If Roger Ebert didn’t coin the phrase “dead teenager movie,” he famously owns it by virtue of inclusion in his ’80s-filmgoer’s glossary. On this far side of that decade’s slasher craze, you don’t need the term defined; you know exactly what it entails. Quinn Armstrong’s Dead Teenagers knows you know, and sets out to subvert the subgenre with a good upending.

The final chapter of Armstrong’s Fresh Hell trilogy, Dead Teenagers plops five hormone-addled high school friends in a woods-adjacent cabin — the same location for the other two movies, in fact. Right away, cocky jock Ethan (Angel Ray, 2023’s Malum) breaks up with Mandy (newcomer Jordan Myers). After all, he’s college-bound and “pussy ’bout to be, like, pow-pow-pow!” Clearly, the actors are too old to play this young, but rather than being a deficit, the choice soon is revealed as intentional.

Mandy’s heartbreak and Ethan’s thoughtless timing get shoved aside by strange events; in the forest, she finds a piece of equipment from the shoot of Fresh Hell’s first chapter, The Exorcism of Saint Patrick, as well as script pages for Dead Teenagers, the very movie we’re watching. Then a hulking man whose face is hidden behind a welding mask shows up to slaughter; like every slasher villain, he comes with an exploitable name: Torch (Chris Hahn, 2021’s Wrong Turn remake).

Mandy and friends suddenly realize they’re in a movie; this inadvertent act of self-awareness amounts to improvisation, changing the course of what’s supposed to happen. Incidental characters who pop into the story continue to play their part as scripted, because they only exist on the page; thus, most notably, a cop (Beau Roberts, returning from Saint Patrick) exchanges blows with someone who’s not even present.

As you’ve likely already assumed, Dead Teenagers doesn’t just go meta, but doubles, even triples down on doing so. Its postmodern nature is not of the arch Scream variety, but a textbook deconstruction so thorough, its footnotes have footnotes.

Ambitious? That’s putting it lightly. Although Armstrong doesn’t quite wring it into being fully successful, he has enough tricks — such as Mandy happening upon a crew van or entering a time loop — to make the Fresh Hell entry the most fully realized. If you watch only one among the trio, this should be it. —Rod Lott

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Don’t let the title fool you. Eighteenth-century fishmongers in Austria weren’t crazy about bathing. They did, however, have an undying fear of Satan and a gross misunderstanding of mental health. In The Devil’s Bath, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (Goodnight Mommy, The Lodge) covers just two of the hundreds of tragic, state-administered deaths from this period. The film’s as cold as it is sincere, and keen to illuminate one of the most prolific killers of all: tradition.

You might be inclined to liken The Devil’s Bath to Robert Eggers’ The Witch. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, especially given its opening sequence. In rural Austria during the late 1700s, a middle-aged woman plucks a baby from a random farm, carries it to the top of a waterfall and hurls it to its death. Then she turns herself in and is promptly executed.

Afterward, Agnes (Anja Plaschg, aka musician Soap&Skin), is married off by her mother and brother to Wolf (David Scheid), a local trapper. Unfortunately, neither quite fits the good Christian mold. Agnes’ quirks make her the frequent target of village gossip and her mother-in-law’s criticism. Wolf, on the other hand, seems much more interested in his friend, Lenz (Lorenz Tröbinger). Depression overtakes Agnes, and in the absence of any real help, she spirals toward a terrifying fate.

The Devil’s Bath occupies a similar space to Rose Glass’ Saint Maud. It doesn’t have the same God-talks-to-you-as-a-roach fever dreams, but this film hardly needs it. The horror lies in the murmurs of the townsfolk, prescriptive sermons and medical “treatments” in the form of leeches and bloodletting. It’s not so much a slow burn as it is a casual stride toward impending doom. From the moment we see Agnes playing with dead bugs, it’s clear she wasn’t meant long for this world.

Even so, The Devil’s Bath is more than a bleak examination of a helpless figure. It is that, to some extent, but it’s far from unearned brutality. Why Agnes doesn’t — or rather “can’t” — fit in is where the movie earns its runtime. She’s God-fearing, even to the point where her extended prayer time unnerves and annoys her community. Yet even this isn’t enough to steer their ire. An abyssal horn calls out roughly halfway through the film, as if signaling that no amount of church services and festivals overpower collective apathy.

It’s both crushing and cathartic. One powerful shot in particular sees silhouettes dancing around a bonfire. They pass through it, completely engulfed by flames, only to emerge from the other side — born and killed and born again but dancing all the same. For Agnes, the image reveals that freedom only exists through oblivion.

The Devil’s Bath could understandably come off as a little too direct for some. Its cinematography and commitment to historical accuracy keep it interesting, though it won’t leave you scratching your head, either. And in this case, straightforward storytelling works wonders, even if it leads straight to a put in your stomach.

Make no mistake: The Devil’s Bath is well worth a watch. Just brace yourself for the cold shower you’ll need afterward. —Daniel Bokemper

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So you’ve left your neo-Nazi, death-metal band behind after the suicide of its clown-faced frontman. Congrats! What do you do for an encore?

If you’re Louis (Michael Kunicki, Silent as the Grave), you emerge from rehab, speak to schools and attempt to make amends. You even visit surviving bandmate, Andy (writer/director Quinn Armstrong), at his remote farmhouse, where you see two flashlights wolves’ eyes ominously penetrate the ink of night. That may or may not have something with do with the cult Andy may or may not run on the property.

Second in the Fresh Hell trilogy — “3 realities, same hell,” goes the tagline — Wolves Against the World positions itself as a werewolf movie. This is true, albeit metaphorically rather than explicitly.

Like its predecessor, The Exorcism of Saint Patrick, Armstrong’s Wolves spends much of its running time as a single-location affair. That enables him to stretch his budget, the thinness of which is most obvious in blood the same bright red and semisolid consistency as Betty Crocker icing gel for cookies and cupcakes.

Wolves Against the World’s strength stands in the color and composition of its visuals. The story, however well-acted, is a scattershot mess, ambling around things rather than getting at things. After long, unbroken passages of dialogue, snatches of found footage tease a plot ready to kick in, only to fall back into another tedious exchange. Whether as a middle chapter or on its own, this film heavily disappoints. —Rod Lott

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Who knew Hunter Schafer could take so much blunt-force trauma? Despite a comically constant battering throughout Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo, Schafer miraculously stands tall with standout performance. But a powerful lead isn’t enough to carry a film. Cuckoo flies the coop more than once, though it isn’t incoherent to a fault. Rather, it sort of circulates clarity, letting its mystery glide just enough to land on an ultimately satisfying place.

Gretchen (Schafer, Kinds of Kindness) finds little motivation in anything, save remotely practicing with her band, as her family relocates to a mountainside resort in Germany. Her dad (Marton Csokas, 2014’s The Equalizer) and stepmom (Jessica Henwick, Glass Onion) work for Herr (Dan Stevens, Abigail), the resort’s owner and a strange bird in his own right. Peculiar, overbearing employers become the least of Gretchen’s worries, however, as she’s relentlessly stalked by a bizarre “woman” wearing shades and trench coat.

Singer’s writing isn’t particularly coherent, though the big picture is never completely lost. Rather, it suffers from frequent detours that, while stylistic, tend to create more confusion than terror. Conceptually, the monster at the center of Cuckoo is intriguing, but Singer (Luz) can’t quite strike the balance between explanation and mystery. It’s like the filmmaker tried to delicately pull back the curtain, only to stumble and reveal a gaggle of puppeteers. It doesn’t ruin the film, but it also strangles the power its ambiguity could have had.

That said, the creature of this feature is secondary. Gretchen, firmly caught between grief and apathy, gives Cuckoo its legs. Schafer nails the malaise of late-stage adolescence, channeling a realistic portrayal without veering into just another whiny kid. Against Stevens and Luz star Jan Bluthardt’s increasingly deranged acting, Schafer serves as an anchor that allows every other character to go utterly off the rails. Without her establishing what’s normal, Cuckoo’s alluring strangeness would just be nonsensical.

What Singer could benefit from most, ultimately, is even just a basic amount of restraint. The film’s violence is mostly well-choreographed, but it doesn’t always feel earned. It often seems like Cuckoo is a compelling coming-of-age drama that has a weird contractual obligation to moonlight as a horror movie. (Though, admittedly, its cold opening does a decent job of keeping the thought of some malicious force at the back of your mind, sort of like the first scene of Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Lamb.)

This makes Cuckoo a bit difficult to qualify. On one hand, it more than establishes Schafer as a capable lead. With any luck, this won’t be her last appearance at the top of a cast. However, it probably won’t be for another one of Singer’s pictures. His premise is intriguing, but Cuckoo itself seems to be locked in an identity crisis that style and strong performers can’t manage to shake. If the director insists on remaining horror, they should rightfully keep swinging for the fences. Likewise, he’d be wise to remember that not every “high concept” needs to float in the stratosphere. We’ll receive him with open arms back on Earth. —Daniel Bokemper

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“Oh, no,” you say, “not another exorcism movie!”

And The Exorcism of Saint Patrick isn’t. Although it does contain the requisite expulsion of green puke, blame falls not to satanic possession, but a glass of ipecac syrup.

But try telling that to the fiercely religious parents of Patrick (newcomer Michael J. Cline), an obese, socially awkward teenager. Wanting to rid their son of his homosexuality, they send him to a secluded cabin for “conversion therapy” — aka abuse in the name of Jeeeee-zus — with a pastor (Steve Pinder, channeling the dapper smarminess of Justin Kirk). Really bad shit happens.

It’s like Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased redressed as a microbudget indie with a third-act jaunt into experimental horror. Before then, the horrors are real-world, and Quinn Armstrong’s work as the film’s writer and director feels deeply, disturbingly personal. Its turn to the ambiguous and allegorical is likely to frustrate viewers invested in the story, however spare. Be warned that about-face is preceded by snippets of hardcore gay porn as the conversion therapy becomes aversion therapy, bringing the aforementioned emetic into play.

I enjoyed Armstrong’s first feature, the bizarro cop comedy Survival Skills. While it wasn’t entirely successful, its subversive streak and VHS aesthetic felt original in the throes of COVID-19. The most creative piece of Saint Patrick is that it kicks off a trilogy Armstrong has branded under a Fresh Hell Presents banner, with the interconnected Wolves Against the World and Dead Teenagers following this first tale to VOD with one-week gaps between each. Whether the entire experience delivers a payoff that this one-off viewing cannot, we’ll know soon enough. —Rod Lott

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