Of all the escape room movies I’ve seen, the obscure Escape: Puzzle of Fear seems the least interested in its exploitable concept. Directed by the basically and justifiably anonymous J. Jones, the film takes half an hour to get its vapid characters into one … and then, within minutes, out of it, switching gears so abruptly, it has to have damaged the clutch.

(To be fair, a brief prologue takes place in the desired environment. Harried contestants battle against the clock and say, “Oh, snap” and “Hey, I found another weird thing.” Yet this place isn’t the one Puzzle of Fear’s participants will tackle, so it reeks of “tacked-on in post.”)

Our main man is Matt (Tommy Nash, who also produced), a contemptible dude-bro talent agent we meet as he wakes in bed. Immediately, he gets blown by his girlfriend (Aubrey Reynolds, 2018’s Frenzy) and only reaches climax by thinking about a potato sack with eyeholes pulled over someone’s head — a weird fetish, if you ask me, but you do you, Matt.

Later that day, he’s mansplaining “escape room” to her when his Cuba Gooding Jr.-esque best bud (Omar Gooding, Ghost Dad) comes bearing tickets to the Escape Hotel. He hypes these tix like they’re for the Super Bowl sidelines or in the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards’ splash zone.

At the über-posh, white-gloved Escape Hotel, they play the “crime and justice room.” Objective: Find the two 8-year-old girls gone missing while trick-or-treating. It takes Matt a ridiculously long time to make the connection between the mission and a real-life event in his past involving two 8-year-old girls gone missing while trick-or-treating. When he does, you can see recognition wash over his face. I mean, what are the odds?

And what kind of trouble is two-time Emmy nominee Nicholas Turturro in that he has to take a sixth-billed part in this trash?

And why did scripter Lizze Gordon (#Captured) type the line, “Ew, it stinks in here. Did you do a wee-wee?” much less leave it in?

For narrative structure, story leaps, character behavior, infantile dialogue, atonal performances and much, much more, Escape: Puzzle of Fear is top-to-bottom baffling. Let me out. —Rod Lott

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I used to hold Roddy McDowall’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes absence against him. Now that I’ve learned — and, more importantly, seen — the reason, all is forgiven. It casts an enchanting spell.

In the only film he directed, The Ballad of Tam Lin, Ava Gardner stars as Michaela Cazaret, a self-described “immensely rich” and “immensely old” woman whose tissue box of younger lovers keeps her young. Currently up — in more ways than one — is Tom (Ian McShane, Too Scared to Scream). He pledges allegiance to her heart until he meets the age-appropriate Janet (Stephanie Beacham, Inseminoid). Living at a clergy house, Janet is the virgin to Ms. Cazaret’s whore.

Still immensely foxy in middle age, Ms. Cazaret is like a house mother to the parade of a dozenish mod hangers-on cavorting about her country manse. Theirs is a careless life of Frisbee, vibraphone jams, tarot cards, parlor games, puppies and intoxicants. When Tom tries to leave, Ms. Cazaret uses her witchy ways to turn their petulance predatory.

It may not sound like much on paper — its 16th-century Scottish source material certainly doesn’t — but The Ballad of Tam Lin is a folk-horror masterpiece. McDowall exhibits a firm grasp on credibly establishing a pastoral, ecumenical mood, then injecting it with hallucinogens. For example, Tom’s night flight from the Cazaret mob astonishes at least half of one’s senses as he transforms into a bear and then aflame — as eerie and nightmarish as it is gorgeous. Earlier touches are comparatively simplistic, yet no less gratifying, like bathing the viewer’s POV in a golden yellow when either lead slips on color-tinted sunglasses.

While McShane is great as the protagonist who doesn’t quite start as such, the picture belongs to Gardner. The sheer vulnerability of her performance can’t be accidental. A classic beauty of Hollywood’s golden age, Gardner stood in a sort of cinematic purgatory at the time of Tam Lin: just past what studio execs consider to be a woman’s prime and, therefore, on the cusp of entering the disposability stage demanded by disaster-movie ensembles, where she would spend most of the decade. Just because she was no longer “bankable” doesn’t mean she wasn’t luminous, and so good at playing Cazaret’s three switched-on moods: evil, seductive and fragile. —Rod Lott

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After a woman is found dead in the forest, with her newborn nowhere in sight, an intrepid journalist (Signe Elvin-Nowak) and crew go searching for the truth. After all, over the last seven years, this female corpse is hardly the first to turn up in these woods.

As you’ve likely already deduced, their footage is the movie, Reportage November. And because it’s presented to us within a faux documentary driven by talking-head commentary, we enter knowing who will survive and what will be left of them, thereby heavily decreasing the chance for fun.

Although admirable, when found-footage horror reaches too far for the brass ring of authenticity, it can backfire. Why? Because reality is usually boring, and such is the case here. Now, where the movie ends up isn’t real, but not worth the sit to get there; just make do with the trailer.

This marks the sophomore feature for Carl Sundström, whose 2017 picture, Documenting the Witch Path, entails more of the same, with even more imitative elements of You Know What. If nothing else, Reportage November proves Sweden can make found-footage movies as dull as we Americans. —Rod Lott

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Allen Plone’s Night Screams enjoys the distinction of being the first slasher shot in Wichita, Kansas. Remember, “first” rarely equates to “best.” Or even “good.” One could sum up where this film falls by using this quick, mid-movie exchange:

Girl 1: “So, where’d you live before you moved to Wichita?”

Girl 2: “In a really nice place.”

Night Screams confuses right from the prologue, as soon-to-be victims watch the ’81 horror movie Graduation Day at home. Rather than show those scenes on the characters’ TV set, Plone (Phantom of the Ritz) chooses to play them in full-screen glory, as if spliced directly into the print; therefore, anyone unfamiliar with that movie may not comprehend which shots are which. (Later, Plone pulls the same trick with a porno to force some nudity into the pic.)

That said, our killer kind of makes up for it with a spontaneous, post-murder rendition of “Chopsticks” on the deceased’s piano. Cut to the opening credits of unknown names and this peculiar tease: “featuring The Sweetheart Dancers.” (Oh, I’ll get to them, promise.)

Night Screams also marks the first and last feature for Joe Manno, in the lead role of David, star of the high school football team and winner of a four-year University of Oklahoma scholarship. While his teammates trade an opened fire hose of homoerotic insults (e.g., “Up your ass!”), he stresses about his full-ride athletic scholarship to Oklahoma, because he doesn’t really want the University of Oklahoma football scholarship, much less to continue playing football, the sport that won him the OU scholarship. And if you think that’s repetitive, get ready to hear it so often from so many people, the film should have an onscreen counter or come with its own punch card.

To blow off steam, David invites his best buds over for a co-ed house party while his overprotective parents are out. Not invited, but looking to crash it anyway, are two escaped inmates from the clink and one newly released mental patient. Are they to blame for David’s friends being slaughtered uno a uno — by pool cue, hot tub, hamburger grill, Glad Cling ‘N Seal — or is David, who forgot to take his anti-anger meds?

The better question: Who cares? Neither you nor I, because Night Screams is so disengaging, its obscurity is deserved. In addition to being nondescript, the students exhibit behavior suggesting they’re occupants from interplanetary craft, from white-guy alley dancing to David acting like a guy on the verge of a Mustang-buying, secretary-banging midlife crisis, not a kid who just wants Dad off his back. Death sequences lack panache and inspire indifference.

Now, because I promised, back to the “nationally famous” Sweetheart Dancers: They’re six young women in sparkly shirts and matching socks who Jazzercise their permed-hair hearts out. They do this as a band called The Dogs performs a song about chilling out. This all goes down at the local club Pogo’s, a really nice place. —Rod Lott

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Move over, turkey! In They Crawl Beneath, the Thanksgiving menu is nematodes! (You and I call them worms.) They’re big, venomous and causing all sorts of shit in a rural garage after an earthquake. They look not unlike House II’s doggy-worm hybrid, minus the cute face and plus all the gnarly teeth.

Whereas most Americans spend the fourth Thursday of November slaving in the kitchen or slugging on the couch, police offer Danny (Joseph Almani, who looks like AI art of “Dean Cain but studious and learned”) is helping his alcoholic uncle (Michael Paré, The Wild Man) work on a car. That’s because Danny’s been dumped by his chipmunk-cheeked scientist girlfriend (Karlee Eldridge, Fired Up), whose job comes in handy when the drunken uncle gets bitten by a huge worm.

From there, you prep yourself for a Tremors facsimile. However, director Dale Fabrigar (Area 407) is working with means presumably below any Tremors direct-to-video sequel, so Danny never leaves the garage. Taking away subplots and flashbacks, They Crawl Beneath is a one-roomer. To get around that, Tricia Aurand’s script gives that nematode venom hallucinogenic properties. While this trick can liven up a scene, it’s also a bridge too far, because the movie is constantly pulling a “JK! Didn’t happen.”

Juggling old-fashioned elements (giant creatures) with current-world issues (ACAB), They Crawl Beneath collapses more often than succeeds, but because it bears competency throughout, I admire its gumption. The practical worms look terrifying, even if the movie is not. For true big-beastie wackadoo this T’giving, put Blood Freak on your viewing plate. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.