Filled to the brim with incomprehensible horror, The Church is director Michele Soavi’s follow-up to his feature film debut, Stagefright. Billed in some areas as the third Demons entry, the film has more in common with Rosemary’s Baby and John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, released only two years prior, than it does with the series.

There is some connective tissue between the two, namely the presence of producer Dario Argento and the premise of people trapped together fending off supernatural entities. But while Demons and its sequel features superb creature makeup and tons of gore, The Church trades in surreal imagery and set pieces that form a somewhat cohesive but altogether disjointed story. 

The narrative begins in the Middle Ages, where a group of knights slaughter an entire village based on the assumption one of its citizens is a devil-worshipping witch. The knights bury the corpses in a mass grave and construct the titular church atop it, as a means of keeping the supposed evil trapped within.

Fast-forward to present day, where Evan (Tomas Arana), the church’s new librarian, arrives for his first day at work. A wannabe archeologist, Evan loathes his new job and seeks a project that will bring him fame and fortune. He thinks he’s found what he’s looking for when Lisa (Barbara Cupisti) discovers a parchment in the church’s dilapidated catacombs that appears to be hundreds of years old. Evan obsesses over the document, eventually discovering hidden passages in latin that speak of a stone with seven eyes.

This leads Evan to return to the church in the middle of the night to search for the stone. He finds it in the catacombs, affixed to a large cross on the ground, and when he moves it aside, naturally, all hell breaks loose. It becomes up to a friendly archer priest (Hugh Quarshie) and the young daughter of the church’s sacristan (Asia Argento, in one of her earliest film roles) to restore balance and keep the evil contained. 

While not much more can be said of the story, the film’s visuals and special effects deserve special recognition, in particular a shot of a winged creature embracing a nude woman — a direct reference to Boris Vallejo’s Vampire’s Kiss painting Also of note is the music, alternately by Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake & Palmer fame), Philip Glass and Goblin. The Church is overall a splendid audio/visual experience that’s a must-see for fans of surreal horror. —Christopher Shultz

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While Dad’s out dining with his bitchy new girlfriend, troubled teenaged girl Morgan is grounded and home alone — well, almost home alone, if not for her invalid grandmother. 

So the prodigiously chested Morgan (Jordan Phipps, Amazon Hot Box) ditches her shirt immediately and hangs out in a red bra. Between bong rips and asthma inhaler hits, she receives creepy, increasingly obscene phone calls, likely from her incel stalker. 

The sitter-in-peril flick is an exploitation staple. Close Calls may be the only one to dare go this far. I don’t mean in content; I mean in literal running time. 

Look, as a heterosexual male, let me say unequivocally that I love boobs. But let me also say unequivocally there is no reason — none! Not even those! — for Close Calls to play out for 128 minutes. On one hand, I get that writer/director Richard Stringham (who also worked with Phipps on that year’s 10/31 anthology) would want to showcase his lovely leading lady and her special effects as much as possible. The camera placement makes that clear, especially when her face isn’t even in frame.

On the other, needless scenes litter and clutter the movie — often a problem of directors making the leap from shorts to their first feature, which is the case with Close Calls. It needs to be tight in order to be taut. For example, what does a scene of Morgan pleasuring herself add? Nothing, except for the squish-squish-squish SFX, which are more than a bit much.

So is that twist ending, which emerges from nowhere and goes to the same place. —Rod Lott

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If you think watching people play Dungeons & Dragons is boring, Knight Chills would like to have a word with you. Now, you’re correct and the shot-on-video movie is dead wrong, but Knight Chills wants a word nonetheless. It’s either not listening or doesn’t care an iota. You’re going to see some serious, no-move-spared RPGing, dammit.

Once a week, a handful of students meet for D&Ding in the basement of a teacher (Tim Jeffrey) who doubles as dungeon master: “The scent of nutmeg is overwhelming.” John (Michael Rene Walton, Superfights) is one of the regulars, despite being openly ridiculed and bullied by the others. John’s dogged attendance might have something to do with fellow gamer Brooke (Laura Tidwell) looking like a layaway-plan Jessica Chastain.

After Brooke soundly rejects John’s date offer in front of the others, he dons the full regalia — from armor to sword — of his gaming character, Sir Kallio, and embarks on a killing spree of vengeance. Even with “Sir Kallio” being a name one shouldn’t speak in the presence of others, Knight Chills’ premise is terrific for a slasher movie, yet near-instantly squandered by first-/last-time director Katherine Hicks.

Although each kill is different, milady, that variety across homicides isn’t enough to offset the mind-numbing scenes of seemingly eternal game play. The scent of something is overwhelming, all right, but it sure ain’t nutmeg. Zero hit points. —Rod Lott

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A somewhat forgotten folk horror film from Australia, Alison’s Birthday begins with the titular character (Joanne Samuel) playing with a makeshift Ouija board with her friends at age 16. One of the girls, Chrissie (Margie McCrae), becomes possessed by a spirt claiming to be Alison’s father, who warns his daughter not to go home on her 19th birthday, insinuating that something horrible will happen. Moments later, a strong gust of wind invades the room and tips over a bookcase, crushing poor Chrissie to death. It’s as exciting and audacious opening to a film as you’re likely to find.

Things slow down a bit as we jump ahead about three years. Alison’s 19th birthday is a few days away, and she’s been summoned to the home of her Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Dean (Bunney Brooke and John Bluthal, respectively). Seems old Dean’s health is failing, and all he wants is one last family birthday celebration with Alison, who hasn’t been back to her childhood abode in quite some time. Despite her reservations (remember that deathly warning she got at 16?), Alison agrees, and convinces her boyfriend, Pete (Lou Brown), to accompany her.

From the outset, it’s pretty clear everything isn’t kosher with Alison’s surrogate parents. For one thing, a mysterious structure in their back garden resembles a miniature Stonehenge. For another, occupying the room across the hall is a spooky old woman who wears a strange amulet around her neck and likes to watch the teenager sleep. She’s explained away as Alison’s great-grandmother, but Alison remembers no mention of the woman all throughout her upbringing.

If you’ve seen a lot of horror movies, you probably have a decent idea where this plot is going, and by and large, it does, though it does so through the POV of Pete, who becomes a final boy of sorts as he investigates the creepy goings-on while Alison gets sidelined to her bed, having been drugged and hypnotized by the now obviously villainous Jennifer and Dean and their physician cohort (Vincent Ball).

Without giving too much away, the ending to Alison’s Birthday is just as audacious as its beginning, and well worth the wait. The film overall is a solid watch, an engaging, if somewhat flawed, entry into the folk horror canon that remains criminally underseen and underappreciated. —Christopher Shultz

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As a religious-horror film, Immaculate earned my respect simply for leaning into internet commenters’ clutched-pearls cries of “evil” and “blasphemous” by using those nobodies’ quotes in its ad campaign, then doubling down with a one-day promotion for $6.66 admission. Members of the Neon marketing department, I proclaim you unholy geniuses.

Then, unlike most of the offended, I actually saw Immaculate. It retains my respect, so much so that I grant it a vow of obedience. (Poverty and celibacy, however? Let’s not go overboard.)

In Italy’s Our Lady of Sorrows, the newest nun is Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney, Madame Web), a young American woman. As Cecilia gets a tour of the 17th-century grounds and introduced to her fellow 21st-century sisters in Christ, the flick is so transparent in foreshadowing, it’s naked, e.g., “Be careful of this one. She bites.”

It’s not like things at the convent aren’t already, well, off; Cecilia’s spider-sense tingles from the outset. Then she gets pregnant, despite her iron-clad virginity. Holy calamity, scream insanity.

Some of Immaculate’s horrible happenings come as shocks, while others are so telegraphed, they’re practically stamped with the Western Union logo. And yet, even some of those shock, despite being expected. In the aforementioned tour, Cecilia’s ears perk up at a passing mention of “catacombs.” Ours do, too, knowing full well the story will near its end at this location. Sure enough, it does, but director Michael Mohan presents it like he’s leading viewers through a haunted house. It’s effective as, um, hell.  

Sweeney, a shrewd businesswoman who also produced the film, seems uneasy in the first act. How much of that is her character’s nervousness, her performance limitations or my own inability to divorce my mind from her sexualized persona in past roles and public, I cannot determine. But once the shit hits the fan — or the God seed hits her womb, so to speak — Sweeney sizzles. Particularly excellent in the birthing scene, with the lens scrunched tight on her bloodied face for what seems like unbroken minutes, she’s a raw nerve.

Arguably the movies’ highest-profile example of the nunsploitation subgenre since Ken Russell danced with The Devils in 1971, Immaculate could have wussed out. It doesn’t. I admire its commitment to middle-brow nastiness and trashiness — and more so its refusal to back down, as Mohan (reuniting with Sweeney after their erotic thriller, The Voyeurs) and first-feature scribe Andrew Lobel carry their button-pushing transgression all the way through what its literally Immaculate’s final shot.

Be careful of this one. She bites. —Rod Lott

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