Hunting Matthew Nichols

When the original Blair Witch Project released, it inspired teenaged Matthew Nichols and his friend Jordan Reimer to make their own DIY horror movies. Judging by the small army of found footage films reviewed here, they were clearly not the only ones. Unfortunately, instead of earning a quick pay day, they fell into a ravine and died. At least that is what the provincial Vancouver Island police say, but they never discovered the bodies. Two decades later, his sister Tara and a documentary film crew set out to uncover their true fate. In the process, they produce another found footage horror movie: Markian Tarasiuk’s independently produced and released Hunting Matthew Nichols, which releases today in theaters.

Way up in northern Vancouver, there isn’t much for teens to do except watch horror movies and go hiking. Consequently, everyone hoped Nichols and Reimer would be found, considering how well they knew the woods (the Canadians call it “bush,” but same difference). Yet, the police only recovered Nichols’ video camera.

Tara Nichols wants answers and director Markian Tarasiuk and cameraman Ryan Alexander McDonald—playing themselves—want to help her at least reach some closure. Regardless, they get some pretty good footage when they discover the missing teens were preoccupied with the local not-so-urban legend of Roy McKenzie, a reputed cult leader, who may or may not have eaten the residents of his commune. McKenzie can definitely hang with the Blair Witch. Nichols and Reimer thought so too, judging from the totem the police turn over to his sister.

There is no getting around the fact Tarasiuk’s film looks and plays very much like Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, but the Roy McKenzie lore helps somewhat set it apart. It also has some of the best performances you will find in the found footage sub-genre. Miranda MacDougall shows potential star-power as Tara Nichols.

ND/NF ’26: Leviticus

Even before the 1980s, horror movies were associating sex and death. The former often led to the latter, but for the horny teens consuming these movies, the hedonism was maybe worth the risk. “Au contraire” say the Evangelical Australians, who will do anything to keep their kids from swinging the wrong way. For Naim and his on-again-off-again friend-hook-up-lover Ryan, the cure is way worse than the disease in director-screenwriter Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus, the opening night film of this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Naim and his mother recently moved to the sleepy provincial town after enduring a vague, never fully explained trauma. Clearly, she has adopted religion as her coping mechanism—the more old-time, the better. Despite their church’s funky-aspiring Christian rock band, Naim is more interested in exploring his sexuality, preferably with Ryan. Unfortunately, Ryan also does some exploring with the “blue jeans” pastor’s son.

In a fit of jealousy, Naim informs on Ryan and his rival, but soon regrets it. To cure the boys, the congregation brings in a “Deliverance Preacher” who essentially places a curse on the lads. Every night, a demon will taunt them in the form of the one they most desire. According to the film’s logic, this is intended to scare them straight, literally. Yet, if it actually worked, wouldn’t the demon subsequently take the shape of women?

Regardless, Naim’s mother soon commits the ultimate betrayal, by arranging his own session with the Deliverance Preacher. Ironically, she drives Naim back to Ryan. Despite the risks, they join forces, in hopes of devising a way to undo the curse. As long as they are with someone, the demon cannot approach. Yet, as soon as they separate, they cannot tell whether the doppelganger might be appearing before them, instead their forbidden lover.

Clearly, Leviticus (named for the Old Testament book with the hardcore fire-and brimstone reputation) owes an enormous debt of gratitude to David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows. Chiarella and cinematographer Tyson Perkins stage several darkly sinister scenes, in which tremendous tension is built from the is-he-or-isn’t-he question. Frankly, the paranoia of not being able to trust the one you adore the most is quite terrifying.

However, the entire curse business makes little sense and the depiction of the Evangelicals is distractingly heavy-handed and simplistic. If Chiarella were to make a film about Berber nomads, he would probably try to understand their culture, their values, and their world view. Yet, obviously, no such effort was made with Evangelicals. The truth is they simply do not talk or think as Chiarella depicts. The absence of such understanding leaves Leviticus conspicuously populated with straw men, whose only purpose is to undermine the beliefs they supposedly profess. That’s projection and wish fulfilment.

I Know Exactly How You Die

Poor struggling horror writer Rian Burman is going through a lot right now. He doesn’t need his agent constantly calling to berate him on top of it all. He ought to just write himself a new one. Apparently, he can do that in the Clayborne, the low-budget motel he checked into. Things tend to come to pass there once they are put to paper (or laptop hard drive). Obviously, that will cause some issues since he writes horror in Alexandra Spieth’s I Know Exactly How You Die, which hits various streaming platforms tomorrow.

Burman needs to send that demanding agent some pages pronto, but he is still reeling from a bad break-up. Katie Waters is a lot like his ex. She is just his type. Unfortunately, she is also Hector Darbes’ type as well. The serial killer has stalked her throughout his killing spree and now he has followed her to the Clayborne as well. That was a far as Burman got before meeting Waters face-to-face.

He soon realizes writing comes to life at the Clayborne—a fact Naja, the proprietress and very amateur poet, reluctantly confirms. Unfortunately, he already washed out the roads and toppled the local cell towers, but he resolves to change the tragic fate he envisioned for Waters. Yet, much to his alarm, his story seems to be taking on a life of its own, in a decidedly dangerous way.

There is a lot that works in Spieth’s film, starting with the two principles. Rushabh Patel and Stephanie Gomes Hogan both bring interesting, energetic screen-presences to the party. The fundamental premise is also intriguing. However, there is an awful lot of fudging and conspicuous attempts at narrative sleight-of-hand.

Bone Keeper, Co-Starring John Rhys-Davies

This creature has its own Patterson-Gimlin film. Everyone assumes it is a hoax, but viewers know better. So does Olivia Wheeler, because her missing-presumed-dead grandfather shot it—and then vanished (conveniently leaving the footage behind). She also thinks her mother disappeared down its cave in search of him, so she organizes an expedition to find some traces of them in Howard J. Ford’s Bone Keeper, which releases this Monday on digital in the UK.

According to the 2001-inspired prologue, the Bone Keeper has been terrorizing this inhospitable region of Scotland since the era of neanderthals. Lately, the Lovecraftian monster has developed a habit of consuming Wheelers. Nevertheless, the Wheeler granddaughter is determined to continue throwing good family-members after bad, so to speak.

Wisely, she has recruited a group of friends who are either abrasively annoying or interchangeably dull, so viewers won’t mind when the Bone Keeper starts snatching them up, one by one. Most of them condescendingly assumed they were humoring Wheeler, but they can’t say they weren’t warned. After all, they visited Prof. Harrison, the leading expert on the Bone Keeper, whom the locals dismiss as a crank. He did his best to dissuade Wheeler and her crew. Failing that, he encouraged them to simply try to bring back some physical proof.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Chime

Those noises in your head can really do a number on your sanity. Just ask the narrator of Poe’s “A Tell-Tale Heart.” However, it is not clear whether Takuji Matsuoka truly hears them. Regardless, it seems that he “contracted” the insanity of someone who did in director-screenwriter Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 45-minute short-ish film, Chime, which opens this Friday together with Kurosawa’s classic The Serpent’s Path (the original, not Kurosawa’s recent remake).

Matsuoka works as continuing ed. culinary instructor, but he clearly yearns to return to the kitchen as a head chef.  He is not a great teacher, but to be fair, most educators would struggle with a weirdo like Ichiro Tashiro. When Tashiro complains about hearing chimes inaudible to the rest of the class, Matsuoka tries to ignore him. However, he can’t ignore what comes next.

Does Matsuoka inherit his craziness, or did he always have it? Did Tashiro’s horror show simply provide a catalyst for releasing it? Kurosawa clearly wants to keep the answers to such questions ambiguous, perhaps even unknowable. Regardless, Matsuoka takes a sinister turn that even surpasses Tashiro.

Arguably, Chime feels like Kurosawa, the horror master, taking a stab at more subtle and slippery “elevated” “post-horror.” There are shocking moments, but Kurosawa too coyly toys with the horror elements to sustain much tension.

As Matsuoka, Mutsuo Yoshioka’s performance is defined by an utter soullessness, even before his apparent insanity kicks in. Yet, Seiichi Kohinata is more disturbing as Tashiro, due to his twitchy, awkward sadness.

The Hole: 309 Days Before the Tragedy

Suppose Linton never existed in Wuthering Heights, so Earnshaw arranged a marriage between Catherine and Heathcliff. Then imagine their story turns into a horror movie that culminates in a notorious national trauma. That is the sinister and complicated fate in store for Sugeng and Arum in director-screenwriter Hanung Bramantyo’s The Hole: 309 Days Before the Tragedy, which EST N8 is repping internationally, following its Rotterdam festival premiere.

Lubang Buaya is a village in East Jakarta, not far from an Air Force base, where the Indonesian Communist Party murdered seven Army officers and unleashed chaos during their failed coup attempt. Frankly, the CIA had its doubts regarding the official story, but Sukarno, who had been flirting with the Communists with his anti-imperialist rhetoric, used the incident to decidedly turn against them. Frankly, even when Bramantyo finally reveals all, it is rather hard to see how the Sugeng and Arum’s story ultimately leads into that historical controversy—but somehow it does.

Arguably, even Sugeng’s marriage to Arum seems a little iffy, since Sukarya raised them both as his children. However, since Sugeng, the former street urchin, is not a blood relation, the local Imam gives his blessing. Unfortunately, the celebration will be short-lived. Since he knows the region, the national police assign Sugeng the investigation into the gruesome ritual murders of several prominent local citizens. Tellingly, each victim was denounced by the local Communist newspaper as part of their shameful gang of seven.

That would certainly constitute motive, but it does not explain the spectral woman who starts terrorizing Arum. As the bodies pile up, the Imam suggests it might be the work of curses cast from a Moorish Andalusian book of black magic. There also might be reason to suspect the local Imam could be somewhat complicit in the village’s sins.

Frankly, horror fans should make a point of watching The Hole whenever the opportunity arises, because it is frighteningly easy to imagine campaigns to censor it, for both religious and political reasons. Bramantyo takes some big, fearless swings and tackles some highly protected sacred cows. Its gutsy filmmaking, to the point of even thrilling with its defiant iconoclasm.

However, Bramantyo still takes care of genre business, building suspense out of an atmosphere of corruption and foreboding. There is definitely bad karma at work, to the point that viewers’ sympathies start to flip, or at least become considerably more complicated.

Kimo Stamboel’s Janur Ireng: Sewu Dino the Prequel

Sabdo and Intan Kuncoro are like the poor relations of a gothic novel. After their father dies and their house burns down, their wealthy Uncle Arjo takes them into his home. The hyper-class-conscious might suspect the hardscrabble siblings will never be considered full members of Arjo’s family, but their uncle and his wife Lasmini are only too eager to accept them. Of course, there are terrifying reasons for this in Kimo Stamboel’s Janur Ireng: Sewu Dino the Prequel, which just opened in Cambodia and Vietnam (with EST N8 currently repping other territories).

Don’t worry if you haven’t seen Stamboel’s Sewu Dino. This is the prequel, so newcomers can easily follow the story, based on SimpleMan’s online story (just like Stamboel’s Dancing Village: The Curse Begins)—at least until the final scene somewhat bafflingly links it back to the prior (subsequent) film.

Regardless, orphaned Sabdo and Intan are rather intimidated by their stately new home. Indeed, despite the luxury, the Kuncoro manor absolutely drips with bad vibes. The decidedly gothic set-up soon takes a rather folk horror turn when Uncle Arjo forces Sabdo to sacrifice a goat. In fact, such ceremonies become a bizarrely regular thing.

It turns out their late father had good reasons for cutting ties with his brother’s branch of the family. These Kuncoros are scary people and Sabdo’s prospective role will be especially ominous, involving rites and literal demons. What transpires probably holds a great deal of tragic irony for those who have seen the original Sewu Dino (which currently streams on Prime). However, it probably lands with even greater force for those who haven’t.

Either way, there is an extended scene of third act lunacy that is so jaw-droppingly over-the-top, it ought to make Janur Ireng a cult classic and a perennial favorite for midnight movie screenings. You’ll know it when you see it. Yet, before that, Stamboel crafts a moody folk horror film, rich with atmosphere and foreboding.

Smother: The Horror of Austrian Motherhood

Michaela is a bad mother, but it runs in the family. Her mother was the notorious crazy lady who killed herself. Maybe being the drunk driver who nearly accidentally killed herself and her daughter isn’t so bad in comparison. It still isn’t great—as her husband constantly reminds her. Regardless, when Michaela finally returns home, she will either face her ghosts or succumb to them in Achmed Abdel-Salam’s Smother, which releases Friday on IndiePix Unlimited.

Hanna still hasn’t forgiven her mother for the accident and her father Alex isn’t exactly letting it go either. Unfortunately, Alex caters to Hanna’s neurotic behavior and psychosomatic illnesses, which dramatically escalated after the incident. However, she enjoys the countryside when the family returns to Michaela’s ancestral home for her grandfather’s funeral.

Michaela hasn’t been home for years—and it is easy to see why. The crass locals still openly gossip about her mother’s notorious suicide. Understandably, Michaela repressed many of her childhood memories of that tragic day, but they start rushing back when she starts seeing vision of her mother. Her Grudge-like mother seems to have unfinished business with her—or maybe Hanna.

Smother is the kind of so-called “elevated” horror movie that devotes all its time to elevation, shortchanging the horror. There are some creepy elements introduced, but Abdl-Salam allows them to wither on the vine. Some might euphemistically describe Smother as a “taut slow burn,” but the truth is it often drags, which is a real drawback for a horror film. Rather confusingly, the film also clearly implies Peppi, the elderly neighbor abuses his partially dementia-afflicted wife Gerti, but then completely ignores the implications.

Ghost Train, on BluRay

It only seems logical that you should have have a “ghost train” to go with a “ghost station.” Now Well Go USA has both. Jeong Yong-ki’s The Ghost Station explicitly set its hauntings in notorious Oksu Station, which has become the epicenter of urban legends thanks to a hit web comic. This film takes place in Gwanglim Station, but it is clearly inspired by Oksu and Japan’s Kisaragi Station, the granddaddy of all haunted metro stops. Regardless, commuters would be better off taking the bus in Tak Se-woong’s Ghost Train, which releases today on BluRay.

Da-kyoung, a.k.a. “The Horror Queen” is n influencer without influence, who works for a sad Gawker-Vice-style YouTube network, trying to bring home the eyeballs. Unfortunately, clicks are down, so Gwanglim Station might be her last hurrah. However, premium booze has a knack for loosening the Station Master’s tongue. Thanks to his stories, her views start climbing. They also give the film an anthology vibe, because they seem relatively self-contained and thematically diverse. (It is also hard to see how he would know some of these things, but who wants to be pedantic, right?)

In any event, bad stuff happens down there. Eventually, an informant tells Da-kyoung the station was built on top of a cult church, where the members committed mass suicide to grant their leader immortality. That is creepy element that helps distinguish Train from Station.

Frankly, the two films are quite evenly matched in most ways. Joo Hyun-young’s performance as Da-kyoung is generally on par with everyone appearing in Ghost Station. However, Jeon Bae-soo eventually takes over the film, to its advantage, in a very strange and memorable way as the world-weary Station Master.

Blood Barn, on Screambox

Ironically, Josie’s friends survived working a season as camp counselors, just to die in her barn. Technically, it has been converted into a farmhouse. Honestly, except for Simon, the nice guy, they are all basically animals, who should be sleeping on straw and drinking out of a trough. Regardless, they will probably die like lambs to the slaughter in Gabriel Bernini’s Blood Barn, which premieres tomorrow on Screambox.

This is one of those intentionally grainy-looking, deliberately cheesy, VHS-approximating retro-horror films. For what its worth, Bernini and the design team get the look perfect. Paradoxically, the filmmakers who cranked out the films that inspired Blood Barn would have been thrilled to have the modern techniques available to Bernini for a more polished look. Be that as it may, nostalgia always has a place in horror.

Josie is wildly insecure, so she invites her new “friends” to finish the summer at her family’s old lake house. They should have the place to themselves, because her other relatives never stay there anymore—with good reason. As it happens, Josie’s own memories of the place are rather foggy, in a repressed kind of way. At least the video tape of family home movies her so-called friends start jeering at slowly reawakens bits and pieces buried in her head.

It is hard to really say what the heck is going on, but it seems vaguely Lovecraftian, in a way possibly inspired by Possession. Whatever the heck it is, you do not want to let it get its tentacles into you, in a very literal sense.

Once you get past the look of the film, clearly intended to invoke memories of the original micro-budget Evil Dead, there isn’t much to the film. The only “name” is Chloe Cherry, the former adult performer turned Euphoria co-star, as the sexually forward Rachel, but her charms will elude most mortal viewers unfamiliar with her previous work.

The Mortuary Assistant, Based on the Horror Video Game

Rebecca Owens isn’t exactly a people person, but nobody actually wants to do business with River Fields Mortuary (or any of their competitors), so it should be a good fit. The problem is all the demons possessing the dead. Her boss, Raymond Delver never mentioned that during his training program. Unfortunately, she is in for a rough night of on-the-job learning in Jeremiah Kipp’s The Mortuary Assistant, based on Brian Clarke’s video game, which opens this Friday in theaters.

The embalming and cremating are not a problem for Owens. The exorcisms will be trickier. Delver never mentioned that part of the job. However, on her first busy night working alone, a parasitic demon lurking inside one of the bodies senses her emotional baggage makes her ripe for possession. Much to her annoyance, Delver clearly expected something like this to happen. At least he has procedures in place—assuming she can trust her eyes and ears—which she can’t.

Movies based on video games probably have the worst critical reputation of any cinematic genre. Yet, weirdly, films derived from survival horror games tend to be positive outliers, as exemplified buy the original Five Nights at Freddy’s and the Taiwanese Detention, perhaps because they have clearly established characters and storylines to build upon. In this case, the screenplay, co-written by Clarke (the game designer) and Tracee Beebe, also hews quite faithfully to the video game narrative.

Kipp does a nice job building tension from the creepy, claustrophobic location and the infernal franchise lore. The two co-leads also far exceed the expectations resulting from the film’s gaming source material. Willa Holland (whom Arrowverse fans know as Thea Queen) is credibly neurotic as Owens, while still suggesting she has sufficient fortitude to survive (at least potentially).

Return to Silent Hill: The Third Film, Based on the Second Game

The Konami videogames never explicitly identified Silent Hill’s state, but it was generally understood to be somewhere in New England, even though it was inspired by the real-life ghost town, Centralia, PA, which was evacuated due to toxic coal mines fires that continue smoldering decades later. However, the first two films located the nefarious burg in West Virginia. Now, the third installment geographically shifts the ominous town to Maine, more in keeping with game lore. Regardless, Silent Hill is a nice place to be from—far from. Nevertheless, James Sunderland revisits his late wife's hometown after several years away, when he receives a mysterious letter from her in Christophe Gans’s Return to Silent Hill, which opens today in theaters.

Presumably, Mary Crane died during the environmental disaster that devastated Silent Hill, but the details were sketchy, so Sunderland still holds out hope. Of course, the letter’s inexplicable arrival clearly suggests a sinister force is luring the grieving artist into Silent Hill’s supernatural peril.

Obviously, this is not the picturesque Silent Hill Sunderland remembers. The air is now foul and cloudy, while monsters roam the ruins, definitely including Pyramid Head, who has been slightly redesigned since the previous two films. Yet, we can tell from flashbacks, evil always lurked below the surface in Silent Hill. That was especially true of the sinister cult founded by Crane’s father, who acted like they had been evicted from the Dakota Building (a.k.a. The Bramford in Rosemary’s Baby).

Naturally, Sunderland eventually finds his way to the Silent Hill hospital, because faceless nurses are an iconic element of the games. Along the way, he encounters Maria, a human survivor, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Crane, except she carries herself in a much more provocative manner. Indeed, she seems torn between helping and seducing Sunderland.

Return to Silent Hill is set in the same cinematic world as the first two films, but it adapts the storyline of the second game release—relatively faithfully. Unfortunately, the most notable deviations devised by Gans and co-screenwriters Sandra Vo-Anh and Will Schneider are uniformly bad, because they dispel the mood and kill the tension. Arguably, the new bits might even undermine franchise mythology, depending how viewers interpret them.

It is strange Gans took such a misstep, because has always maintained a good rep with fans for his understanding of and enthusiasm for the franchise. Indeed, Return does a lot of things right from the perspective of the fanbase, especially the score penned by Akira Yamaoka, the longtime composer for the games. Loyalists will likely also appreciate seeing Evie Templeton reprise her role as Laura, the strange street waif who somehow survived the town’s horrors, from the recent remake of Silent Hill 2, the game (not the movie).

Mother of Flies, on Shudder

Mickey considers Solvieg a healer. The locals call her a witch. This is not a case of potato-potahto. Viewers can tell from some of the flashbacks that the locals are probably more right than wrong. Either way, Mickey entrusts herself to the strange woman’s care in the latest film from the Adams Filmmaking Family (John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser), Mother of Flies, which premieres this Friday on Shudder.

Sadly, Mickey’s cancer has returned while she was away at college—aggressively. Exhausted with conventional treatments, she has convinced her father Jake to accompany her while she visits Solveig. Of course, Jake is suspicious, but Micky assures him Solveig is not trying to swindle her. She didn’t even advertise or pitch her services in a commercial sense. According to Mickey, Solveig came to her in a dream.

Jake is still skeptical, as well he should be. He doesn’t take to Solveig’s vegetarian cooking, while some of the “healer’s” “treatments” look quite distressing. Yet, Mickey believes Solveig’s weird occult remedies must be working. Awkwardly, the college student starts to resent her father’s doubts, arguing they undermine the faith Solveig’s treatment requires.

The Adamses have confirmed Mother of Flies was inspired by their own family history of cancer survival, but most viewers could guess as much just from watching. Every frame rings with uncomfortable authenticity, while a good deal of dialogue sounds adapted from memory. It is definitely one of the most emotionally sophisticated horror films of the year. To some extent, the serious, very mortal issues of mortality overshadow the supernatural horror that should drive the film. However, Solveig is always massively creepy.

Shelby Oaks, on DVD

This ghost town had two major employers, the amusement park and the prison, both of which closed due to tragic irregularities. Darke County’s economy crashed, due to insufficient diversification, but the abandoned ruins of both predictably became a magnet for online ghost hunters like Mia Brennan-Walker’s little sister Riley. Naturally, Shelby Oaks Prison is a spooky place, because scenes there were filmed at the Ohio State Reformatory, a real-life place considered one of the most haunted prisons in America. Ominously, Brennan and her fellow “Paranormal Paranoids” disappeared shortly after their Shelby Oaks episodes. Despite the passage of years, Brennan heads back out into Darke County looking for Riley, after some admittedly strong prompting in Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, which releases tomorrow on DVD.

Shelby Oaks is not found footage, but most of the first act plays out that way, as news reports and the Paranormal Paranoids’ archival footage provide most of the exposition. Brennan and her three friends started posting spooky footage back when it was a relatively new phenomenon, so they quickly built a following. Initially, their disappearance was dismissed a publicity stunt, but as the mystery persisted, they became online causes célèbres.

Indeed, yet another film crew happens to be interviewing Brennan-Walker when Wilson Miles rings her doorbell—just so he can commit suicide in front of her. At this point, the film drops the found footage perspective, so we can see Brennan-Walker secretly pocket the mini-video tape he drops. Following Miles’ trail leads her back to Shelby Oaks Prison. Along the way, she detects signs of some serious demonic iconography.

To a large extent, the first hour of Shelby Oaks plays out like a fusion of Blair Witch Project and one of the better online/reality TV ghost hunting crews meeting their match, as maybe best exemplified by Grave Encounters. However, Stuckmann marshals and recombines those elements with remarkable dexterity. It might be familiar, but it works really well.

Marshmallow, on Shudder

Anyone who knows anything about horror movies understands only bad things happen at summer camp. That is just as true for Camp Almar in this film as it was for Camp Crystal Lake in the Friday the 13^th franchise. However, the situation is a lot more complicated for young, insecure Morgan. His camp harbors some seriously sinister secrets in Daniel DelPurgatorio’s Marshmallow, which starts streaming tomorrow on Shudder.

Awkward Morgan could use a boost of confidence, so his kindly grandfather Roy cautiously suggests two months of summer camp might not be such a bad thing. Then he has a heart attack and dies. Morgan’s parents send him to camp anyway.

Maybe old Roy was right. Morgan quickly befriends fellow nerds Dirk and Raj. He also meets Pilar, a girl who is willing to talk to him. Unfortunately, he must room with CJ, the camp’s violent bully. Morgan is also freaked out by the stories of “The Doctor,” the camp’s supposed bogeyman (told round the old campfire, with hot chocolate—hence the title). Consequently, his friends initially assume his imagination has simply gotten the better of him when Morgan warns them the Doctor is tazing kids with a cattle prod. Yet, sure enough, it turns out to be true.

DelPurgatorio and screenwriter Andy Greskoviak deliver plenty of fan-pleasing retro 80’s horror vibes, while still telling a relatively original story. This is more than a slasher film, but it still has some of those elements. Nevertheless, there is little outright gore in Marshmallow. Instead, DelPurgatorio prioritizes suggestive mood and eerie atmosphere. Although it culminates with some genuinely surprising lunacy, the second act is arguably even more fun, in a nostalgic, throwback kind of way.

The Jester 2, on Shudder

It seems like stupid horror movie characters never manage to overcome the monsters stalking them. Fifteen-year-old Max is a notable exception. She stymies her supernatural slasher within the first act. However, she faces even greater horrors as a result. That might not sound fair, but Satanic deals really aren’t known for being equitable. The titular character continues to do what he does best in director-screenwriter Colin Krawchuk’s The Jester 2, which premieres today on Shudder.

Poor Max’s mother doesn’t allow her to trick-or-treat anymore and her high school classmates belittle her for her passion for magic. They shouldn’t have scoffed, because she immediately recognizes the card trick the Jester tries to show her. It turns outs the Jester can’t kill her, because he didn’t “trick” her first. That is a big problem for him, because he must trick and kill four sacrifices everyone Halloween night or the Devil will take him back to Hell for an uncomfortably nasty eternity.

Awkwardly, this becomes a big problem for Max too, because she essentially inherits oversight responsibility for the Jester’s Faustian contract. Of course, the Jester is happy to sacrifice any old anyone, but Max insists they should be more selective. Nevertheless, she quickly realizes even her worst bullies do not deserve the Jester’s treatment.

Krawchuk’s sequel is considerably better than the Terrifier rip-off that fans might assume, based on the Jester’s clown-like makeup. Krawchuk creates some intriguing lore for his signature bogeyman. Yet, the film’s greatest asset would be Max’s resourcefulness. Having already bested the Jester once, viewers can reasonably root for her to do it again.

Him, on Peacock

The popular acronym G.O.A.T. is a perfect example of how our language has been dumbed down and junked up. In sports terms, the “goat” used to be the scapegoat who took the blame for a loss. Now it supposedly means “greatest of all time,” but it obviously doesn’t. If Jordan was the GOAT, then that necessarily excludes Kobi Bryant, Steph Curry, or whoever from GOAT status. The term ought to be O.O.G.O.A.W. for one of the greatest of all this week. Regardless, the football world identifies Cameron Cade as the next potential GOAT and he just might be—but explaining why would be spoilery in Justin Tipping’s Him, produced by Jordan Peele, which premieres Friday on Peacock.

The San Antonio Saviors sound like the American football cousins of Sao Paulo’s Corinthians, except they are not very Portuguese. They are also quite ironically named. However, Cade does not know that as he grows up rooting for the Saviors. It would be his dream to play for them, but his pro aspirations nearly end when a mysterious assailant brutally attacks him after a practice. Frankly, this is probably the scariest scene of the film.

Given his head trauma, Cade must back out of the pre-draft combine. Yet, his pro dreams suddenly revive when the Saviors invite him to a private workout with their star quarterback, Isaiah White, who is rumored to be retiring next season. (Obviously, there is a strong case to be made for Whitee’s greatness, considering he is still starting professionally, even though he is portrayed by a Gen X actor. ) Cade could be his anointed successor, if he impresses. Yet rather ominously, the bizarre tryout sessions are much more grueling than he expected, physically and especially emotionally. Soon, Cade starts to both doubt his sanity and suspect the team trainers of deliberate malice and cruelty. Yet, whenever White dangles the prospect of superstardom, he comes back for more.

Arguably, Tipping hides his big secrets too effectively, because the truth of the Saviors is quite intriguing horror movie fodder, but Him only skims the surface of what could have been some darkly sinister lore. Disappointingly, the film rarely capitalizes on the sort of terrors typically associated with the Saviors’ true nature. Instead, most of menacing sequences play out more on a psychological level, as possible dreams, visions, or hallucinations. Consequently, it is hard for Tipping to sustain the tension, when each trippy set piece ends with Cade waking up from a fever dream, drenched in sweat. After a while, viewers become conditioned not invest in the images Tipping presents, no matter how intense they might be.

Manor of Darkness

Time loops are always scary, but the ones in horror movies are always the worst. That is because the people looping usually need to be brutally murdered to restart the cycle. This one is one of those. Unfortunately, lucky Laura is the only one who remembers she and her companions are looping in director-screenwriter Blake Ridder’s Manor of Darkness, which releases today on digital VOD.

Laura is the responsible sibling caring for her ailing mother, while her negligent brother Chris has been shirking his duties. The last time she helped Chris pull off a job, it cratered into disaster, but she needs the money, so here she is. He also recruits his girlfriend Lisa, who everyone else can tell is pregnant and Andy, whose pickpocketing and hustling skills caught his eye in the bar.

According to vague rumors, there is some great treasure hidden in Lucas’s manor house. Supposedly, Chris conned him into thinking they are a documentary crew, so they can search for the loot, but instead it was Lucas who lured them to the manor house. He claimed he intended to warn them of the loop, but Laura had already opened the evil pandora’s box, letting loose whatever the evil entity might be. As a result, only she remembers each time Lucas stabs them to death for a restart. He also tries to give them helpful advice for dealing with the loop—so yes, you could describe their relationship as complicated and stormy.

Despite Ridder’s obvious budget constraints, he managed to serve up a relatively fresh take on the horror movie time loop that does not feel like a transparent rip-off of either Happy Death Day or Until Dawn. The rewinding gamesmanship works pretty well, especially since the 82-minute film does not have time for many go-rounds.

The Wailing: Spanish and Argentine Horror

You could call Andrea the child of globalization. Her French birth mother was a French expat in Argentina, who gave Andrea up for adaption, stipulating a new home for her in Spain. However, the style and atmosphere of her resulting story is very much like what expect and appreciate from Spanish horror movies. Unfortunately, a mysterious evil force show no respect for borders in director-co-screenwriter Pedro Martin-Calero’s The Wailing, which releases today on VOD.

Like most teenagers, Andrea resents her parents. She also resents Marie Montand, the woman who gave birth to her, mostly for dying before she could find her. Awkwardly, her parents only revealed her origin recently, which turned out to be way too late. Yet, rather ominously, Montand did not just surrender her daughter. She also committed suicide, after doing time for murdering a teenaged girl roughly her age. That is a lot for Andrea to unpack.

Her exchange student boyfriend Pau suggests she take time off, so she can visit him in Australia. By the way, he also asks, who is the person standing behind you in the video she sent? What person? Yes, indeed, there is a strange old man standing behind her, off to the side and in the shadows, hidden in just about all her recent videos and selfies. Slowly, Andrea starts to suspect the mystery involves an eerie old building in Madrid that looks exactly like the one Montand once inhabited in Buenos Aires.

Rewinding twenty years, Martin-Calero switches his focus to Camile, a film student, who develops a borderline obsession with Montand, an expat party girl. Briefly, she manages to bridge the gap between stalker and potential lover (don’t try this in real-life kids). However, in the process, she generates a lot of film and photos, all of which reveal a sinister figure observing Montand in the background.

By horror standards, there is very little blood and gore in The Wailing. However, it is rich in foreboding and dread. Martin-Calero builds the tension slowly but steadily. While the bifurcated structure is initially jarring, it is ultimately quite effective.

Man Finds Tape: Found Footage in Texas

In Larkin, Texas, social life largely revolves around the church and the barbecue roadhouse. It is about as red as the meat proprietor Winston Boon serves up, but this film still invites sympathy for the community. Something sinister has been secretly preying on the town for years. A brother and sister struggle to expose the bizarre truth in Paul Gandersman & Peter S. Hall’s Man Finds Tape, which releases this Friday in theaters and on-demand.

Believe it or not, the director-screenwriters breathe new life into the found footage subgenre, precisely by embracing its limitations. Lucas Page is a notorious paranormal influencer, who built a massive following with the mysterious videos of his childhood an unknown someone reportedly delivered to him. The first allegedly depicts a shadowy figure standing over him while he innocently slept. Ominously, it clearly was not his parents.

Page would later admit he faked the subsequent tapes in hopes of drawing out the mysterious party. Consequently, his sister Lynn is skeptical when Lucas video-calls, asking her to watch more of his dubious footage. However, when he passes out mid-call, she reluctantly returns to Larkin, out of concern.

Having left town as a teenager, after the untimely deaths of their parents, Ms. Page seems immune to whatever plagues the locals. Clearly, it is not just her brother. Her former bestie (and Lucas’s on-again-off-again girlfriend) Wendy Parker willing goes on-the-record and on-camera to discusses her experiences. Boon also sits for a few interviews, but he is far less willing to face the creepy phenomenon. However, a strange outsider (conveniently referred to as “The Stranger”) obviously understands what is happening, but he clearly has not come to Larkin with altruistic motives.

Man Finds Tape works so well because it uses our disbelief against us, jujitsu-like. As the primary narrating voice, Lynn Page constantly expresses skepticism. Essentially, she even invites the audience to compare her ostensive film to presumed hoaxes, like the Patterson-Gimlin Big Foot tape. The horror itself is also initially hard to define. While it inspires fear and paranoia, it also takes on subtly Lovecraftian overtones.

Gandersman and Hall create a potent atmosphere of dread, which steadily escalates. Even though Rev. Endicott Carr is unambiguously implicated in the uncanny skullduggery afoot, Man Finds Tape still feels highly sympathetic to its small Texas setting.