Last week — at least in my neck of the woods — a massive cellular phone outage with AT&T made things go reasonably kaput coast to coast. Although my phone was on vibrate while I was quietly working, it apparently rocked the entire country, leaving those in the digital age in the Stone Age for around 12 hours.

However, AT&T gave rebates and other tokens of gratitude for their error, so I thank you.

But what was really weird was I had just watched the low-key Stephen King adaption of Cell, about a cellular signal that turns people into mindless zombies. And that’s without the family and friends plan.

In the somewhat-busy Boston airport terminal, an outbreak occurs, sending people with cellphones on a murderous rampage. Graphic novel artist Clay (a sleepy John Cusack) and train conductor Tom (a sleepy Samuel L. Jackson) find their world turning into post-apocalyptic shit in the aftermath.

As Clay and Tom come upon survivors and fight the undead hordes, they surmise that a “hive mind” is getting them to congregate, kind of like a buzzing signal reminiscent of the 2000s internet. Even worse, in that very Stephen King way, a dream demon from Clay’s sketches tries to get them to a diabolical cell tower.

Of course they are.

While I truly liked the violent airport beginning, the movie proceeds to do nothing with the promise of the premise, devolving into a bunch of badly drawn stereotypes with no way to rationally end … except for the walking zombies, demonic possession and, I guess, bad service coverage. 

With very nominal director Tod Williams (Paranormal Activity 2) at the supposed helm, both Cusack and Jackson sleepwalk though most of their passive screen time. To be fair, they are the better parts of this movie, as everyone is pretty terrible.

In the end, Cell is the forgettable adaptation of a dropped call, with none of the wasted intrigue. Hang up! —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Beware, lady nurses in the Valley who happen to stand around 5’3″: A serial killer is targeting you. Be on the lookout for a guy who looks like Jim Henson after a visit to Sunglass Hut. 

Nurse Carrie Lonegan (Janus Blythe, Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive) sure is. Her co-workers at the hospital — really just an office park with an overly fern-laden reception room — keep getting killed by the guy. He’s looking for a “Linda,” but slays regardless of actual name. Worse, Carrie’s new, naive roommate (Lise Romanoff), fresh to El Lay from Kansas City, gets hired there. Will the investigating cop be able to find the culprit before the roomies fall victim, too?

No one tell Carrie, but said crack police detective (co-director/co-writer John Howard) tries to solve the case by punching the following five terms into a TRS-80 database:

• LINDA
• NURSE
• STRANGLE
• BACKBONE
• KNIFE

And holy shit, it works!

As the killer, R. Eric Huxley and his pink shirt exude skeeze. If his extended, methodical torture of his tied-up prey in the third act feels a little, well, fetishy, that’s not accidental. Howard infuses the incidentally amusing Spine with the deliberate kink of his pornographic past: bondage videos with titles like Rope Burn.

For the record, Howard’s creative partner, Justin Simmonds, has no such wank-minded credits, much less any other credits. That’s de rigueur for these shot-on-video affairs. As is the great deal of ice cream truck tunes. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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

Get it at Amazon.

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

Get it at Amazon.

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.