This threesome has a couple of very cool monsters and one disappointing monster (although, he has a nice bod). For me, one film in particular was a total winner. Let’s find out which one.
INTO NIGHTMARES (2024)
This English language, Italian film is somber and moody with plenty of eerie atmosphere, but it’s also a fairly familiar concept. However, it tries to deliver a zinger in the end…which is also a familiar concept for horror veterans.
After the death of his daughter, an older man is sent to live in a home for seniors. The place is desolate, the head nurse is creepy, they put the man in a room with an empty bed facing his bed (eek!), and when he begins having nightmarish episodes, the in-house doctor tells him it’s just sleep paralysis.
The sequences are haunting and spooky, with a corpse-like woman lurking in the shadows in his room, the door knob jiggling, and plumes of ghostly forms floating through the room.
As creepy as it is, like most of these types of apparition flicks, it becomes repetitive since the cheap scares never lead to any actual horror. I guess that’s why a big spider inexplicably appears on the man’s bedroom ceiling at one point during one of his episodes. It makes no sense in the context of the film, but it definitely introduces something different for a moment.
The man begins to believe the nurse is keeping someone or something locked away. This sets the film up for something really freaky and substantial coming out to roam the halls at night, and if this had been a pre-1990s film, there probably would have been.
Instead, the building mystery opts for more of a psychological twist. It’s a twist in terms of this movie, but it’s not all that surprising for anyone with a long history of watching horror films.
THE COVENANT (2026)
I love movies about kids going to stay with their creepy grandparents, and this one has a really dark and sinister vibe, so it’s astounding how terribly slow and uneventful it is.
The main sisters aren’t exactly angels in this instance, especially the older of the two. She intends to loot grandma and grandpa’s place because she feels like they neglected her.
As soon as they arrive, they are met by a creepy woman who is spouting crazy stuff…and it’s not even grandma. This wacko is perhaps the scariest aspect for a majority of the runtime, specifically when she ends up crawling into the bed of the younger sister… 50 minutes into the movie!
So, what happens before that? They explore some old ruins and have a dream-like encounter in a cave. Seriously, that’s the most exciting thing that happens before the cheap thrill at the 50-minute mark.
58 minutes in, the older sister seems to get attacked by something in a river, and soon after, the younger sister apparently has her first period while taking a bath, which grandma calls a sign of her purity. There’s also talk of a creature out in the wilderness. Uh-oh.
In the final act, the “creature” comes out to play…basically a feral man with long claw fingers. There’s a creepy doll room, and the older sister whips out a chainsaw, but this is really a low-key horror flick that didn’t quite hold my interest.
THE WELL (2023)
This is like a classic gothic horror flick with fricking gruesome, brutal, hard-to-watch kill scenes, and it also reminded me of some of my favorite, unsettling survival horror video games of the last three decades, in particular, Haunting Ground.
Actress Lauren LaVera of the Terrifier movies has the perfect look for the lead role. She plays an art restorer who comes to Italy to repair a large painting in an old mansion.
The woman hosting her has that old school, welcoming yet menacing presence, she has a creepy young daughter, the restorer begins to have nightmarish dreams as she uncovers hellish looking figures in the painting…
Oh. And there’s a big bald goon in a lair somewhere keeping people imprisoned, killing them one by one, and then tossing them down a well in the middle of the room to feed them to something.
I warn you, these kills are gruesome. It’s the kind of practical effects gore that makes you squirm. There’s a lot of mutilating before the goon even throws victims down the well, and they are not even dead yet when he does. And they scream the whole time they are being tortured. It’s hard to watch and listen to all at once. Yikes!
The whole supernatural premise is highly entertaining as well, especially if you’re into traditional occult themes, and the overall atmosphere is perfect.
The final act doesn’t let up, and we do get to see what’s in the well, so the movie never falters. I seriously ordered it on 4K disc as soon as I was done streaming it.
