It’s a trio of dark flicks about the occult and possession, so it definitely made for a good, themed triple feature. But did the power of these films compel me? Let’s find out.
THE COVENANT (2017)
If you are itching for an exorcism, this is yet another basic, possessed woman movie.
After her daughter dies and her husband commits suicide, a woman moves into her family home with her estranged brother. Healthy.
Weird stuff begins happening around the house, and soon after, the main woman starts acting weird. Various people also seem to be trying to warn both the brother and sister to leave the house. They seem like either they know something…or are up to something.
The sister becomes more erratic, we get some flashbacks to the real story about her daughter and husband, and eventually she goes totally Linda Blair.
A priest is called in, and the usual bedside treatment is administered. The demonic possession makeup does its job, and there’s a nasty little birth-giving moment, so those are both welcome highlights in an indie film, but there’s really nothing outstanding or unique happening here—unless you count the house crumbling at the end like something out of Carrie.
THE MORTUARY ASSISTANT (2026)
I’ve never played the video game this movie is based on, so I can’t address how it works as an adaptation. As a movie, it’s just one of those flicks with a cheap funhouse of horrors approach, meaning everything thrown at us to scare us feels like a disjointed fever dream of delusions, making most of what happens feel not so terrifying.
The movie is about a woman working at a mortuary overnight. Naturally, she has emotional and psychological baggage that she has to contend with by the end of the film.
She also has a boss who reveals to her that the crazy shit she starts experiencing is the result of a demon that hides out in the dead until it can attach itself to the living. The boss offers up rituals that might contain it, but that shit just doesn’t seem to work as the main girl encounters various ghouls, creatures, and walking dead people as she tries to dodge possession.
It all ends with a creepy creature in the final scene, but honestly, the moment that was most chilling to me comes near the beginning when a corpse smiles underneath a sheet.
Eek! If only the rest of the film had lived up to that horror eye candy.
BLACK GOAT (2025)
This dark woods occult film has a banger of an opener—a straight couple camping in the woods encounters the black goat antagonist, and it levitates the dude before he’s torn in two…starting at the crotch. Ouch.
I’m not going to lie. The film is kind of tedious after that. Our main guy is an environmental investigator sent into the woods on a new project. He sees signs of occult rituals. He encounters a creepy dude. He is confronted by the black goat, repeatedly.
Much of this movie involves nightmare sequences that get little in the way of a reaction from the main guy, so despite some chilling setups and great atmosphere, you just never quite feel a sense of dread—although, the scenes shot in total darkness with light only appearing on the subject of the scene are incredibly effective.
Once the main guy brings a friend with him into the woods and they spend a lot of time basically reciting urban legends about the area, things really slow down.
There are some intense scenes here and there, but they all feel very trippy and surreal, right down to the final act. However, practical gore effects are mostly great, with just one really bad green screen scene. And the final battle is a good representation of the horror the film could have delivered all along if it had been better paced.
