What at first appears to be a baffling creative choice in the 2014 version of The Town That Dreaded Sundown rapidly reveals itself to be among its greatest assets: In the world of this remake, the original 1976 film exists. Obscure compared to most of what Hollywood revives and reboots these days, that source material is referenced throughout as the authorities and various townspeople discuss it; many even watch it.

While this film is fictional, the crime spree it depicts has real-life basis: In 1946, a serial killer dubbed The Phantom of Texarkana (among other catchy names) had the border regions of the Lone Star State and the Natural State gripped in a state of shock. His five murders went unsolved and became cemented in cinematic immortality for the ’76 Sundown, a cheap but effective (and profitable) project for hick-pic director Charles B. Pierce (The Legend of Boggy Creek) that wades in docudrama and horror thriller without fully committing to either. The remake has no such identity crisis, pushing all its chips to the corner of the felt marked “slasher.”

In its meta take, the Texarkana residents commemorating the murders’ 65th anniversary are panicked when a copycat killer — potato-sack headgear and all — begins offing good-looking youngsters who dare give in to their hard-R impulses. Our parentless Final Girl (Addison Timlin, Odd Thomas) survives and investigates.

By acknowledging not just the true-crime element, but Pierce’s real-life film, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (the Sundance-anointed Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (2013’s Carrie remake) are allowed to have their devil’s-food cake and eat it, too; technically, they’re not recreating Sundown’s kills with contemporary gore galore (near-iconic death-by-trombone scene included) — they’re commenting on them, right?

There is no correct answer. Love or loathe the execution (pun not intended), there is no denying it’s different. Gomez-Rejon calls the shots with considerable style; they pop with gorgeous color. He also ably captures the heavy humidity of the region’s sticky summer nights. If only all horror remakes could convey half as much. —Rod Lott

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In adapting its same-named board game to the big screen with Ouija, toymaker Hasbro has taken an interesting marketing approach: Those Ouija boards we sell? They will fucking kill you!

After her BFF jacks around with the satanic tool and then promptly — and fatally — hangs herself with Christmas lights, the mousy Laine (Olivia Cooke, The Quiet Ones) gets the bright idea to gather their friends and contact the dearly departed via the Ouija; malevolent spirits awaken.

If watching people play Ouija sounds dull, that’s because it is. Scenes of such mark countless horror films — Witchboard and Paranormal Activity, just off the top of my head — but here, first-time director Stiles White (screenwriter of 2005’s equally blah Boogeyman) has made a feature full of them. Too bad dialogue like “Are you pushing it?” and “Wasn’t me, I swear!” carries neither the stakes nor the suspense as when Rosemary Woodhouse dug out the Scrabble tiles.

With a PG-13 rating that suggests how little it tries, Ouija is a thoroughly unimaginative entry in the Dead Teenager subgenre. To call its characters one-note is not just too kind, but one level too many; they’re underdeveloped to the point of barely being introduced. Each exists solely for the purpose of receiving the message “HI FRIEND” from one step beyond. (The supernatural force doing the writing goes to so much trouble to deliver the greeting, you’d think it’d at least make the effort to include the needed comma between the two words.)

Ultimately, the only unsettling sight of Ouija is having to sit through two scenes of women flossing their teeth. Ick! If the spirit moves you to watch this one, point your internal planchette toward “NO.” —Rod Lott

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Taking an analog-inspired cue from the V/H/S anthology franchise, Hi-8: Horror Independent Eight goes even further down the scale of format quality, with each of its eight segments (wraparound included) shot on fullscreen video. Rather than coming from today’s mumblecore world, Hi-8’s contributors herald from an even more lo-fi movement: regional horror flicks shot on video (SOV). If you’ve so much as heard of their work — Cannibal Hookers, Sorority Babes in the Dance-A-Thon of Death, Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker! among them — you’re predisposed to have interest in viewing this “all-star” experiment.

A typed-on-computer title card warns (read: promises) “overt gore and unbearable suspense”; Hi-8 delivers on exactly one of these, and overall results are scattershot as a pulsating sprinkler with no adjustable range. On the plus side, Tim Ritter (Truth or Dare? A Critical Madness) charts the “complicated” relationship between a wife and her husband, who happens to be a rapist / serial killer. On the minus side, Chris Seaver (Return to Blood Fart Lake) turns in a three-character piece that plays stalker rape for comedy. Ha?

Inconsistency is Hi-8’s only constant: Tony Masiello’s tale of “a lost SOV” titled Bloodgasm has a decent setup and a poor payoff, whereas Todd Sheets (Zombie Bloodbath) follows a radio DJ in an EC Comics-style story with a decent payoff and a poor setup. Among the project’s octet of shorts, the best doesn’t even try for shocks — just laughs. Genuinely LOL-hilarious, it’s from The Vicious Sweet’s Ron Bonk, who simultaneously sends up George A. Romero and 1980s-style action by plopping a Snake Plissken-esque he-man amid an attack of the undead on his Nana’s nursing home.

The entire exercise ends with a list of the eight rules each filmmaker had to follow — only practical effects allowed, wind noise encouraged, etc. — and this should have appeared at the start just to prep the unsuspecting / uninitiated as to what they could expect from the whole of Hi-8. Those not used to SOV “epics” will have a really tough time with it. —Rod Lott

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To the surprise of no well-versed viewer of horror, The Houses October Built refers to the “haunted” variety — in particular, those ramshackle attractions that spring up nationwide in the weeks leading to Halloween, then shutter their makeshift doors until next fall. Houses, however, is no documentary, although it started life that way in its original 2011 incarnation of the same name. Now, that scrappy project has been restructured as a mockumentary, getting slathered with a heavy coat of the found-footage craze in the process.

The story seems tailor-made for that approach, slim as it is: Five friends spend five days in an RV, going from town to town to take in the best haunts the season has to offer. Because they’ve brought a camera, it’s like we’re in the actual spook-shack halls with them: It’s tough to see and not as much fun once you’re inside. They also hit up more inventive entertainment experiences, from shooting paintballs at zombies to patronizing strip clubs where the dancers don masks (not a bad idea, based on the bethonged I’ve seen IRL).

And that’s about it, until this ersatz Scooby-Doo gang gets the itch to track down the not-advertised, not-on-the-map “underground haunt” that’s rumored to make its visitors shart their britches in terror. The question of whether they’ll make it out alive is answered in Houses’ opening minute, so don’t enter this one in search of suspense; the exercise is more about being jolted by SUDDEN! LOUD! NOISES! than any skillful building of tension. While unremarkable and anticlimactic, its mix of fact and fiction makes for a decent time-waster.

The Houses October Built is directed by Bobby Roe, one of the aforementioned five haunt-hunters, all of whom we can assume are playing themselves since they go by their real first names and, lest ye already forgot, much of the 91 minutes comes cobbled from its humble documentary beginnings. (If you can find it, the Best Buy-only Blu-ray contains the full doc as a bonus feature.) Bubbly Brandy Schaefer is our token female and, comparatively speaking, the voice of reason among fellow travelers Mikey Roe, Jeff Larson and Zack Andrews, because there’s always a Zack. (What, no Chad?) —Rod Lott

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Spanish filmmaker Víctor Matellano’s Wax bears more similarity to 1953’s classic House of Wax than 2005’s official remake. With one foot planted firmly in horror cinema’s past, Matellano uses his other to sidestep between the decidedly more contemporary subgenres of found footage and torture porn. There’s room for all — perhaps even too much, as not enough time is allocated to each or any.

What is in too-great supply are the unruly curls atop the head of journalist Mike (Jimmy Shaw, Lord of Illusions), a dead ringer for Simply Red lead singer Mick Hucknall. Eager for cash, Mike is hired by a TV producer (Geraldine Chaplin, 2010’s The Wolfman) to spend the night — if he can! — in a reportedly haunted Barcelona wax museum. Hence the title and all.

Mike’s still grieving over the murder of his wife and child by kidnapper-cum-cannibal Dr. Knox (Jack Taylor, Succubus) a year prior and — wouldn’t you know it? — the sinister senior surgeon lurks and stalks the halls after hours. In the basement is where the old man carries out his acts of Hostel behavior on his victims (most of them bare-breasted young women), keeping them sedated just enough for them to withstand the pain of being eaten alive as they watch.

Essentially, we have three distinct styles of shock shoehorned into a film that feels like it can’t pay homage to one without placating today’s audiences with doses of the others. Because of that, Wax fails to truly take hold, although it comes close. Still, if you are a fan of movies set in wax museums — and this one takes a meta step to share that pleasure — the film is worth the price of admission, and the feature-debuting Matellano proves himself as a talent to watch. Just don’t be suckered into a rental because of the touting of late Spanish fright-flick legend Paul Naschy high atop the credits; only his voice appears, none of it recorded for this low-budget, high-ambition project. —Rod Lott

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