Hadiya is twelve years old, living in an Egyptian village where the elders’ traditions are absolute and cold. When she’s promised to one of these men, she realizes that the only way to save herself and her village is to flee.

The stage is set: she has to cross the unforgiving desert to find her father and bring justice to the community. But there’s a massive problem: a Western corporation is looming over the village like a vulture, trying to bleed their water supply dry. She isn’t alone, though. Her only companion is her family goat, Sparrow. But out in the heat, reality starts to warp. The goat begins to speak to her—with the voice of her mother who passed away—becoming the only guide she has in a landscape that wants her dead.

This isn’t your standard survival flick. With Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino and John Savage bringing some serious acting muscle, the film grounds its more surreal elements in hard-nosed drama. It’s a road movie where the road is nothing but sand, shifting horizons and the encroaching madness of thirst.

Whether it’s reality or just a hallucination brought on by the sun, Hadiya’s journey is one for the books.

You can get this from MVD.

Look, I usually spend my time watching 1970s Italian cannibal flicks, shot-on-video weirdness or movies that get under a 2 on IMDb. But every now and again, a movie comes along that is so completely outside of the B&S comfort zone that I just have to sit down and watch it.

That brings us to Someone Like You.

It’s a 2024 faith-based tearjerker directed by Tyler Russell and written by his mom, Karen Kingsbury, based on her own bestselling novel. This is pure, unadulterated, wholesome melodrama made for the crowd that thinks a PG rating is pushing the envelope.

The plot sounds like something out of a weird 80s sci-fi soap opera, but played with absolute, deadpan earnestness. Sarah Fisher pulls double duty here as London Quinn and Andi Allen. London tragically dies early on, leaving her architect boyfriend, Dawson Gage (Jake Allyn), utterly shattered. But wait! It turns out London was an IVF baby and there was a secret second embryo donated to another family. Dawson tracks down the biological secret twin sister, Andi, and healing, tears and clean romance ensue.

What makes this movie worth talking about for a drive-in mental case like me? The cast connections, of course! Well, the moms are played by Robyn Lively — yes, Lana from Teen Witch — and Lynn Collins, who was Silver Fox in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Dejah Thoris in John Carter.

Someone Like You knows exactly who its audience is. It’s sentimental, it’s glossy and it moves with the slow, deliberate pace of a Sunday morning. It treats its bizarre embryo-swap plot with the kind of soft-focus reverence that secular critics hate, but Kingsbury fans absolutely devour.

You can get this from Deep Discount.

We’ve all spent late nights falling down the rabbit hole of weird internet mysteries, clicking from one creepy, low-res YouTube video to another until the sun comes up. YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann turned that exact modern obsession into his Kickstarter-funded directorial debut, Shelby Oaks. Starting out as a viral, real-world alternate-reality game called The Paranormal Paranoids, the original videos convinced som epeople this was all real.

This starts with those Paranormal Paranoids — Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), Laura Tucker (Caisey Cole), David Reynolds (Eric Francis Melaragni) and Peter Bailey (Anthony Baldasare) — disappearing while investigating a prison in Shelby Oaks. The bodies of all but Riley are found. One camera is recoved and it shows Riley losing her mind. Then, the film follows her sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) twelve years after her sister Riley  and her amateur ghost-hunting crew vanished from the face of the Earth in an abandoned Ohio town.

When a crazed stranger shows up on Mia’s doorstep, mutters a cryptic warning and paints the porch with his brains, he leaves behind a mini-DV tape that blows the cold case wide open. Soon, Mia is divorced from reality (and her husband, played by Brendan Sexton III), chasing down the former prison warden of Shelby Oaks (Keith David) and hiking into the decaying heart of the penitentiary to find out what happened to her sister.

The first 17 minutes of this movie play out like a slick, dread-inducing true-crime documentary mixed with found footage. Shooting at real-deal spooky midwest locations like the Ohio State Reformatory and Chippewa Lake Park gives the film a gritty, rust-belt decay that you just can’t fake on a Hollywood soundstage.

Once the movie ditches the found-footage/documentary style and shifts to a conventional narrative, it loses its footing. It’s like watching two different movies stitched together by a mad scientist. By the time we get to the basement of a dilapidated farmhouse, the movie throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. We get a violent prison inmate who didn’t want to escape, an elderly cultist mother (Robin Bartlett, a parasitic incubus named Tarion, a squad of Swedish-imported hellhounds and a demonic pregnancy plotline.

Neon bought the movie after its 2024 Fantasia premiere, ordered reshoots to amp up the gore, altered the ending, and cut 11 minutes of backstory. Is that why the result feels rushed and a bit incoherent by the time the credits roll?

Stuckmann clearly knows his horror history and shows flashes of real directorial confidence, especially when he’s letting the quiet dread build. It doesn’t quite stick the landing, but as a calling card for a new filmmaker, it’s fine. You could do a hell of a lot worse.

The Beast Hand follows Osamu (Takahiro Fukuya), a man at the bottom of the social ladder who gets chewed up and spit out by the criminal underworld. After a botched interaction with the mob, he loses his left hand to a sword. Guided by his ex-girlfriend Koyuki (Misa Wada, Fukuya’s real-life wife), he visits an unlicensed surgeon. The transplant works, but the hand isn’t just a tool; it’s a sentient, aggressive entity.

The procedure is a success, but the recovery is a nightmare. Osamu discovers the hand possesses its own consciousness, a feral, predatory instinct that begins to dictate his actions. As the hand’s bloodlust grows, Osamu is pulled back into the underworld, no longer as a victim, but as a biological weapon. The film centers on the tragic irony of a man who finally gains the power to stand up for himself, only to realize he is no longer the one in control of his own limbs.

Directed by Taichiro Natsume and written by Yasunori Kasuga, this relies on practical gore and puppetry to give the hand — and the gore — a tactile, repulsive reality.

Extras include promo clips and trailers. You can get this on DVD or Blu-ray from MVD.

Released by Blood Sick Productions, this isn’t just a movie. It’s an analog artifact that feels like it was recovered from a psychic VCR in a basement that hasn’t been opened since 1992. The film follows “______” (played by director Kasper Meltedhair), a character sporting horns, bat wings and polka-dot skin. She possesses a secret capability to turn flesh, specifically babies, into glass.

The narrative (which operates on slippery, non-linear logic kicks off when she trips in the BBQ Salon. This clumsy moment causes “immortal goop” to splatter across the faces of _____ , Movie Star (Erin Caywood) and Character Name (Cody Brant).

From there, the film descends into a party-murder plot involving a green amulet, body-melting chewing gum, and a wood chipper that eventually reveals a dusty trick.

One of the most surreal elements involves a group of men in suits led by Gartan Galtar (Brewce Longo). They don’t just walk; they dance “preciously” through liminal spaces, on a mission to steal glass babies so they can shatter them over themselves and achieve immortality.

At 90 minutes, Busted Babies is a marathon of non-narrative, confrontationally strange imagery. It’s a movie that doesn’t just want you to watch it; it wants to stain your brain with its rusting, immortal goop.

Extras include a short film by Kasper Meltedhair, Behind The Scenes, Outtakes, The Donald Farmer Viewing Experience and trailers. You can buy it from MVD.

Blood Bitch Baby relocates Elizabeth Bathory from 17th-century Hungary to modern America. The story follows a specific, dark trajectory. Played by Jessa Jupiter Flux, Bathory is depicted as a servant of Satan seeking to bring his heir into the world. She ensnares Jenny (Angel Bradford), granting her demonic powers that Jenny eventually uses to get revenge on her abusive boyfriend, Kevin (Joe Casterline). The goal? Impregnate Jenny with the Blood Bitch Baby, an unholy, monstrous creature.

Along the way, there’s also a paranormal investigator, some cops who barely get anything done and the always alluring Mel Heflin as a potential love interest for Jenny. Eyeballs will be consumed, women will be assaulted by dark forces, and there will be plenty of gore and perhaps some flesh, as well.

Like many of Donald Farmer’s movies, this utilizes real-world, gritty American locations that contrast sharply with the ancient evil of the Bathory name. Plus, at 68 minutes, it moves quickly and won’t overstay its welcome.

The Bloodsick Productions Blu-ray of this movie includes extras such as a behind-the-scenes photo album, a director’s introduction by Donald Farmer with Kasper Meltedhair, and trailers. You can get it from MVD.

Sean Whalen is the guy whose face you know from everything from The People Under the Stairs to that “Aaron Burr” Got Milk? commercial. He directed, wrote and stars as Vegas Winters, a former child star whose glory days are so far in the rearview mirror they’re practically in black and white. Now, he’s scrubbing stains and living a life of quiet desperation in a failing laundromat. He’s lonely, he’s depressed, and he’s surrounded by the one thing every laundromat has in abundance: abandoned, crusty socks.

But we don’t remain in sad indie drama territory for long. Through a cocktail of Vegas’s tears, misery and probably some questionable laundry chemicals, a pile of his filth-caked socks merges into a sentient, googly-eyed creature named Crust. At first, Crust is a quirky little buddy, the kind of offbeat companion a lonely guy needs. But it turns out this sock monster is fiercely protective. And by protective, we mean he’s willing to violently dispatch anyone who makes Vegas’s life difficult.

Whalen is a character actor treasure, and seeing him take the lead in his own twisted vision is a treat. He brings a genuine, heartbreaking pathos to Vegas that makes you root for him, even when he’s talking to a pile of hosiery. And look for favorites like Felissa Rose, Daniel Roebuck and Rebekah Kennedy. 

Crust is a bizarre, blood-stained love letter to the outcasts and the forgotten. It’s dark, it’s damp, and it’s definitely not permanent press. If you’ve ever felt like a single sock lost in the dryer of life, this movie is going to speak to you. Just maybe wash and fold your laundry before you sit down to watch it.

Extras include a commentary by Sean Whalen, two short films and a Q&A. You can get it from MVD.

In a dystopian California that feels uncomfortably close to our own headlines, the State has finally seized the means of reproduction. You don’t just get to be a dad; you have to earn it. We follow four men, each desperate for the government’s golden seal of virility, as they trek into the remote mountains for a mandatory sanctioned retreat. They expect a drill sergeant or a clipboard-wielding bureaucrat. Instead, they find… nothing. Just an empty site and a collection of the most soul-shattering, creepy infantile automatons you’ve ever seen.

These aren’t your niece’s dolls. These are mechanical government tests designed to push these men to the brink. Left without instructions, the men descend into a tribal, frantic madness to prove they can provide and protect.“It’s a pressure cooker where the steam is made of repressed masculinity, and the whistle is the sound of a robotic baby crying in the dark.

Kelley and Sherman (who also star) have crafted something that is darkly hilarious one second and genuinely horrific the next. It’s a satire of the “Alpha Male” industrial complex that manages to be both a sci-fi nightmare and a timeless fable.

If you like your sci-fi with a side of existential dread and your horror served in a government-mandated diaper, this is the one for you. It’s a bold, bizarre debut that marks Kelley and Sherman as filmmakers to watch—preferably with the lights on and your own kids safely in bed.

Extras include commentary with Neal Kelley and Jono Sherman, two episodes of the C.U.P.S. web series, extended and alternative scenes and an improv reel. You can get this from MVD.

You know Jeff Daniel Phillips. Whether he’s playing Uncle Gilbert or a frantic warden in Rob Zombie’s filmography, he has a face made for the flickering light of a drive-in screen. In Cursed in Baja, Phillips steps behind the camera as writer and director, casting himself as Pirelli, an ex-lawman who looks like he hasn’t slept since the mid-90s and has spent every waking hour since carrying the collective sins of Los Angeles on his back.

Pirelli is tasked with a simple job: head south of the border, find the wayward heir to a massive L.A. fortune and bring him home. It’s the kind of setup that usually leads to a standard action flick, but Phillips isn’t interested in being predictable. Once Pirelli crosses into Baja, the movie takes a hard left turn into a hallucinatory, soul-searching nightmare.

This isn’t just a hunt for a rich kid; it’s an existential dive into the dirt. After all, the last person who took the job just up and faded away. And just when you think you’ve settled into a gritty neo-noir, the film throws a curveball: a Russian cult that worships the Chupacabra. Yes, you read that right. Pirelli has to navigate double-crosses, his own crumbling psyche and goat-sucking-cryptid zealots.

Even better, Barbara Crampton has a cameo.

Extras include a commentary track by Jeff Daniel Phillips and a making of. You can get it from MVD.