Directed by Michael Stevantoni and Strack Azar, The Banality is about a feral child who is adopted by a young couple. Known as “Feral Boy,” Father Moss (Sherman Augustus) introduces the child to the couple and for eleven years, all is well, before the once feral child is killed in a hit and run accident.

Can the religious man with faith issues find his way back to God after the senseless death? Why would God even bring “Feral Boy” into their lives if He was going to cruelly take him away? Are the dreams both asleep and waking that the priest is having direct him to the mystery of how the child was in the woods alone all these years and who killed him?

A full-length version of the 2019 short film, The Banality is also known as Death Letter Blues. This isn’t a horror film in the traditional sense but instead a more slice of Southern life told well. I’m looking forward to this getting a wider release because I think it’s going to knock people out.

The Banality is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

The same people who made this made the equally wild Lake Michigan Monster. Let me sell you on this: it’s a Merrie Melodies-influenced black and white no dialogue movie about an applejack maker whose life is ruined by beavers, so he fights back against them as a trapped and finds himself up against, well, hundreds of them.

Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who co-wrote this with director Mike Cheslik) must survive a brutal winter, then learn how to trap fur, selling the dead beavers to The Merchant (​Doug Mancheski) while making eyes at his daughter The Furrier (Olivia Graves).

All the while, the beavers are planning to destroy mankind.

This movie is an absolute joy, a quick moving living and breathing cartoon in which one man challenges the odds and the beavers and the snow and the sharp objects and oh man, this was great.

Hundreds of Beavers is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Hoping to find a cure to the disease that is destroying him from within, The Professor follows Agatha on a strange and risky journey into a forgotten but not entirely deserted urban wasteland. Sure, that’s the logline, but this film makes getting there so different, so trippy and so intense.

Kelly Bigelow and Roland Becera did just about everything in this movie from directing, writing, editing, costumes, casting, effects and animation. It’s a truly singular work that presents an ever-evolving series of images that creates a dark mood while presenting what it calls “the disintegration of nature, institutions and people.”

It’s more a series of imagery and tone than an actual narrative film, so if that’s what you’re expecting, well…then this just isn’t going to work for you. If you’re feeling adventurous, however, this movie has a rewarding look and feel. It’s like exploring a series of dark paintings and nearly falling through them, unsure if what you’re seeing is either live action or animation or something in the middle.

You can learn more at the official site.

Agatha was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Hilarie (Jennifer Harlow) and Steve (Mark Reeb) are on the way from Texas to as mountain town in Colorado that is supposedly safe from a mysterious viral disease that makes people disappear or turn become murderers. They try and stay isolated from everyone else in the small town that they are hiding out in, as they don’t want to trust anyone. But after Hilarie is attacked by a man in the woods, he refuses to allow her to leave the house. This makes her lose her sanity and soon, he starts finding her just wandering with no idea how she got there.

This film is of our times, as there’s a battle between those wearing masks to protect themselves from the virus and those who think that makes them weak, including a talk show host who uses the radio to drive his followers to violence.

Director and writer Dalila Droege gets in all of the moments that we have lived through: isolation, racism, lack of reason and people just plain disappearing. If you want to live through that again, this movie goes even further, as it seems like nature itself is rebelling against man and all our folly.

No More Time is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Dan (Max Woertendyke) and Jen (Dana Berger) are in the type of relationship where you start to wonder what it would be like without the other person. He’s embarrassed her yet again and as she runs to clear her head, he tries to follow her. The only problem? It feels like they keep going around again and again, around the same path, going through the same motions, the paranormal version of what it’s like to be with each other.

They’re not alone, as the trail around the pond has others who are trapped and doomed to wander in circles as well. Can they escape?

Based on director and writer Dane Elcar’s short film The Pond, this is a dark story that progressively gets grimmer. Some couples are like that, endlessly going through the motion, one trying to stay ahead of the other, both realizing that they are locked into this endlessly repeating unreality.

If you think your relationship is bad, imagine being forced to stay within the same time and place as your partner in a never stopping loop.

This film is big on ideas and low on budget, but when is that a problem?

Brightwood was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

When Max Causey (Jared Korotkin), he made the biggest mistake a kid can make. He accidentally killed Santa.

Now, 12 years later, Max has fixed that error by resurrecting Father Christmas but soon realizes the creature he created — Santastein (Michael Vitovich) — wants to kill everyone, naught or nice, and is on his way to Max’s friend Paige Byers’ (Makenzie Rivera) Christmas party.

Starting as a short made when the filmmakers — Manuel Camilion and Benjamin Edelman — were studying at the University of Miami, Santastein has become a full-length film.

After a decade without Santa, the world seems dark. And yet, as a result of Max — again — it’s about to get even darker. Christmas horror is a genre all to itself — I mean, I have a holiday Letterboxd list, I get it — and I think those that love the bloodier and more frightening side of the season are really going to enjoy this movie.

Plus, Camilion and Edelman have a great sense of humor, as evidenced by this line from the Kickstarter for this movie: “We only recently learned after making our short film that kills in horror movies aren’t real. So we need a new cast as well.”

Santastein was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Instead of going to jail, Willem (Stephen Phillips) takes a different sentence, in which he has to stay all alone in an isolated facility. Phillips takes on so much in this, because he’s largely on screen all by himself for the entire run time.

While watching the monster, Willem reflects on his life, like how everything went downhill after the death of his wife Carrie (Cecilia Low), a return to heroin and the loss of his two daughters. We also actually see his memories in the form of what looks like actual home movies.

However, Willem isn’t alone. There’s some kind of creature, one that he’s sure is just in his head, that is watching him. Is it his past pain come to life? Is it how he sees his addiction? Is it going to shred him when he goes to sleep? And why do the government agents keep asking so many questions, none of them about this monster, and shock him when he lies?

Directed by Tristan Barr (who also plays Dalesky) and written by Vincent Befi, this is a movie that puts its lead through hell yet so much of that is of his own making. This is unlike any movie I’ve seen and worth your time.

Subject was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.