The Grieving (2025) (Italy)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Following her father’s sudden passing, Mia carries a bit of guilt that her busy life as a New York gallery owner put her relationship with her dad on the back burner for a seemingly brief bit of time. Of course it was in this brief stretch that his life came to a close, so I can understand why she’s beating herself up. The disturbing dream-vision of her father the night before she receives the word of his death further unsettles. Mia flies home to Italy to collect her papa’s ashes from the crematorium where the excellent, atmospheric opening of the film took place. Yeah. We know the spookiness is on the horizon. She plans on burying the ashes next to her mother on the family property. It’s going to take a few days for paperwork to be sorted and Mia is warned that it’s illegal to open the urn and spread the ashes without the permission of the Italian government. I don’t blame them for hammering this home, Mia’s been in America for a bit and we are a selfish batch of monkeys. So, this leaves Mia on her isolated family property while she’s waiting to get permission to lay her father’s cremains to rest. She opens the urn to place in her mother and father’s wedding rings and fixes up the house while crying. Luckily, she’s able to communicate with her best friend/business partner and he’s able to offer up some levity during this awful stretch. It takes almost no time for spooky shit to ramp up and Mia may be spooked but she also sees it as a chance to communicate with her much-missed dad. She’s convinced he’s pierced the veil because there’s something he needs to tell her or maybe even warn her about. It also may be driving her insane. A convenient medium pops up because what’s a small Italian village without one? She lets Mia know that her father asked for her assistance because he was being haunted by something and needed help. This will lead to contact and a revelation of just what malevolence is in the works. A very small and likable cast carry the familiar haunting story (executed well enough) on a small budget and may deliver some stilted performances but that’s the cost of performing something in a second language. It doesn’t bother me a bit and it’s my kind of indie horror because it comes off like a foggy recollection of Insidious presented with a production budget that wouldn’t cover a small percentage of that movie’s catering. I love me an underdog and this is a capable one.

Mother of Flies (2025) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A young woman’s terminal cancer diagnosis has her looking for healing in the dangerous fields of backwoods medicine. A witch offers up a remedy but as anyone who has ever seen anything involving the curative powers of black magic medicine could tell you, there is a hefty fucking fee. Mickey and her loving father struggle with the diagnosis and Mickey decides to seek the assistance of a deep woods dwelling woman with a strong connection to nature and death. This woman had reached out to the girl and Mickey, looking to hold on any way she can, agrees to undergo the three-day stint of death magic and ritual being offered up. Her dad goes along with it because the options are thin and the idea of such a deep loss is fucking terrifying. His disbelief and helpless anger at the situation never rings false and he serves as a solid anchor for the slow spiral into the unknown. It’s a much more important part of the film’s progression than I was expecting. Of course, the heavy focus is placed upon the conjurer and the sick girl where it rightfully belongs, also a centuries-old shame that ties everything together. Presenting witchcraft as it should be to anyone raised on stories of Appalachian disquiet or Hong Kong ickiness, the spells and conjuring here are suitably disgusting. Gorgeous images and scenery meld perfectly with decay and disgust to throw everything on unsteady ground, keeping the audience right where the film wants us to be. Quiet, hallucinatory, personal, beautiful, lyrical and carefully gross. Melodrama detracts a bit but it’s easy to overlook when everything else is so fascinating. A dream steeped in fairytale and corrupted by the inevitability of mortality forming one hell of an intriguing dark fantasy. Not at all what I was expecting and sometimes that’s the best thing a movie can be.

The Fairfield County Four (2026) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

As flawed as it may be and as many times as it has hurt me on a personal level, I still love me some found footage movies. I also find the dog man a fascinating edition to the realm of cryptozoology. Now, what happens when these two things come together? Four young folks head out to the Connecticut wilderness to investigate sightings of a werewolf (not exactly a dog man but oh well). John Bloom pops in for an interview as an attorney who is releasing the footage captured of the missing four to help his clients (the families of the vanished quartet) get some answers that the local authorities appear to be covering up. It’s nice seeing Joe Bob Briggs introduce us to what we’re watching and we get a brief chunk of people talking about the case. In no time at all, we’re traveling along with the doomed team of monster hunters who run a series called “The Cryptid Project”. Irritating Randy documents everything, including the usual useless footage and moments of people talking over each other. Two exhausting female hosts agitate and the sound guy’s sarcasm grows tiresome. The two dudes bicker even before things go to shit. Uh oh. Local interviews and Fairfield County wanderings kill time, awkwardly fleshing out our protagonists (God help me, it kinda works. The interview with the grieving mother really goes a long way in showing these people actually have more to them than manufactured enthusiasm) and introducing some colorful folks and cautious /hostile government officials who populate the small town living under the shadow of a hairy and dangerous legend. John Bloom comes back to let us know that after a certain point in the footage, things shift for the four and things get worrisome. A slimy town rep hooks them up with his magnificently bearded uncle so the old timer can work as a guide for them into the woods. He’s pretty great. He shares some spooky history and personal experiences and then warns them to not go following a loud howl and movement in the woods. They don’t listen and the inevitable encounter with the killer unknown ruins everyone’s day. The opening act may be a drag thanks to it landing firmly into the standard unlikable found footage shenanigans but once it allows the audience to project some sympathy towards our heroes, it gets a lot better. Also… a found footage werewolf film… that’s such a great way to get me rooting for your damn movie right out of the starting gate. The werewolf costume is practical and looks mighty fine which means the movie ain’t afraid of displaying it for the brief time it’s featured. A solid cast works well and it’s a simple enough story to keep it all from dragging too much. A good time that may not reinvigorate the subgenre but shouldn’t piss anyone off if they’re looking for some easy shaky-cam tomfoolery.

The Black Fables (2015) (Brazil)

aka Dark Fables

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

As Dominic Toretto once proclaimed; “THIS IS BRAZIL!” Only this time instead of muscle cars being raced by sweaty men capable of physics-defying driving techniques, we get a side of Brazil that deals with much darker things. Bringing together a quartet of local legends (amongst them, Coffin Joe himself, the late, great José Mojica Marins and Petter Baiestorf who blessed the world with Zombio and then shat all over everything with its sequel) we are treated to an anthology with its Brazilian blood pumping enough madness and variety to keep me intrigued. A group of goofy kids take a break from their delightful costumed shenanigans in the woods, enjoying some hybrid fantasy role playing that involves homemade weapons, homemade costumes, slabs of wood serving as swords and water balloons. A kick to the balls puts a sudden end to the tomfoolery and eventually some storytelling eases the youthful boredom. First up is Monster of the Sewer from Rodrigo Aragão. A corrupt, obese mayor dies on the shitter (the kind of brief illness that involves blood shooting out of your double chin until the back of your head explodes… I think that’s mono) and everything he voids goes into the sewer system he has refused to fix. This ends up poisoning the water supply that crosses paths with the overflowing sewer outside of some frustrated man’s home. This has the nasty effect of turning said fed-up guy into a violent sewage zombie for… uhm, reasons. It also has a giant, living turd found by the soon-to-be sewage zombie’s child who keeps it as a pet. It’s pure toilet stupidity, which I have seen plague more than a couple Brazilian flicks but it’s at least reasonable because it’s being told by a pre-teen boy. We’re idiots, especially at that age and I can definitely see this as something hilarious to some youthful dope who swears it to be true. A very cheap zombie, a very messy kicked-in head and a very lovely giant insectoid BM combine for an opening act that kind of has me shrug while shaking my head. It’s not my cup of tea but nowhere near as bad as it could have been. As the kids march off to grab some food, one of them stumbles across a giant track left in the dirt. This leads him to telling a local legend about a werewolf fucking up the cruel, racist military rule of a small village. Pampa Feroz comes from the aforementioned Baiestorf and it is a charming bit of budget-strained lycanthrope madness. Chocolate syrup splatter and truly despicable victims pair well with a majestically janky monster (think the creature from Cellar Dweller but realized by Andy Milligan and you’re practically there) and a transformation back into human form that is fucking jaw-dropping in a very cheap and icky way. It’s also shot to look like it was filmed through your memory of an unfinished basement in the Midwest. Yes, that is praise. Why are you looking at me like that? One of the boy’s fears of something called the Saci leads to O Saci from Marins which he shows up in. A young girl is tempted by some horny dope to join him while hunting in the woods at night. An old timer warns them that it’ll be dangerous after dark because they’re in the land of the Saci but the guy ignores the warning and ends up shooting the mythical hopping monster. The girl’s parents aren’t happy and they don’t believe her story. The guy decides the truth can only come out if he finishes the job and embalms the Saci for all to see. The creepy-ass rubber monster pays a visit to the girl’s home and the question rises as to whether or not the girl is just insane or actually being plagued by an ugly nightmare. Possible possession leads to Marins performing an exorcism which leads to a concerned father and unfortunate ends for a few folks. It works fine and features a folkloric beast I haven’t seen before. The next story comes from Joel Caetano and involves a ghost haunting the bathroom of a rundown boarding school. Bloody Blonde is said specter and she’s leaving some bodies in her wake. The headmistress buries these dead kids on the school grounds and goes about her business, informing nobody but she has darker secrets than that and it connects to the school’s spirit. Bloody Mary scared the fuck out of me when I was little and this ghastly ghost really hits me in the terrifying nostalgia section of my brain. The effective entity is decayed to hell and covered in blood, conjured up by speaking her name in the bathroom mirror… it’s damn-near perfect when it comes to giving this middle-aged idiot some chills. Cruelty, a hideously scarred butler, bitchy classmates, nauseating wall paint, some nasty violence and a nice level of grime just wrap it all up into the kind of package I am madly in love with. Rodrigo Aragão bookends with Lara’s House which has a woman murdering her adulterous husband and bumping uglies with a Satyr that clued her into her husband’s infidelity. Legend has it that the scorned woman still resides in her now derelict house, leaving the confines once night falls. Our storytellers now sit outside the seemingly abandoned home and a simple, mean-spirited prank is going to show just how factual the scary tales were. If you have no issue with production budgets stretched as far as they can go, this anthology is a pleasant surprise (outside of a mostly forgettable first story). Giving us a zombie, a giant poop-creature, a werewolf, a one-legged thing from folklore with a case of the giggles and one hell of a ghost all brought to life on film sets you can smell from the comfort of your own home with a cast that could use a shower. Again, that’s praise.

The Vampire’s Coffin (1958) (Mexico)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sequel from the same team behind El Vampiro sees Count Lavud (a returning Germán Robles) unwittingly resurrected by a greedy grave robber and embarking on a quest of revenge against our two likable heroes from the previous entry. A colleague of Dr. Enrique (Abel Salazar, also returning), fascinated by the vampire lore, looks to unlock the vampires biological secrets but instead unleashes the evil count on the medical center where he works. Unluckily, Marta (the beautiful Ariadna Welter reprising her role) is at the same medical center recovering from her traumatic encounter with Lavud. On top of the returning cast and bats on strings, we get a creepy wax museum, a climactic battle between man and bat, some awkward dance numbers and an elderly woman killed by an iron maiden. Not on par with the excellent original, The Vampire’s Coffin is still a fun time.

El Vampiro (1957) (Mexico)

aka The Vampire 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Vampirism combines seamlessly with family drama in this horror classic. Marta returns to her home for the first time in years at the request of her uncle when it seems her aunt is nearing death. She arrives to find her aunt has passed and her lovingly remembered home has slipped into disarray. Mr. Duval has taken residence in the small village and now it is avoided like the plague. Duval is in cahoots with Marta’s aunt (whom he has vampirized) to reclaim ownership of the family estate and resurrect his brother who is buried on the grounds. His vampiric gaze has become fixated on the lovely Marta, not because of the “lost love” stuff usually found in these films, but because her aunt left her the deciding share of her childhood home and her vote to sell to Duval would mean her uncle is shit out of luck. Hopefully she may be spared an undead fate with the help of a charming doctor and the (possible) ghost of her recently deceased aunt. An excellent film that should be far more revered than it is. Germán Robles makes for an impressive evil presence, the story is fresh, the folklore moves to its own beat, superbly acted by all involved and the striking photography enhances the already moody atmosphere. See it.

The Ghost from Hovrino (2012) (Russia)

⭐️1/2

Russian Blair Witch Project offers nothing new outside of some cool backstory involving an ancient forest used as a sacrificial ground by sorcerers. There’s talk of a large ghost/monster thing running around the woods but you know you’ll never lay eyes on it. In a pleasant twist, the female lead follows her gut and dumps the dumbass filmmaker when he refuses to leave the legend alone. Something starts taking the four-man crew one by one and the idiot goes insane in a less than convincing fashion. You’ve seen it before but this time it’s in Russian!