During the Cold War, Russians were experimenting with shark/human hybrids — go with the movie on that — but they become too powerful and a scientist named Sergey (played by Roman Chsherbakov in flashback and Ego Mikitas in the rest of the film) locks them up and flies them to the moon.

Forty years later, Commander Nicole Tress (Maxi Witrak) and her team of astronauts return the United States to the moon in time to crash land and find the human sharks have become an advanced society training to destroy the Earth. The American astronauts just want to get home and Sergey and his daughter Akula (Tania Fox) — a shark/human who looks human and a finny undersea monster — want to come with them. The sharks, led by Tzarina (Natasha Goubskaya) want to come to Earth and rule it.

Look, this is an Asylum movie — directed by Glen Campbell and Tammy Klein (Planet Dune) and written by Ryan Ebert and Anna Rasmussen (Tales of a Fifth Grade Robin Hood) — and has people with nose breathers — and no spacesuits — on the surface of the moon, shark-part weapons, ridiculous animation of the shark/humans and an ending that sets up a sequel while also probably making you upset there is one. It’s got an amazingly creative title and a decent idea, but doesn’t push itself to be any stranger or better after that, which is a shame.

You can watch this on Tubi.

If your child is sick, you’ll do anything you can to make them better. But what if a possession could heal the brain cancer that your son is suffering from? What would you do?

Directed by Kelton Jones and written by James Cullen Bressack, this is the story of former priest Ben (Jonathan Stoddard) and his wife Norma (Daniela Palavecino), whose son Alex is seeing visions of a cult while being struck by a rare form of brain cancer.

I’ve said it before, I will say it again, but if an elderly neighbor comes to you with a medical procedure that involves roots and rituals, move. It happens here, as one such non-traditional medical procedure leads to Alex dying on the operating table and coming back to life, yet different. Like devil inside him different.

Vernon Wells mentioned to me just how much he enjoyed being in this film. It’s a really intriguing concept that while not completely realized or perfect still has plenty of frightening visuals along the way.

Of the Devil is available on digital and VOD from Uncork’d Entertainment.

In case I never told you, I love Predator. I love the whole series. Well, the ones with Aliens are just OK and that last one should have never been released, but still, I love the Yautja and whatever they choose to do in movies.

But I was worried about this one.

How many series have we seen rebooted, revised, remixed and screwed up?

I mean, I could care less about ever seeing another Alien at this point.

But man, the idea of the Predator in the past seems, dare I say, an idea as good as the stuff in Dark Horse comics. Could a movie pull it off?

Spoiler warning: yes.

Directed by Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) and written by Patrick Aison, Prey takes place in 1719. Our heroine is Naru (Amber Midthunder, who is incredible in this), a Comanche who has been trained as a healer but dreams of joining the hunt and being alongside her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers).

As she tracks a deer alone — save for her dog Sarii (an American Dingo named Coco who was not a trained movie dog and was pretty wild on the set) — she sees what she can only see as a Thunderbird, the mythological creature that was believed to control the upper world while the underworld is the domain of the underwater panther or Great Horned Serpent; the flapping wings of the Thunderbird creates thunder and the lighting it unleashes is meant to destroy the beasts of the world below. In truth, it’s a Predator ship, out to hunt the tribe which is strong enough to fell lions.

Using a plan that Naru has come up with, Taabe kills the weakened lion and becomes War Chief, while Naru is injured and must deal with the indignity of him carrying her home. Yet Naru believes that something even more dangerous is out there, something that can skin an entire buffalo and easily defeats a bear. By the time her tribe sends a party to rescue her, they run directly into a primitive Predator (Dane DiLiegro, a former basketball player) that easily kills every single one of them, only sparing Naru as her foot is caught in a trap. She’s not a threat, so he thinks, yet even after she’s caught by trappers, she remains ready to find and kill the hunter who has killed so many of her fellow Cherokee.

This sets up a final battle that lives up to anything the franchise has given to its fans before. And yes, the line “If it bleeds, we can kill it” is in there.

There are so many touches that I loved; the glowing Predator blood being used as war paint, the  flintlock pistol with the name Raphael Adolini on it being the same gun Lieutenant Mike Harrigan was given at the end of Predator 2, Naru’s kinetic fighting style, the streamlined and brawny look of this Feral Predator…this movie just works. It flies, never seeming bloated or overly filled with exposition like so many modern action movies. Even the moment where the film’s title appears in the sky and gets out the way made me want to cheer.

So many people have issues with female heroines. Or the poor CGI. Or how this Predator looks different. You know, people can have all the opinions they want. This is the Predator that I’ve been waiting for, a movie that takes the intensity of the first film and builds on it, respects the franchise and yet gives it something fresh.

The real joy has been all of the actors from the first movie sending glad tidings to Midthunder and telling her how well she did. Mushy words from big macho action stars. Ah man, it makes me tear up a little…but that’s just a strategy to mask my body heat because I’m being hunted. If you see those three dots, get running!

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.

There is an incredible scene late in the film adaptation of Emily Danforth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post where Cameron (Chloe Grace Moretz) confronts Reverend Rick about the practices at God’s Promise, a conversion camp set in remote rural Montana. She demands to know what happened to one of her fellow residents, a young man named Mark who nearly died in an act of extreme self-harm. Rick confesses what happened but cannot account for why, cannot accept responsibility for what pushed Mark to harm himself so grievously. 

Cameron realizes out loud that neither Rick nor his therapist sister have any idea of what they’re actually doing at God’s Promise. They have no concept of the damage they are responsible for, the continued emotional and spiritual violence they are inflicting upon the young people in their care. They believe they are doing the right things for the right purpose. But pushed to explain Mark’s actions, Rick does not have an answer and instead breaks down. Cameron does not comfort her abuser.

In a lesser film, this scene would be played at top volume, the sensitive Rick turning cruel heel to Cameron’s quiet derision of his actions. Instead, the characters act like people, not archetypes. There is horror underneath this scene, both of the self-violence that Cameron and RIck just witnessed, and the larger sense that something is terribly wrong with the mission of God’s Purpose. 

There is more palpable, unsettling tension in this one scene than there is in the entirety of They/Them, a new direct to Peacock film about a slasher terrorizing Camp Whistler, a conversion camp run by Own (Kevin Bacon) and a small team of insidious closet-bigots, save the new nurse, Molly (Anna Chlumsky), who seems far too empathetic to be in on the darker methods employed by her boss and his staff. 

The campers, a varied mix of queer and trans young adults, exit the bus and are greeted by Owen who assures them that they are not here to force them to change, that there will be no Bible talk, and that he accepts them all for who they are. He insists that this is a welcoming place, no judgment, all respect and honesty. This is, of course, bullshit, as nonbinary camper, Jordan (Theo Germaine), is quick to suss out. 

Things escalate at the camp within 24 hours, from sociable if mildly interrogative group therapy on the first day to outing a transgender camper and placing her in the boys cabin to leaving handcuffed pairs of campers in the woods by themselves overnight… etc. Meanwhile, a masked stalker looms, having already dispensed of a motorist in the opening scene. By thirty minutes in, that kill remains the only one, unless you count the death-by-cringe scene of the impromptu musical performance of Pink’s “Fucking Perfect.”

The pattern of the kills is easy enough to recognize, so the real horror is the abuse of the campers by the Camp Whistler staff. The movie makes a wise swerve in the decision to fuel the zeal of Owen’s enterprise with biological essentialism instead of outright religious bigotry. However, the manipulation and torture (mostly emotional, later actually both sexual and physical) remains basically the same.

The young actors portraying the traumatized campers do their best to add dimension to their characters, some succeeding more than others. Germaine is especially good at steely eyed resilience with just the right notes of vulnerability mixed in. Quei Tann’s performance feels almost effortless, she is transcendent even when the script requires her character to fall back on cliches. The rest of the young cast is uniformly solid and the audience will root for them even as they’re rooting more for the movie to be over.

There are threads of a better movie here, but nothing – not the script, not the characters, not the suspense, not the gore – rises above the level of a Lifetime original movie. It might have been better if director John Logan and the team behind They/Them had leaned into the camp and went full on Peaches Christ in their queer slasher. 

Sadly, the film aims for some odd mix of suspense and earnestness, failing on both counts. The pay off is especially troubling and will likely disappoint and even anger the majority of this film’s queer audience. Failing as a competent slasher, failing as a queer empowerment horror, failing as a cheesy, campy mess, They/Them just… fails.

J. Arcane and Paul Erskine have already made Crucify and NYC Dreams together. Now, they’ve created The Razing, which is all about a group of friends — Corey (Jack Wooton), his wife Ellen (Laura Sampson Hemingway), Ray (Logan Paul Price) and Lincoln (Nicholas Tene) — who gather for Corey’s birthday but they’re continually sniping at each other and probably should have never ever gotten back together. The only normal human being among them is Clare (Mia Heavner). And outside, well, The Razing — an end of the world event — is happening and people are losing it and killing their families.

Meanwhile, as the world burns outside their door, the partygoers consume a series of pills that are red, white and blue when they’re not having flashbacks to their teen years or killing one another. Exactly what is real and what is a fantasy are left up to you.

If you like talkative speculative fiction that takes place in one claustrophobic location, The Razing is the movie you’re looking for. But if you ever had a bunch of friends you couldn’t stand, well, trust me, never get back together with them. As for this movie, it’s shooting for high art and it succeeds more often than not.

I’m excited to see what J. Arcane and Paul Erskine do next.

The Razing is now available from Gravitas Ventures.

What if we took zombies, Michael Jai White, Halo suits, greenscreen, Starship Troopers, Resident Evil, more zombies, a title that’s been used before, Iron Man visor graphics and Jeff Fahey and threw them all into a blender? Well, it would taste pretty good, to be honest. I loved Dead Zone because it’s the exact kind of movie I’d have rented as a 5 for $5 for 5 nights mom and pop video store pick, along with probably I Come In Peace, The Hidden, Class of 1999 and The Eliminators.

Danner (Tarkan Dospi), Ton (Antuone Torber), Sinclair (J. Michael Weiss) and Boss (Michael Jai White) are the soldiers who must enter the Dead Zone, a place where humans become the undead, to find what could be the cure. And while Boss is his name, he answers to Master Chief Callahan (Jeff Fahey). They’re given their new suits and joined by their inventor, Ajax (Chad Michael Collins).

The suits serve the purpose of both looking cool and allowing stuntmen or other actors to do some of the action as we see the faces of the soldiers all lit up inside their helmets. It’s fine, though, because this movie is packed with action and even has a giant rubbery monster man, which I appreciate.

There’s just one thing missing: a kick-butt female team member. Good news. Goodman (Whitney Nielsen) signs up once they get to her lab.

Somehow better than G.I. Joe while using similar cyber suits, you can’t help but love any movie in which Michael Jai White says, “Side effects may include fuck you.”

Directed by Hank Braxtan (Snake Outta Compton, Jurassic Hunt) from a script by international distribution masterminds Jeffrey Giles and Michael Lurie from a story by Michael Klug, I would watch as many sequels as they feel like making for this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Imagine an unholy union between Night of the Creeps and Carrie and you’re getting close to Baby Fever, a short that begins with a young couple making love in a lab amongst the pickled punks and not getting any less gross from that point; a girl gets a full face of vomited blood before the opening title card.

Director and co-writer (with Alex Hartwig) Hannah May Cumming does more with 25 minutes than most horror movies this year will do with 90. This is a cotton candy-hued freakout and I savored every single frame, a film that at once has the drama of teen pregnancy mixed with what we’re really here for, a prom dancefloor filled with killer slugs.

Helena Berens (I Need You Dead!) plays Donna Hartman, a girl who just wants to go all the way with her dumb jock boyfriend. Except that nature — well, perhaps the supernatural — wants to destroy any chance she has of making high school a normal experience. I’ve also never seen anything like the biology class scene in this movie. It’s legitimately one of the grossest and most amazing things I’ve witnessed in years of watching horror.

I want this to be a full movie and I want it on a double feature with Prom Night 2.

I watched this at the North Bend Film Festival, which you can learn more about on their official site. You can also learn more about Baby Fever on its official webpage.