I know that you don’t have to love every protagonist in every film, but I somehow found myself watching multiple films at the Chattanooga Film Festival, where each lead made me want to rage-quit the movie. That’s not fair to the filmmaker or the film, so I stuck it out each time. This would be one of those times.

Merl (Colin Burgess) never leaves his house. His home is also enormous and challenging to comprehend. So yes, you can see why he needs to bring on a roommate — the second CFF movie where someone got a roommate and it ruined their life — to make his rent.

That new friend is Larry (Paul Rothery), who has just escaped from jail and is constantly being watched by his criminal associates.

Director and writer Cory Santilli has agoraphobia, and this has many moments that prove this, as Merl can’t leave this place even when he’s months behind on paying the landlady. One reason he never leaves? There’s a giant version of his head sticking out of the front yard.

It’s a quirky film that just didn’t resonate with me, but you may find something to love here. Most of the other reviews I’ve checked online have been overwhelmingly positive, so I think I need to give this another watch.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watched films.

A young Brazilian girl, Laura (Rebecca Rosato), has come to Argentina to visit her aunt but once there, schedules don’t work out – her aunt has forgotten that she’s coming to town – and all her luggage is lost in her taxi and what follows is an all-night adventure through a crazy night, ala After Hours. Usually, it’s men that have these late night adventures, but this movie puts its female traveler into some strange places with even odder folks.

Directed by Matías Szulanski, who wrote it with Victoria Freidzon, this was quite the journey. Buenos Aires offers a strange birthday party, a broken nose and so much pizza. It feels dirty, haphazard and at the end, authentic, even if these are the kind of nights that can only happen in a movie. I really liked the look of this film. It feels like being out all night with nowhere else to go, nowhere better to be and we all know nothing good for you happens at 11 PM.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.

Directed and written by Casey T. Malone, this is about Stephen Doore (Aiden White), a dock worker who refuses to be vaccinated against a strange harbor pathogen in a black and white world of conspiracies. The acting is strong and I understand the understand how we’re still trying to make sense of the pandemic that we all lived through, as well as the waking nightmare that we find ourselves in today. But a hero who refuses to be part of the program feels strange in today’s climate and I don’t know what that says about us, me or this movie. There are a lot of soliloquies that discuss the secrets that are behind the world, but so many of them seem to go nowhere, as does a lot of this film. Yes, there’s a briefcase that has spirals of something inside it. But like this film, it all feels like wisps of what could have been something more. The bones are there, the muscle and flesh covering it let me down.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.

Less a movie and more a true confession – director and writer Shane Brady and his wife Emily Zercher really did lose money in the same way as a hacker stole $20,000 of their money as they bought their first house  – Hacked is them living out what they wish really did happen. Or as the filmmakers say, ““The first ten minutes of this film are based on true events. The rest is what we wish we could have done to that bastard.”

Mark Rumble (Brady) and his wife Amy (Augie Duke) are getting through the pandemic, even if it means selling vacuums to people they are terrified of. Their kids Freddy (Collin Thompson) and Ralph (Owen Atlas) are unfazed – this is a time to play. They’ve seen through the lies of the world and just want to make their videos. And play a video game that causes them to abuse The Chameleon (Walking Dead’s Chandler Riggs), the most wanted hacker in Florida. In response to the ways that they troll him, he steals the family’s downpayment on a new house. The bank doesn’t care. The police can’t do much. And now they’re living in a motel and Mark is forced to donate bone marrow to make ends meet.

Working with CIA agents Nova (Mia Castillo) and Kate (Katelyn Nacon), they plan on taking down the hacker, who has done so many horrible things, including stealing a giant axe like the one in the game the brothers are obsessed by.

I also enjoyed Brady’s Breathing Happy and this is even better. Richard Riehle as Santa? Two brothers whose videos abuse almost everyone they meet? Revenge on banks and those who take advantage of people? I mean, maybe $20,000 isn’t a lot of money to you, but to the average person, it’s life-changing.

This is the kind of film that I love. It’s what I call a hijinks ensue movie. The idea is basic: a hacker goes after a family and erases their lives and steals their cash. But the rest is in those hijinks: moments of sheer lunacy, goofball over the top humor that you can come into and watch at any time. Hacked is a movie made for lazy Sundays, lying on the couch and coming into it wherever you end up, knowing the great parts about to happen. That’s about as high a compliment as I can give.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.

Directed and written by Alberto Sedano — who produced Jess Franco’s 2010 Paula-Paula — Severin goes deep into Spanish cinema — well, at least the kind we all want to watch — with this doc. Here’s what they have to say for themselves: “Under the Franco dictatorship, Spain’s rigid censorship laws had repressed any form of sexuality outside of Catholic marriage. But following Franco’s death and the consolidation of democracy, Clasificada “S” films–restricted to those over 18 years old, with the warning that their content may offend the sensibilities of the viewer–embodied a period in Spanish history when sex went from being a sin to becoming a cinematic expression of political freedom.”

This film “…explores the history behind the rating, the battles it fought, and the distinctive dramas, thrillers and horror shockers that subverted the values of the former dictatorship. Narrated by Iggy Pop, featuring revealing interviews with actors, directors and historians, and showcasing clips from films by Jess Franco, José Ramón Larraz, Ignacio Iquino, Eloy de la Iglesia and many more, Exorcismo tells the incredible true story of a film movement that rocked Spanish culture, changed the face of genre films, and left its transgressive mark on global cinema forever.”

If the names of any of those directors got you all hot and bothered — look, I’m cuckoo for Franco and lunatic for Larraz — this is for you. And even if you have no idea who they are, there’s a lot to learn here about how sometimes extreme cinema can have a lot to say about the world that it escapes from.

From euro horror like The Awful Dr. Orloff and Horror Express, which played American screens, to the films of Naschy, the Blind Dead and Eugenio Martín and Eloy de la Iglesia, this hits the expected notes before surprising you with stuff like The Killer of Dolls, Bloodbath and Human Animals.

As much as I love Italy, and it will always have my perverted movie heart, Spain has been neglected too long. Italy’s violent films of the 1970s often were reactions to Anni di Piombo. Spain was finally emerging from a time when everything was forbidden, when two versions of nearly every movie had to be filmed—one for Spain, where women were nearly fully clothed, and where violence was held back, and another for the rest of the world.

Where this film really sings is when it allows the talking heads to expand on movies that they love from Spain—Bloody Sex, Beyond Terror, Satan’s Blood, Morbus, Mad Foxes—and three of the country’s most unique directors, José Ramón Larraz, Ignacio F. Iquino and Jess Franco.

Maybe you won’t feel like you’re seeing uncles you haven’t heard from in too long when Jack Taylor and Antonio Mayans show up to speak, but if you do, again — this was made for you. You will also come back with a list of movies you need to check out. Mine are Poppers, Morbus and Dimorphic.

Also: Holding back from showing Jess Franco until an hour and forty-four minutes in is the very definition of edging.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.

This is my first film at Chattanooga Film Fest 2025, and wow, it’s already a winner. Abigail Before Beatrice defines slow burn, and that’s not a bad thing here. It parcels out the info that you need in just the right way, gradually revealing who people are, what they’ve been through and how—and if—they can move on.

The second full-length film from director and writer Cassie Keet, this concentrates on Beatrice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), a woman who lives so far removed from the world that at times she feels like a feral child. She has a barely working phone, steals strawberries to make jam and works several at-home jobs where she never has to physically meet another human being. Yet there was a time that she belonged — even if it was to a cult — and when she reconnects to fellow survivor Abigail (Riley Dandy), who has moved on to create a podcast that details all she went through, she still feels love for her. And yet we soon learn that Beatrice can’t move on to a reality outside of the religious nightmare that she endured for so long.

Now that their leader, Grayson (Shayne Herndon), is being released from prison, Abigail is preparing to defend herself. As for Beatrice, reconnecting with that man will send her into a spiral that has been coming for so long.

My only quibble with this film is that the moments that start it off, about how Beatrice connects with Will (Jordan Lane Shappell) and his daughter Jillie (Andersyn Van Kuren), seem forgotten until the finale, which I’m still not sure is happening or just another fantasy in its lead’s head.

So often, when people experience true crime through documentaries and podcasts, they seem to place a distance between themselves and what they watch. “I would never do that.” “How stupid these women are.” “Who could believe these stories?” Yet, the women in this story have each come to Grayson for different reasons, one he could see and use against them, as even years later, they still argue over who his favorite was, as if that matters any longer. But to answer those questions true crime watchers have, or the way they don’t get it, they aren’t living through the cult experience. They have no idea how it can prey upon your innate need to be adored, to be told you matter, to feel like you have a purpose. It’s so simple and trite to question an abusive relationship until you’ve been the one locking yourself in a bathroom. This movie tries to get in that room, to get inside that head, to show you that yes, people can be trapped by these silver-tongued words, and the worst part is what comes after. Can you heal? I don’t know the answer.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.