In a Queens apartment, Laura (Laura Dooley, TV’s Mr. Mercedes) discovers her roommate, Elizabeth, is dead — like, a stinky two days dead — but signs of neither struggle nor trauma exist. Arriving to investigate are detectives Miller (Frank Wihbey, 2015’s The Sadist) and Richards (Adrienne King, 1980’s Friday the 13th). Perhaps, Miller suggests, Laura should to a hotel for the night? No go; she can’t afford a room (yet has no qualms about calling crime-scene cleaners minutes later), so she’ll just stay put.

From there, The Dead Girl in Apartment 03 alternates between two things: Laura in apartment 3 (not “03,” title be damned), and Richards and Miller discussing the case. Only one of these branches extends toward intrigue. Naturally, it’s the former, as Laura hears mysterious scratches and doors opening on their own, panics when the electricity go out and sees weird cultists pop up who look straight off The Long Night’s call sheet.

A true narrative doesn’t take hold until the final 20-minute stretch, when Laura learns about her roomie’s favorite hobby. Graft the film’s opening 10 minutes onto that (minus the two-minute Bond-villain speech) and, wow, writer/director Kurtis M. Spieler (New York Ninja) would really have something.

As is, a meandering middle hinders a decent ghost story. It’s also longer on atmosphere than action, which isn’t automatically a strike against The Dead Girl in Apartment 03; good when your eyes dart about the frame to look for an approaching wraith, but bad when the photography is so dark, you have to squint to spot. No worries — the score by Satanic Panic ’81 lets you know each and every time Elizabeth’s ghost appears. —Rod Lott

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A classified ad seeks a quintet of participants for an experimental film. The project entails the five living together in a suburban house, their every move and conversation recorded “for VHS.” Selected are a narcissistic actress (Nichole Pelerine), a woman-hating hack stand-up (Danny Terranova), an academic sweater guy (John Fairlie), a socially withdrawn artist (future WWE Diva Amy Weber) and a riot grrrl type (Promise LaMarco). The latter works at Hot Diggity Dog, where she pees into the lemonade of impatient customers.

The most annoying among them — it’s not even close, even with all being unlikable — gets killed pretty quickly. Immediately, the house goes into lockdown mode, sealing the contestants inside for some devious Big Brother shit. See, the home is equipped not only with cameras, but traps, from a razor ’frigerator to ankle pinchers popping outta drywall. The Property Brothers would shit!

Sounds sweet, right? Agreed, Kolobos does. Yet in co-directing their own script, Daniel Liatowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk are unable to get their immense ambition to pay off. The biggest factor of dissatisfaction is the amateurish acting — some so poor, I cringed. The gore effects made me cringe, too, but because they’re good; particularly brutal is the unfortunate meeting of a character’s face and the harsh corner of a bathroom countertop.

While the death sequences (and a resulting disco-ball head) are inspired, the whole of the Nebraska-shot indie is not. Even the starting credits rip off Goblin’s Suspiria score as brazenly as Richard Band did Bernard Herrmann for Re-Animator. Worse, the killer is exactly who you expect. —Rod Lott

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In Sacramento, the dilapidated and abandoned Lincoln High School building is reportedly haunted. With rumors abound of murderous teachers and demon rats, more than one camera-toting, would-be ghostbuster has made his or her way into its hallowed halls to sniff out the true story.

The latest, paranormal investigator Wes Wheatley (Jesse Janzen, Cry_Wolf), is shooting the pilot for a reality show. Because an impromptu exorcism on a local housewife just isn’t enough, a trip to Lincoln High it is, thanks to a loan of keys from the landlord (The Room’s Greg Sestero). To amp up dramatic tension the crew finds lacking, they’ve roped in Wes’ former partner without his knowledge: his long-estranged sister (Leah Finity), a psychic medium.

The footage for their eventually unsuccessful (or is it?) first episode makes up the bulk of Infrared. What our elders say about not judging a book by its cover can apply to this found-footage movie, too. Fresh off their COVID-lockdown comedy The Other Girl, Robert Livings and Randy Nundlall Jr. not only share duties as writers, directors and producers, but bring that film’s entire cast along for this wild ride. Perhaps that behind-the-scenes familiarity and comfort with one another allowed everyone to make something more special and surprising than the FF subgenre usually gets (and rarely so deserves).

The performances really push Infrared toward standout status. Janzen brings a manic energy to his Wes’ self-absorbed petulance, while Sestero proves quite funny in his character’s cluelessness and Finity makes us feel every awkward moment of sibling rivalry. Moments of comedy remain true to the story, though; this is, after all, a horror film — one that, by its end, so skillfully turns alarming, you may not want the camera to keep peering around corners so quickly. —Rod Lott

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In the sweepstakes of films in which strangers awake in a mysterious locale for unknown reasons or purpose, the Mahal Empire’s Death Count shoots to earn the consolation prize of Most Gory. Held captive in individual cells and outfitted with a back-of-neck explosive device are eight school faculty members, including a stereotypical Hispanic janitor, a stereotypical masculine female gym teacher and a stereotypical meathead coach for whom “violence” is a two-syllable word.

They’ve been gathered by a figure calling himself The Warden (Costas Mandylor, Saw III-VI), who looks like the CW’s Arrow, but with a bedazzled, BDSM-friendly leather eyepatch. Broadcast online, his game entails comply-or-die scenarios of self-injury, like fingernail removal via box cutter or scissoring off a fingertip. Each round, whoever gets the least “cyber likes” is eliminated. No contestant reacts properly to excruciating pain, whether hammering their hand, practicing dentistry with pliers or taking a kerosene shower. Now, before you think The Warden inhumane, please know he’s prestocked each cell with toilet paper.

Meanwhile, at the police station, the detective trying to locate the signal source is played by Michael Madsen (Species). From the looks of his bruised and butterfly-bandaged face, Madsen came straight to set from a snooze in the alley, where he tussled with a hobo for the biggest piece of cardboard. En route to The Warden’s pad, he delivers an impassioned monologue about the loss of true relationships and connections in the digital age. If that sounds preachy, it’s nothing compared to the reveal of Why The Warden Is Doing All This — a reason so asinine, it takes an otherwise serviceable bit of Sawsploitation from enjoyable trash in the first half to insufferable trash for the second.

Soon enough, a showdown — complete with a “Huzzah!”-style bit of stage magic — leads to an anti-ending, followed by end-credits jabber that shames the audience for watching. With that, one’s left to wonder why director Michael Su (The Revolting Dead) bothered with torture porn. I’ll give the benefit of doubt to screenwriter Michael Merino (Acceleration), considering his credit arrives with a rather suspicious F.U. attached: “with revisions by Rolfe Kanefsky.” No word which gentleman wrote The Warden’s “Now we’re cooking with gas!” quip (as a character gets the asphyxiant treatment) or tried to determine a credible way to get Sarah French (Insectula!) to bare her breasts. They didn’t, but she does anyway. —Rod Lott

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Three women — er, better make that four — have been disemboweled by an unseen killer in requisite black gloves. Because all of the deceased were models, suspicion falls upon strip-mall photographers Dave (James Hansen, Streets of Death) and Mitch (Larry Thomas, aka Seinfeld’s infamous Soup Nazi). Now, Mitch is creepy AF, but Dave sure seems like a nice guy — you know, for someone who takes boudoir, swimsuit and nudie pics of strange women in the shop’s back room, away from all those nice frames my mom would like.

Although engaged to be married (albeit to a cheating hussy), Dave is smitten when into the store walks Jill, a lovely lady with an indiscriminate European accent and a pressing need for glamour shots for her beau. Uh-oh, doesn’t her posing in a soccer mom-friendly one-piece technically qualify her as a model? Will this innocent sesh of snapshots place Jill on the radar of the titular Night Ripper!? Those questions are as rhetorical as whether this shot-on-video slasher will culminate in a mannequin factory.

Night Ripper! marks the sophomore movie for Victims! writer, director and producer Jeff Hathcock, who clearly has a thing for emphatic punctuation. He also has a thing for showing characters both major and minor getting both in and out of cars both arriving and departing. And yet, Hathcock manages to work in effective misdirection and uniquely staged kill scenes that belie the near-nonexistent budget — enough for Night Ripper! to earn that exclamation point for being entertaining in spite of all its faults, rather than solely because of them.

Believe me, they’re there — none more amusing than a mistress’ post-coital argument with a red herring who won’t leave his wife: “This isn’t love. This is two sweaty bodies fucking a flood lamp!” she cries, then pausing for a delicious four seconds. “And I’m tired of flood lamps!” Seconded. —Rod Lott

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