Wes (Drew Marvick) wants to be a monster hunter, even if he isn’t very good at it. Yet when he meets a coven of vampiric ladies — Scarlett (Nina Lanee Kent, Murdercise, which was also made by co-directors Angelica De Alba and Paul Ragsdale), Selena (Adriana Uchishiba), Zooey (Meredith Mohler) and Reese (Kansas Bowling) — Wes pitches the idea of a subscription app where users pay for encounters that stop just short of death. This creates a bizarre symbiotic relationship: the vampires get a steady, safe food supply and Wes gets the fame and money he failed to find as a monster hunter.

Great title. Decent poster. And this is shot well, too. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be two hours in length, but it remains fun throughout, even if the motivations of the vampires go from bad to good a few too many times. As the vamps add more women to their blood cult, including Wes’ mother Mimi (Ginger Lynn!), the power all goes to some of their heads.

This also has Jessa Jupiter Flux as Gwen, Wes’ camerawoman sister, and their assistant — and total geek — Quentin (Shane Meyers). So much of the movie is told in montage, but you also get to see plenty of gorgeous vampiric vixens, including Regina (adult star Little Puck), Penelope (Ellie Church), Eva (Bebe Bardot), Neve (Delawna McKinney), Siren (August Kyss), Ronnie (Satta Murray) and Zara (Lo Espinosa). One of them even remarks that she’s excited to be like one of the girls in The Vampire Lovers!

The girls also have to stay ahead of their former master, Harvey (Nick Zagone), conspiracy-obsessed incels and true love. I really loved that Scarlett is so pro-women-in-charge, anti-capitalist, and all about turning other women on to give them a taste of what power is like. 

The film employs a rich palette of pinks, purples, and blues, which masks its indie budget and gives it a dreamlike, music-video quality during its many montages. This improves on the day-for-night flashback at the beginning, and the film looks uniformly good from that point on. The montages drag a bit and some of the elements are confusing, like is Scarlett good or evil and what’s this about a vampire war that gets forgotten just after it’s brought up. But for an indie feature, it’s way more visually interesting than most stuff out there and has its heart in the right — and most fun — place.

You can watch this on Bloodstream.

Director and co-writer Johnnard Harper has made more than twenty movies in a short time. Working with writer Anthony Leone, he’s made a perfect Tubi Original: cheap, outrageous and quick. 

We meet April (Kennedy Williams) and Derek (Joseph Mason), a couple deep in the struggle. They’re trying to make it, but the rent is due, and the bank account is screaming. Their solution? Get a roommate.

What follows is a parade of human wreckage that feels like a fever dream. Every interviewee is either legally insane, looking for a three-way, or both. It’s a montage of desperation that captures the true horror of the modern gig economy. There’s one moment when they meet a potential roommate, Jason, who is a stripper and an OnlyFans creator named Donald Trunk. This scene is incredible because it’s a one-take wonder, as at least two of the actors are visible breaking throughout. No notes.

Eventually, they settle on Megan (Mikiya Scottia). She’s polite, she’s clean, she’s perfect. Of course, because we’ve seen the first five minutes of the movie, we know Megan has already stacked a few bodies. We’re in on the joke; the roommates are the punchline.

This being a Tubi Original, there’s a late-in-the-film twist you’d never see coming, and because I said that, you can see it coming. But you still won’t see it coming. I apologize if this makes no sense, unless you are a watcher of numerous Tubi Originals and then, well, you get it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Editor’s note: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on January 24 at 7:00 PM at The Sie Film Center in Denver. You can get tickets here. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict 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.

Official synopsis: Anything That Moves follows nubile sex worker Liam who bikes with his girlfriend — his partner in both business and pleasure — through the city delivering snacks and divine satisfaction to his love-hungry clients. Meanwhile, a serial killer’s gory murders are piling up and all the evidence seems to point back to the lovers’ bed. 

If you have been wondering what Ginger Lynn and Nina Hartley are up to these days, writer/director  Alex Phillips has you covered with his latest feature Anything That Moves. The two actresses add adult-film authenticity to this tale of bicycling sex workers Liam (Hal Baum) and his girlfriend Thea (Jiana Nicole), who get caught up in the case of a serial killer who targets Liam’s clients.

The film’s aesthetic combines 1970s era porn vibes with that decade’s sleazy, gory grindhouse horror gruesomeness. There’s more here than mere pastiche, but social issue elements and sincerity tend to get muddled amongst all of the calculated weirdness and exploitation activity.

There’s no denying the fine 16mm cinematography work by Hunter Zimny, who marvelously captures the oppressiveness of both the Chicago summer and the powers that be that try to hold down the sex workers, along with the sex scenes that vary from tender to violent as well as the decidedly graphic horror mayhem. The performances are all committed in their own ways, from the more sincere to the over the top, the latter including Frank V. Ross and Jack Dunphy as two police officers accusing Liam and Thea of being prime suspects.

Anything That Moves is a unique vision. If you’re in the mood for what Fantasia’s official synopsis describes as “a psychosexual dark comedy thriller” that bounces around but never seems to quite settle on a main thematic focus, it’s certainly worth a view. 

A decade after they were in middle school together, Rowan (Ryan de Villiers) takes on Mag (Jane de Wet) as his roommate, and her obsession with him grows. She may claim she’s a hag — and the film has characters remind her that this is outdated terminology — but she’s really just an old-fashioned, obsessed with him.

Directed and written by Sam Wineman (Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror), this begins with Rowan struggling to get over the death of his fiancée and struggling to work every day in a coffee shop in the lobby of an office building. He and his boss, Opal (Adore Delano), try to get noticed by the music executives who come in and out for a drink, but they barely get noticed. Or even worse, when Rowan does get seen by one of them, it’s just for a casting couch down low situation.

Before Rowan came out, he dated women. One of them was Mag, and she feels like that was the only time that she was loved. Now, she is back in his life, in what she compares to Will & Grace. Soon, she’s worked her way in, butting heads with his best friend K.C. (Anja Taljaard) and alienating everyone else in his life.

I actually loved this. Sure, it’s kinda sorta Single White Female, except that Mag writes insane songs about love being a shell, gets into a MMF threesome with Rowan and his personal trainer when they’re drunk, and oh yeah, puts his electric toothbrush into her lady business and jills off with it, knowing he’s going to be scrubbing his bicuspids with it that night. This has a go for it sexual energy that’s great; it’s not afraid to go there. And go further.

Also: Never eat apples if you’re staying with your best gay friend and his stalker ex-straight hag.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and written by Jezar Riches, Fan of Mine inverts what you expect: diva singer Yari Iris (Angeleah Speights) is getting her life back together after a tragedy and going on tour. She decides to meet one of her fans, Mackenzie Sunday (Sylena Rai), and they end up having a real connection. Except that, well, this is a Tubi movie, so Yari quickly becomes friends with the fan and her family.

This even sets up a sequel, just like so many Tubi movies. Yari has her mother trapped in the house and a dead husband. Instead of getting herself together and recording her new music, she decides to get as close as she can to Mackenzie’s family, eventually inviting herself in and even taking care of everything, such as stopping a school bully. When she decides to get with Mackenzie’s husband, even he comes around to the fact that she’s lost it. But when a star is used to getting anything they want, there’s no way that she’s going to take no from anyone, even a family.

I love it when people post horrible reviews of Tubi movies. It’s like drinking Malort and thinking you’re getting champagne. No, you’re getting Malort. It’ll get you drunk, real drunk, but you’d better be ready for everything that entails, like having your mouth taste like eating from an ashtray would improve the taste. Similarly, making light of Tubi movies for their bad scripts, ridiculous moments, and poor acting is an indictment of you, not the films you watched.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Remember Married to a Balla? Skye (Dominique Madison) tried to get away from her abusive pro-athlete husband, Sandino Washington (Emanuel Alexander), and protect her sons, Justice (Darian J. Barnes), Kareem (Alonte Williams) and Jordan (Mario Golden). At the end, Skye shot him and then played football with her sons. 

So how do we have a sequel?

Sandino lived.

Directed by Emily Skye and written by Jacqueline Davis, Jamal Hill, and Tressa Azarel Smallwood, this movie reunites Skye and has her fall in love with a man from her past, Dr. Brett Langston (Jataun Gilbert). She left him all the way back in high school for Sandino, and he’s been in love with her ever since. Maybe she gets over her half-dead man quickly, but one of her sons is more interested in getting into the drug game than having a new dad. As for her oldest, he’s in college and is like when a sitcom character goes away due to a contract issue. He’s in this, but not for long.

Does Sandino get what he wants and trap Skye again? Can she have a career and love? Do we find out what a balla is? Will we get a third Balla movie? All these questions and more will be answered.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Simon West directed Con Air, The General’s Daughter, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Mechanic and The Expendables 2, so he’s the perfect person to make an action movie. 

You may not expect Rebel Wilson to be in one of those movies.

Here, she plays Sam, a secret agent trying to fix her relationship — and her status as maid of honor — with her friend Betsy (Anna Camp), who has replaced her with her sister Virginia (Anna Chlumsky). Despite her anger, her handler, Nadine (Sherry Cola), tells her to attend the wedding at Betsy’s fiancé, Ryan Caldwell’s (Sam Huntington), family’s lush estate.

Between Sam flirting with best man Chris (Justin Hartley) to the point that it angers Virginia, and an armed attack by criminals led by Kurt (Stephen Dorff) — and helped by Chris — the wedding day is a mess. But it allows Sam to use her special set of skills to, well, kill every one of the bad guys.

Coleen Camp shows up (she also produced) and Wilson has the kind of energy you need for one of these films. Anna Chlumsky, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Gigi Zumbado are the rest of the wedding party who quickly learn from Sam how to be an action star. I’m a sucker for silly action comedies, I guess.

Tulsa Terrors is all about the direct-to-video horror boom of the mid-1980s, which was sparked in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and led by United Entertainment (now VCI Entertainment, which released this) and its founder, Bill Blair.

Starting with Blood Cult, Blair’s idea to produce films exclusively for home video revolutionized the industry, leading to a wave of low-budget genre films that bypassed theatrical release. You know, SOV. And yes, I know that Boardinghouse was SOV first, but it was made for theaters, not video. Same as Sledgehammer, which was created for video, but not advertised as such, like Blood Cult.

This film features interviews with everyone who was there and covers many of the movies you know and love. You’ll learn how Blair approached Christopher and Linda Lewis with The Sorority House Murders and the idea to film on video, just like a soap opera. After all, he had two Betacams and Sony editing equipment. And you’ll get to see moments from the films, like The Ripper, Revenge, Toe Tags, Branded and The Stitcher.

If you have any love for SOV, consider this an essential watch.

You can get this from MVD.

The eighth movie in the series and the sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, this film begins two months later, as the rogue AI known as The Entity has begun hacking its way into nuclear arsenals, aided by a doomsday cult that worships the code. Only Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team can stop it. Luther (Ving Rhames) has already been working on a virus to destroy it, which leads The Entity to tell Ethan directly that it plans to kill his best friend.

Joined by former enemies Theo Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) and Paris (Pom Klementieff), they must go to the wreckage of the sub from the first movie, transmit a Poison Pill into the AI and somehow stop Gabriel (Esai Morales) from aiding the AI in dropping nuclear bombs on the planet.

This brings back just about every character in the series, either in new footage or flashbacks, even revealing that one of the CIA agents is the son of disgraced IMF commander Jim Phelps.

At three hours, the first third drags a bit. But hang with it, as the end is filled with massive stunts and set pieces. I rarely seek out big Hollywood movies, but if you’re going to do that, this is the one to watch. It’s dizzying in its array of situations it puts Ethan into, and there are actual emotional stakes throughout.