All at once, life for the otherwise successful Margaret (Rebecca Hall, The Night House) is unstable. She’s bedding a married co-worker. With her daughter set to leave for college, Margaret faces an empty nest. Worst of all, her past suddenly and literally has come back to haunt her.

It comes in the form of David (Tim Roth, The Hateful Eight), a former flame from more than 20 years prior. Margaret sees him pop up wherever she goes: work conference, department store, the park. Why he’s there and what he wants, I leave for viewers of Resurrection to discover on their own. That said, it’s clear their relationship was abusive and toxic, and his controlling nature — okay, brainwashing — picks right back up, essentially holding Margaret’s sanity hostage.

Hall does stress — and distress — very well. Over the course of the film, what begins as suspicion morphs into suffocation. That festers into such all-consuming panic, you’re watching each frame for signs of fracture for Margaret to crack. I don’t know why writer/director Andrew Semans (Nancy, Please) took a full decade before making this sophomore feature, but if it were a case of securing just the right actress, his wait was worth it. Her performance works hand in hand with Semans’ cold, clinical, antiseptic view of Albany, New York, purposefully disallowing viewers to feel comfortable at any point.

On the downside, he keeps Resurrection’s secrets tucked away for too long, sure to frustrate many. As a whole, the movie would be all the more potent shorn of half the second act. Then again, Resurrection was never intended for mainstream consumption, best evidenced by the whammy of a climax, as oblique as it is flabbergasting — an ending, perhaps, only a mother could love. —Rod Lott

From Crypt of Dark Secrets director Jack Weis, the New Orleans-set Death Brings Roses involves a feather-haired fugitive-cum-mob enforcer (one-timer Alfonso Landa) who picks up protection dough from every watering hole and strip joint in the French Quarter. When his palm isn’t greased right away, he’s not above slapping a “dancer” upside the head with a powder puff — the movie’s lone cinematic touch, however brutish.

A prostitute condemns his cruelty by aiming below the belt: “When you make love, it’s like going to the toilet: no feeling, no emotion, no nothing!” The same can be said of Death Brings Roses, a listless crime story without the points of action to unequivocally qualify it as a crime picture. In an extended cameo, Henny Youngman takes to the stage as himself — take my role, please! — while Broderick Crawford plays a bartender. Oh, the delicious irony! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

A group of people step onto an elevator; no matter the floor buttons pushed, most won’t land on their desired destination. The M. Night Shyamalan-produced Devil, right? Well, yes, but also Elevator, two years later. Whereas supernatural forces were to blame in Devil, the indie Elevator boasts something even more evil: mankind.

Going up in a metal box to a corporate fundraising party are nine people, including:
• the CEO (John Getz, Blood Simple) and his “evil little bitch” granddaughter;
• a company mover-shaker (Christopher Backus, Rogue Hostage) and his newswoman fiancée (Tehmina Sunny, Children of Men);
• a less-successful employee (Devin Ratray, Home Alone), presumably because he’s obese;
• a gorgeous pregnant woman (Anita Briem, 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth);
• a claustrophobic comedian (Joey Slotnick, Twister), who’s the night’s last-minute hired entertainment;
• a security guard (Waleed Zuaiter, London Has Fallen);
• and a longtime investor (Shirley Knight, Grandma’s Boy).

Oh, and one of them is hiding a bomb that will kill anyone within a 5-meter range. (Is that bad? I don’t know metrics.)

I’m a sucker for small-scale, single-location movies, and Elevator succeeds more often than not. It builds a solid batch of suspense that while never boils over, sustains itself until Norwegian director Stig Svendsen loosens his grip to allow you to breathe.

The identity is the bomber is just one aspect of the suspense; defusing the device is another. While someone like Alfred Hitchcock would’ve had a field day with Marc Rosenberg’s script, Svendsen does a fine job with what looks to be very little money. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

After his father’s tragic death in an auto accident, food vlogger Jeff Blake (Bret Lada, TV’s Alpha House) learns a nice surprise through an online ancestry service: He has a half-brother! Curious, Jeff drives to the rural, rundown farm to meet his heretofore unknown sibling, Andy Baker (Dustin Fontaine), the product of an affair.

Although they resemble one another, the two couldn’t be more different: Typical of a YouTube influencer/narcissist, Jeff is a preening, preppy ass, whereas Andy, in his denim overalls and overgrown beard, looks like “a live-action Berenstain Bear.”

Presented as a compilation of footage found by New Jersey police in 2020, The Andy Baker Tape captures the brothers from meeting day to falling out and beyond, all within a three-week span. Jeff’s hoping to score a Food Network show and enlists Andy for help as cameraman. Andy’s happy to oblige … until he senses disrespect. Still relative strangers, both clearly are working out issues in real time; they just need to — ahem — bury the hatchet.

Essentially a two-hander, The Andy Baker Tape is also that way behind the camera: Lada directed, Fontaine produced, and both talented actors shared scripting duties. A point in their favor is thriller’s compactness, bowing out shortly after the one-hour mark — and before wearing out the welcome. Without spoiling where it goes, the movie is all the more unsettling because the situation could happen — and has, as NBC’s Dateline and its ilk demonstrate week after week.

You’ve seen much worse COVID projects, but few better. And its last line is killer. —Rod Lott

Unequivocally, Party Line is the finest psycho thriller starring a prematurely balding, former Tiger Beat staple in eye makeup and a puffy shirt. That would be Leif Garrett (Macon County Line) as Seth, the whiny, wealthy brother of sexy, spoiled Angelina (Greta Blackburn, Savage Harbor). They have nothing better to do than repeatedly carry out a felonious, three-part scheme as if it were as frivolous as Taco Tuesday: They set up dates by dialing up party lines (the Tinder of their day); Angelina seduces them; then Seth straight-razors them before driving off in a sports car with the license plate “TEMT ME.”

Following a number of these acts of 976-evil, homicide detective Lt. Dan Bridges (Richard Hatch, TV’s Battlestar Galactica) is assigned the case. But because he’s a “dangerous, hotheaded jackass” who exercises both police brutality and illegal search-and-seizure, he’s assigned a buttoned-blouse partner (Shawn Weatherly, Amityville 1992: It’s About Time), a special investigator for the district attorney’s office, to keep tabs on him.

They eventually get a break thanks to a preteen girl (Patricia Patts, the voice of Peppermint Patty in several Peanuts cartoons) who calls the line for kicks. This babysitter has more bearing on the plot — and thus, more screen time — than Bridges’ captain, played by the iconic Richard Roundtree (Shaft, duh).

Seth harbors major mommy issues and sissy issues — the latter best exemplified by his rage-tearing the curtains off the rod as he watches a tanning Angelina rub her bikinied breasts. In this scene and all, Garrett’s performance is hysterical, in both the emotional and humorous definitions of the word.

As clearly as Seth is disturbed, Party Line is clearly a theatrical progenitor — although a weak one — of the ’90s VHS/cable erotic thriller revolution. Director William Webb (The Banker) lathers a prescient Animal Instincts coat of adults’ body paint atop his coupling of William Castle’s I Saw What You Did and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill. You don’t even need the Blu-ray subtitles’ many instances of “(sexy saxophone music)” to recognize that.

Too hokey to be erotic or thrilling, Party Line boasts several pause-worthy moments (and I don’t mean the kind you think*). For instance, be sure to see:
* 37:30 for a cameo by the boom mike, moving more than either actor in the scene
* 41:18 to glimpse the fucking filthy bare feet of Bridges’ cop girlfriend (Marty Dudek, Martial Law), as if she’s not been pulling over speeders, but cleaning chimneys with Dick Van Dyke
* 1:01:33 for one of the era’s more brazen kid mullets (speaking of, Garrett’s hair suggests an odd combo of mullet, ‘fro and failed Rogaine)

Yes, of course “The party’s over” is one of the film’s final lines. —Rod Lott

*That said, gentlemen, check out 1:12:48 for Weatherly in a red satin dress more fiery than the 15-oz. “Party-Size!” bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

Get it at Amazon.