First things first: I have no idea why The Pumpkin Karver chooses to misspell its own title. It’s about a carver who moves to a small town named Carver, with nary a K in sight.

That’s where clean teen Jonathan (Michael Zara) moves with his big sister, Lynn (WWE Diva Amy Weber), for a fresh start. See, a year earlier, Lynn’s asshole boyfriend, Alec (David J. Wright, TV’s Sons of Anarchy), pulled a mean prank on Halloween night by donning a truly creepy pumpkin mask, locking Lynn in her garage and coming toward her with a knife. Thinking it real, Lynn screamed, and Jonathan ceased carving his pumpkin (not a euphemism) to save his sis by fatally stabbing the guy. Sucks to be Alec.

Anyway, a year later, they pull into Carver, where the population hovers around 666 — enough for the local teens to have a blowout kegger and dress in their best Austin Powers costumes. Jonathan is smitten by Lynn’s single friend Tammy (Minka Kelly, Blackwater Lane), even though she wears a beret and says a lot of things that could get you thrown into special ed.

Threatening to snuff out their burgeoning love is that Jonathan is forever tormented by visions of Alec in the aforementioned mask. (Let us pause to note the Slipknot-esque visage on the movie’s cover thankfully appears nowhere.) Worse, someone is killing the partiers — and, in the cases of obnoxious, toga-clad Pauly Shore stand-ins Spinner (Alex Weed) and Bonedaddy (David Phillips), not soon enough.

With the victims’ faces sporting a gourd-ready rictus, are these murders the work of a resurrected Alec? Or perhaps the weird old pumpkin farmer (Terrence Evans, 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) who shares his expert karving carving techniques and tools with Jonathan? (Whoever it is, props for choosing a theme and sticking with it. And adding the shoved-in-mouth candle? Chef’s kiss.)

If the internet is to be believed, Robert Mann’s movie served as something of a gateway horror for impressionable tweens and early teens in the era of straight-to-DVD trash proliferation. I can see why. With its Halloween-driven storyline, pumpkin-patch backdrop and slasher setup, The Pumpkin Karver is practically built to court and foster viewers’ growing nostalgia, clouding how silly it actually is. I gained little from watching, but I don’t regret the experience, either. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

In Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead’s first film, Resolution, two friends retreat from society to an isolated rental property so one of them can get sober. Things don’t go as planned. Now, a decade later, make the duo sisters and you have the synopsis for Jack Dignan’s Puzzle Box, an Australian found-footage horror pic.

Kait (Kaitlyn Boyé, 2019’s The Furies) is the addict brought to a beautiful, multistoried home in the middle of the woods by her sis, Olivia (Laneikka Denne in her feature debut). Olivia camcords the events to document Kait’s rehabilitation.

Once darkness engulfs the sky, the house inexplicably begins to “glitch,” as stairways extend and doors lead to new hallways and unexpected rooms, like a B&B Backrooms. Seconds before the siblings are separated, Kait takes possession of the camera. Turning on its night-vision mode, she attempts to escape from this labyrinthian nightmare, only to be chased at every turn by some bleeding, shrieking woman (Cassandre Girard, Dignan’s After She Died).

Initially, that’s a neat bit of freakery; after 10 straight minutes of it, not so much. Following a slight breather, Puzzle Box returns to it yet again. In essence, Dignan not only rides that one-trick pony like a thoroughbred, but toward the Triple Crown. Put aside any hopes of the movie transcending its found-footageness. It follows the template established in 1999 by those three nosy youngsters in Burkittsville, to-the-camera confessional included. As the house’s hosts’ notes taunt, enjoy your stay! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Father doesn’t know best in The Beast Within. That’s because every full moon, he turns into a werewolf, requiring him to be chained in the British wilderness to keep his loved ones safe and sound.

Eternals’ Kit Harington headlines as Noah, the current owner of the gosh-darned generational curse. “I am a coward and I am a monster,” he says to his 10-year-old daughter, Willow (Caoilinn Springall, Stopmotion), who’s begun to suspect as much anyway. Kids these days be smart.

With Within, documentarian Alexander J. Farrell (Making a Killing) makes a move to fictional features. This first attempt is inauspicious, however, being laboriously paced and predictable; regarding the latter, when the script introduces Willow as suffering from life-or-death breathing issues, you know Farrell’s doing so to establish Chekov’s oxygen tank. With intended scares overly dependent on either the eye-through-keyhole variety or the just-a-dream conceit, the movie plays too conventionally.

And not conventionally enough, where the werewolf is concerned: rarely spotted outside of shadows and, when he is, clearly built in cash-deficient CGI that belies the beauty of the West Yorkshire forest. Either way, we’re left wanting more. Like the scene with the splinter plunged underneath one’s fingernail — at least that, we feel.

While The Beast Within is not a remake of 1982’s same-named raping cicada movie, maybe it should be? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sung to the tune of “The Muffin Man”:

Do you know the pumpkin man
The pumpkin man, the pumpkin man
Oh, do you know the pumpkin man
In Jack-O, he’s very lame

Because good Christians in the olden times don’t cotton to sorcerers, a man by the last name of Kelly kills a warlock. To get revenge, that wizard, played by (visibly deteriorated stock footage of) John Carradine, conjures up a scythe-swingin’ man with an oversized pumpkin for a noggin. Call him Jack-O if you like, even though the movie Jack-O never does.

As Halloween nears in modern-day Florida, Jack-O (née Lantern) goes after a grade schooler in glasses named Sean (Ryan Latshaw, son of Jack-O director Steve Latshaw) because he’s the last of the Kelly clan. In the climactic scene, li’l Sean even goads his monstrous pursuer with, “Come and get me, pumpkin man!” Them’s fightin’ words, kid.

Meanwhile, babysitter Linnea Quigley takes a shower; Cameron Mitchell posthumously appears on TV via leftover footage; Sean’s ineffectual father (one-and-doner Gary Doles) turns his garage into a spookhouse; and Sean’s mom (Rebecca Wicks, Latshaw’s Biohazard: The Alien Force) forever looks like an unblinking deer caught in headlights. I dunno, maybe it’s just her perm.

It shouldn’t be hard to make a passable horror movie out of a gourd/guy hybrid, yet for about an hour and a half, Latshaw and his frequent producer, Fred Olen Ray, show you how soundly they failed. Their monster (Patrick Moran, Latshaw’s Dark Universe) looks cool, but — like the flick itself — barely bothers to move. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.