Among the hundreds of horror anthologies I’ve seen, Midnight Peepshow boasts arguably one of the most unique settings for its wraparound: a private booth in a London sex shop. On Valentine’s Day, no less!

That’s where convention attendee Graham (Richard Cotton, The Living and the Dead) drunkenly stumbles into. Each time he inserts cash to make the window go up, the woman on the other side shares her story. It’s no coincidence all three involve Black Rabbit, an Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-themed site on the dark web where people pay to have their wildest sexual fantasies realized.

From director Airell Anthony Hayles (They’re Outside), the first segment starts the film on a misstep just sketchy enough to give me a Verotika vibe, which no one wants or needs. Here, the miserably married Roisin Brown and David Wayman experience a home invasion that doesn’t unfold as planned.

Now, imagine if Saw’s games were run not by Tobin Bell, but by Gremlins’ Zach Galligan. That’s the case with the next story, courtesy Andy Edwards (Ibiza Undead). Here, a woman (model Miki Davis) wakes up in a makeshift bridal gown and trapped in a dungeon, where three men she’s slept with are tied up and shock-collared. She’s forced to literally play Fuck, Marry, Kill.

Finally, Jake West (Razor Blade Smile) lets Graham witness his own origin story of sorts. As his better, sexier half (a debuting Sarah Diamond) starts liking their intercourse rougher and rowdier, he starts to wonder why … only to learn the hard way (in both meanings, unfortunately).

Merging fear and fornication in the anything-goes style of Showtime’s The Hunger TV series or the Jeff Gelb/Michael Garrett-edited Hot Blood paperbacks, the movie is naughty enough for a nice night of erotic horror. Two outta three make for greater odds than most indie anthologies can muster these days, and that last hour is strong enough to cry out for another go-round. —Rod Lott

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Why a Christmas-set movie is hitting home video the week of Valentine’s Day is secondary to why a Christmas-set movie requires one of its leads to rectally insert a thermometer throughout. Admittedly, the “hole” idea is less absurd when you understand A Creature Was Stirring falls into the realm of holiday horror. It’s not to be confused with the 2018 anthology All the Creatures Were Stirring, although you’re better off if you do.

In her first role after an Emmy-nommed, six-year stint on TV’s This Is Us, Chrissy Metz plays a nurse who lives with her young-adult daughter (Ouija: Origin of Evil’s Annalise Basso, looking like a li’l Heather Langenkamp). That their respective names are Faith and Charm should give you a solid idea of director Damien LeVeck and scripter Shannon Wells’ level of subtlety with the material.

At super speed, a blanket-draped Charm skitters around her bedroom and turns into a porcupine monster if her body temp falls anywhere other than the “safe zone” between 102˚ and 104.4˚. The opening credits relay this multiple times. If you aren’t paying attention, no worries: Faith’s loaded up with dialogue to remind you thereafter. At least the full monstrous transformation shown later deserves kudos — and the Fangoria spread it’s clearly aiming for.

Meanwhile, in Creature’s concurrent plot line, siblings played by Scout Taylor-Compton (The Long Night) and Connor Paolo (Friend Request) break into Faith’s home, only to be attacked … and then invited to stay the night because, baby, it’s cold outside. So they do.

More ludicrous, Faith makes out with the DC Comics superhero Green Lantern. Somehow, this from-nowhere fantasy manages to be even more embarrassing than the worst moment of Ryan Reynolds’ hapless Green Lantern — not an easy achievement.

In his sophomore feature, LeVeck (The Cleansing Hour) stages one truly Stirring sequence as Taylor-Compton’s character elbow-crawls her way through a maze of snow tunnels in search of Charm. Its near-magic mix of tension and claustrophobia makes you wish he were able to sprinkle that everywhere else. Half an uninspired movie remains thereafter, limping toward a “one week later” coda with twists it doesn’t earn the right to present. But I admit the film’s final image is kinda ballsy — and refreshing because it takes place in daytime, thus sparing us the aggravatingly saturated Christmas-light color palette that overpowers every scene before it. —Rod Lott

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Set 45,000 years ago, Out of Darkness follows six people with nothing but the animal skins on their backs. Led by Adem (Chuku Modu, Captain Marvel), the ragtag family searches for fertile land in order to survive.

One night, Adem’s son, Heron (Luna Mwezi), disappears into the woods. Tracking him, Adem and company soon realize they’re trapped themselves by a malevolent force they hear but cannot see.

So much for Adem’s insistence that “There are no demons,” right? What begins as a tale of man vs. nature suddenly morphs into one of man vs. … well, they’ll find out. Some of them, at least.

There’s a lot to like about Out of Darkness, a remarkably assured debut for Andrew Cumming, a Scottish director whose CV heretofore was limited to shorts and TV episodes. From the scope and scale of this film, you wouldn’t know it. Setting it in the Stone Age is ballsy, because such a thing lives and breathes on selling the illusion.

Cumming succeeds in doing so, thanks to period costumes, barren locations, a no-name cast to squash preconceived notions, and an invented language (including a phrase translating to “fuck all”). In addition, the score by Saint Maud’s Adam Janota Bzowski is so wonderfully foreboding, it’s practically a cast member. The same can be said for Ben Fordesman’s cinematography, crisp and cold to complement the expert sound design.

But one element works against the movie’s greater good. As rich as Darkness is in details, it’s short on plot. Authentic though the film may feel, to call its quest a slow burn would be generous. More disappointing, the threat leads to an ending where the payoff doesn’t quite justify the build.  —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.