Consider the law of diminishing returns: X is the best slasher that I’ve seen all year, last year, the year before and probably for the rest of this year.

It may also be the law of the desert island in that it may be the only slasher in years that approaches the blood-soaked heaven of 1978-1981, yet were it released then, would I feel the same way?

And after seeing tweet after tweet about how debauched and filthy and sexed-up this movie was, did we see the same film? Or am I really the “affable pervert” that Grindhouse Releasing said I was and I’ve become too desensitized? Or, probably more true, has this generation become more puritanical and repressed than we were?

Probably most importantly, I decided to just shut up and enjoy the movie.

What I came away with was a film that actually gave me that uncomfortable and awesome feeling of “I wonder what’s next” and a worry for each of its characters.

Back in 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make a dirty film in rural Texas, learning nothing from another Texas-shot slasher. And when their elderly hosts discover what’s happening, the cast find themselves in a way different movie.

Reading that description, I felt sure that I would dislike this movie, but then again, this was Ti West, who somehow took a very basic story in The House of the Devil and made something great and lasting.

I’ve been burned by an A24 trailer before. Come on, we all have. But again, I decided to shut up and watch the movie.

And I’m glad that I did.

Maxine Minx (Mia Goth, Nymphomaniac) dreams of being an adult film star and people knowing her name. This brings her to deepest, darkest New Zealand, err Texas, along with her producer/boyfriend/suitcase pimp Wayne (Martin Henderson), director RJ (Owen Campbell), his assistant/girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega, Scream) and two co-stars, Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow, the Perfect Pitch movies) and Jackson Hole (Kid Cudi!). As they go deeper into the rural world, we’re reminded — of course — of that aforementioned Texas film, what with the van that propels them and the farmhouse they end up in.

RJ has a goal. Just because it’s porn doesn’t mean that it can’t be art, he says, almost like a non-burnt out Gary Graver. Wayne knows something more important: porno chic died because middle America is stil too afraid to go to a porno theater and still blushes when they buy a skin mag. But if they can have that movie in the safety of their home? He’s ahead of the video era, Caballero and VCA before they’d even realized what was next. The themes of this movie are desire and age battling hand in hand and the fact that the new type of entertainment they’re making is based on the oldest joke there is — The Farmer’s Daughters — points to the intelligence of this endeavor.

Meanwhile, there’s Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (also Mia Goth, we’ll get to that shortly), the elderly couple who owns the land. Howard barks at everyone while Pearly stays in the shadows, except for the moment where she invites Maxine in for lemonade, a remembrance of youth, some jealousy and a rebuffed sexual December to May advance.

That afternoon, Pearl watches Maxine and Jackson at work and begs Howard to make love to her one more time, but while the spirit and the emotional heart are willing, the flesh and the physical heart are weak.

That night, Lorraine surprises everyone by asking if she can be in the film. RJ tries to use art as the reason why the script can’t be changed; she defeats his argument and he watches her make love through the eye of his camera. That night, he leaves everyone behind but runs into Pearl and that’s where — nearly an hour into the film — “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays and we’re reminded of exactly what kind of movie we’re in for.

The end of the film surprised me. I should have seen it coming, but the repeated dialogue, the divine intervention and Greek chorus of televangelists all came together in a way that I had no idea was going to occur. Seriously, that preacher gives Estus Pirkle a run for his money.

I also had no idea that Goth spent ten hours a day in makeup for the dual role, which she’ll take up again in Pearl, a prequel that was shot at the same time as this movie.

Even the soundtrack works, written by Tyler Bates and Chelsea Wolfe, who covers Fred Fisher’s “Oui, Oui, Marie.” What doesn’t, however, is the moment where Snow and Kudi sing “Landslide,” as we’ve already established the closeness of the actors and this seems only in the movie to have them remind us they also do music.

As bad as 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre is, this is good. It feels closer to Eaten Alive, another Hooper film, what with the alligator scene — I winced when someone claimed this movie had a scene that echoed Alligator — and I love how the final girl is the least chaste character in the movie, continually doing drugs and putting herself first.

Here’s to more horror being committed to only being inspired by the past instead of wallowing within it, pushing itself to new heights. I was worried if West would ever come close to House again; my fears were unnecessary.

Yes, I watch junk. But I watched this for professional reasons.

That’s because a few years ago, when I had my own marketing agency — don’t ask — I did the pitch materials for a movie called Unsinkable, which started filming in 2017 in The Settler’s Cabin Wave Pool. I remember sitting in a pitch room surrounded by drowned FX bodies and now, post-COVID, the movie is finally shooting some other scenes. I mean, Karen Allen is in it. And what I did on it — simply a test poster and pitch copy — is long forgotten.

But I didn’t know it even lived. In fact, the only time I heard it discussed in the past five years was from gossip from production assistants who had an axe to grind. I mean, I got paid, so even though I wondered, “Who wants to see a movie about the Titanic filmed in a wave pool and set in a courtroom?” I also cashed that check, which rarely if ever happened on any film work I did.

When I saw Titanic 666 was on Tubi — it’s an exclusive — I thought, “I bet that’s where the footage is.”

Also, I was invited to come and be in said footage. I’m not getting in a wave pool in the summer, much less at 2:10 AM in the dead of Western Pennsylvania winter.

So anyways, Titanic 666.

Nick Lyon’s directorial credits include Rent-An-Elf and Stormageddon, so he understands that what sells is holiday movies and disasters. Zombies, too. He’s made a few of those. And he’s joined by writer Jacob Cooney, who has dipped into that other cable and streaming well — sharks, like 5 Headed Shark Attack — and Jason White, who has a movie in production called Demon Pride which is not about an LGBTQ possession but a school mascot. I was frightened for a second, especially with his nickname being Whitey.

Yes, this is a film by The Asylum.

No, I don’t know why it’s not on SyFy,.

I also don’t know why the Titanic 3 would go directly over the wreck of the original, but would we have a movie otherwise? Also, are you not surprised that they used the docked — and haunted — Queen Mary for this? More than 130 movies have been shot on this vessel, including 2010’s Titanic II — oh man, am I watching a sequel, yes I am, The Asylum did that one too — and Goliath Awaits and “The Werewolf” episode of Kolchak the Night Stalker.

Keesha Sharp (TV’s Lethal Weapon) is Captain Celeste Rhoades and she must guide the crew and guests of the Titanic 3 through its maiden voyage, which is going well until an unnamed stowaway and descendent of Captain Edward Smith (Lydia Hearst, great-granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst and Abigail Folger in another movie that I felt compelled to endure, The Haunting of Sharon Tate) takes some of the artifacts that Professor Hal Cochran (Jamie Bamber, Apollo from the BSG reboot), slices her wrists and brings back the victims of the original disaster as vengeful ghosts.

For a movie where social media influencers battle ghosts on a new Titanic — I mean, the movie is named Titanic 666, let’s go for it — this movie doesn’t ever seize on the pure ridiculousness of the situation. It’s a great idea sunk by the kind of effects that you could do on your phone when it should have a zombie orchestra rearranging their deck changes for the entire running time. That’s just one of the better ideas I have for this, but the title is already used, all hope has been abandoned like bodies drifting into the ocean. I demand more from streaming Satanic-christened movies!

You can watch this on Tubi.

Reign of Chaos sounds like a pretty metal title and when you learn that three women descended from the goddess Nike are battling a dark lord named Chaos (Mark Sears) and all of humanity — who are now rabid — well, that sounds just about right.

Producer Scott Jeffrey (Jurassic Island, Exorcist Vengeance), director Rebecca Matthews (Hatched) and writer Tom Jolliffe (Witches of Amityville Academy) have been releasing seemingly a streaming movie every month, but by and large I’ve enjoyed their films.

This one, well…

Rhodi (Peter Cosgrove, The Curse of Halloween Jack, Winterskin) must bring together Lindsay (Georgia Wood, The Bad Nun), Nicole (Rebecca Finch, Shadowland) and Alina (Rita Di Tuccio, The Mummy Reborn) to be a fighting force against the forces of the dead who are known as the Joiners. Except, you know, there are still gyms open in the end times. Even Planet Fitness shut down for the pandemic.

There are also stores that sell Matrix-style tight-fitting body suits to potential world-saving superheroines. Capitalism must never die.

I’ve seen lots of comments in reviews about the budget of this, but what do you expect? There’s an audience for these low spend direct to streaming films and more often than not, it’s me. If it’s you, you already know what to expect.

Just because the world is ending doesn’t mean we can’t have a training montage.

Reign of Chaos is now available from Left Films.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We shared a preview last year for this movie. Check it out.

A vehicle crash in the Pine Barrens led to a Kelsey’s (Madison Ekstrand) disappearance and locals blamed it on the infamous Jersey Devil. Then, on the anniversary of the crash, Sarah Franklin (Sasha Anne), the cousin of the missing girl, and Alex (Evan Adams), Kelsey’s boyfriend, head off to the crash site to discover what really happened.

Hey — there’s Joe Estevez as the old man warning those teenagers not to ask too many questions. You know, if the last time I was in a town I watched someone get their arm torn off and a monster drag my friend into the woods, I probably wouldn’t go back.

Dale Fabrigar also directed the genre-hopping D-Railed, which was a pretty good time. Written by executive producer Suzanne DeLaurentiis, Tricia Aurand (Middleton Christmas) and Sandy Lo, this film feels like it’s searching for what it wants to be. It has a great creature, an interesting set-up and then struggles to put it all together. It’s not the worst film you’ll find on streaming, but it may be a bit frustrating because it gets so very close to being a good movie.

You can watch this movie on DVD and on digital from Uncork’d Entertainment. To learn more, visit their website or Facebook page.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Director Ben Jagger’s Room 203 finds university journalism student Kim (Francesca Xuereb) moving — very much against her parents’ wishes — into an apartment with her troubled, aspiring actress friend Izzy (Victoria Vinyarska). The young ladies obviously didn’t research their new place of residence well, as it has a very violent history behind it, their titular room in particular. A decidedly chilling stained glass window should have made them question their choice of abode, as well, not to mention that the only other occupant in the building is their suspicious-acting landlord Ronan (Scott Gremillion) and that there is a hole in the wall containing a necklace, both of which, as viewers learn during the film’s cold open, mean big trouble for the two friends and for Kim’s new romantic interest from school, Ian (Eric Wiegand).

Room 203 doesn’t offer much new in the haunted house movie department, offering a side of classic J-horror spice (the screenplay by Jagger, Nanami Kamon, and John Poloquin is based on a novel by Japanese writer Kamon) that also comes off at times as a bit creaky. Jagger invests the film with a brooding, eerie atmosphere, though, serving up some solid visuals and suspenseful set pieces.  Xuereb leads the cast with a spirited, committed performance. Apartment-house horror aficionados, supernatural spookiness buffs, and fans of “college kids in peril” scare fare should find plenty to enjoy in Room 203.

Japan’s Ammo Inc., California-based Ammo Entertainment, and Vertical Entertainment present Room 203 in a limited theatrical release and on VOD from April 15, 2022.

Night Visitors is the follow-up to On the Trail of UFOs and On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky. Directed by Seth Breedlove, this installment follows investigator and Into the Fray podcast host Shannon LeGro as she heads out of Denver and into the countryside of Colorado, looking into human abductions and cattle mutilations.

Scott Jeffrey has also produced Dinosaur Hotel and Hatched, so he’s back with another low budget dinosaur adventure, Jurassic Island, which is directed by Dominic Ellis who also wrote the script with Tom Jolliffe.

After returning from a mission, special forces agent Ava (Sarah T. Cohen) discovers that her archeologist parents (Tony Goodall, Nicola Wright) have finally found the island that her grandfather had gone missing on decades ago and now, they’ve followed his lead, because they’re gone. She heads off for a rescue mission along wityh her fellow soldier/boyfriend Luke, a paleobotanist named Cassie and Tommy while renting a yacht to the island of, well, look, it’s jurassic island, so I’m not spoiler anything by telling that there are dinosaurs there, but I am spoiling things by revealing that the island also has leaches that turn people into zombies.

Don’t go in expecting quality near any other movie with jurassic in the titles and just have fun with the small budget. And hey, the poster art is pretty good. The effects, well, maybe they don’t live up to them.

This film is available on DVD and on VOD from Uncork’d Entertainment.

Soon, life-like androids with artificial intelligence — Anton LaVey would have been happy about this — have been created to do the household work that humans have no interest in doing themselves. One of those androids, One (Luke Robinson), has been part of creator Roger Marshall’s (Jamie Robertson, Medusa) family but now the inventor plans on making a new model, things go wrong.

Directed by Jack Peter Mundy (Amityville Scarecrow, Dinosaur Hotel) and written by Sam Gurney, Prototype introduces a new android named Two (Zoe Purdy) who has near superhuman capabilities but when it begins to malfunction, the lives of Roger’s entire family are in danger.

I really liked that One and Two have a definite alien future look despite the low budget of this film. While the promotional materials take so much from Ex-Machina, I prefer the just not yet a human appearance of the movie.

Prototype is available on VOD from Left Films.

Jay (Michelle Ehlen, who also directed and wrote this movie) is a non-binary photographer making the movie across the country after divorcing her wife Lily (Jeneen Robinson). That journey takes her to the home of Jess (Shaela Cook), a woman who she used to be secretly obsessed with, and introduces her to Tommy (Chad Steers), a stand-up comedian who no longer believes in love.

Shot in 17 days over the course of almost two years — with the last four days of shooting delayed due to the pandemic — Maybe Someday comes from a very personal place, as its creator also made a cross-country post-divorce trip.

Unlike other breakup movies, the choices that Ehlen makes as a character and as a filmmaker are about discovering how you can grow from a breakup and become someone better instead of feeling the loss. That’s brave if you’re a person and most assuredly if you’re a filmmaker.

To watch Maybe Someday, you can purchase tickets to Cinequest on April 1-17. To learn more about the movie, visit the official Facebook page.

Ken Barber (Geno Walker, who is great in this movie) is recovering from a breakdown, alone in a new apartment where he’s pushing his personal physical improvement while obsessively recording YouTube self-help videos that have viewers in the single digits. His apartment is filled with dead and stuffe birds, dying plants and newspapers lining the windows, further cutting himself off from the world outside his walls, his only connection being his ex-wife Kelly (Kate Arrington) and her new husband Isaac (Michael Shannon, who is seemingly loving every minute of being in this movie) and his best friend since they were kids Terry Gilson (Felonious Monk).

And then Ken gets into the occult.

Ken’s new apartment may be haunted by the ghost of Roberta Wellwood (Morgan S. Reesh) and after watching numerous episodes of Dark Corners, a paranormal webcast hosted by Dark Corners (yes, that’s his name and he’s played by Daniel Kyrie). With the help of a supernatural expert named Colin Albertson (Lawrence Grimm) and a spirit jar, he hopes to clean the spirits away from his new home and his life, starting anew, except that fate doesn’t always have a way of working out perfectly.

Directed by Jennifer Reeder, who made Knives and Skin as well as the “Holy Hell” section in V/H/S 94, and written by Brett Neveu, Night’s End is best when presenting the loneliness and disassociation of its protagonist instead of the poor effects near the ending.

Reeder said, in her director’s statement, that “Night’s End is a proper genre film with some aesthetic and narrative connections to The Tenant and vintage John Carpenter.” I personally don’t see the latter, but folks today sure do love to throw around Carpenter’s name.

That said, there are some good moments here. It’s just frustrating that the end seemingly comes out of nowhere with all the slow build, seemingly like almost a dream sequence within the story and not the actual build to the close of the film.

Night’s End premieres on Shudder March 31.