This trio of films from my Prime list for a movie marathon worked out for me, because there was satisfying horror to be had in all three flicks.
ALIEN INVASION (2023)
Running 73 minutes long, this little alien flick gets to the point and delivers some creature feature fun, with an alien that looks like Alien and moves with a very SyFy CGI style.
A group of friends sneaks into a neighbor’s house, finds a mysterious egg in a glass case, and opens it.
Before long, they’re being terrorized by a giant alien. It must have been cramped in that egg…
In a totally silly scene, the neighbor comes home, sees that the egg has hatched, and then starts speaking to the alien (which he doesn’t even see because it’s hiding), explaining to it in English how it came to be in his house, thereby giving us the backstory.
It becomes a cat and mouse game through the house as the alien kills friends left and right. Eventually the survivors run to a church, where one girl’s father is now a priest. Wait until you see him box with the alien.
There’s a cool scene with some of the girls trapped in a car by the alien right before the movie ends with a UFO arriving but no definitive conclusion. It just kind of cuts short.
THE POSSESSION EXPERIMENT (2016)
This is an earlier film from the director of Bad Candy. If you can’t get enough of possession films but would like something a little different, this fits the bill, even if it is a little hokey at times. Personally, I had a blast with it because it isn’t just another possessed girl tied to a bed movie.
However, it begins that way, with Bill Moseley as one of the priests, and the scene totally rocks. The exorcism is being documented on video, and the possessed girl wreaks havoc on those in attendance.
Years later, a cute college dude decides to do a project about the deaths at the exorcism for his world religions class. He’s considered a geek by his friends, who nag him to lighten up and score some pussy. He’s also (sort of) playfully called a fag by his hot, asshole roommate.
Anyway, he convinces a friend to sneak into the abandoned house where the exorcism occurred. They find a Ouija board, and he decides he wants to live stream himself welcoming the supposed demon into his body.
This is where the film gets a fresh twist. The possession attempt seems to be a failure at first, but then the action kicks in, and a possessed host goes rogue, even running through the streets jabbing people with…Freddy Krueger razor fingers! Awesome.
Of course it wouldn’t be a possession film without an exorcism climax, and this one definitely breaks the mold, with some fun surprises and plenty more deaths.
HOUSE OF INEQUITY (2023)
It’s not often that a film delivers so much on the horror aspects yet suffers from trying way too hard to offer character development and plot, but that is the case with House of Inequity. Excessive exposition through dialogue does nothing but make the premise of the movie get more and more murky.
The opening scene feels disjointed from the rest of the movie. A serial killer on the run sneaks into a house and commits murder for the purpose of an occult ritual apparently. Don’t expect to ever understand why he does so or how it causes what the main characters experience afterward.
We meet a teen being raised by his brother with the help of some hot friends. The teen is being bullied at school and is also fascinated by true crimes, so his sexy support system offers him a chance to sneak into the house where the serial killer murder took place.
Once inside, they are soon split up by supernatural forces and then get killed off one by one by some ghoulish and masked fiends who all look human to me.
But I’m not sure if they are or if the occult ritual at the beginning of the film had something to do with releasing otherworldly fiends into the house.
Either way, the kills are brutal and violent, and the fiends are nice and freaky. Problem is that in the final act the leader of this creepy clan has to explain that everyone’s deaths were based on their fears. Not a new concept, but those fears are never clearly expressed despite all the dialogue and insight into the characters.
Some fears are obvious (a guy thinks his dad hated him), but others are pretty out there (fearing someone is going to chisel out your teeth then stick a needle in your eye?). I guess it could be argued, however, that exploring really deep, dark, twisted fears (like being set on fire when you are paralyzed) is a cool idea, but not knowing that’s what we’re witnessing until after all the kills have happened kind of takes away from our opportunity to truly feel the terror the characters are.
Despite the flawed execution and a runtime that needed to be trimmed for pacing, this flick really does deliver some great horror sequences.
