I love demonic possession, I love wicked witches, and I love sailor men, but I had a favorite in this trio of subgenre horrors. Let’s find out which one.
SPIRIT SPRINGS (2025)
This homage to Evil Dead takes almost an hour to kick into high gear, and then it’s all over in a flash.
A struggling band hits a series of snags when they travel to a possible gig, so they are put up in a mansion by a lake, where we get several music montages, as well as a whole band performance clip, which is your chance to speed up the viewing experience, if you know what I mean.
Finally, a girl and guy go swimming in the lake at night. The next morning (apparently, they were in the lake all night), they are walking back to the house and come upon a spring…while a nod to Evil Dead shaky cam that looks more like drunken cam comes stumbling through the woods.
The water whore decides to take a dip in the spring while the dude reads a sign that says the spring is filled with spirits that will possess you if they don’t like you.
56 minutes into the movie, the spring decides it doesn’t like the water whore. She becomes possessed, enters a weird delusional plain momentarily, and then attacks and chomps on a band mate. After the gang sees their friend get bit, the possessed water whore messes with their minds to lure them in, and you have to wonder…did they not see Evil Dead…or her eating their friend?
Here’s the biggest disappointment. While possessed water whore resembles the Deadite mom from Evil Dead Rise, she disposes of all her friends quickly, and they all open their eyes to show they’ve become possessed…right as the movie ends! WTF? You gotta spread the horror love through your movie, not concentrate it into the last few minutes! I can only assume the intention here is to make a sequel that is an actual homage to Evil Dead.
UNHOLY SONG (2025)
This “witch” movie feels very much like a local, home-brewed production. At one point there are three different timelines being juggled, so it’s not exactly the smoothest narrative. It’s also not very eventful.
Basically, there’s this dude who rents out some rooms in his house. He tells the new tenants not to go into a shed in the yard. They do. They play a tape they find in there. It unleashes a witch.
Next, we’re presented with flashbacks to a back story of how the landlord acquired the tape, and how his wife became possessed by a witch when he played it.
Finally, we’re presented with flashbacks to a back back story of a brother whose witch sister was terrorizing him, so he shot her just as she was singing an incantation into the tape, which led to her cursing the tape.
It’s an entertaining, no-nonsense plot, it’s just not handled with any energy. The most fun is had when a priest gets involved. Fun isn’t really the word for it though. His battle with a dude who gets possessed is actually funny. Not sure if it’s intentional humor, but it made me laugh, especially when the priest whips out…a spray bottle of holy water?
When a priest realizes he has limp wrist…
The possessed dude does appear as a demon eventually, and that’s about the most exciting visual horror we get, because the witch only appears for about ten seconds at the very end of the movie.
POPEYE THE SLAYER MAN (2025)
This is the third Popeye slasher I’m covering, and although the killer Popeyes all look so much alike that this could have been a franchise of sequels instead of three movies independent of each other, this one is the most fun and could serve as an origins story.
Here’s the awesome back story—a spinach canning company that was cutting corners ended up poisoning the food supply, leading to a man morphing into the psycho sailor man. Awesome.
Everything else is just gravy. Various groups of people end up at the now abandoned factory—film school students, a gang of thugs, a few business people—and get violently mutilated by Popeye. The kills are king here. They’re loaded with gory practical effects, and that’s all I really need from my sailor man slashers. Well, that and the fact that behind the mask, this particular Popeye looks like this…
As an added bonus, the movie introduced me to a new song for my Future Flashbacks show: “Believe, Rewind” by Icarus. Plus, the movie is totally left open for a sequel, and of the three Popeye flicks I’ve seen so far, this one is my choice to get one.
