and tense slasher with good direction by Dave Parker (The Dead Hate the Living!, The Hills Run Red).

This story takes place in the Shady Oaks Senior Living retirement home where a new nurse named April (Jenny Boswell) has shown up at the same time as a resident dies. As the staff look through his things, they find a footlocker with Doktor Death inside it and before you can say Andre Toulon, that little guy is out and out killing everything in his path. Also, if you’re a fan of AEW, The Bunny and The Blade are also in the cast briefly.

Parker is trying to make something great in a few days and this has the gore to back that up, as well as a surprise ending that makes me hope that this isn’t the end of this story. It’s shot in Charles Bands’ Ohio house but it doesn’t really need much to look like a nursing home. I was excited to see Melissa Moore show up as a psychic painter and man, how about that image of Doktor Death inside a body, using tendons to make someone walk around?

More hour long better quality Pupper Master movies! This was a blast.

You can watch this on Tubi.

You know, I made it through every Hellraiser — yes, even Hellraiser: Judgment and Hellraiser: Revelations — and the stupid social media uproar that Pinhead would be a woman, plus the second social media fervor that this movie was going to make Hellraiser too gay, which is absolutely the most hilarious argument of all time.

Too bad that the movie that resulted — directed by David Bruckner (Southbound, The Ritual) from a script by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski (The Night House) from a screen story they co-wrote with David S. Goyer — can’t live up to all that tweet and retweet noise.

Roland Voight (Goran Višnjić) is a hedonistic millionaire who serves Leviathan and brings the puzzle box — the Lament Configuration — into the lives of people who pay as it cuts them and the Cenobites arrives to flay their souls.

Riley McKendry (Odessa A’zion), a recovering addict who solves one of those boxes and learns that they mark their victims as a sacrifice. She learns that when her brother Matt (Brandon Flynn) gets taken away when he is sliced open. Soon, she and her boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) and Colin’s lover Matt (Adam Faison) are trying to escape Voight’s mansion with their lives.

For all the noise about Jamie Clayton playing Pinhead — I mean The Priest, as it says in the credits — it really doesn’t change the story or the idea. It’s just a gender swap and people should get over these things. What I want is a movie that lives up to the first two films and again, again, again and again I never get what I desire. Some critics say it’s better than the last films and that’s like saying it’s the best of your breakups.

Maybe I expect too much and get too excited. Maybe I watched too many Eastern Europe-shot direct-to-video sequels (this was shot in Serbia). Maybe I’m not getting the right versions of all these reboots and reimaginings that everyone else seems to love.

But when someone says, “We have such sights to show you,” they should show me.

I really love Small Town Monsters‘ work. They combine documentary and interview footage with narrative story elements to bring creatures from folklore and legend—like the Jersey Devil—to life.

“It’s one of those classic, gothic, American tales that we’ve wanted to tackle for years but just couldn’t find the right way to do it…until now,” says Small Town Monsters founder Seth Breedlove.

There are many stories told about where the Jersey Devil comes from. Some say that it was the thirteenth child of Mother Leeds, a woman who had already had twelve babies and was cursing her troubled pregnancy. While born as a normal infant, the child grew into a demonic being with hooves, a goat’s heagoat’s wings and a forked tail. Some say she was a witch and the father the devil. Others claim this legend was spread after a battle between Benjamin Franklin, who published Poor Richard’s Richard’s rival almanac, Daniel Leeds. Franklin called the Leeds family “monsters,” and what added even more hellfire to the story was that Leads, a Quaker, was ostracized by his religion for publishing pagan symbols in his almanacs and, after being kicked out of the church, went all in on esoteric astrological Christianity and occultism.

After being formally chastised as blasphemous and heretical by the Philadelphia Quaker Meeting, Leeds converted to Anglicanism and published anti-Quaker tracts criticizing their theology and throwing in his lot with the British royal governor of New Jersey, Lord Cornbury.

Leeds’ sonLeeds inherited the almanac business, and Franklin predicted his death as a joke and referred to him as a ghost in the following years. Given the symbolism and the fact that the ghost story was taken as truth, the Jersey Devil was the next logical step. The Pine Barrens, where it supposedly lives, are isolated and undeveloped, so they lend themselves to mysterious theories.

Bloodlines: The Jersey Devil is great. It combines horrific black-and-white footage with historical moments that bring the story—perhaps the truth—to life. It’s a high-quality film right up there with Small Town Monsters’ past work.

You can learn more on the official site.