All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

Hellbilly Hollow (2026)

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Four internet investigators known as the Paranormal Scream Team travel to check out Alabama’s Hellbilly Hollow haunted house and hayride. Reportedly, the woods around the property are haunted.

Would it surprise you to learn the attraction is home to a killer clown named Tickles? If so, Hellbilly Hollow might make you defecate your britches. Or so the miserable movie hopes, judging by three references to characters doing just that.

Running the place is a former carny turned hog and soybean farmer Bull, played by Kurt Deimer (2024’s Scared to Death) because Sid Haig is no longer available. The mute Tickles (Kevin Wayne, Malum), who lives in a school bus and eats from a cooler marked “MEEAT,” carries out Bull’s bidding, such as murdering three teens kicked out for messing with the talent, yet somehow are able to re-enter and spray-paint a spurting dick on the wall.

Any initial viewer interest is sapped by the sudden introduction of a supernatural element: the CGI specter of a vengeful voodoo priestess turned fortune teller (Kaila Little). In doing so, Hellbilly Hollow bites off more than it can chew, much less plug between its cheek and gum. It wants to be both a slasher and a ghost story, which operate differently. It’s not like Hollow couldn’t decide which to be; I suspect the idea of choosing never crossed the filmmakers’ minds.

Yet that split personality is not what sinks the pic. It’s simply relentlessly stupid, poorly written and performed even worse. Had it showcased the carnival games of darts and dunk tanks and the like as a hook, Hellbilly Hollow might have emerged as a gut-spiller worthy of “spooky season” priming, but these sequences are barely present and mostly incidental. One thinks Herschell Gordon Lewis coulda shoulda woulda milked that concept into a bloody good time. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

The Stunt Driver (2026)

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For American youngsters in the 1970s, myself included, star-spangled daredevil Evel Knievel was a real-life superhero. The dude was all over network TV; his Stunt Cycle was one of the hottest toys; and Hollywood even made two movies about him. (The internet didn’t exist, so we didn’t know any better.) 

But Ken Carter, the self-proclaimed “Mad Canadian”? Never heard of the guy. Until now, with Michael Dowse’s riotous biopic, The Stunt Driver, starring BlackBerry’s Jay Baruchel as Carter. Having zero knowledge of Carter makes the movie work even more in your favor, so don’t go a-Googling. 

Just know this: In 1976, the cross-eyed, adoration-hungry Carter yearns to out-Evel his U.S. rival with a milelong jump over the St. Lawrence River in a rocket car at about 280 mph. Ignore, as he does, that he can’t swim; doesn’t matter, as long as he secures the services of Dick Keller (Ed Helms, The Hangover trilogy), Chicago creator of the Blue Flame, the fastest car in the world. 

Working as director and writer, Dowse (Goon) traces Keller and Carter’s efforts — respectively pragmatic and foolhardy — toward a shared goal. At least both men have physics on their side. It’s a pleasure to see Helms cede doofus duties for once, doing superb work as essentially the straight man to Baruchel’s well-meaning motormouth. Carter’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, in part because he can’t afford a shed. That risks turning the subject into a caricature, but Baruchel is too skilled. (In my mind, he’s no longer “the kid from TV’s Undeclared” first and foremost.) His is a real performance; you root for Carter, despite his voluminous naïveté.

As the woman who loves him regardless, Laurence Leboeuf (Turbo Kid) grounds The Stunt Driver with support and sanity. She’s an excellent actress who deserves a little more to do. There’s a lot of love to go around for the ensemble, including Ben Foster (2011’s The Mechanic) nailing the smarm in an Evel cameo and especially Joe Cobden (2010’s Devil) as the filmmaker shooting a documentary about Carter’s fast and furious folly. The real-life result, 1981’s The Devil at Your Heels, informs Dowse’s script and provides footage of Carter’s various feats. 

With as many great scenes as it has broken bones, The Stunt Driver revs in as an unexpected gem — a rowdy, winning comedy about a man whose ambition hit heights his souped-up vehicles could never achieve. It’s mighty funny and deeply moving, in both senses of the word. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Legend of the White Dragon (2026)

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Jason David Frank’s 2022 death is a tragedy. For members of Gen Y and beyond, he’ll forever be remembered as the White Ranger of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV series and movies. His posthumously released passion project, Legend of the White Dragon, is doomed to evaporate.

Frank plays Erik Reed, aka superhero White Dragon. (Overlook that his costume is more silver and gold.) Reed’s been in hiding for three years since the day his battle with the squatty demon-faced villain Ashtagor resulted in 1,263 lives lost. So haunted by the toll, Frank has the digits (but not the comma) tattooed on the side of his head. Imagine having to explain that one on the regular: “No, they’re anything but my lucky numbers.”

Ashtagor (David Ramsey, TV’s Arrow) recruits pharma bro Jai to help locate and liquidate Frank. Jai (co-director Aaron Schoenke, resembling an on-markdown Milo Ventimiglia) will stop at nothing to do so, in order to avenge the death of his wife (Power Rangers alum Ciara Hanna) on that fateful day. Jai possesses half of the crystal that fuels White Dragon’s superpowers; Frank, naturally, holds the other. Realistic hand-to-hand combat ensues, as does a Chris Daughtry rock ballad.

Meanwhile, Frank’s wife (Cerina Vincent, also a Rangers vet) sits at home, nervously fiddling with her necklace while watching cable news and wondering if he’ll ever come home.  

Legend of the White Dragon plays like Power Rangers Mid-Life Crisis. In other words, a labor-of-love fan film, the kind that litters Schoenke’s CV, here expanded to a cosplay feature while respecting copyright law so it can be seen outside a convention hall. Highly Marvel-inspired (right down to Easter-egged, sequel-teasing credits), it sports pretty decent effects for a Kickstarter-backed, green-screened endeavor. It’s also flat, dull and sunk from the outset by some dreadful performances.

That doesn’t apply to Michael Madsen (Arena Wars), who cameos as Frank’s imprisoned father, or Mark Dacascos (China Strike Force), who appears as a monk. One of the latter’s lines sums up my feelings for the enterprise as a whole: “Well, that was not necessary.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Chronovisor (2026)

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This much is true: In 1972, a Benedictine monk named Pellegrino Ernetti wowed the world with news of his invention, the Chronovisor. Developed with the aid of a dozen physicists, this gadget could pull audio and visual memories from the ether — in essence, able to capture any image from history, including the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.

Or so Father Ernetti claimed.

In Jack Auen and Kevin Walker’s debut feature, Chronovisor, a Columbia philosophy professor named Beatrice (Anne Laure Sellier) learns of the device one lonely night at the library. She can’t pull herself away from the rabbit hole of her own research, especially after she reads of the monk’s and machine’s vanishing act, so she follows the breadcrumbs of a conspiracy.

Naturally, she’s obsessed. So, too, will you. 

There’s a reason one of the initial bits of media Beatrice’s eyes consume is a lobotomy. Chronovisor cleverly erases the line between fact and fiction to fashion a one-of-a-kind, genre-bending mindfuck — all to the music of Gustav Holst. (Who knew the year’s best score would be more than a century old?) It’s a picture that rewards patience (not to mention a lot of reading, which they make absorbing), even if the conclusion can’t possibly satisfy half its audience.

Succumb to its considerable spell. The warm, amber glow of the Kodak 16mm film sure as hell helps. —Rod Lott

In theaters; see Grasshopper Film for schedule.

Mystery

A Strange House (2024)

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Although I’m a voracious reader, fiction rarely finds a slot in my TBR pile(s) these days. The latest exception: Strange Houses, a 2021 mystery from Japan penned by the enigmatic, unimonikered Uketsu, a YouTuber who hides his/her/their identity behind a minimalist mask that suggests Ghostface by way of an egg carton.

What appealed to me wasn’t the author’s anonymity or horror-ready headwear, but the novel’s use of floor plans as clues to forward the narrative. More than mere gimmick, these scale diagrams are the mystery; you literally couldn’t tell the story without significantly diminishing the experience. I have a track record of falling for this illustrated maps-and-charts approach in fiction, whether erudite (Arthur Phillips’ The Egyptologist) or ridiculous (Matthew Reilly’s 7 Deadly Wonders).

Possibly due to the daunting and imperfect task of translating the Japanese language into English, Strange Houses’ prose struck me as primitive. But the premise? Addicting and unputdownable. No wonder the book’s popularity traversed oceans to become an international phenomenon. Somewhere in the middle of fever-turning page after page, I thought, “This would make a great movie.”

An adaptation already exists! Alas, A Strange House is only decent. Uketsu’s surrogate is Amemiya (Shotaro Mamiya, Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo), a like-and-subscribe-starved YouTuber. He needs views — and gets them after his producer (DJ Matsunaga of hip-hop’s Creepy Nuts) shows him a flyer for a potential abode. They notice an area of the blueprint appearing to serve no structural purpose — but perhaps a sinister one. Amemiya enlists the expertise of antisocial architect pal Kurihara (Jiro Sato, 2015’s Death Note TV series), who spots even more disturbing peculiarities on the page.

Kurihara and Amemiya soon learn the place is tied to the recent discovery of a corpse eerily missing a left hand. As their investigation grows beyond theoretical to physical, floor plans of other residences surface, each literally holding secrets within its walls. To explain further would give away the plot’s twists. Suffice to say, several come built-in.

The Strange foundation has solid bones and no shortage of curb appeal. Scripter Kentaro Ushio and director Junichi Ishikawa succeed in nailing the book’s spirit, admirably leaning into the J-horror elements to bestow a multifaceted whodunit of perversity. When the camera pulls back at one point to give the audience a top-down view of the action, it’s like a Clue game board come to life — and, as locked-room and puzzle-box mysteries should, death.

To the filmmakers’ credit, A Strange House is appreciably faithful. However, it could stand to better establish the characters, especially Amemiya, because the movie begins in haste, like a TV show several episodes removed from the pilot. Ishikawa and Ushio primarily labor in the medium of television, conceivably accounting for the zero-to-60 launch. The pic also could use a few turns of an Allen wrench to dispense with add-ons the screen renders superfluous.

With fewer minutes on the clock and a fresh coat of paint on the players, a remodel could work wonders. Considering Uketsu has three sequels (Strange Pictures, Strange Buildings and Strange Maps) currently on the market, no doubt someone will try. —Rod Lott