Last summer, as part of a spinal procedure requiring me to remain semi-conscious, ketamine was administered as an anesthetic. A first-timer to the drug, I was ill-prepared for the trip of its drip: one in which my body was pushed through shapes and colors that do not exist. Members of the Trainspotting generation know better, using it recreationally for the very reason I found terrifying.

The experience is so tough to describe with an approximation of accuracy, I yield to the Reddit poster who writes, “you are kitty tripping balls. It’s when MEOW becomes WOEM and the sky is on the floor and vice versa.”

That merits reuse when discussing The Outwaters. It’s a found-footage movie like none you’ve seen. Heck, that still applies if you pull “found-footage” from the equation. On paper, it sounds like every other project in the subgenre: Four friends venture into the Mojave Desert to shoot a music video. Something happens. What we see comes from three memory cards the police recovered from the scene.

In execution, it’s so much more than that, although you wouldn’t know it if you gave up before it gets there — and many will. As writer, director and producer (and editor and cinematographer and sound designer and SFX person and …), Robbie Banfield boldly dares to double down on the mundanity for The Outwaters’ first 52 minutes, only to throw audiences for an absolute loop thereafter.

We meet two brothers (Banfield and Scott Schamell), an aspiring singer (Michelle May) and a newlywed friend (Angela Basolis), as they prep to leave L.A. earthquakes behind for the shoot. In the desert, Banfield’s able to capture moments of beauty, both visually and aurally. Camping overnight, they hear what they think is ball lightning. The next morning, what’s with the electric currents running through the rocks?

Then, with no forewarning, the film takes such the hardest hard right, spatial concepts like degrees and directions cease. For the next hour, The Outwaters trafficks in sheer terror and cosmic whatthefuckery at once Lynchian and Lovecraftian. You’ll question what you’re taking in as it unspools. It’s as audacious as it is mind-bending, and weeks later, I’m still trying to parse how several of its shots were pulled off.

For all the viral brouhaha Skinamarink recently enjoyed, The Outwaters deserves it more, despite being equal in viewer polarization and befuddlement. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Broadcast on Halloween night 1992 in the UK, Ghostwatch may be the greatest prank in TV history, not to mention a seminal moment in small-screen horror, a britches-wetting touchstone for a generation. Three decades later, it’s well-regarded and influential, having left footprints on arguably every inch of “found footage.” (Plus, WNUF Halloween Special would not exist without it.)

Presented as a “live” BBC special, but scripted in actuality by horror scribe Stephen Volk (2011’s The Awakening), Ghostwatch purports to investigate — and possibly even exorcise — supernatural forces at the home of the Early family. As single mum Pamela (Brid Brennan, Excalibur) tells on-site presenter Sarah Greene — and, by extension, in-studio host Michael Parkinson — the poltergeist has terrorized her and her two young daughters with bumps in the night, broken dishes, stained clothing and, ewww, a smelly tap. Pam’s girls chalk it up to Pipes, an entity so-named for its pipe-banging propensity.

Suffice to say, before the 90-minute time slot is up, Pipes shows it’s no slouch. Its “appearances” are why Ghostwatch is held in high regard. Having BBC TV personalities appear as themselves helped get it there, selling the illusion of reality. Because viewers were so bought-in to the premise, there’s no denying Ghostwatch‘s conclusion isn’t brilliant. (It may be more brilliant than you might realize; using the pause and frame-advance functions of a remote shows the extent of the subliminal working toward the greater gasps.)

All that said, the space between the frights can feel like stretches, which they are. Off and on, it’s something of a tough sit. That’s a reasonable expectation while waiting for paranormal acts that original viewers weren’t certain would occur within the allotted airtime. Knowing beforehand that they do — and that they’re ultimately quite a doozy — dilutes the program’s power. Watched today from that perspective, Ghostwatch is easier to admire than submit to.

I guess you had to be there? How I wish I were. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

In his lifetime, Robin Hardy directed a genuine cult classic in 1973’s The Wicker Man. Unfortunately, he made only two other films. Worse, the last of them was The Wicker Tree.

While the quasi-sequel is based on Hardy’s 2006 novel, Cowboys for Christ, who’s he kidding? If you’ve seen the original Wicker or its bug-nuts Nicolas Cage remake, you know exactly where this new one leads, even without the benefit of Edward Woodward as your guide.

In The Wicker Tree, that role falls to young Christian country starlet Beth Boothby (Brittania Nicol, apparently a for-the-better one-and-doner). With her purity-ring cowboy fiancé (Henry Garrett, Red Tails), Beth accepts a two-year missionary position in Scotland. She’s even tailored her message to her audience: “Jeezus was braver ’n Rob Roy!”

Not everyone in the pagan village is happy to host the Americans, but town employer/nuclear magnate Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham McTavish, Aquaman) and his wife (Jacqueline Leonard) put on game faces and trade insults behind her back: “I bet she smells like a dairy.”

If only there were … oh, some kind of, I dunno … “May Day festival” planned for which they could trick the hicks into, um, “participating.”

Hopes that Hardy may approach the material with a wicked sense of humor rise early with a glimpse of Beth’s Britney Spears-esque pop-tart past (via a video for “Trailer Trash Love”), but when you later see well-to-do Scots line-dancing at a posh party, those hopes have long been torpedoed. So go any chances of the filmmaker beating the odds by capturing lightning in a bottle twice. While technically competent, the movie doesn’t go anywhere approaching the unexpected; this Tree takes root, but never sprouts.

Hardy’s on the record for calling his final film “very horrifying.” That’s very generous … and perhaps very delusional. The Wicker Tree offers some gorgeous scenery, a super-brief Christopher Lee cameo, a sex scene with a toy horse’s head and nothing else of note. Folk horror is rarely so wearisome. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.