ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, legendary exploitation-film historian, rapscallion, and frequent contributor to this site, attended the 2026 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. He gives us the inside scoop on some upcoming films.

Just before I hopped on the plane to Austin and SXSW, I was thinking that the current state of movie comedy is pathetic. In the 70s and 80s, we had films from Monty Python, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, John Belushi, John Hughes, the ZAZ guys, hell, Rudy Ray Moore’s Dolemite was hilarious. Today, it’s dire. Comedies are money losers in theaters, and the stuff made for streaming services is either a sad-ass romcom or a belated sequel that no one asked for to something like Beverly Hills Cop. A couple of months ago, I watched Frackham Hall, a parody of Downton Abbey, which was moderately amusing. But before that, I can’t remember a decent comedy, which is why I walked into Pizza Movie at SXSW with the lowest of expectations. But my head was about to explode—like the 50 or so in the film.

At the outset, the generic title Pizza Movie recalls 80s teen comedies like Hot Dog … The Movie and Hamburger: The Motion Picture. And if you figured that there will be a meta-reference why the film has that generic title, well done. This might be the review for you. Anyway, I knew next to nothing about the film other than it was the first film from Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, two former SNL and Funny or Die writers and starred Gatan Matarazzo. An SNL-adjacent movie with a kid from Stranger Things? That hardly sounded promising.

But hang on tight, the first five minutes have more laughs than probably the last 10 comedies I’ve seen (if only I could remember what they were apart from Frackham Hall). In a brilliant montage, winningly set to David Naughton’s disco hit “Makin’ It,” we see that the misguidedly overconfident Matarazzo as Jack and his college roommate, Sean Giambrone (the TV show The Goldbergs) as Montgomery, who’s so wussy he has a pet butterfly, are the geekiest kids on campus and hated by everyone for a mysterious thing that happened with the football team. We follow them as they get beaten up, abused, shaken down, farted on, and covered in urine. If the movie had no laughs past that opening, it would still be better than all the recent comedies combined.

Soon, it’s apparent that this movie’s universe is an extreme version of a Savage Steve Holland film, like his classic Better Off Dead: surreal, weird, and batshit crazy. One day, the cool kids in school have the hapless duo on their dorm room floor and are farting in their faces–and potentially giving them pink eye. (The clique leader, a smarmy kid in a sweater, never seems to have any conversation outside of “we farted in their faces.”) These hijinks dislodge a secreted and long-forgotten tin that contains what appear to be drugs. What are these smart lads to do but use Google and check out “drugs exploding head mints.” And lo and behold, up pops a 10-year-old YouTube video of Sarah Sherman (this movie gets more amazing by the minute), a chemistry major who created this mind-blowing psychedelic. Taking one mint will give you seven levels of tripping. (Now we’re into Cheech and Chong, Harold and Kumar, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World territory.) I’ll let you fully discover the trip levels yourself, but I will preview that one deals with exploding heads, and the last one has your worst nightmare f***ing you in the ass with a chainsaw. (One character will discover how terrible that is simply because he was frightened by the Rat King in a Baltimore community theater production of the Nutcracker as a child.) 

Now, if the film were only about the misfits making it through the seven levels—all filled with ridiculous, surreal, violent, gory, disgusting, absolutely stupid and psychotic imagery, including heads on hands and a nightmarish area where a Hispanic man holds a baby in a sailor suit, and you have to “impress the baby,” it would be great. But oh no, it’s more, much more. If the trips get out of control, Sherman tells them the only way to come down is to eat pizza. So the guys, high AF, order pizza, which is delivered by a psychotic drone delivery cart voiced by Bobby Moynihan. All they need to do is compose themselves long enough to go down two floors to the dorm lobby to pick up the pizza.

But that, my friends, is an epic journey like the Odyssey fraught with incredible danger, such as a stormtrooper brigade of resident assistants whose leader is psychotically committed to punishing rulebreakers by taking their cellphones and using them to register their owners to living at Gralk Hall, a dorm on a branch campus four hours away, which appears to be part hell, part tuberculosis sanitarium, and part insane asylum from which no one ever returns. But assisting Jack and Montgomery on this journey is former platonic friend Lizzy, played by Lulu Wilson (Becky and The Wrath of Becky), who’s now part of the cool kids because she has a credit card, and who also has ingested a mint and is tripping balls.

I’ll stop right there because I’m laughing too hard, there’s so much more to tell that I’d be here for hours typing, and you need to discover for yourself the twisted, sick, juvenile, puerile, revolting, ludicrous, politically incorrect hilarity in this effed up film. Like Airplane, it’s packed with so many jokes that if one misses, no worries. Just three seconds later, you’ll be doubled over in hysterics. Indeed, someone should count the number of jokes in just over 90 minutes. I’ll bet it’s a record.

That said, like all comedies, Pizza Movie will be divisive. Many will not find it funny and complain that it’s terrible. If that’s you, I don’t want to know you. If the humor hits with you, you’re in for a rollicking time, just like back in the halcyon days of movie comedies. Loaded with great video effects, characters, and humor, it’s a big winner. And it was filmed in Buffalo. Amazing!

Pizza Movie premieres on Hulu on April 3.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, legendary exploitation-film historian, rapscallion, and frequent contributor to this site, attended the 2026 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. He gives us the inside scoop on some upcoming films.

FINAL EXAMINATION—Horror Filmmaking 101

Create a horror feature film using as many types of jump scares as possible. Additional points given for homages to classic horror films with jump scares. Use your imagination and be creative. (Counts for 100% of your grade for the semester)

March 16, 2026

Professor,

As my submission for the final exam, attached is a digital file of my film Hokum, with Adam Scott trapped in an Irish haunted hotel. I hope you like it.

Respectfully submitted,

Damian McCarthy

A mysterious teaser trailer was attached to Oz Perkins’s horror film Keeper last fall. While Keeper was another misfire for the prolific Perkins, the coming attraction was for one of the most anticipated horror films at SXSW 2026, Hokum, writer-director Damian McCarthy’s follow-up to his hit Oddity (2024). While quite a few folks loved Hokum at the SXSW screenings (the young woman sitting next to me watched most of the movie through her hands), it was one of the most infuriating horror movies I’ve seen in years. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Hokum begins with a perplexing scene of a man in armor and a young boy in a desert. They have a treasure map that they can’t get out of a bottle. The scene ends with a cliffhanger, and we soon learn that it’s the beginning of the epilogue of what will be the last book in author Ohm Bauman’s best-selling conquistador trilogy. Yours truly, ever the avid credits reader, sighed and noted that in the opening credits, an Abu Dhabi production company was credited, so this is McCarthy’s sucking up to his foreign investors. We’re not off to a good start.

Adam Scott as Bauman sits in the dark in his sterile, concrete residence with his laptop, drinking whiskey and laboring over how to end his book. He has writer’s block. He also has a small box that contains a revolver and some faded old photographs. Hold the phone. There was a sudden movement of something in the dark, our first jump scare. 

The next thing we know, Scott’s in Ireland to write that damn epilogue and put the ashes of his parents under a big tree where they got engaged. In rather rapid succession, he sees a local with a dead goat in the parking lot of the quaint old hotel. He insults the local. He checks into the hotel. He insults the desk clerk. He insults an old guy in a wheelchair, who is telling a folk story about a witch to some children. The old guy owns the hotel, but Scott doesn’t care. He insults the bellhop who’s a wannabe writer. He then pounds down whiskey, finds out about the honeymoon suite that’s haunted by a witch, so it must remain locked, and only mildly insults the cute young Irish woman tending bar.

This sets up two huge problems with the film: First, Scott’s an insufferable douchebag. He’s so awful that he can’t really be a surrogate or a hero for the viewer, You can’t picture yourself in his shoes, and you don’t really care what happens to him. Then there’s an unexpected shock behind his hotel room door, and McCarthy begins the mystery part of the narrative to set up the supernatural part, the movie’s second big problem. The young woman mysteriously disappears, Scott feels compelled to help find her, and the supernatural stuff sets in, which means the film will soon become a jump-scare-o-matic. Oh, I forgot to mention that when he buried those ashes, he met an old coot living out of his van in the woods who drinks milk laced with the local magic mushrooms that the goats have been eating. If you’re getting the idea that this film is overstuffed with random tropes and things that will probably end up going nowhere, ding, ding, ding, you are correct.

This mystery of the missing barmaid really cripples the film because McCarthy must interrupt the supernatural stuff to get back to Scott’s playing detective with the old coot from the woods. At this point, I thought to myself, why in the hell did we need all that set up? Just get Scott locked in the haunted honeymoon suite already. 

In the supernatural part of the movie, Scott eventually does get locked in that suite, and we have jump scares galore. I didn’t count them, but, like clockwork, there’s at least one about every 10 minutes. And McCarthy, like he’s fulfilling the requirements of the imaginary film school final exam that began this review, does almost every possible permutation of a jump scare. He gives you the motionless apparition at the end of the hallway, the out-of-focus image suddenly coming into focus outside a window, a spirit suddenly moving across the screen in the background, and a character shifting position to reveal a ghost. That fulfills the homage part of the exam by cribbing from The Shining, Suspiria, The Exorcist III, and Insidious.

But wait, there’s more! A scary thing comes out of the TV as in Poltergeist and The Ring. And The Ring was so cool, hey, let’s pay more homage to it by turning its well into the hotel’s dumbwaiter shaft. I think McCarthy plays all variations on his theme except the cat jump scare and the old chestnut with closing the medicine-cabinet mirror.

At about midpoint, I started to grade the film like an academic exercise because that’s how it felt to me: a semester-long project to see how many times you   can go “Boo!” To its credit, the production is beautiful looking, the visual effects are good, Scott gives it everything he has, and it’s never boring. About half of the attempted jump scares work well, and a couple are almost in the pantheon of the ne plus ultra, the jump scare at the end of Brian DePalma’s Carrie. But the other half don’t work due to poor timing or misdirection or a musical stinger that comes a fraction of a second too soon. 

Even as time is running out in the last act, McCarthy’s not quite finished. Look at this! It’s Inferno! Now I’m going to crib from Fulci without the gore! It’s The Fog! If you’ve been following me, it should be obvious now why the film infuriated me so much. McCarthy’s a talented horror director, for sure, but he’s just punching in all these mechanical shocks, tropes, and references that mostly go nowhere. And speaking of nowhere, we’re going back to that imaginary desert in Adam Scott’s mind for a bookend scene with the conquistador and the boy. But not before McCarthy has a last line of dialogue that pulls the rug out from under the viewer. No, it’s not “it was all a dream,” but it’s pretty damn close. 

When Hokum comes out in wide release from Neon on May 1, a lot of folks are going to rave and say that it’s effing great and scary AF. But the SXSW crowd at my screening didn’t applaud when it was over. It was the only time that happened at a screening while I was in Austin. That’s dire. Maybe other audience members felt, as I did, that McCarthy had just repeatedly punched them in the face and laughed for over an hour and a half, and that didn’t deserve applause. To paraphrase Monty Python, “I came for a horror film, not abuse.” 

Mr. McCarthy, you passed the final, but just barely. You are a smart and talented guy. Next semester, you’d better show improvement, or you’ll have to do remedial work by directing episodes of Goosebumps.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, legendary exploitation-film historian, rapscallion, and frequent contributor to this site, attended the 2026 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. He gives us the inside scoop on some upcoming films.

Family Movie, a meta-horror film starring the beloved Kevin Bacon (Friday the 13th, Tremors, Hollow Man, Stir of Echoes, MaXXXine, and many more), wife Kyra Sedgwick (the long-running TV show The Closer), musician son Travis, and daughter Sosie (the TV show Scream and the film Smile) is a strange creation that resides in a murky nether world somewhere between vanity project and high-concept gimmick. In it, the Bacon family members play exaggerated versions of themselves as a family that makes micro-budget horror films.

Kevin plays Jack Smith, a farmer and struggling filmmaker, whose greatest triumph was when one of his Palonia Brothers-like films opened a crappy regional film festival two decades earlier. He’s trying to finish Blood Moon, the last horror film he’s going to make with his family. (You gotta love the inside references to the horror masterpiece Messiah of Evil in Dan Beers’s screenplay, including the climax of Jack’s film, which is something akin to the never-filmed sacrifice scene from Messiah.) Kyra plays his wife, a failed New York stage actress, who stars in the family’s films and does craft services–humus and stuff that will “bloat” a bit player. Travis is their boom-operator son, a heavy-metal head into martial arts who longs for something more in life. And Sosie is their daughter, of course, a budding actress who has just landed a starring role in a TV series filming in Vancouver, but who is afraid to tell her mom that mom’s former agent, now an enemy, got her the job. It’s just your average family with average problems.

But, as you can guess, things do not go smoothly on Blood Moon. A documentary filmmaker hired by Jack to do a “making of” film keeps catching the family at its worst, a surly neighbor, played by a very funny John Carroll Lynch (Face/Off, Gothika, and Zodiac), has a dog that keeps barking and ruining takes, and wonderful character actor Jackie Earle Haley (Dollman, Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence, and the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street), playing a Smith-film regular, gets conked on the head with a spotlight. And as his SAG insurance has just expired, he hands Jack the hospital bill, which is huge because the wound reopened and oozed and all that. Then there’s a real murder and we’re off to even broader humor, more murders, lots of gore, family meetings where secrets are revealed, and proof that the family that slays together stays together. 

Sounds like fun, right? Well, for a time it is kind of  fun. The Bacons seem like nice people whom you’d want to hang out with, and they’re clearly having a ball, especially Kyra. But I think my plot synopsis makes Family Movie sound much better than it really is. It’s co-directed by Kevin and Kyra in a slick, fussy way (too many unnecessary tracking shots) that the fictional Bacon clan could have only dreamed of achieving. I hate to use the cliché, but it’s never truer than here: They’re all having more fun than the viewer with this burlesque horror-comedy, which isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. I’d describe it as kind of the American horror version of an Ealing Studios black comedy like Kind Hearts and Cornets as done by Benny Hill with assistance from the Cohen Brothers, while drunk on Malort. (But if that were true, it would be a much better movie.) It’s cute and pleasant enough, but obvious and predictable, and I’m sure I won’t think about it again after finishing this review. 

Fun fact: A producer friend of mine was invited to the pre-screening party for Family Movie. He told me Kevin Bacon didn’t attend his own party but was seen later looking surly, accompanied by his gigantic bodyguard. Somebody must’ve mentioned Footloose to Bacon, and the bodyguard had to throw the miscreant through a wall. Now that image is better and funnier than anything in Family Movie.

Family Movie has apparently been picked up by Neon but does not have a release date. 

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: A metafictional comedy about the intersection of the climate crisis and generative AI.

Director Sarah Lasley collaborated with 30 of her film students at Cal Poly Humboldt to create the short film Climate Control. The result is an absurdist take on both the climate crisis and the pitfalls of generative AI. It should be noted that no generative AI is used in the short, and generative AI is satirized quite humorously. 

Youth activism, filmmaking challenges, karaoke, and AI trying to turn a documentary into a saccharine-sweet rom com are part of the proceedings. There are messages behind the mayhem, and heart behind the humor. Climate Control is a labor of love, a genre film that uses absurdity to point out absurdities, and it entertains as it makes its points.   

Lasley and her students have also made the website www.promptresponsibly.com , which tackles AI literacy through a sustainability lens.

Climate Control screened at Slamdance, which ran February 24–March 6, 2026 in Los Angeles. 

Sean Foster (Asher Angel) is all about academic success and dreams of attending MIT. His journey to the Ivy League is complicated when he crosses paths with Flora Morgan (Paris Berelc), a rebellious, wealthy girl who has no interest in college or traditional academic achievement. The twist comes when Flora’s parents, desperate to see their daughter succeed, offer Sean the ultimate bribe: if he can woo Flora and influence her to start caring about her studies, they will write him the prestigious recommendation letter he needs to secure him a dorm room next to Tim the Beaver.

Directed by Fawzia Mirza, who wrote and starred in Signature Move, and written by Christine Duann (who wrote the novel it’s based on) and Rebecca Webb, this is a basic romcom, but I have found that I really enjoy them the older I get. Berelc is way better than this movie deserves, even if she’s 28 playing 18, but when has that ever stopped teen comedies?

As they spend time together, Sean realizes Flora is hiding a deeper side to her personality, noting that she knows a lot more than she lets on. Flora discovers that Sean isn’t just a math nerd but is actually quite sentimental. The problem is that Sean realizes his feelings have become real. His friends warn him that it’s getting out of hand and that he needs to tell her the truth, but he worries that revealing the deal with her parents will destroy the genuine trust they’ve built.

I did like that Flora forms a friendship with Sean’s sister, and that the right thing happens for every character. Yes, predictable is the word used for this movie, but then again, sometimes that’s nice to have, even if I hate the third-act moment when the lovers have to break up. It gets me every time. Instead of dating in high school, I watched movies like this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I’m too old for TikTok, so I had no idea who Kelon Campbell or his viral character Terri Joe were. According to Complex, Terri Joe is “a sendup of a particular sort of passive-aggressive, conservative, Christian, Southern white woman.” So imagine my shock when I got to this movie, which does the SNL thing of putting a sketch comedy character into an insane world. I have no idea if this lives up to the original stuff. But I loved it.

According to Yahoo Entertainment, “The film comes as part of Campbell’s deal with Tubi under their Stubios project. The Stubios initiative, which featured Issa Rae as a mentor, sought out online creators to develop projects that resonated with Tubi’s audience. Campbell was one of the 14 finalists to earn the title Stubiorunner, essentially executive producing his own film.”

Directed by Dale S. Lewis, this starts with Terri Joe working in a grocery store. When criminals knock it over, she has to identify them, but they find out that she’s the one who led the cops to them. As she runs to Miami, as I always say, hijinks ensue.

Also featuring Campbell’s Jeorgia Peach and Amethyst Jade characters, this is an absolute blast. This irrelevant and often offensive movie keeps putting Terri Joe into the weirdest situations and having her react like an absolutely horrible person, yet she somehow is endearing throughout. 

Unlike nearly every influencer movie, this actually makes me want to see more of the character. Consider me a fan.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and written by Chris Stokes, this feels like his most giallo film yet, one in which a maid named Cassandra (Zulay Henao) tries to escape her past but falls for Erik (Flex Alexander), a co-worker who is already dating their boss, Helen (Shalèt Monique). However, Cassandra is an unreliable narrator, and things aren’t as they seem.

In her mind, she and Erik share a deep, clandestine passion. Cassandra believes they are forbidden fruit and is actively planning a future together to escape Helen’s control. Only the wedding and their romance are real, even if they aren’t. This is erotomania, a delusion in which someone believes that a person, usually of higher status, is in love with them.

At one point, a voice tells Cassandra, “Your mom is going to be so happy to see you,”  as she returns to a new phase of her life. However, Cassandra is shown in deep isolation, often talking to herself or reacting to things others don’t see. In many giallo-style thrillers, a sickly mother figure often represents the protagonist’s fractured psyche or a past trauma they cannot let go of.

This has a pretty good story, but the acting and camerawork aren’t good. But the more Stokes leans into giallo, the more he can get away with plotholes, which are actually part of this genre.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Fresh out of prison for murder, a ruthless woman named Justinee schemes to replace her twin sister Jordyn and claim her flawless life by any means necessary. Both roles are played by Drew Sidora from The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Even better, this is another film by the always dependable Chris Stokes and Marques Houston.

While Jordyn has built a “flawless” life complete with a handsome husband and a beautiful home, Justinee has spent the last decade (or twenty years, depending on which part of the movie’s internal logic you follow!) behind bars for the murder of her husband.

Ten years ago, Justinee killed her husband and ended up in jail. Then, she shows up — surprise! — at her sister’s house, just in time to either try to kill herself or kill her sister and take over her life. This gets a bit confusing at times — the on-screen super claims Justinee was in jail for 20 years, the film says 10; is Jordyn an attorney or a delivery room doctor? — and if you were married to someone or someone was your mother, wouldn’t you be able to tell if they were a twin, even if they were identical? 

Anyways, after the attempted unlifing, as the kids say, a doctor explains that the injured twin has lost the last 40 years of her memory. Taking advantage of the medical emergency, the “healthy” twin integrates herself into Jordyn’s family. The husband, Adam (Jensen Atwood), even notes that something feels off, yet the charade continues as Justinee works to reclaim what she believes she is owed. That said, maybe Adam is happy getting some strange, even though he doesn’t know it. Life’s weird like that.

Then again, so many of Stokes’ movies are nearly giallo and most of the ones I’ve watched make no sense, and I still love them, so allow me to give this film a little breathing room. As we didn’t see which twin survives, I know we’ll get a sequel.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A bachelorette getaway at a mansion gets wild when the maid of honor is found dead, and everyone is a suspect.

Directed by Jhayla Mosley, who co-wrote the script with Regine Coney, the weekend begins with Joi (Elizabeth Foxx) celebrating her upcoming wedding with her bridesmaids: Morgan (Amerrah Garrison), Katrina (Deborah Lane Spencer), and Zoe (Kayla Von). The Maid of Honor, Angel (Sydni Janeé), is a social media influencer and none of the other bridesmaids like or trust her.

So yeah. She’s toast. Whodunnit?

Angel is shown demanding $30,000 from one of the guests, revealing that she has already been receiving hush money. The bridesmaids realize they are all being blackmailed by her, leading to a collective sense of dread and a total lack of privacy, as they even fear she is monitoring their phones.

While the official story suggests that she overdosed on drugs, the tension among the survivors suggests something much more calculated. And we even hear directly from Angel, the narrator, who tells us everyone here has a secret, including herself.

This has way better acting than you would expect from a Tubi Original, along with a major twist you may or may not see coming. For that, it’s definitely worth a watch.

You can watch this on Tubi.