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

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Befitting the inescapable social media and selfie culture it derides, the British-made Followers is instantly forgettable. Like a Snapchat, you watch it and — #poof! — it’s gone, snuffing itself out.

Although I hate to speak ill of the end, I doubt that’s what the late Marcus Harben had in mind for his first feature. He knew how to go about it, though, for economy’s sake: as found footage.

To view Followers is to be forced to, er, follow the YouTubed antics of the idiotic, immature, obnoxious Jonty Craig (Harry Jarvis, The Dare). Cap askew, the 19-year-old documents himself getting on the nerves of his college housemates — and hopefully into the bed of comely roomie Amber (Erin Austen, 2021’s The Kindred).

Jonty’s M.O. of pranks and other “influencer” BS undergoes a content overhaul when they discover the house is haunted. From a ghost in a laptop to all-out poltergeist havoc on the kitchen cupboards, Jonty’s thrilled for the exponential boost in likes and subscribers. Hell, he even gets sponsored!

Followers has the makings of a raucous, vicious satire, but not the drive to take the proper piss out of anyone. Too toothless to function as a comedy, too by-the-numbers to be scary, the movie Harben left is half-cooked — full of ideas without quite bringing a single one to fruition.

Unless one of those ideas was to have viewers abhor its lead character, in which case, well done, good sir. —Rod Lott

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Like Zach Cregger’s Barbarian, Richard Greenwood Jr.’s This Land hinges on a double-booked weekend rental property. Unlike Barbarian, This Land’s threat lives outside the home’s walls.

A year after losing their in-utero daughter to an assault, the mixed-race Owens spouses — a pragmatic, PTSD-afflicted nurse (Hostile Territory’s Natalie Whittle) and an ineffectual, NPR-addicted soy boy (Nazis at the Center of the Earth’s Adam Burch) — rent the Cortez Grove manor for the Fourth of July. They stay despite all the red flags: skinning shed out back, sink full of dirty dishes, blood seeping from the eyes of paintings in crooked picture frames, bowl of saltwater taffy in the living room …

But guess who’s also coming to dinner? Mr. and Mrs. Moss: a chaw-spittin’ (ptui!), flannel/camo-clad, deer-huntin’, deer-grillin’ redneck (John J. Pistone, whose part certainly would’ve gone to David Koechner under a more generous budget) and his Karen-esque wife (Mindy Montavon, #iKllr).

Having these mismatched peeps’ reservations all screwy is no accident. See, every four years, the townsfolk put on their best purple cloaks and have themselves a good ol’ fashioned blood sacrifice to honor “The Flayed One,” a misnomer for “corpse that looks like a human Slim Jim.” To the death!

What begins with pure cringe — a flashback of Whittle speaking in an unnatural manner to her belly’s unborn child — quickly becomes a moderately stimulating story of survival horror and satanic panic, spring-loaded with a couple of functional jump scares. It also makes hot-take statements on such triggering topics as our political divide, emotional trauma, economic inequality, gun control, abortion and — you betcha — race. Compared to like-minded, well-meaning indie thrillers of late, This Land’s makers comment on society without the hammer-slamming; it knows it doesn’t have the panache to pull off taking itself too seriously.

Lest you take This Land for a treatise, Greenwood’s first feature is exploitation first and foremost — so “most,” in fact, it contains the line, “According to the welcome book, it’s an Aztec death whistle.” (Plus, the Moss patriarch announces his teen daughter “done gone preggers.”) In other words, it’s aware of its limitations, so the third act leans hard toward delirium, especially with Garret Camilleri’s performance as the park ranger. That he stands on the opposite end of the tonal spectrum from Whittle’s fully grounded (prologue excepted) work? Eh, I had enough fun to forgive. —Rod Lott

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Cram finds college student Marc Lack (John DiMino) having to do just that, in order to write a paper overnight for class. Working on his laptop in the library, he’s having problems getting past page 2. His friends slowly abandon him as the night rolls toward quitting time.

When the building closes for the night, however, Marc is left inside. That’s a scary prospect for viewers who’ve put in long hours at any university library, as their grand architecture and maze-like aisles make them ideal locations for horror. So of course, strange things start to happen, beginning with Marc’s Word document and notebook pages suddenly becoming blank.

Clearly, he’s dreaming, and writer/director Abie Sidell keeps Cram on that realm for the film’s duration without outright acknowledgment. That’s a difficult line to toe for long, which may account for why Cram clocks in at a mere 45 minutes. Although Sidell gets away with teasing between fantasy and reality scene after scene, I didn’t like where the thing lands: at an overly chatty denouement between Marc and another person. Telling instead of showing, this protracted end halts the swift, quick-pivot pacing of everything before it.

With assured direction and acting, Cram finishes just above average, albeit graded on a curve. —Rod Lott

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If you’re making a folk horror movie, especially on a miniscule budget, the one thing you must do is take advantage of the United Kingdom landscapes. In the anthology Rewilding, his first effort as writer or director, Ric Rawlins does this in spades — all in a smidge under an hour, Millicent. From shores to forests to fields, Mother Nature deserves a co-starring credit in each of “three folk tales.”

Each story centers on its setting. After two people enter a seaside cave, inexplicably vanish, then turn up safely and say they saw the devil, an aging archeologist professor investigates. A woman working on a book of interesting trees is told about a man so obsessed with one, he perished there. And finally, for the Halloween edition of the newspaper, a journalist visits a remote village to witness its festival.

All the rage since Robert Eggers’ The Witch broke big in 2015, folk horror is arguably more popular now since its early-1970s heyday. Among its points of appeal are the deep-seated mysteries in its roots; although any go unresolved in part or whole, audiences are willing to sacrifice answers if they get a good jolt in return. The short-form film is the ideal delivery system for this sort of storytelling, and Rawlins succeeds by batting a fitting 0.666.

Naturally, its Midsommar-on-$2-a-day financial limitations mean a few performances resemble Ren Faire theatrics. So Rawlins powers through by leaning into his influences — Picnic at Hanging Rock to Eyes of Fire to The Wicker Man — and coming out the other side with no fewer than three shocking and disturbing images that are hard to shake. —Rod Lott

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