Ken Brewer clearly has a favorite hiking spot, and unfortunately for the local population, it’s filled with body bags. With nine films now under his belt, Brewer’s Death Park saga has officially transitioned from a low-budget slasher series into a sprawling indie epic. By returning to the familiar, scenic grounds of Santa Carla Regional Park, Return to Death Park leans into the comfort food of horror: beautiful foliage, questionable law enforcement and a high body count.

This time around, The Death Park Killer’s body (Brewer and/or  Robert Allen Mukes) has vanished from a morgue and new murders have begun. To stop this once and for all, Chloe (Josi Kat) leads a posse of bounty hunters after a $50,000 reward, while survivors Hunter (Doug Waught), Willie and Shady (Linnea Swanson) also return. As Shady and Chloe have both lost sisters to the killer, they have some level of kinship.

This has a huge cast, from one-eyed groundkeeper Willie Loomis (Joe D’Aguanno) and Detective Frank Ricardo (Rich Gordon), who are just searching the park, to the entire posse that comes in guns drawn, shooting for that big paycheck. who steps up to talk to the group. He warns them not to go to the park with guns as the place is being patrolled by undercover police, and they will be arrested. There may be two killers, but there’s definitely a “Matrix Guy” (John Ozuna), who can teleport before getting his head smashed in with a sledgehammer.

Brewer understands the assignment: if you have a massive cast and a legendary killer, you give the people what they want. And that’s confrontation. The tension between the heavily armed bounty hunters and the undercover police patrolling the park creates a powder keg environment where the killer isn’t the only threat.

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Directed by Shaun Silva (who also directed Jason Aldean’s video for “Try That In a Small Town”) and written by Travis J. Opgenorth, this stars Zack Roerig as lawman John Dorsey, who is about to lose not only his job but his wife to his deputy, Danny Raise (Britton Webb). Against his will, he teams with U.S. Marshall Butch Hayden (Billy Zane) to hold outlaw Emily Rusk (Cara Jade Myers) hostage. A battle of wills ensues as Emily turns the posse on themselves, but as her marauding husband Kyle (Scott Adkins!) and his gang get closer, Emily and John realize they will need each other to survive.

Hayden and Rusk have already had a shootout at a motel, and the body count is piling up. Hayden is even using Big Buck’s (Trace Adkins) biker gang as part of his militia. Beyond Adkins, the inclusion of Yelawolf and Struggle Jennings (grandson of Waylon Jennings) gives the film a distinct outlaw-country texture that complements the Southern Gothic vibe of the motel shootouts and biker militias.

Nearly a Western, this has all the twists and turns you’d expect and maybe a few you won’t. While the marketing pushes the action, the meat of the story is the Stockholm Syndrome-adjacent dynamic between Zack Roerig and Cara Jade Myers as the lines of morality blur because the hero is essentially a man who has already lost his dignity at home. By the time the gang closes in, the film shifts from a chase movie into a siege film, reminiscent of Assault on Precinct 13 or 3:10 to Yuma.

Scott Adkins is widely considered one of the best modern martial arts stars (the Boyka series, John Wick 4), so seeing him as a marauding husband is interesting. He has only one fight scene, which is strange and may not be the best use of him. 

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Match is directed by Danishka Esterhazy, who remade Slumber Party Massacre. It’s all about Paola (Humberly González), whose first date with a man she met online takes place inside a terrifying house and involves a way-too-long tea with his mother, ending with her knocked out and tied up. What’s next?

Lucille (Diane Simpson) lives in a suburban home that’s really a prison for multiple people, including her deformed son Henry, whom Paolo thinks she’s been talking to the entire time. Instead, she’s been chatting with Lucille, who is looking for the perfect woman to mate with her beloved boy.

All along, Paola’s sister, Maria (Shaeane Jimenez), has been telling her there are so many red flags. When her sister doesn’t return in time to see their father before his surgery, she starts to worry. That brings her to the same house of horrors, where another date.

The reveal that Lucille has been catfishing as her son Henry adds a layer of psychological voyeurism. It’s not just a kidnapping; it’s a mother’s twisted attempt at curating a bloodline. Diane Simpson’s performance as Lucille is genuinely unsettling, oscillating between a doting mother and a predatory architect of a human breeding program.

Written by Al and Jon Kaplan (Zombeavers, Lowlifes), this has two scenes that are guaranteed to blow your mind. In one, Lucille explains sex to Henry while jerking off her son and another where Paolo stops Henry from assaulting her by, well, snapping a mousetrap on his meat. I’ve never seen that before!

What motivates Lucille to create this twisted breeding program for her son? How does Paola’s sister, Maria, react when she discovers the truth about what happened to her? What consequences will Paola face after her harrowing experience in Lucille’s home? So many questions. Don’t pass this one up just because it’s a low-budget Tubi original. There’s something good here.

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Remember how wild Adopted was? I mean, it ended up with ten-year-old Dylan (Jayden Aguirre) facing a literal firing squad of cops. I’m so excited that Chris Stokes is back with a sequel, because that movie earned one.

Dylan starts the movie inside a mental health facility. But he soon escapes and finds his way inside the home of another family, a place where he can be so sweet until the time when he loses it, yet again, and threatens everyone’s life.

Directed by Chris Stokes and written by Marques Houston, who returns as Detective Dante Miller, this finds the Andrews family — Ava (Princess Love Norwood), Caleb (Don Benjamin) and Mason (Preston Best) — repeating the pattern of Dylan: at first, he’s so full of love. By the end, he’s shotgunning blasting your favorite aunt. They’re just getting over the loss of a son, and now, they’ve let a total wildman into their home.

While many sequels try to reinvent the wheel, Chris Stokes and Marques Houston know exactly what their audience wants: high-stakes melodrama and a child who embodies true evil. Aguirre plays Dylan with a terrifying on/off switch. One moment, he’s the healing balm for a mother’s broken heart; the next, he’s a tactical mastermind wielding a shotgun with the efficiency of a seasoned action star.

Look, this is almost the same movie as the first, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t watch the third.

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Director and writer Jem Garrard has made R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead, the Invasive movies and Slay for Tubi. All of these movies are in the upper tier of originals made for the streamer, so when I see their names above the credits, I know I’m about to watch something unique.

Nova (N’kone Mametja) is the anchor of a scuzzy, fluorescent-lit diner that seems to be held together by grease and broken dreams. It’s the kind of 2 A.M. haunt where the coffee is burnt, and the hope is non-existent. The tension ramps up when Nova becomes convinced that the silent, unassuming man at Table 5 isn’t just a late-night regular. He’s the serial killer currently dominating the local news cycles.

The evidence is mounting: a suspicious car, a body-shaped bundle in the backseat, and a demeanor that screams predator. But Garrard pivots from a standard slasher into something much more cynical. Once Nova’s co-workers catch wind of the massive bounty on the killer’s head, the diner transforms into a pressure cooker. To these wage slaves, the man at table 5 isn’t a threat to be feared; he’s a winning lottery ticket wrapped in a blood-stained jacket.

Shot in South Africa, this feels like it could be anywhere in America, a lonely place where no one cares about anyone. There’s no future, and that lack of future could end a lot sooner than anyone believes. I really enjoyed the downtrodden nature of this, as well as the constant twists.

You can almost smell the stale cigarettes and floor cleaner. Garrard balances this grim reality with a relentless series of twists that force the audience to constantly re-evaluate who the real villain is: the man with the dead body, or the “normal” people willing to do anything to escape their poverty. As with their other films, Garrard has made something special here.

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Directed by Amara Cash and written by Arland Digirolamo and Alana Wexler, Get Off My Lawn starts with Jackie (Camila Banus) and Jason (Tahj Mowry) getting a too good to be true deal on the house of their dreams. That’s until they meet Alec Todd (Jonah Hwang), the next-door neighbor who believes their home should be his.

That’s because his grandfather had promised it to him. However, his father, Denny (Max E. Williams), wanted it sold, so Alec convinces his mother, Denny (Max E. Williams), to sell to the young couple, hoping to get them to move quickly. Every single thing they do enrages him, from moving Gramps ‘ rules of the house off the mantle to getting rid of the backyard memorial to him. 

While Alec’s best friend Ethan (Tyler Lofton) and girlfriend Ray (Kayla Maisonet) are normal teenagers, he’s stuck in the 1950s and seems as prim and proper as anyone could be. He repeats, many times, that “rules must be followed or there will be consequences.” That seems to mean using his friends to prank the married couple out of their new home. One wonders how he keeps his girlfriend, or if the villain even cares.

I love my mom’s house and want her to stay in it as long as she can. So I get how it feels to lose a home that you love so much. That said, I would not go as murder-crazy as Alec, but man, he’s a great character. Alec’s behavior quickly shifts from creepy to dangerous. He leaves a dead rat on their doorstep and claims his grandfather is buried in their yard. He grows increasingly insane as the film progresses, and without him, this movie would fall flat.

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When his brother Finn (Seth Isaac Johnson) disappears and everyone forgets that he existed, Sam (Bean Reid) must unravel the mystery before his sibling is lost for all time. Directed and written by Jem Garrard (Slay, which a character watches in this movie, as well as Takeout and Invasive) and based on the R.L. Stine short story of the same name from Nightmare Hour, which was also adapted as part of The Haunting Hour TV series, R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead is a Tubi Original with a lot going for it.

The town of Redhaven is presented as a slice of heaven where the harvest never ends. However, this prosperity is built on a dark foundation. The secret horror of the child-stealing curse is psychological as much as it is supernatural; when a child is taken by the curse, they aren’t just physically gone. They are erased from the community’s collective memory, leaving only a few to live with the truth.

Sam and his family have just moved to Redhaven and know nothing of its secrets. The child-stealing ritual coincides with Mr. Palmer’s Harvest Festival, which is when the old farmer opens up his farm to everyone. There, as Sam is acting out, he steals a prize pumpkin. Finn brings it back for his brother under the sheriff’s order and is taken. Soon, no one but Sam remembers his brother, except for a girl named Becka (Adeline Lo), who will introduce our hero to the lore and legacy of her town.

I really liked this. It’s inspired by Stine but not slavish to his work. However, it gets the feel right. It’s a gateway horror movie, even if the ending may leave some kids upset, confused and disappointed. That’s why you watch films with them, so you can talk through the things that happened and see what you can learn from it.

The Palmer Farm is filmed on the same location as Pa Kent’s farmhouse on the WB series Smallville. 

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Directed by Maya Table and written by the duo of Donna Christopher and LisaBeth Willis, the movie centers on a tragedy that strikes at the heart of a family when a gang shooting leaves young Nathan (James Jay Alexander) — the son of Faith (Ciera Angelia) 00 fighting for his life in a coma.

The film sets up a high-stakes investigation led by a detective who admits the shooting is likely gang-related, but Faith has little confidence in working with the police. As the plot unravels, her internal conflict shifts from as she goes from a grieving mother to a woman seeking her own brand of justice.

Benny (Raymond Seay) leads the gang who shot Nathan, and he makes his henchmen follow a code of silence, betting on the fact that nobody’s going to talk. The film takes a surprising turn toward religious themes. While it begins as a standard urban thriller or revenge flick, the closing acts lean heavily into the spiritual battle Faith faces.

This was the top movie on Tubi for a few weeks, and you can see why: it tells a story people want to see, with an incredibly dramatic performance by its lead actress. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

When the President of the United States (Gayle O’Grady) collapses during a historic peace accord with Russian President Kasparov (Jason Piette), all hell breaks loose. Yes, terrorists have hacked her pacemaker, threatening not only her life but also global stability as she attempts to negotiate peace with Russia. Now, a team of fearless agents — led by Jacob Pike (Jesse Kove) — must figure it out before either the President’s heart stops or she stops peace from finally happening.

Between Lorenzo Lamas and David Chokachi playing the security detail to the hacker terrorists known as the Patriot Front, this is packed with action, romance (of course,, the agent is dating the President’s daughter, Amelia, played by Gina Vitori), airplane derring-do and so much more. Sure, it’s a movie by The Asylum, but I had fun. Paul Logan as Agent Breacher and G. Anthony Joseph as the main bad guy also make this way better than it has any right to be. Give it up for director Nick Lyon and writers Geoff Mead and Kenny Zinn. 

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Based on the Wattpad sensation The QB Bad Boy and Me by Tay Marley, and the sequel to Sidelined: The QB and Me, Sidelined 2: Intercepted finds USC freshman quarterback Drayton (Noah Beck) dealing with an injury rather than taking the field. His girlfriend, dancer Dallas (Siena Agudong), is attending CalArts and working toward becoming a professional dancer. Can they stay together despite the pressures of their new lives?

Directed by Justin Wu and written by Crystal Ferreiro, this is one of James Van Der Beek’s last roles as Drayton’s father. 

For Drayton (Noah Beck), his identity is tied entirely to being the “star QB.” Being sidelined by an injury isn’t just a physical setback; it’s a psychological one. The trailer hints at the friction this causes, with his coach telling him he can get with the twos or get out. This vulnerability makes him susceptible to the sparks he finds with his physical therapist, Charlotte (Roan Curtis).

A new layer to Dallas’s story is the soaring cost of her education at CalArts. With tuition increasing by roughly 30%, or around $18,000, she is forced to juggle a new job alongside her rigorous dance schedule. This professional pull makes her realize that Drayton is a dream, but not her only dream. Plus, she finds a good friend — and perhaps more — in coworker and musician Skyler (Charlie Gillespie)

It’s funny because I never dated in high school, yet I keep watching these romantic comedies and go through all the ups and downs with these kids without knowing what it’s like to really be in this world. Then again, I do the same with giallo films. At least these are less dangerous to my health.

You can watch this on Tubi.