The scariest part of the male mannequin killer is that we never see it move or kill. We only see its handiwork, as it only attacks when no one is looking. Directed by Micheal Bafaro, who also wrote the script with Michael Mitton, who also plays Jonah, the man who tries to help Frankie and earns the anger of her boyfriend Steve (Colm Hill).

There are some frightening moments, even some kills at a nightclub near the dancefloor, and the idea of the unstoppable creature following our heroine echoes It Follows, but this is very much its own film. Frankie has almost no luck, as the mannequin keeps showing up everywhere she goes, killing people and making it look like all of these crimes have one thing in common: her.

If you get freaked out by mannequins, by all means, this is going to make you ruin your pants.

I watched Don’t Look Away 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.

Featuring interviews with the members of Thou, Neurosis, Enslaved, Panopticon, Emma Ruth Rundle, Yellow Eyes, Couch Slut, Blood Incantation, Krallice, Mizmor, Weigedood, Hell, Leech, Mania, Inter Arma and many more, as well as performances by several of those artists, A Wandering Path is really the story of Adam Bartlett, who started the Gilead Media record label in 2005.

His label may have started small, but is now a well-known source of the best noise rock, doom and black metal artists in the world. He also works with Dave Adelson from the record label 20 Buck Spin to celebrate Migration Fest every two years, with the 2018 version being right here in Pittsburgh, PA.

Michael Dimmitt has directed a movie that pays as much attention to the reasons for the music as the music itself. You’ll discover how several of these artists have used the power of this dark form of music to get past the pain in their lives. I was most impressed by Austin Lunn of Panopticon. His band’s music combines black metal with bluegrass and folk with Appalachian instruments such as banjo, fiddle, bells and acoustic guitar breaking up the expected distortion and thundering drums. In the same way that Norweigan black metal bands drew upon the past of their country for inspiration, his work draws upon issues and themes unique to his Kentucky home.

This is a difficult subject to make a movie about as just getting into who the label is, what Migration Fest is and each of these bands, not to mention the genres that all appear, could all be their own films. Dimmitt has played in bands like Disassociate, Mutilation Rites and Overdose as well as working as an editor, including on a film that tried to explain black metal, Until the Light Takes Us.

The main issue is that this is such a niche subject — it’s similar to making a documentary on a deep cut exploitation director like Franco or Rollin — that it may not be able to make much sense for newcomers. And for those who are already well-versed in this music, it may seem like it’s glossing over its subject. There’s also a fair amount of “we’re all a family” scenesterism, but that happens any time you get metal folks together. It’s genuine, even if from the outside it may not feel like that.

Is this movie successful? It caused me to look up several of these bands and listen to their work. I think that’s a very clear case of it working quite well.

You can learn more at the official site.

I watched A Wandering Path 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.

Bridget O’Brien (Anastasia Elfman, The Once and Future Smash, Aliens, Clowns & Geeks) is a red-haired waitress and burlesque dancer at a Van Nuys dive bar where she performs Grand Guignol-style dance routines with her partners Pepe (Marcos Mateo Ochoa) and Leticia (Naomi de la Cruz) while avoiding the sexual come-ons of her boss Tony (Tom Ayers).

Her life isn’t all that great, despite her perky attitude. Her boyfriend Edwin (Christian Prentice) basically sleeps around right in her face and the guy who seems like a knight in shining armor, a lawyer named Goldman (Adam J. Smith) assaults her and she ends up in jail when she fights back. She’s soon attacked all over again by a female prison guard and tries to kill herself before she’s saved by Baron Samedi (Jean Charles), who thinks that she’s the reincarnation of his long-dead wife, Maman Brigitte, the former Celtic goddess who has become a Haitian death goddess who drinks the blood and hearts of evil men.

He recreates the lost woman in the image of that scarlet woman and sets her on the path of revenge. But soon, she wants her soul back, as Samadi slept with her to give her the power when she was drunk on spirits from the spirit world. And yet Satan (Richard Elfman, who directed and wrote this) claims that sometimes, women will do that. I’m certain lots of folks will be upset by this moment but I am even more certain that Elfman doesn’t care. Have you seen Forbidden Zone?

If you haven’t seen a movie by Richard Elfman, well…buckle up. There’s a stand-up routine in here that’s more offensive than in like ten Hollywood films. Doesn’t mean it’s good, but it’s in there. What is great, however, is the look of the film, the music and the lunatic energy. I mean, what other film has a father and son lawyer duo — Daniel Dershowitz Sr. and Jr. (Rick Howland and Evan Eckenrod) — trying a case in Hell?

You can learn more at the official site.

Bloody Bridget 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.

Jen (Tedra Milan) is a photographer and her husband, Tyler (Michael Reagan) is a novelist. They’ve been evicted from their home, they’re low on gas and completely out of money. You could say at least they have each other, but Tyler’s confidence issues have driven a wedge between the couple. As they barely make it to the edge of a park, they decide to camp for the night. As for whatever money that’s left, Tyler has spent it on whiskey and starts drinking.

That’s when the masked men show up.

Directed and written by Jason Miller, Ghosts of the Void starts with a George Carlin quote — “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.” — you may find it hard to sympathize with the couple, who have followed their artistic muses right into homelessness. Or you might think that that could be you someday. I worry about that a lot. But I also know that even though this system is rigged against us, you have to keep working.

That said, the end of this, as the golfing at the country club continues despite the violence of the night before, rings more true and is more frightening in its coldness than almost anything else in this film.

Ghosts of the Void 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.

South of Chile, if not heaven, a trio of twenty-something women have formed a black metal band, Invoking Yell, and taken to the woods to record their first album. They decide that to capture their sound, they need to find psicofonias, quite literally the voices of dead children killed in a schoolbus accident, inside the forest. While they film their recording, things go wrong. Or right.

Directed by Patricio Valladares, who co-wrote this with Barry Keating, this brings back one of the ideas in their movie Embryo and has a music video in the woods that slowly unravels. It starts with a quote from Maximiliano Sánchez Mondaca, which claims that while the rise of black metal around the world led to more bands trying to record their own music, it also brought about more Satanic rites, vandalism and murder.

Andrea (María Jesús Marcone), Tania (Macarena Carrere) and Ruth (Andrea Ozuljevich) are now in the same conundrum that artists like Snorre Westvold Ruch, Varg Vikernes, Euronymous, Samoth, Jorn Inge Tunsberg, Faust, Dead and Andreas “C. H. Surt” Kirchner, Sebastian “Dark Mark Doom” Schauseil and Ronald “Wolf” Möbus of Absurd — named for, yes, the George Eastman movie  — found themselves in. How long can you pretend to be amoral and evil before you have to prove it for real?

A movie that claims to be found footage from Ruth’s video camera as the women recorded in 1997, this finds Tania and Ruth enjoying their time in the woods — drugs and drinks are had by all — while Angela seems devoted to reaching true kvlt status and following up on her goal of having music bringing suffering.

There’s plenty of enjoy here, as you learn how the women want to break out of just being used for their bodies and need to establish their own music. To stand out in a scene where church burning, suicide and seld-mutilation is the norm, however, they’re going to have to go too far to make that happen.

Chile is also known for its extreme music with nearly three thousand bands listed on Encyclopaedia Metallum as proof. There’s Skullshredder, Desecrator and Negro from Slaughtbbath, as well as Ecologist, Invocation Spells, Sol Sistere, Death Yell and many more. Just check out this Spotify list.

The moments of the girls talking about who is true and who isn’t may seem silly, but Euronymous used to be quoted saying stuff like, “I would rather sit at home and cut myself than go to parties.” and that he would only sign evil bands to his label, Deathlike Silence.

Beyond the music, I think that any fan of found footage will enjoy this, even if you don’t have an opinion on Immortal being better with or without Abbath.

I watched Invoking Yell 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.

Tilly (Anna Bullard), Monica (Annie Hamilton), Peter (Rory Alexander) and Allison (Grace Binford Sheene).are in a car crash and everyone survives except Allison, whose uncle blames them for her death. Monica has a plan for the summer, as she thinks they should all get out of town and go to the country. That way they can work through their grief and be away from the stares of people who think that they killed their friend. The summerhouse they are staying in is a welcome place of normalcy until a masked man shows up to make them all pay.

Directed by Alex Herron and written by Ulrvik Kraft, this Scandinavian-shot movie continues the trends of twentysomething teenagers from 90s horror. This movie feels like I Know What You Did Last Summer mixed with a home invasion, well, that’s what it is. The difference is the teens in that movie all felt a sense that their life had been destroyed by their secret. Maybe it’s the length of time since the accident, but not everyone here is working through it here. That said, the last ten minutes of this movie are intensely rough as everyone pays for their crime, but the final resolution feels too easy. But man, that drowning scene? Intense.

Dark Windows is far from perfect, but there’s something here. I think Herron and Kraft have a better movie in them and it will be great to see it happen.

Dark Windows 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.

Director and co-writer Alice Maio Mackay is just eighteen years old, but across her last two films — So Vam and Bad Girl Boogey — she’s improved from an already solid start. Now, with T-Blockers, co-written with Benjamin Pahl Robinson, there’s another leap forward.

Sash VO (Joni Ayton-Kent Sash) is a young horror filmmaker with a cop dad that lives in a town that doesn’t seem too open to a trans girl. Yet Adam (Stanley Browning), who she goes out on a date with, does seem unfazed, even if whatever secret he tells her is so upsetting that she runs home and drinks, smokes and does coke with her roommates to the point of sickness. And Adam? Well, he’s taken into a cult of men who have been rejected and indoctrinated into their sinister ways.

The entire town is becoming contaminated by something evil in the water, something beyond just passing laws against trans kids, something supernatural. And Sophie has gained the ability to grow sick any time she’s around people who are under the influence of this darkness as they transform into zombies.

There’s also a movie within the movie, monologues by Australian drag performer Etcetera Etcetera and a budget of around $6,000, which blows my mind, because it’s all on the screen and then some. I loved how each side of the battle has their own unique color scheme and yeah, some people are going to be put off by how stereotypical so much of this movie is, but it’s a teenager making the movie she wants to make, telling it on her terms, so when you can say you’ve made three movies and a TV series by 18, then you can show how it’s done too.

T-Blockers 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.