I’ve seen enough shark movies to never ever want to be on the open waters. So when a new one comes out, much less one with Trace Adkins and Jeff Fahey, I feel like I am bound by law to watch it.

After getting dumped before the wedding. Jessie (Nicky Whelan) takes her friends Will (Shane West), Sunny (Porscha Coleman) and Brianna (Kelly Lynn Reiter) on the honeymoon she’s already paid for. So where does Trace Adkins come in? Well, he’s Harlan, a man no one will listen to, as he tries convincing the law and Professor Hoffman (Fahey) that a great white killed his daughter. So he does what you or I would do: he grabs a shotgun and takes off in his boat to shoot a shark in the face.

Spoiler warning: he does it.

Director and writer Justin Lee also made Big Legend, Final Kill, Hellblazer and his next movie will be The Most Dangerous Game, which has Casper Van Dien as Baron Von Wolf and man, that’s enough for me. I’ll watch it just for that.

As for Maneater, it has a CGI shark but some decent practical gore. And you know, Trace Adkins grim faced and unloading a bunch of shells into a big fish and while he sang “You’re Gonna Miss This” he doesn’t. I mean, it’s an astounding scene and I was sure there’d be another shark or it would rise back up but nope. That shark stands no chance at all.

I mean, you can still watch it.

Maybe you should watch it, just for that.

Maneater is available on digital and VOD from Saban Films.

Alex (Katreeva Phillips) is a journalist who returns home after the death of her estranged father Aurthur (John Francis McCullagh) and finds a cassette tape detailing the mysterious lights that he saw over the skies of West Texas and grew obsessed by. Her sister refuses to see her and had the funeral without her and she has no way to get closure so she decides to connect with her father by listening to the tape and following the path he went down.

As I’ve said before and will again about horror movies, never go back home. Never settle your family’s affairs. Leave the past alone. That said, without this, we’d have no movie, so let’s get into it.

Director and writer Timothy Stevens lays out this yarn in which Alex listens to the fifty-year-old tape of her father speaking to a man named Mario (Billy Blair) who sounds lucid yet explains how the ghost lights cause people to disappear and the men in black who are hunting him. As she gets closer to the true, she notices her very own man in black (Timothy Stevens) tailing her and visions of her father telling her to turn back.

It’s an interesting take on a UFO movie, one that follows the stages of grief more than Majestic 12.

The Ghost Lights is now available on digital and will be on the Terror Films YouTube channel on September 2 and Kings of Horror on September 9.

No, this has nothing to do with 1979’s The Day After Halloween.

Every year, lifelong friends Addison (Danny Schluck, who wrote this) and Hayes (Brandon DeLany) have a Halloween party at the drive-in that Addison operates and then an after-party. It’s always a lot of fun. So how did this year’s party end with the corpse of Addison’s ex (Aimee Fogelman) in the bathtub? Seeing as how the boys were both blackout drunk, they better find out and find out fast.

This movie would be better if it was presented in a linear structure, as it bounces around so much that it’s difficult to follow. But even if that still happened, the fact that every female character doesn’t have a name and is instead named after their role in the film kind of makes me not all that into this. Throw in some humor that is just in your face instead of provocative — a character is painting a sign with an unfinished racist slur at one point — and you have a film with unlikeable leads, unlikeable side characters and a frankly unlikeable plot.

Hey — at least some of this was filmed at the Mahoning Drive-In. And I liked some of the very in-your-face dialogue that Fogelman says, but so much of this feels like a drag. This is being sold as “The Hangover meets horror!” but perhaps they meant that it has all the pain of an actual hangover, not the movie that is being referenced.

The Day After Halloween is available on VOD and digital platforms from Gravitas Ventures and Kamikaze Dogfight.

Written and directed by Ben Rood, this is the story of Ryan (Shawn Knox) and Chad (Andy J. Carlson), two movers who want to go to their ten-year high school reunion but have to get the job of moving Meredith (Annalese Poorman) and her three kids out of the way but it’s literally one of those jobs that never seems to end. Even when reinforcements are called in, the job seemingly gets rougher, and the unresolved issues between our heroes seem to stand in the way of them getting done, grabbing a shower and making it to the reunion in time to win back the girls that got away all those years ago.

Movers Ultimate was shot in Cincinnati, but Sé Marie, who plays Meredith’s daughter Susan, is from Jefferson Hills, which is literally miles away from my South Hills of Pittsburgh home. She’s really funny in the film, as is nearly the entire cast. This seemed like a movie that was a blast to make and has the feel of late 90s and early 00s comedies. It’s a welcome find!

25 years ago, Samaritan and Nemesis — twin superhuman brothers whose parents died in a fire — fought to the death in Granite City.

Today, graffiti of both of their logos can be seen all over, but if anything, the city has gotten worse. A gang leader named Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk) has found the weapon and mask of Nemesis and is using his image to gather the downtrodden in a play for power which, ultimately, will benefit him.

Meanwhile, Sam Cleary (Javon Walton) is growing up in the middle of all this, working for Cyrus’ gang in an attempt to keep his mother from being evicted, all while obsessing over the fact that Samaritan is still alive and just waiting to come back to save everyone.

He’s seen Samaritan in numerous older male role models, but when he sees garbageman neighbor Joe Smith (Sylvester Stallone), he knows he’s found his hero. That becomes even more true when Joe saves him from the gang attacking him. He punches one member so hard that he flies through the air and when they retaliate by hitting him with a car, he survives.

Written by Bragi F. Schut — it was originally a spec script, sold as a movie script and adapted as a graphic novel while waiting to be filmed — and directed by Julius Avery (Overlord), this is the kind of movie that superhero fans will adore and those bored by the genre will immensely dislike. I fall more in the first column, so I’ll say that I had a great time with it. I also — as this site has proved time and again — that an intense fascination with the films of Stallone. He imbues the role with the right level of weariness and finally anger, as this film has quite the twist near the end — and I’m not just talking about the fact that his character pours apple juice on his cereal instead of milk.

For everyone who says this is Stallone’s first comic book role, well…he was Judge Dredd, Starhawk in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 and King Shark in The Suicide Squad.

A killer is trying to compose a symphony made up of the screams of his victims. At the very same time, Artemis ( Cassandra Scerbo) is planning a party at her parents’ vacant lake house, which is right next door to the RV that a killing machine named Caleb (Michael X. Sommers) is using. Yes, it’s a new RV slasher — you can add it to the list of movies like Hitcher In the Dark, The Toybox, The Hills Have Eyes, The Hills Have Eyes Part II, Race With the Devil, Crowsnest, Death Valley and Motor Home Massacre.

Directed by Ben Meyerson (Deadly Girls Night Out), Requiem for a Scream was produced by Cartel Pictures (Shudder’s Creepshow and Syfy’s upcoming Day of the Dead series) so it looks really great. In fact, there’s a scene in the woods — and a mask — that reminds me of Sergio Martino’s Torso.

Her friends Shira (Georgia Leva), Delan (Zachary Roozen, Romeo and Juliet Killers), Theo (Brandon Santana), Ellen (Erica Shaffer), Alex (India McGee) all come out to visit — and do coke and watch Night of the Living Dead on an iPhone — while Caleb haunts the halls with a hammer.

Writers Jordan Robinson and Andre Puca have put together a slasher that has some decent blood and guys, as well as a nailgun getting used in a particularly nasty way. I’m all for more slashers getting made particularly ones that take it somewhat seriously and the throat slash murder of Shira really surprised me.

It’s not The Prowler (or any one of the slashers of 1981, perhaps the last year where they were all something wonderful) but it’s definitely a lot of fun. That’s high praise for a 2022 stalk and slash.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Starring and based on the life of Erica Nix, Austin queer artist and fitness guru (and currently a surprising and unlikely Austin mayoral candidate), the filmmakers say that this movie “is a tribute to the disappearing bohemian demimonde of Austin itself; a psychedelic freak-out fantasia of adventure and discovery inspired by Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain, Pee Wee Herman, and Linklater’s Waking Life.”

After a divorce and in the middle of a pandemic, Erica is caught in the changing tides of Austin’s value system, as the city that proclaims that it will keep things weird has priced bohemian artists like herself out of being able to live there. To come to terms with this reality, she undergoes a series of hallucinations which lead her to seek the advice of her inner child, God, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mother Nature and Satan.

the debut feature film from the producing team THIS IS NOT A CULT, which includes writers and producers Erica Nix, Jessica Gardner, Jeremy von Stilb and Sawyer Stoltz. The film also has appearances by Austin’s most acclaimed underground performers, artists and musicians, including Christeene (Paul Soileau), p1nkstar (Girls Like Us), Caleb De Casper, Andie Flores (George Lopez’s Lopez Vs. Lopez), Nikki DaVaughn, Lynn Metcalf and many more.

Will you like it? That depends on your tolerance for weirdness and performance art. As for me, I always enjoy some surreal goofiness, so I had fun with it. I hope that you watch it with an open mind and feel the same way.

Erica’s First Holy Shit! debuts tomorrow at PRISM 35: aGLIFF’s 35th Annual LGBTQ+ Film Festival in Austin.