First-time actor Thomas Parigi plays the title role in The Strange Case of Jacky Calliou, a young man orphaned by a car wreck. He lives with his grandmother (fellow neophyte Edwige Blondiau) in the French Alps, where she makes a most meager living as a “magnetic healer.” From achy body parts to depressed farm animals, she’s got the touch; she’s got the power.

After he expresses interest in learning her trade, the old woman passes away. But after reviving a bird, Jacky accepts his hands indeed are imbued with the gift. Thus, he takes on his gammy-gam’s last client: a beautiful young woman (Lou Lampros, The French Dispatch) whose right shoulder bears an inexplicable patch of what looks like a Petri dish’s worth of mold spores.

Is Jacky a healer or enabler? Great question, acknowledges feature-debuting director Lucas Delangle, whose script with Olivier Strauss takes deft, measured steps to approach the edge of answering without quite stepping foot on or over it. That’s by design, and as is common in folk horror, this ambiguity is one of its strengths. Not only are we left to gauge the reality of the Caillou power, but how deeply Jacky and his grandmother believe in it. (Lest we ruin it, let’s not even touch the issue of village sheep brutally murdered in the dead of night.)

Chilly in look and feel, Jacky Calliou (as it’s blandly titled on home turf) employs the slow-burn technique that earns every reward, which it turns over to the audience. Majestic setting aside, nothing about the film is showy; Delangle asks for patience and gets it without the viewer even noticing the point at which he or she yields. Although this Strange Case is hardly for everyone, anyone curious how Blood on Satan’s Claw might play like in contemporary times, here comes the evidence, ready to make the hair on your back stand up. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

I’ve not seen Anthony DiBlasi’s 2014 film, Last Shift, so I’m uncertain why he felt the need to remake it. I’d be shocked, though, if the original were as accomplished and spiderweb-sticky as Malum.

At the Lanford Police Department, it’s the first night for rookie officer Jessica Loren (Jessica Sula, 2016’s Split). At her request, she’s working the graveyard shift, in honor of her late cop father (Eric Olson). Before his tragic and unusual death, he was something of a reluctant hero after saving three young women from a cult leader (Chaney Morrow, 2021’s Wrong Turn reboot) whose homicidal followers fed their victims to pigs.

But who said those women wanted to be saved?

With hauntings and hallucinations galore, Malum (that’s Latin for “evil”) is one of those movies constantly toying with what’s real and what’s not. In the wrong hands, that can grow annoying to a viewer, but DiBlasi has a firm hold on the material and what works for each scene. This allows him to go whole-hog — pun not intended, but perfectly perfect — with fake-outs that keep Jessica and her sanity in a prolonged state of anxious doubt.

Although the ultimate reveals of the story hardly arrive as surprises, getting there is all the fun. With Clarke Wolfe (Deathcember) particularly, eerily convincing as one of the cult members. Given the loyalty nonsense she spouts, Morrow’s maniacal grin and visage, and the story and setting, Malum plays like Charles Manson’s Assault on Precinct 13.

DiBlasi impressed me with his first film, the 2009 Clive Barker adaptation Dread. With Malum, he’s a step away from joining horror’s big leagues. It boasts real scares, Hereditary-level disturbing imagery and, of course, the end credit “and introducing Yahtzee the Pig.” —Rod Lott

Get it on Amazon.