Not to be confused with the found-footage spooker Apartment 143 — dyslexia excepted — Apartment 413 is almost entirely a two-hander in one location. Yes, of course it’s the unit of the title: a depressing-looking place in a depressing-looking complex in Austin, with a fitting “FML” carved into the window AC unit’s exterior side.

Community college dropout Marco Reyes (Nicholas Saenz, Mr. Roosevelt) needs a job. And fast, because his girlfriend, Dana (Brea Grant, All the Creatures Were Stirring), is about-to-pop pregnant. He’s not having much luck, considering his alarm mysteriously fails to wake him as set, thus causing missed interviews.

As he sits in his apartment all day applying for jobs — and playing video games — stranger things begin happening: Trash re-appears; an unknown text message suggests it’s “not your baby”; and Post-it Notes pop up like magic, scrawled with threats like “THIS IS A WARNING.”

Things escalate from there. Stress? Black mold? Psychotic break? Residual haunting from the site’s domestic murder two years prior?

You’ll find out, although the ending is more confounding than disturbing. As the first film for both director Matt Patterson and writer Ron Maede, Apartment 413 likely serves as a calling card for bigger and better things, rather than a Texas-sized reworking of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion through a millennial-hipster lens. At just under 80 minutes, credits included, not enough happens to do lasting damage, yet so much solitary time with an increasingly unlikable guy is a lot to ask of the audience; as a short, it would be three times more effective. —Rod Lott

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Pay semi-close attention, class, to bee-obsessed Aster’s speech toward the start of Royal Jelly. The lead character’s presentation on the honeybee — particularly its strict caste system and post-coital genital ripping — isn’t just there for filler, no matter how bored the high schooler’s classmates look. Writer/director Sean Riley (Fighting Belle) practically highlights and underlines where his sophomore film will go from here — unfortunately not as quickly as you will like. (For a teen-transformation movie that properly uses horror as a metaphor for puberty, you want Ginger Snaps.)

Played by relative newcomer Elizabeth McCoy with appropriately paste-white skin, the Carrie-level outcast is stuck in a stereotypical Cinderella household, where her evil stepmother (Fiona McQuinn, Hallowed Be They Name) takes all the noodles and her snooty half-sister (debuting Raylen Ladner) makes her scrub menstrual blood from the bedsheets.

Weirdo substitute teacher Tressa (Sherry Lattanzi) shows an unhealthy interest in her; Aster gladly soaks up the attention, despite the elder’s habit for wearing sunglasses indoors. Tressa takes the misunderstood misfit to egg the houses of the mean girls, who respond in kind by busting Aster’s beehive. That’s not a euphemism; she literally tends to one in her yard.

That said, Royal Jelly is no modern-day version of The Wasp Woman, nor another update of The Fly. After the setup, when Aster flees to Tressa’s farm and meets her son (Lucas T. Matchett), it becomes a turgid, soap-bubble drama made all the rougher by performances both amateurish and at tonal odds with one another. Lattanzi embraces the camp, whether she realizes it or not, while her young charges play scenes as if Twilight leapt to a series on The CW. This marks the first feature credit for many of its cast members.

Normally, I don’t reveal details about a film’s ending, but I must here: Aster sprouts wings, like the kind little girls wear around the playroom. I had to laugh — certainly the reaction Riley neither intended nor wanted. —Rod Lott

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Hey, everybody! The carnival’s in town! The carnival’s in town! And Death Screams takes place in the supposedly idyllic American small town where that kind of thing is Earth-Shattering News. Shot in North Carolina, it’s the rare slasher with no discernible lead and in which the killer has no discernible gimmick. To complete a hat trick of sorts, it’s also the only slice-and-dicer to be directed by a member of the Ozzie and Harriet Nelson family, early sitcom titans. While brother Rick zigged his way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, David clearly zagged.

This hicksploitation horror’s biggest crime is being instantly forgettable. More screen time is given to quilt-selling than story setup. Had Nelson given any character half as many traits as the number of times someone mentions having to work tomorrow (three), we might relate to one of them. As is, they’re as fleshed-out as the fair’s “Junk Shop” booth, which literally has just a toaster. Having more presence than the appliance are H.O.T.S. honey Susan Kiger, who’s inappropriately wooed by the coach (Martin Tucker, Rockin’ Road Trip), and Jennifer Chase (1983’s Balboa) as the one ride that doesn’t leave town when the carnival does.

Amid all the toothpick activity of the sheriff (Earl Owensby Studios regular William T. Hicks, A Day of Judgment) and talk of mince pies are recurring cutaways to two teenagers floating the river like bobbed apples: the ones who were offed in the prologue for having hormones. By the time all the young people ditch the bonfire for an ill-advised trip to the graveyard, a guy named Diddle (John Kohler, Ownensby’s Dogs of Hell) excuses himself to “make heh-heh,” which is a first for my ears.

Aimless and ambling, Death Screams may not be painful, but it’s heh-heh all the same. —Rod Lott

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