ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

*This Review Contains Spoilers

What it is: 

A competently written and directed, well-acted, but overly long derivative prequel to the original Omen trilogy. An American girl, raised in a Catholic orphanage, travels to Rome to become a full nun. She works in an all-girls orphanage/home for unwed mothers. There, she uncovers the conspiracy to birth Damian from the original 1976 film. Along the way, she discovers that she is one of many chosen mothers. 

The film slides quite nicely into the events of the original film while setting up a parallel storyline we never knew existed. One in which Damian’s twin sister has been hidden away on Alderaan to keep her safe from the Empire. Um, I mean the evil Catholics trying to assassinate her. 

Director Arkasha Stevenson certainly did her homework, which I appreciated. The little musical cues evoking Morricone’s giallo work made me smile. But at times the film feels like an academic essay littered with extended passages from other, better source material. 

It’s a movie meal that plucked all its ingredients from a list of high-quality horror and sci-fi films including The Omen, Deep Red, The Devils, Rosemary’s Baby, Possession, Flavia the Heretic, Return of the Jedi, To the Devil A Daughter, Inseminoid, Suspiria, and yes…even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

With a meal like this, you know exactly what you’re getting. The consequences of eating a meal like this are twofold: 

1. You’re not hungry anymore. The food fills you up. Job done. 
2. You drive home thinking about that really great meal you had at that awesome restaurant on your birthday 10 years earlier. 

The key ingredient missing is the “extraordinary events happening in an ordinary world” approach taken in the original film. There was almost no supernatural hoo-ha in the original Omen. To an outsider in that world, everything that happens could be viewed as simple coincidence or tragedy. This film is loaded with overt supernatural stuff going down and for the most part, it works. 

What it isn’t: 

• A nunsploitation film. There are no gratuitous repressed nun sexy shenanigans. The first act teases that it might go there, but it never does.  
• Alucarda

What I liked: 

• The performances are top-notch. Kudos to Nell Tiger Free for carrying the picture admirably. 
• The camera work and music are excellent. 
• The concept of organized religion deliberately doing evil things to pump up their membership numbers was accurate. This was the most disturbing idea in the film.
• The birthing scenes.
• The files containing the photos of the failed, deformed antichrist babies. 
• ‘60s-style music needle drops

What I disliked: 

• Too many jump scares in the first half. 
• Too much time spent settling Margaret into her new job at the orphanage. 
• An all-too predictable plot twist for Margaret. 
• Entire sequences lifted from other films. 
• An all-too predictable set-up for a trilogy that will likely end with a teenage Satanic Leia blowing up a bunch of stuff with her newly discovered powers. 

Who is this movie for? 

• Younger horror fans who dug The Nun and other recent jump-scare heavy films will like this a lot more than older viewers who have likely seen all its influences more than once on multiple formats with and without commentary. 
• Disney, who appear hell-bent on resurrecting every good 20th Century Fox franchise from the 1970s.  
• Younger film critics who don’t know that women have dominated the horror genre for 50+ years. 

Summary: 

It’s a worthy effort considering that most franchise reboots aren’t stellar. It wouldn’t be very fair if I said I love a movie like Paul Naschy’s Exorcismo, which is a blatant rip-off of The Exorcist and then slate this film for doing something similar with a bigger budget. It’s a good film when viewed from that perspective. I liked it better than Omen III: The Final Conflict, but not as much as the 1976 original or Damian: Omen II.  It’s a well-made, entertaining film with nothing new to say. A meal that fills you up on a Friday night with your fellow horror fiends. 

Remember Jen and Sylvia Soska? Well, they just made a sequel — kinda, sorta — to Night of the Living Dead and its on Tubi. Yes, the very same Soska sisters who made the remake of Rabid and American Mary.

Now, is that a good thing? Was the remake of Rabid a good idea? Have we gotten so many sequels to Romero’s work both from him — good (Dawn, Day) and bad (everything not Dawn and Day) — and from the other creators of the original, good (Return of the Living Dead) and, well, weird (Flesheater) and just plain abysmal (Children of the Living Dead). Then again, isn’t everything after Romero influenced or outright stolen (Zombi) from his work?

Ash (Ashley Moore) and her brother Luke (Shiloh O’Reilly) are the grandchildren of Ben from Night of the Living Dead and even have the gun he used to kill zombies. Their parents have gone away on Ash’s birthday and her friend Iris (Camren Bicondova) offers to watch her brother so that she can go to the Festival of the Living Dead, a concert that is on the same ground where the walking dead first appeared in 1968, with her boyfriend Kevin (Gage Marsh), his brother Ty (Andre Anthony) and sisters Destini (Keana Lyn Bastidas) and Lindsey (Maia Jae Bastidas).

Yes, kind of like Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. The less said of that, the better.

Written by Miriam Lyapin and Helen Marsh (who also wrote the Tubi Original Deadly Midwife), this kicks up a notch when the concert goers all get in a car accident hitting a zombie and go to the concert to get help. Iris hears that her friend is in danger, so she gets her friend Blaze (Christian Rose) to drive her and Luke to save everyone. Yes, she takes a diabetic child into the heart of the undead.

For some reason, the festival has a giant man to be burned, like Burning Man. Or The Wicker Man. Or Midsommar. None of this has anything to do with the movie you are going to watch and maybe twenty people came to this concert, which feels more like the Gathering of the Juggalos than a concert that is a tribute to people who died. The bands all feel like Warped Tour instead of anything, as if this movie was made in the 2000s for SyFy and was filmed in Eastern Europe just like, yes there it is again, Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave.

I grew up minutes from Evans City and this weird field is not the weird fields in Evans City. Instead, it’s all cash in cheap quick artifice and yeah, I should know better, but I never do. Moore and Bicondova are good actors and do what they can, but they there isn’t much to save.

Also: How did they get Ben’s gun and know he was a hero when he died in a basement and got burned as a zombie? Did we forget, you know, the shocking ending of the movie that started modern horror?

If this movie was just a zombies at a concert film, I’d be fine with it. But by associating itself — literally inserting itself — into the trinity of zombie movies, it commits an unforgivable sin. It’s boring. There’s a great idea in here of a world where the undead have become commonplace and celebrated as tragedies like how 9/11 is a few years away from being another sale day like President’s Day. Instead, it’s content to be a movie with some decent fight scenes, alright gore and nothing else to add to a genre that’s overflowing with movies that added less than nothing.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Keith (Matthew MacCaull) and Kathleen (Elyse Levesque) are taking their kids Jeffrey (Josh Zaharia) and Amy (Amanda Fix) on an RV vacation across the country. While the family eats breakfast, Amy goes off to smoke and two backwoods types appear and are vaguely threatening. You’ve seen it before in, well, nearly every RV horror and rednecks against normal folks movies.

Except this one has a twist.

And I don’t want to reveal it because even though I assumed it was coming, the way it plays out was pretty great.

Directed by Tesh Guttikonda (the writer of Influencer) and Mitch Oliver and written by Al Kaplan (Zombeavers), this places the RV family into the home of Vern (Richard Harmon), Billy (Ben Sullivan), Big Mac (Dayleigh Nelson), Savannah (Brenna Llewellyn) and Juli Ann (Cassandra Sawtell). Their home is isolated far from the closest down and the law, which is Deputy White (Alexander Calvert).

Again, without giving much away, this does a great job of pitting the civilized — a family that barely gets along and use drugs to get by — against who they perceive as the hopeless uncivilized country folk who carry guns everywhere they go. The film also places your sympathy with some characters and then pulls your feet out from under you when the reveals — there are more than one — happen. Toss in some solid comedy that doesn’t diffuse the tension and some grisly gore — look out for that eyeball scene — and you have a slasher that’s way better than what we’ve come to expect from the genre lately.

You can watch this on Tubi.

When a young Army sergeant is murdered, the police can’t find any answers until they learn that the killer could be as close as the dead man’s backyard. By the end of it all, Jeremy Cuellar admitted to working with Kemia Hassel to kill her husband Sgt. Tyrone Hassel III on New Year’s Eve 2018. Cuellar and Kemia were lovers and all three were soldiers stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia. The killers had planned to collect Army death benefits and life insurance money.

They had started their affair when they were stationed at Camp Casey Korea as part of the 3rd Infantry Division, 1st Combat Brigade. They communicated on Snapchat as they thought that their messages couldn’t be found or traced. The case was broken when an anonymous tip was given to Officer Eric Wolff that revealed “investigators need to look at the victim’s wife … and a boyfriend who serves in her platoon.”

Cuellar told another soldier that he and Kemia wanted to be together and were planning to murder Tyrone while the married couple was on leave. That soldier went to Criminal Investigation Division and told them that he believed Cuellar was the murderer. He killed Tyrone in the driveway of his father’s house while his year-old-son slept inside. He thought he was bringing home a plate of food for his wife and was walking into a trap that she set up.

This Tubi Original tells you the entire story and has family members share their loss. It’s a hard watch, seeing their pain, but does a good job of sharing out this tragedy.

You can watch this on Tubi.

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.

An engaging documentary focused on the remarkable life of maverick theater owner Chelly Wilson in the heyday of cinematic porn as well as a valentine to the era of grindhouses on New York City’s 42nd Street, director Valerie Kontakos’s Queen of the Deuce is a fascinating watch.

There’s no question that Wilson lived a life, and Kontakos explores it wonderfully, from Wilson’s childhood in Greece to her move to America with only $5 to her name, to becoming the the owner of several highly profitable gay porno theaters in the 1970s and a highly respected center of attention to those who knew her. Believe me, there are so many details in this documentary, from heartbreaking to hilarious, about Wilson — an openly gay woman who married men, a Jewish woman who enjoyed celebrating Christmas, a wealthy woman who chose to live above one of her theaters rather than in a more expensive abode — that there aren’t room for in this review.  

Archival audio and video footage of Wilson shares screen time with interviews with some of her relatives and colleagues, all of whom have remarkable stories about her. Speaking of archival footage, scenes of 42nd Street from the seventies should bring lumps to the throats of many a grindhouse theater fan.

Queen of the Deuce is a superb documentary about Chelly Wilson’s jaw-dropping life story, not only in breaking the glass ceiling in the adult film industry but as a younger, free-spirited woman in Greece, and the many fully lived years in between and after. Kontakos’s terrific film comes highly recommended to anyone who enjoys an unusual life story of someone battling the odds and coming out on top.

Queen of the Deuce screened as part of the 2024 edition of Make Believe Seattle, which runs March 21–26. For more information, visit https://www.makebelieveseattle.com/.

Mykah Jones (Sheila Leason) is a wife and mother, as well as a hit woman. None of these things are working out together, because her husband thinks that she’s cheating on her, probably because her cover story of being a photographer keeps getting all messed up when she does things like forget her camera. Instead, she’s out acting like an escort and strangling strange men and getting all sorts of injuries that she can’t explain.

Once she takes on her last assignment, she learns just how important her family is and that goes beyond the marriage counseling that she’s been struggling through with her husband Jamieson (Kevin Blake Chandler). Little does she know that most of her life has been a lie and that she was turned into a killer by her father’s former partner Lady (Cheryl Frazier) who is trying to do the same with her daughter Malia (Anmalya Delva).

Directed by Christian Sesma and written by Karen R. Hardin, this has hints of Kill Bill but from the side that hired killers are good people and do it all for noble reasons. So will Mykah kill her target Dyson (Dontelle Jackson), as she’s being blackmailed by Chauntell (Kyle Kankonde), who has photos of her seducing a target that she plans to send to Jamieson? Being a hired killing machine seems difficult, if this movie is based on reality.

I enjoyed Kiss of Death. It has a few twists that make it different and sure, it’s very similar to True Lies, but that’s not a bad thing.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Ella (Patricia Allison) is the punk daughter of the sheriff who just so happens to be the fastest gun in her island town. When her father (Bashir Salahuddin) is killed just after being warned that the people who killed his wife and son are back in town, she hopes that someone will get her justice. No one does and it feels like her father’s murder is being forgotten. Well, this may be set in the present, but it’s definitely a Western and it has a heroine who equals any man with a gun.

The state police, led by Sam Mayo (Adam Lustick) aren’t getting anything done. The new cop Hobbes (Arjun Gupta) is clueless and the mayor Calvin Whitney (Tate Donovan) may be behind it all. All Ella has is her weapon and her friend Townes (Myles Evans).

Directed by Max Isaacson and written by Tony Borden, this was filmed in Hawaii, where Paradise is located. It’s gritty at times yet covered in bright colors; Tia Carrere shows up as the boss of the bad guys, complete with an eye patch. I read one review that said that it can’t figure out what kind of movie it is. I disagree; it’s one that has so many influences yet emerges as a unique and exciting action film all its own.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and written by Henry Darrow McComas (the writer of Wolfman’s Got Nards), this is the story of Sadie (Rachel Colwell) and Ed (Dillon Casey), a young couple who are barely getting along as they live the van life and travel across the U.S. Their travels take them to a camp run by the title character (Brooke Johnson) who is very much Mrs. Vorhees without the need for a son to rise from the lake two movies later. Then again, this ends with the hint of a sequel and gets supernatural.

I never wanted to go camping before this and certainly don’t want to now. The camp host has a series of rules — her life was ruined by those horrible kids that didn’t follow them, also it must be this place, this horrible place — and there’s one kill, in which a man climbs up out of one of those camp toilets covered in human excrement and looking like some kind of demon that would have made this an ironic film if it came out in 1980.

That said, I would never leave my dog at a killer camp and drive away. Obviously, Ed is a complete moron but he seems to get it together before the end. I really enjoyed this because it definitely leans into what you’re expecting before becoming what you’re not expecting. That’s a big swing and seeing that this is a Tubi Original, an even bigger one. Bring on The Camp Host 2.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The bachelorette party has become dangerous in the horror films of the 2020s. It seems that every time ladies get together, people die. I was excited about watching this because it was directed by Dave Parker, who made The Dead Hate the Living!

Kelsey (Diana Gardner), Rochelle (Isabella Egizi), Blake (Nathaniel Ansbach) and Jenny (Anastasiya Bogach) are in Italy to celebrate Rochelle’s wedding to Richard (Davide Nurra). One of their friends, Brianna (Giulia Nunnari), has already been killed by a vampire but they don’t know that. No, they’re here to party, even if Kelsey and Rochelle aren’t really all that good of friends these days — which seems like a bit taken from Bridesmaids, but taken even darker because Rochelle stole Kelsey’s man, who is Richard. We also find out later that she may like Kelsey even more than Richard, however.

Everyone goes out and ends up a club owned by Victor (Fabián Castro). He asks to be invited back to where the party is happening and brings his vampire clan to start killing everyone, as well as try and win over Kelsey, who of course looks like his long dead love.

Written by Michael Lucid and Mary O’Neil (who is in Malum), this has some fine gore, gay representation — even Blake gets a love interest in vampire killer Dario (Riccardo Angelini) and some great production values. Is it the best vampire movie you’ve ever seen? Of course not. Is it a great movie for a rainy afternoon or late night with some drinks and pizza? Totally.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Maddie (Alexa Barajas) is driving when she gets distracted and hits someone. Instead of staying to check on them, she runs. Her mother is a politician and decides to hide her, more for her career than for Maddie’s safety. Her friend Hertig (Pavel Kríz) has created a state-of-the-art AI-powered house that has a system called ROMI (Jocelyn Chugg) that was created by Barkley (Juan Riedinger).

While hiding out, Maddie smokes weed, drinks and pops pills, showing no remorse at all for nearly killing someone. She does, however, learn that Hertig once had another woman living in the house named Irina (Jamie Shelnitz). That’s when the movie throws you a curve while otherwise it had been setting itself up to be an AI versus human beings film. It now is about a lost soul trapped in the house as well as a woman-hating serial killer coming after Maddie.

Director Robert Cuffley and writer Susie Moloney made a short of this film in 2019. There are some interesting shots in this as well as a really cool red color palette for some scenes, but there isn’t much that will surprise you. Cuffley also made Bright Hill Road, which has a similar story of a female protagonist confronting her past through the supernatural.

You can watch this on Tubi.