Noticing I had three movies on my Tubi watchlist with enticing entity names, I knew it was time for a new triple feature. But did any of these flicks deliver?
BIAZ: KARA LYENIN LANETI (2024)
The name of the entity in this Turkish film is more frightening than the movie itself, which is a totally formulaic throwback to supernatural stalker movies of the early 2000s.
Four friends celebrating the end of exams week pull out a Ouija board at their little party. Almost immediately, things start moving around them as if they just stepped into Carol Anne’s bedroom.
And then, they each start experiencing haunting phenomena while alone. There’s plenty of horror lighting (and strobe lights), but the scare sequences are repetitive, and the entity looks like some medieval monk. Yawn.
Eventually, the kids start to get killed, but there are only four of them, so there’s no body count. After the first kill, the three survivors decide they must stick together…and then eventually split up. Sigh.
They first track down someone previously affected by the entity in a mental hospital, and she tells them how to defeat the entity. They attempt to apply her technique, more of them die, the ones that are dead seem to join the entity around those he kills, and we get a final girl and a brief chase sequence around their school (where they seem to spend a lot of time alone at night for kids that are so terrified).
Not even my nostalgia for early 2000s movies like The Boogeyman could save this one.
NAHUALLI (2025)
This 76-minute movie delves into Mexican superstition and folklore, yet it mostly comes across as a combination possession/slasher hybrid. However, the dark and atmospheric settings do the heavy lifting of capturing the spirit of the underdeveloped entity.
In the opening scene, three friends explore an old church in Mexico, and something takes possession of one of them. From what I could tell, it seems to take control of victims by inserting its hand in their mouth, which is not something you see every day.
Then we meet Mark and his two buddies. They are heading to Mexico a year later to search for Mark’s missing sister. I’m not exactly sure where anyone is staying, but the guys and a bachelorette party both end up sheltering near the church.
Mark has eerie nightmares and visions, including those of some sort of witch doctor that seems to hold the answers to everything. Mark and his friends head out into the wilderness at night, and that’s when things begin to go wrong.
The story of the bachelorette party really feels unnecessary until the guys find the church, where they encounter the demonic entity. One of them becomes possessed and heads out to start killing people, and the girls are a perfect target.
The legend doesn’t unfold organically, for in the end, a few of the characters have to find the witch doctor of Mark’s dreams, and it is he who basically explains everything. Adding to that underwhelming aspect, there’s not much in the way of a thrilling climax, although there are suddenly a few more demonic looking baddies added to the mix, and they are effectively creepy.
LECHUZA (2025)
This is a film that has a fantastic demonic/witchy creeper vibe and visuals but simply doesn’t pair its monster with a script that gives it a chance to thrive.
The story is simple. A woman, her young son and daughter, and their uncle are going on a camping trip. While on the road, they stop for a woman cloaked in black who seems to be hurt. However, as the uncle approaches her, he senses she’s a freak, so he leaves without helping her. I wouldn’t have even stopped.
Soon after, it’s like the witch is following them. During a rest stop, she terrorizes the son and seems to curse him as well. This is followed by an unneeded stretch of scenes of her roaming through the wilderness as the car drives on a deserted road.
After they set up camp, the kids go exploring and encounter the main creature. Eek! I’m telling you, this winged demon witch monster—aka: Lechuza—gets a fantastic monster design. Are the monster and the witchy woman one and the same? Not sure.
As for the family, they kind of just hang out. The kids keep getting scared, the adults tell them they’re imagining things…rinse and repeat. Even with the kids saying there’s a monster in the woods, and the adults telling them they aren’t allowed to watch horror movies anymore because they’re imaginations are running wild, the uncle goes and tells them the legend of Lechuza at the campfire! Asshole.
While this isn’t a found footage film, it sort of is. It keeps jumping between third-person camera view and a first-person perspective with no rhyme or reason. The uncle does hold a camera earlier in the movie, but I don’t think he’s actually filming during any of the first-person scenes. When the uncle explores the woods with just a flashlight, the monster suddenly goes full-face at the screen, and you hear the uncle yell, “What was that?” Like, are we supposed to be seeing through the uncle’s eyes, with that close-up being just to thrill the audience? No idea.
Like I said, the director absolutely nails the monster sequences, including a great aerial view when it’s flying over the running family and picks one of them up in a moment that brings me right back to the very first V/H/S story.
The final flight (of both the family and the monster) is fantastic and made the movie worth watching for me, but the final frame ends with the letters REC up in the top left corner of the screen. This movie wanted so badly to be a found footage film but just couldn’t commit.
