This year, film fans, we finally got the sequel we thought would never happen. After what seems like a lifetime, the retro vibes are back, landing from the skies on a highway to the danger zone! No, not Top Gun: Maverick, but Out There Halloween Mega Tape, the second part to 2013’s WNUF Halloween Special.

If you enjoyed WNUF, you need not know anything further to place this follow-up atop your watchlist. However, inquiring minds wanna know, so allow me to indulge them.

WNUF’s gifted director, Chris LaMartina (What Happens Next Will Scare You), continues the faux-show aesthetic without repeating the same joke. This time, we get two back-to-back programs, seemingly recorded years apart on the same VHS tape. First, a Halloween-themed episode of tabloid talk show Ivy Sparks, in which the eponymous and costumed host (Call Girl of Cthulhu’s Melissa LaMartina, absolutely nailing the Jenny Jones-style shenanigans) interviews a would-be vampire, alien abductees and someone claiming to have sex with the ghost of a Civil War widow.

Following that half-hour is an hourlong broadcast of Out There from Oct. 31, 1996. Co-hosted by a post-Sparks Sparks, the show airs live from a farm reported to be the site of recent UFO activity. Although it’s obviously akin to Fox’s Sightings and its infamous Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction special, to say more would spoil the surprises. What doesn’t ruin a thing is mentioning how accurately Mr. LaMartina captures the low-rent appeal of “the fourth network”’s exploitative programming of the time.

Of course, that UHF parodic pulse carries through each morsel of Mega Tape’s real meat: the commercials. As with WNUF, they’re dead-on, here with parodies of Cops, the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Pure Moods CD and Lorenzo Lamas’ Renegade syndicated series, plus station IDs, PSAs, newsbreaks and even lotto numbers. From spots for movies, toys, CD-ROM video games, a trucking school and local restaurants (“I’ve got a prescription for pepperoni!” exclaims Dr. Pizza), the ads are — like the whole of Out There Halloween Mega Tape — endlessly creative and pure pleasure. —Rod Lott

Get it at WNUF Big Cartel.

Pot humor may help The Murder Podcast eventually find a cult, but — as is the case 9 times out of 10 (or 378 out of 420) — the movie doesn’t need the boost of bud. It’s funny enough on its own.

The lead performance of unknown actor Andrew McDermott is up to 90% of the reason. Sporting a Michael J. Fox babyface that goes a long way for likability, he’s laugh-out-loud hilarious; scene after scene, line reading after line reading, his Chad is reminiscent of peak Steve Zahn. His Funyuns-and-Fright Night approach consistently cracked me up.

Living in his sister’s basement, Chad is a slacker with a poor work ethic and a poorer gag reflex. Rather than get a real job, he and his nerdy best friend (Cooper Bucha, Judas and the Black Messiah) harbor delusions of their ramen review podcast breaking big.

But when their suburban town of Harbor Falls starts seeing strange deaths after a homicide-free run of 20 years, Chad smells money in not noodles, but the caboodle of corpses — hence, The Murder Podcast. Their amateur investigation puts them afoul of cops, a TV news reporter, Chad’s brother-in-law and Sam Raimi-level spookies.

Although it’s similar in tone to Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, I don’t mean to suggest writer/director William Bagley’s first feature is quite as winning; the third act’s heavy shift to the supernatural tips the scales away from what the film does best. But it’s close enough to run circles around so many indie horror-comedy wannabes, from John Dies at the End to Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. Bagley’s premise is not just supported by strong effects and delivery, but timely in our nation’s collective true-crime obsession. That his lively movie is saddled with such a generic moniker is near-felonious. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Not to be confused with the processed cheese product manufacturer Kraft — or, for that matter, the sea monster Kraa! — a kratt is an mythological monster. Unlike your Medusa or garden-variety minotaur, the kratt is DIY; as legend has it, you build one from whatever you’ve got around the house, make a deal with the devil and, whammo, it does your bidding and brings you riches. Not a bad deal!

Or is it? From Estonia, the film Kratt examines this conundrum in a winning family comedy — assuming your family is good with repeated utterings of the word “fuck,” not to mention the potential inquiry of “Mom, what’s fentanyl?”

When their parents go on vacation, Mia and Kevin (real-life siblings and first-time actors Nora and Harri Merivoo) are left with Grandma (Mari Lill) in the country and, worse, without their phones. Boredom leads them to create a kratt, but a freak accident throws the Satan-swapped soul not into their ramshackle construction, but their grandmother! (It also plants a scythe in her head, but that’s beside the point.)

Instantly, the ever-robed taskmaster of little patience and a big generational gap becomes Mia and Kevin’s slave: a pancake-cooking, house-painting, coop-cleaning, sauerkraut fart-lighting machine.

Although Rasmus Merivoo — the writer, director, editor and kids’ father — smashes the Wes Anderson button a few times too many, he gets a great performance out of Lill and good ones from the children, particularly Nora. Whenever he shifts focus to the village’s bratty governor (Ivo Uukkivi) and squad of social justice warriors, the movie loses a few smidges of charm; these portions of political satire undoubtedly play in Peoria Estonia, but on this hemisphere, they feel like unneeded padding.

Still, Kratt stands astride the fiendish fantasy of Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale and the subversive goofiness of The Peanut Butter Solution, with an eye toward the good-natured gore of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive. It’s observant, sharp and light of heart even when the comedy grows dark. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

American Drive-In feels like its financiers watched 1976’s Drive-In and ordered, “Make that, but with boobs, ass and grass!”

Depicting one crazy night at SoCal’s City Lights Drive-In, Krishna Shah’s contemporary comedy centers on clean-teen country couple Bobbie Ann (Emily Longstreth, Private Resort) and Jack (Pat Kirton, The Staircase Murders). Jack promises a night to remember — and how!

Other recurring characters in this IBS-loose structure include a power-hungry councilman (John Rice, Time Chasers) attempting to bust marijuana dealers, a hefty family of four who exist only to gorge themselves on a bucket of KFC and fistfuls of spaghetti, and a little person (Phil Fondacaro, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie) marveling at himself on the movie being played. That’d be Hard Rock Zombies, which Shah also directed.

Meanwhile, a hooker sets up shop on the grounds; a guy tries to get his prudish girlfriend to give him head; and the councilman’s scorchingly hot ’n’ horny daughter (Rhonda Snow, Shadows Run Black) sneaks away to get laid in a van. In the movie’s one concession (no pun intended) to Porky’s-brand prankery, her moaning and groaning get broadcast to every car speaker. It’s all as zany as a pair of Slinky Eyes, which the pic features.

And then things take such a dark and violent turn, you’ll diagnose it as bipolar: Bobbie Ann is kidnapped and molested by a greaser gang led by Sarge (Joel Bennett, Hellhole), on the hunt for “beaver.” It’s no stretch to categorize the climax as post-apocalyptic, demolition derby and all.

Until then, though, Shah captures a lot of the drive-in theaters’ nostalgic elements, which combine to make whatever was showing secondary: the snack bar, the playground, the door prizes and, yes, the nookie. That he does so with complete stupidity — and perhaps pure dumb luck — can’t be ignored, but for the era’s tits-and-zits formula, American Drive-In beats its more brainless peers. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Arguably, The Acid House wouldn’t exist without the international phenomenon of Trainspotting two years earlier. While both are based on Irvine Welsh books, The Acid House is an anthology and arrives adapted by Welsh himself, so “cunt” utterances abound.

“The Granton Star Cause” details the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day of Boab (Stephen McCole, Rushmore). In quick succession, the “lumpen proletariat malcontent” gets booted from his soccer football team, kicked out of his family’s house, dumped by his girlfriend, thrown in jail and fired from work. Nursing his wounds in a pub — where else? — he meets God (Maurice Roëves, Judge Dredd), who gives him the powers of revenge … albeit as a housefly. Let the scatological parade begin!

Joviality downshifts into “The Soft Touch,” a working-class love-ish story of newlyweds/new parents Johnny and Catriona (Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd and Doom Patrol’s Michelle Gomez, providing the movie’s strongest performances). Here, Welsh dwells in Mike Leigh kitchen-sink squalor, detailing Johnny’s heartbreaking misery as a skeevy, alpha neighbor (Gary McCormack, Valhalla Rising) moves into their building and near-immediately into Catriona. More depressing than funny, the segment at least gives the film an emotional core — one best exemplified by the shoegaze melody of Belle & Sebastian’s “Leave Home,” a number so moving, the soundtrack uses it twice.

Finally, there’s the titular story, starring Ewen Bremner, practically reprising his Trainspotting role of Spud. In a body-swap scenario Hollywood wouldn’t dare touch, his Coco does a hit of acid and switches souls with a newborn baby — no explanation given or needed. Via an animatronic infant more unsettling than those of most horror films, Coco thoroughly enjoys breastfeeding, asks Mum (Jemma Redgrave, Dream Demon) for a beej and pleasures himself from his crib as his parents get frisky in the sheets.

Like “Granton,” this third bit revels in shock value and succeeds, even if first-feature director Paul McGuigan (Victor Frankenstein) lets it go on so long, it’s perilously close to schoolyard juvenilia. Then again, with arrested development running a throughline, that may be the point. To varying degrees, each story overstays its optimal welcome, leaving The Acid House too loose and unfocused to become a classic for the UK’s chemical generation, yet diverting enough for one go-round. Scottish accents come unvarnished, so lest the likes of “nippy wee winger” and “daft sow” reside atop your tongue, subtitles are encouraged. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.