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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So, hypothetically speaking, how many rock-song montages should a movie be allowed to have? Because in Scare Zone, I counted seven, each with its actors and/or extras gesturing wildly for the camera while the likes of Soulguard, Hydrosonic and Orange Avenue rip through all the hitz* on the soundtrack!

Shot largely at Universal Studios Florida, Scare Zone is set at a three-nights-only haunted-house attraction — the Scare Zone Psycho-Splatter Raw-Topsy Slaughter Dungeon, to be specific. Run by Oliver (Simon Needham, Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector), the rooms include a mad surgeon’s table, a vat of lye and poopy toilets, all of which are on the tour he gives to his new employees; from the sassy Black guy to the slutty blonde girl, all stereotypes are covered.

It doesn’t take long for writer/director Jon Binkowski (The Visitant) to thin his cast of unknowns, but those scenes have no sense of suspense — a common problem among low-rate slashers. Not so common: cartoon orchestration punctuating so many lines of dialogue and character movements. It’s almost as if Scare Zone is unsure whether it’s a horror movie or a comedy. Supporting that theory are visual throwaway gags, like the celebratory round of “Killer Lite” beer, and lame exchanges on the level of grade-school joke books, like:

“She told me about her family.”
“Yeah, who, the Addams Family?”

Scare Zone’s single grace is that in using the sets from Universal’s actual attraction at the time, it boasts production value for days (or 6.25% of one, if you dislike hyperbole). However, great sets aren’t enough to save a picture. Scare Zone remains, to borrow a phrase from Oliver, “juvenile tomfuckery.” I am looking forward to fall, though. —Rod Lott

*Misspelled on purpose, but appropriate for what sounds like Collective Soul, but watered down, then shrunk in the dryer.

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Last month, I took an overnight, eight-hour flight with mechanical issues, a significant delay in departure, spine-crunching seating to render sleep impossible, mayonnaise on the turkey sandwich “dinner,” Venom: Let There Be Carnage playing on the screen and a couple of passengers getting a little too mouthy about having to wear masks. All that’s to say today’s airlines make for a stressful, terrifying experience.

Sadly, Row 19 is neither. Unlike my seat, it’s by no means painful. For a supernatural spooker at 30,000 feet, the Russian film is at least more entertaining than America’s own, higher-profile Flight 7500. Its ultimate destination is what sinks it.

Twenty years after emerging as the lone survivor of a catastrophic plane crash, doctor and single mom Katerina (Svetlana Ivanova, Cosmoball) bravely takes off again. With her daughter (fellow Cosmoballer Marta Kessler) in tow and the same age as Katerina was at the time of tragedy, she boards a red eye with only about half a dozen passengers — I mean, unless you count the ghosts, spirits and other phantasmagorical stowaways eventually causing havoc.

What It All Means can be sussed out well before director Alexander Babaev (Bornless Ones, not to be confused with boneless ones at your neighborhood Buffalo Wild Wings) intends. Although Ivanova succeeds in selling the hell out of the concept and Babaev brings it in at a tidy 78 minutes (with credits), Row 19 lands as a rough and routine trip of terror. Barring a different language, the slick flick is nothing you haven’t seen before — especially if Flightplan is stamped in your cinematic passport. —Rod Lott

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