I watched this assortment of indie horror flicks so you don’t have to…unless you like what you hear.
SHIFTED (2022)
I did not know what to expect going into this film that at first felt like it was going to be strictly about a group of neighbors all trapped in one house while a zombie outbreak we never witness is going on outside. I thought I was in for some torturous Pontypool shit, but although this is a slow burn, it succeeds in making you more interested in what’s going on inside with the characters than outside. And yet it even manages to actually deliver some intense zombie action.
We are thrown into the middle of an outbreak during the wintery, snowy time of year. I’m a sucker for zombie outbreak movies that take place during the day while it’s snowing.
Anyway, this group of neighbors is struggling to survive with limited resources. We slowly learn what each of them experienced before arriving at the house. They also welcome new people to their safe haven, but they do tend to treat them with suspicion and interrogate them.
There are a few fleeting struggles with some seriously nasty looking zombies outside, but things get complicated inside the house when one of the survivors is found murdered in the bathroom!
Trapped with each other, the group has to deal with the fact that there’s a killer among them, which of course leads to heightened tensions, distrust, and eventually survivors turning on each other.
It’s all quite compelling, and there are some unnerving moments when zombies infiltrate the house. Plus, there’s a hunky as hell zombie. I’d eat him before he could get his teeth on me.
However, one thing really kills the whole mystery behind the plot: ***SPOILER*** the opening scene shows one of the main characters murdering someone before coming to the house. I kept telling myself this person couldn’t possibly be the killer of the victim in the house, too, because it would defeat the point of the mystery, but alas that person is indeed the killer! WTF? That first murder scene is completely unnecessary, and I don’t understand why the creators of the movie didn’t choose to remove it other than the fact that they wanted to open with something shocking and bloody. As if there weren’t some other kind of horrific opener they could have come up with in a movie about a zombie outbreak…
THE HEADMISTRESS (2023)
One thing about this derivative ghost movie saved it for me…a gay couple that lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.
Ghost movies in general don’t particularly scare me, so all the tropes we get here had no effect on me. After a woman in serious debt inherits an inn in the woods from her father, she takes a small group of interested buyers to see it. We have a misogynistic douche, two different female characters that are pretty indistinguishable other than their hair color, and the cute gay couple that proudly owns a pizza shop.
Once in the house, the group splits up to explore. One woman sees a ghost girl in the basement and “help me” written on a closet wall. The other woman sees a dark figure moving closer to her every time she lifts her old school camera to take a picture. There are fleeting glimpses of ghosts in the shadows, there are some jump scares, ghosts start messing with everyone’s minds, and the ghosts appear to start manifesting in the flesh.
The group slowly begins piecing together the history of the large house, which involves an old boarding school and children being tortured. One thing that definitely has a lot of embellishment here is the backstory.
There is a final confrontation between the main girl and the ghosts, but that just gives us one cool appearance of a demonic looking main ghost.
The gay guys are the most interesting of the bunch. One of them dreams of buying the place to make it into a haunted hotel, so he’s also the most prepared to deal with the ghostly insanity. Best of all, the gay guys get the last line, and it reminds us of just how adorable they are together.
THE DEMONS WITHIN (2023)
I watched this movie for one reason—80s sweetheart Deborah Foreman of Valley Girl and April Fool’s Day was listed in the cast. Turns out she has about a 20-second appearance as a nurse and is not a good reason to sit through the movie.
I’m not going to spend much time on this. For me, the fact that a movie like The Exorcist exists makes it barely worth it for major studios to throw money at inferior exorcism films, let alone for low budget indies to go there.
So this girl Izzy doesn’t get along with her parents. She goes to a therapist where it appears demons are transferred into her phone. Ah, a comment on phones taking over our lives in modern society.
This kicks off cheap versions of typical exorcism movie tropes. With 20 minutes left, the parents, who are atheists, cave to organized religion and call in a priest, who performs an exorcism on the living room floor, because family TV time is surely the most important part of the day.
