As if America’s current discourse over this amendment and that amendment weren’t enough of a Gordian knot, Todd Sheets’ Final Caller lays down even more convoluted rules from our crazed druid ancestors: To appease the gods every eight years, eight people must be killed on Aug. 8. So says cannibal/serial killer Edward Ray Hatcher (Jack McCord, Sheets’ Dreaming Purple Neon), a pot-bellied pig of a human being who dubs himself “The Outsider.”

Hatcher relays all this info by calling into the live radio show hosted by FM shock jock/gaseous blowhard Roland Bennett (Douglas Epps, Sheets’ Bonehill Road). What Hatcher doesn’t specify is how many of the endangered octet will be sacrificed on station property. As a murderer, Hatcher doesn’t screw around. Among other savage things, he removes fingers via DeWalt hand saw, hammers foreheads, nails palms, razor-knives necks and, most sphincter-clenching, jams wooden handles into poop chutes. As little as you’d want to carry on a conversation with him (“You’re already seniors. With cobwebs in your pussies.”), you wouldn’t want to pay even the minimum amount due on his Home Depot bill, either.

Unrelated to his radio DJ-centric segment of 2013’s Hi-8 horror anthology, Final Caller is well-trod territory for Sheets as a showcase for torture-porn gore and gallows humor. Although the very bloody effects are convincing in their refusal not to flinch, one still can sense a giddiness among the cast members in making this microbudget mash-up of Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio and, oh, every subtlety-free indie slasher. A character’s T-shirt boasting the logo of Wild Eye Releasing, the flick’s distributor, establishes the level of seriousness we’re supposed to take all this.

An icon of shot-on-video horror, Sheets boasts a filmography of 50 some-odd titles across an astounding near-four decades. With that much hands-on experience, you’d expect progress and growth; indeed, Final Caller allows him to demonstrate a true knack for the rhythms of editing and setting up his shots. I’d love to see what he could do with an actual budget. Until then, however inconsistent, this effort lives as an example of doing better with next to nothing. —Rod Lott

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Usually, low-budget creature features oversell themselves. The British-born Spider in the Attic presents itself as a rare exception — but only because it has multiple spiders versus the singular promise of the title. In every other case, it disappoints as expected.

The prologue shows scientist Dr. Zizerman (Chris Cordell, The Curse of Humpty Dumpty) pitching a fit over being fired for his unethical practices and skirting regulations. See, he’s genetically altered a regular spider to become a rather large hissing spider with a scorpion-like stinger, deliberately kept in low light to shield the sheer shittiness of the CGI. It escapes its glass box and kills Dr. Z in his bed. Kinky.

Linda Buxton (Nicola Wright, Top Secret!) is a flailing producer of true crime shows. Her career’s on the verge of cancellation when her home-from-the-military daughter (Sarah Alexandra Marks, Easter Bunny Massacre) and pregnant daughter (Chelsea Greenwood, Amityville Scarecrow), convince her she just needs to solve the mystery of Dr. Zizerman’s death to bring in the numbers. The Buxton women head to the abandoned house, with others on hand to assist. Despite gripping mugs of tea, having harsh bangs or wearing opera gloves, somehow not a single one is named Penelope.

As you can guess, spiders attack, but director/co-writer Scott Jeffrey (Cannibal Troll) sure takes his damn sweet time to let them loose. Killing the entire vibe of such a enterprise, the arachnids come so crudely computer-animated, they’re not threatening. In shots calling for numerous ones, it looks like whoever was running the effects program followed — and repeated — this uninspired series of keystrokes: Select > Copy > Paste > Scale > Rotate.

One thing’s for sure: If Spider in the Attic were shot in the fall, any nearby residents hoping to score fake cobwebs for a seasonal porch display were certain to encounter an empty shelf at the shoppe. Ditto for the cotton balls aisle. —Rod Lott

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We Bought a Zoo can F itself, because Mark and Jenna have bought a ghost town.* Their plans are to revitalize the remote, abandoned Old West town of Blackwood Falls into a family-friendly shopping destination and tourist attraction.

A recovering alcoholic turned workaholic, Mark (Andrew C. Fisher, 2010’s Night Music) is so sure it’ll work, he’s sunk their life savings into it. Jenna (Mandy Lee Rubio, Jurassic Tale) is … well, doing her damnedest to stay a supportive spouse.

The premise is not unlike this year’s millennial-driven Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot, swapping one boogeyman for a boogeywoman. After digitally signing on the dotted line, of course, our couple learns Blackwood Falls’ true history: The Texas townspeople thought the brothel to be run by witches, not bitches, so they burned it to the ground and buried its prostitutes in a mass grave. Oops!

Minus a few flourishes impossible for Mark’s camera to catch, A Town Full of Ghosts plays as found footage intended for his YouTube channel. Even in his dead-of-night sojourns (Where’s that piano music coming from? Do you smell smoke?), he’s smashing that “REC” button almost as often as he pushes Jenna’s buttons of evaporating patience.

The found-footage subgenre has become so overused the last two decades, especially by indie filmmakers, because going that route maximizes what little resources are at their disposal. Therefore, it’s a bit of a wonder writer/director Isaac Rodriguez (Last Radio Call) is able to prove there’s life in it yet. He adds elements that work so well, they justify its use, from a wasp nest that grows exponentially overnight to, best of all, the ghost town’s wooden maze. The POV sequences of stumbling through it in darkness ring particularly effective; Rodriguez even tops it with an overhead drone shot that approximates the God-like view a classic video game, as we see Mark turning left and right, unable to see the horror ahead.

The movie’s not perfect, as Mark’s transformation seems rushed and some digital effects work diminish the scares. Still, amped by the built-in atmosphere, those frights are present and largely work, in part by the movie closing up shop at an economical 67 minutes. —Rod Lott

*In actuality, We Bought a Zoo can also F itself for being We Bought a Zoo.

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I don’t like ghost movies in which someone says, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” The character may not be cognizant, but the movie sure as hell winks. Mid-Century is one of them.

Coinciding with a big eclipse, Alice (Chelsea Gilligan, Door to the Other Side) and Tom (Shane West, Escape the Field) rent a 1950s home for the weekend. She’s a surgeon interviewing for a hospital gig; he’s an architect who drops Andy Warhol quotes in his RFPs. And the house? It’s one of the first designed by architecture giant Frederick Banner (Stephen Lang, Don’t Breathe) — think, oh, Frank Lloyd Wright, but if Frank Lloyd Wright branched out from designing skyscrapers to also murder beautiful women.

Tom finds a book revealing Banner was a polygamist whose wife “disappeared” under mysterious circumstances. He was also deep into the occult via a secret society called The Brotherhood of the Orange King (you mean MAGA?), which sought to achieve immortality. Not long after, Tom starts receiving visits from a ghost of one’s Banner’s victims — lucky for him, a redheaded cutie-pie one (Sarah Hay, The Mortuary Collection).

And that’s merely the tip of the Eames chair. As a fan of mid-century modern architecture and its general aesthetic that seeped into the design of American culture at a time when “copasetic” lived free in our vernacular, I was primed for Mid-Century. Turns out, it’s a mess, but a fabulous-looking mess. The script by first-timer Mike Stern (who effectively plays Banner’s progeny) is overly complex, with too many characters straddling too many subplots amid too many time frames. It’s as if he gave his director (#1 Cheerleader Camp actress Sonja O’Hare) not merely a story, but a world-building bible.

It feels like three movies stuck together with tape — the kind people in movies tear with their teeth — and it would even if we discounted the hallucinatory cameo by the great Bruce Dern, who utters a few sentences without having to stand. While West is not likely destined for film history, he deserves credit for always showing up with a committed intensity. By contrast, a vacancy exists behind Gilligan’s lines, some of which are cribbed from millennial memes: “Real talk,” “This is a mood,” et al. In that spirit, I’ll borrow an oft-used slang word from my teenage son: This tale of the supernatural is indeed “mid.” —Rod Lott

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Asks the cover art of Tales from the Other Side, “DO YOU DARE WATCH THEM ALL?” While the horror anthology’s makers intend that tagline to be ominous, consider it a public service announcement and save your time.

On Halloween night, a few trick-or-treaters decide to approach the front door of “Scary Mary” (Roslyn Gentle, 1989’s The Punisher). Although rumored throughout the neighborhood to be a mean old witch, she kindly invites the kids inside for — guess what! — six stories, each helmed by a different director. Two-thirds are simply mediocre; the remainder, monotonous.

A traveling circus’ ringmaster enthralls crowds with the legend of his turd-like “petrified boy,” leading to too little a payoff after a long buildup. A would-be filmmaker takes an overnight job editing memorial videos for a funeral home; his gig ends predictably, yet with an excellent boogeyman. In the most creative segment, Krampus battles a Christmas elf in something I hesitate to call “animation” because the stop-motion elements cut too many corners, more resembling a stack of flipped-through drawings.

Sadly, Other Side’s most seasoned directors (Sushi Girl’s Kern Saxton and Mope’s Lucas Heyne) are saddled with a story that doesn’t even qualify as horror: In a psychiatric hospital, a patient (James Duval, Go) claims to be a prophet of God. While far and away the most well-made of all the Tales, it’s also pretentiously written.

In total, the collection’s only surprise is that it holds none. —Rod Lott

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