Luther Boots (Mike Hartsfield) goes to a yard sale, finds a backpack — that has killed a child with a stock video explosion and that means I had to send a message to Erica from Unsung Horrors and pass the curse of this on to her — and it starts to kill everyone that is close to him.

Evan Jacobs also made Amityville Death Toilet, so I guess I have to watch this.

Every SRS-released Amityville movie has characters that just talk about everything. They narrate every moment of their lives. No one I have ever met talks like this, but yet this happens in all of their movies. I realize that we need to explain what is happening, but when the talking takes up most of the movie and people are given to saying things like, “Backpack, I think you’re going to help me a lot.” I lose my mind by the time a film like this one is over.

What didn’t help is that I usually watch Amityville movies all alone, but for some reason my wife came in and started watching this one and realized that she had made a mistake marrying me. She had so many questions about why I would spend so much time watching this and I was afraid to show her my Letterboxd list because I’m too old to start over again.

Anyways, what it does have going for it is shots inside the backpack, as well as the fact that the backpack looks just like the house on 112 Ocean Avenue. It also has the threat of a cat death — spoiler warning, it survives — and a lot of people killed by, yes, a backpack. Who knew that my old JanSport could have been so evil?

There were moments of this that were so uncolor balanced and the sun was bleeding into the image that I was shocked that it wasn’t filmed by someone who had never seen a camera or a movie before. Then there would be a great shot or a cool slow motion push in to someone. I wonder, can you tell when one of these movies is a parody any more?

Now, to the tune of Stroke 9’s “Little Black Backpack:”

Don’t want to watch this,

You say why not?

Don’t want to think about

Movies about this haunted town

There’s totally no good reason

For my wife to care about

This little Amityville Backpack

You can watch this on Tubi or order it from Ronin Flix.

My wife asking me during this movie, “Did cowboys really swear so much?” I figured this movie was just following the lead of Deadwood, but I decided to do some research. According to Notes from the Frontier, they both did and didn’t. Jesse Sheidlower, the American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and the book The F-Word says, “There were cursing contests when cowboys would get together and insult each other. Evidence that we have is that they were using more religious blasphemy than the sexual insults which are popular today.” That’s because using the f-word didn’t come into use in the U.S. until after World War I. That said, the same article says that Stagecoach Mary, Belle Starr — and this film’s star! — Calamity Jane all were historically known to use tons of profanity.

Directed by Terry Miles (Even Lambs Have Teeth) and written by Leon Langford and Collin Watts, this is the story of — you guessed it from the title — Calamity Jane (Emily Bett Rickards, Felicity from Arrow) getting revenge on the man who killed her soon-to-be husband, Wild Bill (Stephen Amell, who was Green Arrow on Arrow and the lead in Heels).

Most of what we know about Calamity Jane — born Martha Jane Canary — comes from an autobiographical pamphlet that she dictated and sold as part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. As you can imagine, a lot of the story in that pamphlet is exaggerated. She claims that her name came from a battle with Native Americans: “When fired upon, Capt. Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort. Capt. Egan, on recovering, laughingly said: “I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.” I have borne that name up to the present time.”

Then again, another story of her life — not written by her — said, “She never saw a lynching and never was in an Indian fight. She was simply a notorious character, dissolute and devilish, but possessed a generous streak which made her popular.”

How realistic is this film’s claim that Wild Bill was married to her?

On September 6, 1941, the U.S. Department of Public Welfare granted old age assistance to a Jean Hickok Burkhardt McCormick. Jean claimed to be the daughter of Martha Jane Canary and James Butler Hickok and had evidence that they were married at Benson’s Landing, Montana on September 25, 1873. She also had a letter from Jane that said that she had been married to Hickok and that he was het birth father. She was then placed for adoption with a Captain Jim O’Neil and his wife.

When she died — of alcoholism — according to Michael Griske’s The Diaries of John Hunton: Made to Last, Written to Last: Sagas of the Western Frontier, “Four of the men who planned her funeral later stated that Hickok had “absolutely no use” for Jane while he was alive, so they decided to play a posthumous joke on him by burying her by his side.”

The truth is always difficult to divine.

Let’s talk about the movie.

When Jane and Bill make it to Deadwood, they finally decide to walk the aisle. Except that he can’t leave behind the chance to play cards and that ends with Jack McCall (Primo Allon) killing him. As you can imagine, McCall gets out of town before Jane can catch him after she easily escapes from the jail of Sheriff Mason (Tim Rozen).

Mason starts a posse to hunt down both Jane and McCall, as well as a criminal that Jane was in jail with — and who started the riot that got her out — by the name of Abigail (Priscilla Faia) starts to stalk her.

If you’re an Arrow fan, this mini-reunion doesn’t last long. So you may be let down. This also feels like way more talking than action, but the fight between Jane and Abigail is pretty great. I also liked the undertaker character who gets Jane through the Badlands, even if he’s barely in this. But hey — I’m all for new Westerns getting made.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I have to tell you, I drove my wife nuts by saying the name of this movie over and over again.

This starts with Monica (J. Roppolo Jacobs) trying to call her daughter Verity (Evelyn Giovine) — or V as everyone seems to call her — from a pay phone after she causes an incident at a mega church by calling Pastor Dean Humphries (Damon Dayoub) a “hypocritical bastard.” She barely gets a message sent before she’s cut off, just as her daughter is in the midst of shaking down someone along with her boyfriend Sam (Greg Finley). As the man runs, Sam takes a shot at him and steals a car while a convenience store owner gets a clear view of both of their faces. V breaks up with him, something that seems to be a long time coming, and heads to The Devil’s Dive, a bar where her foster sister Ruby (Raquel Davies) works.

After doing some research into where her mother was — yes, there are still payphones, as her sister reminds her — she is contacted by Detective Peter Frederick (Daniel Link). They’ve found her mother’s body and she has to identify her. We soon discover that Peter might be V’s father and he definitely wants to discuss her relationship with Sam, the money they owe to drug dealer Ricky and the beating of the man the other night. She runs and decides that there’s no way the police can handle this investigation, so she has to infiltrate the church where her mother died.

To do that, she has to become The Sintern.

After meeting the Pastor and his wife Heidi (Stefanie Estes), V renames herself Chastity and becomes part of the marketing team for the church. Despite being on the bad side of longtime parishioner Louann (Judy Kain), she wins over everyone, including the social media officer Kayle (Phuong Kubacki) — the brownies help — and singer Gage (Samuel Larsen), who leads the church’s choir in worship. V — or Chastity, as she’s now called — now understands the sin of illicit thoughts every time she sees Gage make an altar call.

Of course Chastity is able to figure out exactly who killed her mother, get the boy to fall in love with her and get away from her criminally minded ex-boyfriend. She also gets to bond with her foster sister all over again, who conveniently is going to college for marketing. As I was watching this while doing my day job in advertising, I just kept yelling at the TV (when I wasn’t making up songs about The Sintern).

Directed by Julie Herlocker (who was a producer on Millennium and Grimm) and written by Jeff Dickamore and Aurora Florence, this presents a level-headed look at a church — despite the murder and sexual mania of its leaders, the followers are there for good reasons — and has a heroine who moves past her upbringing to become a capable heroine willing to do nearly anything to expose the truth. Also, as I love exploitation, bonus points for — spoiler warning — Pastor father nearly assaulting her, followed by her puking up her guts when she realized that any daddy issues that she had in the past are about to be multiplied beyond belief. Double word score — or whatever — for the fact that Pastor Peter doesn’t really know much of the Bible and seems to make things up, which others call out and which confuses our heroine, who doesn’t know much of the Psalms.

On a final note, I always get weirded out when religious people drop the name and location of their Bible quote. Like, you’d say, “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.” And then follow it with Psalm 30:11. You don’t see me closing my movie quotes with where they appeared, like “You wanted to kill me! What are you gonna do now, huh? Now death is coming for you! You wanted to kill Helena Markos! Hell is behind that door! You’re going to meet death now… the LIVING DEAD!” Suspiria, an hour and five minutes in.

I should totally start doing that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

When The Strangers came out in 2008, it had mixed reviews, which didn’t matter. It became a cult film. It has characters that have such a good look to them and the end of the film, where Dollface explains it all by telling the couple that they were attacked “Because you were home,” which was enough in the quality starved mid 2000s. The sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, changes influences from the 1970s to the 1980s. While it also has its audience, it’s really twenty good minutes looking for a movie to be part of.

Imagine how surprised I was when Lionsgate announced that director Renny Harlin and writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland would be making three new films in this series, all in a row, all shot in Slovakia. Is this the 2000s all over again?

Intellectual property is insidious. Sure, we love seeing sequels of the films that we love. But when an IP is a success, we can be sure that we’ll see numerous remakes and reimaginings of every horror property there is — except for Friday the 13th, right? — again and again.

Where this movie changes the game — slightly, ever so slightly — is by having its leads Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) traveling across the country and being forced to stay overnight in Venus, Oregon, as opposed to visiting their summer home in the midst of a relationship crisis.

Harlin has stated that this trilogy was intended to be neither a remake nor reboot. He was also aiming to get the tone close to the first movie, despite plans to explore who the killers are and where they come from. This suggests to me that what made the original so great — there’s no motivation for the killers other than they need something to do — is similar to why Halloween remains the best film in that series. It’s all about keeping things simple as well as scary.

Producer Mark Canton also says that these three movies are all about introuducing audiences to the world of The Strangers and that they want to expand that world Also, these movies take place in the same universe as the original two films. Harlin also told ComicBook.com, “We, of course, shot them on top of each other and mixed up, like movies are always made. But we had to keep in mind that this is one story arc. It is one 4.5 hour movie, and the first movie is a first act. It sets up the characters and the terror and the Killers and our main character, who will survive the first movie, but then go on a journey for the next two.” The thought is that these movies will show four days in the life of Maya.

The problem with shooting three movies at the same time is that the first movie better knock you out. And this, well…remember when Gus Van Zant remade Psycho and people wondered why it was shot for shot? At least that was a classic film that had several decades in between. This just feels like watching a fan film of the original. Sure, it looks great, but it’s missing the menace that the first take had, the moments of looking out into nothingness, wondering what is out there waiting. That’s one of the most terrifying things in real life and The Strangers captured it flawlessly.

None of the masked characters are actors from the other films. The Man In the Mask is now called Scarecrow and he’s played by Matúš Lajčák while Dollface is Olivia Kreutzova and Pin-Up Girl is Letizia Fabbri.

It took Michael Myers six movies to find the Thorn Cult and Jason ten movies to go to space. Who knows where these films are going to go? Will we see other people make their own karaoke versions of mid-level slashers? Will I be enraged when Zack Snyder remakes The Prowler and Michael Bay shows us his vision of The Being? But we all lived through the Platinum Dunes era, when the films we once loved were strip mined and made into barely recognizable films with pretty kids getting killed by CGI versions of the murderers we once cheered for.

I am reminded that Harlin also made A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Exorcist: The Beginning. Then again, he did make Deep Blue Sea, the movie that taught me that LL Cool J’s head is like a shark fin. Maybe I should be patient and see where he goes with this. But man, how many chances has this guy got? For every The Long Kiss Goodnight there’s Cutthroat Island, but then again, he also made Prison, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Die Hard 2. I feel too old and too limited in the time that I watch movies — yes, I know, I watch like four a day — to sit through three of these movies only to say, “Eh.” Maybe I want too much, you know?

At least the Spirit Store will have official masks for all the Hot Topic kids to wear this Halloween.

Eh, that feels like I’m being a gatekeeper. Perhaps this will lead people to discovering better movies.

Now I’m being too much of an optimist.

After a spring break vacation to Miami, three friends — Maika (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut), Taylor (Rachel Leyco) and Shay (Jada Elena Wooten) are blamed when the fourth member of their squad, Autumn (Annalisa Cochrane) goes missing. As she is a social media influencer, the story becomes picked up by the media and it puts the girls even more in the spotlight.

As told through flashbacks, we learn that at one point, Autumn was the girl who pushed the others to be wilder and go after the boys and girls they were interested in. But as the story unfolds, we soon discover that perhaps she wasn’t the best friend to everyone. Meanwhile, Maika’s father Zion (Derek Roberts) tries to coach the girls through what they should say to the police, triggering Shay as she remembers Autumn doing her makeup and revealing that she knows that she has a drug addiction.

Autumn also has a new guy by the name of Cameron (Christopher Collins) and his OCD is so bad that he does everything in three, keeps all of his clothes and records footage of his house that he watches over and over. He’s also a drug dealer and treats them to hard seltzer and cocaine. He also tells Detective McAvoy (Lauren O’Quinn) later that he thinks that before she disappeared, Autumn had a fight with Maika.

That’s when Maika gets a text from someone named “I Know Who Killed Me” saying that she knows what she did. Whoever it is, it also posts a photo of her and Julian (Zachary S. Williams) to make her look bad and anger her boyfriend Brandon (Phillip Patrick Wright). Taylor thinks that Cameron is the one behind the account.

Autumn is always getting into other people’s faces, as well as using her friend’s issues against them and going after the boys that they’re interested in. But they’ve all known one another forever and generally, you stay friends with people like this, at least in high school.

But then they find Autumn’s body and Cameron flips out, thinking that he’s going to jail. This brings up the past again, as Autumn posts a photo of Maika and Julian as he tries to kiss her. Back to our time and “I Know Who Killed Me” is accusing everyone of the murder. It all leads to the girls using the media to try and clear their names.

Directed by Tim Cruz (The Final Rose) and written by Jackie Logsted (Deadly Secrets of a Cam Girl, Rush for Your Life), this has two major twists left that change the entire story. That said, you’re going to have to watch it yourself to see what happens next. This another example of Tubi originals getting better and having stories that make you stick with them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

At the end of War of the Worlds: Annihilation, General Skuller (William Baldwin) is taking spaceships into space to colonize — attack — other planets after the planet Earth — destroyed by years of pollution — comes after the planet Emios. He sends Alice (April Mae Davis) through the wormhole that connects the two planets and has her use the Terra Modus to destroy our homeworld by creating a series of natural disasters.

Earth’s defenses are led by General Alfaro (Michael Paré), who coincidentally has an ex-wife named Sybil (Kate Hodge) and a daughter named Jill (Jessy Holtermann) who are studying that very same device. Yes, it’s the battle we’ve always wanted: Baldwin vs. Paré! Where does Eric Roberts stand in all of this?

Directed by Christopher Ray (Fred Olen Ray’s son; he also directed Mercenaries, Almighty Thor and Mega Shark vs. Kolossus) and written by Marc Gottlieb ( Time Pirates) — and produced by The Asylum — this really makes you wonder who the heroes and who the villains are. Maybe there aren’t any when it comes to war? Maybe we have no real choice over who are leader is going to be because both options are the worst possible? Is The Asylum making a deep point for us to consider? No, of course not. They just want to use disasters footage from other movies and have another series of movies to make money from. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what exploitation is all about.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and written by Katherine Barrell (who was on Wyonna Earp and Workin’ Moms) and Melanie Scrofano (who was Wyonna Earp), Clickbait: Unfollowed has a group of influencers all invited to the SoShal Mansion — get it? — a place where they will learn how to gain more followers and become the important people that they have always wanted to become. Except, well, they keep ignoring the voice that gives them commands keeps hinting that they are going to die and the fact that the guardian robots — called Husbands — look like something out of Squid Game. They each must go live to their audience and explain why they should make it — like something out of a reality show mixed with social media — and whoever has the least followers is told, “You still matter, just not enough” before being messily dispatched.

Spoilers below the trailer. You’ve been warned.

Julie (Jessica Stanley) and her son Parker (played by Skylar Ball, voiced by Harry Pentecost) — who make unboxing videos as Parker’s Playhouse and are lying, because he’s fourteen and not ten — are the first influencers to be introduced, sent a special tablet — Willie Wonka-style — that brings them to the mansion, a place that is either curated or looks better on social media because everything looks better on social media.

They soon meet the others:

• Alpha male Ax$el Mega (Charlie Bouguenon) whose online name is @Ax$selErasteWealth and he’s obvious a crypto bro based on Andrew Tate.
• Workout influencer Kyle (Luke Volker), who goes by @PumpitKyleStyle and is the first. to die — spoiler warning after the fact — when he basically is exercised to death.
• White girl philosopher and yoga lover Gaia (Ashleigh van der Hoven) whose screen name is @GuruGaiaNamasteYogi and we first meet pouring her period blood all over a plant.
• Comedian Ami (Shermin Hassan) who goes by @MimiM33tsWorld.
• Peach (Roberto Kyle), who has a makeup social channel and goes by @PrettyInPeachMUA.

They are told that they will get $1 for each follower but only one person can win. What they don’t know is that the mysterious Sofia (Katherine Barrell) who has gathered them together has a past with Gaia, who recognizes her as the first followers start getting murdered. Spoiler again: If you go back and watch the credits again, you realize that we’re watching Sofia’s new face get stapled over her old ruined one.

Soon, everyone is trapped in the house, only given their new tablets with no connection to the outside world other than the new devices they have been given. After Kyle is killed, the next to be taken is Parker, as it is revealed that his mother paid for followers. He is placed in a small coffin and Sofia laughs that she wishes that they had another child to do an unboxing. There’s a coffin for Julie and she’s asked if she’d rather stay and play the game or join her son. She stays.

Gaia recognizes Sofia’s voice and her turtleneck. She asks where her sister Shalin (Melanie Scrofano) is, which shocks Sofia. The lights go out and we see the control center where the two are controlling everything. The sisters created Look Loop and became rich from it. Gaia worked for the ad agency that did their marketing. Sofia did the creative and Shalin programmed, which was perfect. Their platform, like all social media, was supposed to bring people together. Now, they are bitter because the CEOs who took over their company forced them out and made it addictive. And now, people become influencers and are famous and wealthy for nothing. Yet, as Sofia remarks, they aren’t psychos and it’s the audience deciding who lives and dies. She wants to prove that social media ruins lives and her sister Shalin just wants to make the company that stole her work lose money. As always, they are yin and yang.

It’s also revealed that Sofia’s face was destroyed by her sister as she fought security guards with office chairs. So their relationship is…complicated.

While Peach and Gaia try to find the sisters, Ax$el and Julie end up combining their efforts and after taking a little blue pill, consummating their business relationship. But Gaia is caught and tied to a giant circle made up of plants, forced to listen to her cringiest stories as she bleeds out, pleading that “It was an honest white woman’s mistake.” The hubbies continually stab her and she dies listening to the meanest replies that she has ever received on social media.

Finally, everyone must Survivor vote off the next person and Julie uses the sex she had with Ax$el against him, as he’s sodomized and filled with semen until he throws up blood. Yes, this movie goes there. That leaves just Julie and Peach, but what the sisters don’t realize is that they may have taken someone who actually has a sense of right and wrong. And what the final two don’t realize is that not everyone is dead.

I’m not going to spoil any more of this for you because the ending is so good. This movie came out of nowhere and just totally obsessed me. Barrell and Melanie Scrofano have made a movie they should be proud of and I can’t wait to see what they create after this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

This movie — the sixth film in the series and a prequel — has no right to be as good as it is.

Yet here we are.

It starts with Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson, so great in The Witch) learning that the Catholic Church is planning to bring the Antichrist to our world to encourage people to come back to the church. An older priest — Father Harris (Charles Dance) — tells him all of this, gives him a photo of a baby with the name Scianna and is then killed when a pipe graphically lands in his head and down his spine — this scene seems so much like how Brennan dies in the first movie — as stained glass rains down.

I was already sold.

As Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free) arrives from America to study at the Tanz Akademie — err, I mean, to become a nun at the Vizzardeli Orphanage — in the middle of the Days of Lead. As protests swell around her, she meets Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy), who has been in her life since her birth, along with Father Gabriel (Tawfeek Barhom), Sister Silva (Sônia Braga), a strange nun named Anjelica (Ishtar Currie-Wilson) and her roommate and fellow student Olga — err, again, I mean Luz (Maria Caballero).

Margaret and Luz bond, deciding to go to a disco where the inexperienced American girl dances with Paolo (Andrea Arcangeli). As the rooms begins to spin, she passes out and wakes up back at the orphanage.

She soon becomes concerned about a girl named Carlita (Nicole Sorace) who has been confined by the nuns as she is said to have evil thoughts. At one point, Carlita shows Anjelica a drawing that disturbs her so much that she sets herself on fire, jumps off a ledge, hangs herself and falls through a window.

Brennan (yes, the same character played by Patrick Troughton in the original film, even if he’s said to be a Satanist in that movie) and Margaret believe that Carlita has been picked to be the mother of the Antichrist. When she sees Paolo one night, he tells her to look for the mark just seconds before a truck pins him to a wall. When she tries to hold him, Margaret walks away holding half of his body in an astounding moment.

Soon, she learns that she was impregnated by a demonic jackal — unlike the female one in The Omen — and is rushed to an abortion by two Catholic priests, which is as sacrilegious as it gets. Another car slams into them and she emerges from the car and suddenly she becomes Isabelle Adjani from Possession, seemingly now ready to give birth as she writhes in the filthy street.

Cardinal Lawrence watches over the birth of two children, a girl and a boy — the moment state his sex, the Jerry Goldsmith theme takes over — but Margaret is able to stab the priest and nearly kills her male child, but can’t. Luz stabs her and the conspiracy leaves, sending the entire place up in flames, the jackal burning and screaming. Carlita saves her and we see the two living in the mountains, just as Brennan finds them and says that she will be hunted down and that her son is named Damien and that he has been adopted by Robert Thorn and his wife Katherine.

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson, who wrote the script with Tim Smith and Keith Thomas, this film feels like it takes parts of Rosemary’s Baby, Suspiria and the aforementioned Possession while being its own unique film. Stevenson directed the “Butcher’s Block” season of Channel Zero, which is a neglected series that more people need to see. I’m so excited that more people are getting to see her work with this film.

Stevenson understands that the real horror — more and more these days — is that women’s bodies are being taken from them. She told SciFiNow, “Do you remember that scene where Gregory Peck is holding Lee Remick in bed and she says “I think I need you to call me a doctor because I think I’m going crazy.” That is what I remember more than anything. Even as a kid, that terrified me because it first introduced the concept of people dislocating from reality and not knowing what’s real and what’s not real. That scared me as a kid but continues to scare me even now. Especially as a woman. I think a lot of our life is deciphering what’s a threat, and what’s not a threat.”

From the paintings in the orphanage resembling the ones that Bugenhagen finds at Yigael’s Wall to a young Father Spiletto running from the fire, foreshadowing his death in The Omen, this film has something for the fans that love the original but new viewers don’t have the need to see every film in this cycle of movies.

This is such a unique moment, as it’s not just a sequel but a prequel that feels like it adds to the original while being able to have the quality to be judged on its own. I’m still just shocked by it and how much I loved every moment.

Directed by Jimmy Drain, who also appears in this movie and co-wrote it with Robert Bieber and Lewis Leslie, Realm of Shadows is an anthology horror film that boasts appearances by two pretty famous talents in Tony Todd and Vernon Wells, as well as Richard Tyson (Kindgergarten Cop) and Harley Whalen (Ash and Bone).

The connecting story — all horror anthologies need them! — is about a group of priests — Bishop Lucian (Mel Novak) and Brother Charles (Michael S. Rodriguez) — battling a coven of witches led by Nalum (Erika Monet Butters) — there’s even a Ouija board! — over a dagger that was used to stab Jesus in the side. Their battle brings the stories to life, several of which are based on tales that have actually happened.

The stories are:

Mallick’s Dreamlady: A man named Mallick (Drain) is able to pick up his dream girl (Leah Saxon) after help from a bartender (Mike Apple) who may not exist. This story was originally a short film directed by Drain and written by Tim Keller that was made in 2009.

Hike: The same man (Drain) keeps waiting to propose so long than his girlfriend (Morgan Weaver) leaves, which makes him loses his sanity. This is another short that Drain directed and Keller wrote in 20111.

Abashed: Jane and Thomas (Cassie Kelso, Mark Mook) have a bad break-up but when black magic gets involved, it turns out that true love may be the only enemy of evil. This is the short Abashed that was made in 2020.

The Initiation of Professor Kimmer: A new professor named Daniel Kimmer (Drain) is seduced by a student named Starr (Luba Bocian) and could lose his happy world with Jamie (Emily Absher). Starr wants more than just lovemaking. She may want his soul. But perhaps that soul is already owned by Jamie and her coven. This is taken from the 2011 short of the same name, directed by Drain and written by Lewis Leslie.

Cadaver: Peggy (played by Jodi Lynn Thomas, voiced by Ashe Medina) finds one of those witchcraft dancing schools we’ve all seen in movies, this one owned by Beedham (Caustic Scifidelic, who also did the score). It may cost so much more than money.

Meet Michael: Gaylen (Mara Davala) is a five-year-old girl so afraid of monsters that her parents hire an exorcist. This is from the 2017 short of the same name, directed by Brian McCulley and written by Drain.

Finally,Fate Upside Down  has the witches and priests fight it out for the dagger, which brings in Father Dudley (Todd) and his son Robby (Drain). This has animation and werewolves, as well as the characters from the first two stories, plus a last second appearance by Wells soon follows.

Realm of Shadows is a lot better than most streaming anthologies. It seems to have a central idea about love and evil, as well as moments of experimentation, even silent movie elements. It definitely looks way better than its budget would suggest and I’d love to see where Drain takes this in the sequel that is built by the ending.

You can watch this on Tubi.

O.J. Simpson died on April 10 of this year and it made me reflect. This movie asks the viewer to remember where you were when you saw the Bronco being chased by the police. I was in a raucous bar in Beaver, PA which was usually so overwhelming loud and it was super quiet. People suddenly had to realize that they were watching history and one of the first major moments of the 24 hour news cycle. It’s difficult to explain what it was like to live through the years of O.J. being arrested, the trial and what came after to someone who wasn’t alive for it. It was a TV show that we all lived through every night.

In this documentary, we hear from Kato Kaelin, Alan Dershowitz and Christopher Darden — as well as many others — as they talk about what it was like to be in the middle of this trial and the surrounding fervor. Even though we are so many years removed from this time, it still feels so real and like it just happened.

The really interesting part is when one of the people interviewed speaks about how O.J. claimed for years that he was above being black or white and wanted to transcend race, just being known as O.J. Yet when the trial was happening, he quickly embraced his blackness to gather the support of the community. It was also a truly tense time to be in Los Angeles, as after the Rodney King trial and the riots, it felt as if anything could set the whole place on fire.

If you have any interest in this trial and this era, you probably have seen everything there is to see. I mean, we did an entire podcast about the American Crime Story O.J. season. That said, it’s here for you if you need it.

You can watch this on Tubi.