Southbound represents a logical extension for the guys and gals behind the V/H/S series: another indie-horror anthology featuring work from the likes of Roxanne Benjamin and the Radio Silence collective, but the rare omnibus that dares to ditch the rickety wraparound device in favor of a seamless flow of one story into another. They number five in all, concluding with something of a mind-blower.

With filmmaker Larry Fessenden (2013’s Beneath) acting as a radio DJ — our ersatz Wolfman Jack, yet neither seen nor consulted — the movie opens on a stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere, as two guys specked with blood are on the run from … something, yet caught in a Möbius strip. Their maddening journey gives way to a riot grrrl band stranded, thanks to a blowout on their VW van, only to be “rescued” by a very odd couple.

Southbound peaks with the middle tale, “The Accident,” in which another unlucky motorist (Mather Zickel, I Love You, Man) attempts to save a downed pedestrian by performing emergency surgery, assisted only by instructions given to him over the phone. Written and directed by David Bruckner (2007’s The Signal), the scene builds from nervousness to an agonizing intensity. Anything following that would be at a disadvantage, but “Jailbreak” from Patrick Horvath (The Pact II) is a letdown either way — the only dud of the bunch. Not to worry, as the pleasure of terror quickly snaps back into place with a You’re Next-level home invasion, with a kick. And what a kick!

Admittedly, Southbound is not styled for mass-audience consumption. For starters, it refuses to dish out full details or satisfy your curiosity about every question it raises; it assumes you are smart enough to fill in the blanks, even if what unfolds before your eyes gives the finger to laws of nature. —Rod Lott

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I have a morbid fascination with the efforts of classic-era Hollywood directors who, post-Exorcist’s Oscar and box-office glory, tried their hand at modern horror, too. Perhaps they were always drawn to the genre; perhaps they just wanted to show the big studios that they, too, “could stay hip with the kids.” Whatever their reasoning, they pretty much sucked at it: Arthur Hiller’s Nightwing, John Frankenheimer’s Prophecy and, of course, John Boorman’s most infamous Exorcist II: The Heretic.

Exhibit D, fittingly: Phobia, courtesy of John Huston, the legendary director of certifiable, for-the-ages gems as The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Today, there’s good reason Phobia remains forgotten — or perhaps repressed.

Fresh off a four-year stint playing the top half of TV’s Starsky and Hutch, a sleepy and ineffectual Paul Michael Glaser stars as Dr. Peter Ross, a psychiatrist specializing in helping patients conquer their fears, albeit through highly controversial methods. For example, scared of snakes? Dr. Ross will make you handle one. Terrified of heights? Prepare to traverse the girders of an under-construction building like a trapeze wire. The doc’s problems begin when he takes an agoraphobe prone to severe panic attacks, plops her at the corner of a bustling city street and orders her to walk to his nearby home. When she arrives and he’s not there, a file cabinet goes kablooey, killing her instead of the intended target: Ross. Shit happens.

Over and over it happens — patient after patient, each while confronting his or her own fears — yet all at a ho-hum, humdrum pace. Although working from a story by genre vets Gary Sherman (Raw Meat) and Ronald Shusett (Alien), Huston has no grasp of suspense in this realm, as if it must be treated entirely different from the ways of film noir. (It doesn’t.) Was Huston desperate or just drunk? Either way, the misbegotten, near-worthless Phobia embodies one character’s line of disdainful dialogue: “This whole thing smells to high heaven!” Yep. —Rod Lott

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Rest easy, 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man: No longer are you the most needless remake/reboot in cinema history. You’ve been usurped by the squishy new version of Cabin Fever.

I get that when Eli Roth’s original infected the mainstream in 2002, members of the new movie’s target audience were still voiding into Pull-Ups, but that first film hasn’t aged; it’s not like it has become irrelevant to the point of unwatchable. I’m on the record as an all-in fan of Roth’s breakthrough project, yet I approached this clone by Scavengers’ Travis Zariwny with curiosity trumping trepidation.

Like damn near everything in it, the story remains the same: Five 20-somethings on vacation in the woods become most unhappy campers when a killer virus infiltrates the local yokels’ water supply and spreads like creamy peanut butter. Except for an end-credit stinger that makes no sense, Zariwny’s additions are minute and of no consequence: selfies, hip-hop tunes, references to gamer culture, upgraded firearms, more explicit couplings and gorier renditions of the original’s most notorious pair of gross-outs: the shaving and the fingering scenes.

The biggest departure is the gender flip of supporting character Deputy Winston; whereas Detroit Rock City’s Giuseppe Andrews was a hoot in the 2002 role, Louise Linton (The Echo) is stunningly awful. Even with the same dialogue, she’s not the least bit funny. Overall, the movie’s loss of Roth’s perverse humor proves its biggest drawback; here, a vomited geyser of blood is no longer a punchline.

At least Zariwny solves the mystery of the meaning behind “Pancakes!” and throws in an audiovisual tip of the hat to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining — neither enough to warrant a recommendation. The new Cabin Fever is not a bad film; it can be enjoyed. It’s just wholly unwarranted. Why choose it when Roth’s movie is still alive and kicking? There’s a word that encapsulates the entire endeavor: Why? —Rod Lott

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Forget that whole Armageddon thing from the close of The Omen series’ third chapter, 1981’s not-final Final Conflict. Ten years later, 20th Century Fox dropped an enjoyable bundle of trash named Omen IV: The Awakening at America’s collective front porch, rang the doorbell and bolted to hide behind the neighbor’s bushes and snicker.

Antichrist politician (redundant) Damien Thorn is long dead, but the British telly reporter he had mad, bruising sex with in The Final Conflict was impregnated with his demon seed. The result is a baby girl whom Catholic nuns are more than eager to push into the arms of doting adoptive parents (doting optional), what with “666” embossed on the hater tot’s palm. As the York family, Faye Grant (Internal Affairs) and some guy with feathered hair (Michael Woods, TV’s NightMan) essay those roles, and … well, they’re not particularly giving it their all. If the word “shrill” didn’t exist, it would have to be invented for Grant’s performance.

Delia, the second-generation Antichrist, is played in grade-school form by Asia Vieira (TV’s FlashForward). See if you can spot her mustache.

This Delia girl is one mean little bitch, tormenting a fat kid in her class before moving on to meatier targets, like her psychic-obsessed nanny, whom she forces out of a second-story window and onto a merry-go-round below. Delia also uses her satanic powers to cause a nosy P.I. (Michael Lerner, Barton Fink) to meet an untimely fate in the form of a swinging wrecking ball. There’s another decapitation, too, but it pales next to David Warner’s from the original Omen, probably because this so-called Awakening was made IV the Fox network (but released theatrically overseas). It was directed by two guys, Turbulence 3’s Jorge Montesi and Halloween 5’s Dominique Othenin-Girard, which should explain everything. —Rod Lott

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Turns out Tourist Trap was a test run of sorts for director David Schmoeller in the Shit That Should Not Move horror subgenre. Having made that low-budget chiller and its mannequins so effective in 1979 for producer Charles Band, Schmoeller earned himself the gig of helming Full Moon’s flagship, Puppetmaster, which has served as Band’s bread and butter ever since, for better and often worse.

Set at the Bodega Bay Inn, this inaugural entry in the Puppet Master series (two words beginning with the first sequel) isn’t so bad. In a 1939 prologue, puppet creator Andre Toulon (William Hickey, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) already has discovered an ancient Egyptian method of giving life to the inanimate. As the Nazis come charging in his room to swipe his secret, Toulon bites a bullet, ensuring it stays out of the Führer’s hands. Fifty years later, a select few people gifted with extrasensory powers are summoned to the inn at the behest of colleague Neil Gallagher (Jimmie F. Skaggs, 1988’s Ghost Town) who has unlocked Toulon’s secret … and since committed suicide.

Gallagher’s cohorts stick around to collectively figure out, y’know, what the hap. They include an anthropology professor (Paul Le Mat, Strange Invaders) with midtransformed-wolfman hair and dreams of things to come; a fortune teller (Irene Miracle, Dario Argento’s Inferno) who carries a stuffed dog; and, most hilariously, a scalding-hot psychic (Kathryn O’Reilly, Jack’s Back) who experiences the past of her surroundings. Seriously, she steps in the elevator and senses a rape; she plops onto her hotel room’s bed and feels the oohing and ahhing of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s mattress activity of decades prior. (Apparently, the Bodega Bay Inn doesn’t retire mattresses.)

Oh! And there are killer puppets. No one in Gallagher’s party possesses peripheral vision, because Toulon’s puppets roam about the halls rather freely and without causing alarm … until they decide it’s time to commit murder. Although they have no names in the movie, Band’s Full Moon catalogue of action figures, comics and other merch will not let you forget their cute monikers. Each is labeled for his or her defining trait, e.g., Jester, Pinhead and Tunneler. Leech Woman pukes up the slimy, bloodsucking worms onto the chests of her prey (an act that look like she’s defecating from the wrong end), while the skeletal-faced Blade (a dead ringer for Invasion U.S.A. villain Richard Lynch) stabs his victims. In arguably Puppetmaster’s most overt point of humor, Blade’s pupils pop out as bolts when he peeks through the keyhole as the sexy psychic in undress.

With more of a mystery vibe at play, not to mention legitimate storytelling in general, Puppetmaster bears little resemblance to the double-digit sequels Band continues churning out, now with crowdfunding assistance. While the puppets are the draw, they are not the focus. When they are onscreen, however, it’s for the benefit of Schomeller’s picture because David Allen’s stop-motion animation is quite good, particularly on a Band budget. Then again, on projects big (Young Sherlock Holmes, for which Allen was Oscar-nommed) and small (this) and really small (Equinox), Allen delivered. —Rod Lott

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