It turns out this trio of flicks I watched on Tubi all feature women in perilous horror situations. Shocker, I know. More shocking is that two out of the three really worked for me.
THE DEAD GIRL IN APARTMENT 03 (2022)
Short and to the point at 72 minutes long, this little indie really grabbed me with its ambience and atmosphere—isolating, dark, shadowy, and mostly contained to one apartment.
The main girl discovers her roommate dead in her bedroom. Adrienne King of Friday the 13th plays one of the detectives that comes to the scene to investigate the possibility of any foul play.
This becomes a tense slow burn as the main girl tries to go on with her life while attempting to piece together what could have happened to her roommate.
The only person she really has contact with while she’s alone in the apartment in which she found a dead body is her ex-boyfriend.
When her electricity goes out, the shit hits the fan and a terrifying presence comes out of the shadows.
Sound and (lack of) light are used to great effect for the final act, and there are some good occult aspects added to the ghostly storyline.
VIOLETT (2023)
If you’re looking for a visually arresting, intriguing, and unnerving elevated horror flick, this one is a good place to turn. I’m not the biggest fan of elevated horror, yet I found Violett totally engaging.
Kids have gone missing in a small town, and a sick and mentally troubled mother is concerned her daughter is going to be taken as well. Especially since the freaky neighbors stare at her when she goes out on the street. Is she paranoid, or is there something much more sinister going on?
She has macabre visions, delusions, and daydreams, and her relationship with her incredibly handsome husband is suffering.
However, she has a strong and protective relationship with her daughter, which deepens as the threat starts hitting closer to home.
This moody and atmospheric slow burn has an eerie vibe, the casting of mother and daughter is fantastic, and there are some unexpected twists, so I’d definitely recommend it for lovers of the elevated horror subgenre.
LAIR OF THE KILLER CLOWNS (2023)
Not even the 75-minute runtime could make this one any less unbearable to me.
We’re thrown right into a bizarre situation. A blonde bombshell seems to have some sort of psychic powers. She channels some clowns then begins searching for her missing, killer clown brother with the help of some other dude in the middle of a desert.
They explore sand and some ramshackle structures for 50 minutes, with no action and very little dialogue. Eventually they split up and she finds a few crazy clowns that are keeping her brother bound in some sort of killer clown purgatory (aka: a room in one of those ramshackle structures).
Finally, there’s a bunch of dialogue that doesn’t accomplish much of anything other than just taking us right to the closing credits.
I don’t know. Maybe this was supposed to be some sort of cathartic art piece so those who fear evil clowns could get to see them pay for what they’ve done, but personally, when I’m welcomed into a lair of killer clowns, I want the clowns to…you know…kill.
