Remember the beheading from The Omen? Imagine a horror movie that tries to recreate that epic scene for nearly every one of its kills — plus some immolation, face peeling, face melting and bisection for good measure — and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Beyond the Door III is all about.

If you’re hoping it has anything to do with the original Beyond the Door, you’ll be sorely disappointed, as this is an in-name-only sequel, much like the second entry in the series, which is actually just the Mario/Lamberto Bava joint Shock.

The plot centers on Beverly and her friends, students of an indeterminate age (they look like grad students pushing their 30s, but act like high schoolers) on a trip to a rustic foreign land. They’re traveling to witness a pagan ritual, but little do they know they’re marked to be a part of the ritual, a fact they learn after some creepy villagers lock them inside their cabins and set fire to the structures. All but one of the group escapes and they seek refuge on a train, which becomes possessed by evil spirits hellbent on finishing the sacrificial work.

We learn that Beverly has been chosen to be the devil’s bride because she’s a virgin with a large birthmark on her stomach, as well as some kind of familial connection that is ill-explained. It hardly matters, however, because just as the train literally goes off the rails at one point, so too does the film itself. Any semblance of logic flies right out the window and gets decapitated.

In case it isn’t painfully obvious, Beyond the Door III — also known as Amok Train — is incredibly gory. Come for the special effects, but stay for the general wackiness, which includes some befuddling dialogue among the principal cast, and even more confusing exchanges with police and government officials who do not speak English and whose lines aren’t subtitled, all of which contributes to the fever-dream-like quality of the movie.

It’s the kind of picture you’ll half-remember years down the line and wonder if it was real or just something your brain cooked up after consuming some days-old Chinese takeout you found in your fridge. Fortunately, it’s just over an hour and a half runtime makes it a perfect slice of WTF-ery that won’t eat up an entire night. —Christopher Shultz

Get it at Amazon.

Nothing’s tantric with this Sting, a spider movie from Down Under that delivers a load. Of fun.

During a city-crippling ice storm, a Brooklyn apartment building gains an unexpected visitor: a rock from space that houses a dandy li’l spider. It’s found by Charlotte (Alyla Browne, Furiosa), a young girl who lives there with her family. From room to room and floor to floor, Charlotte traverses the complex via its ventilation ducts, foreshadowing the eventual activity of her new eight-legged pet, whom she names Sting and keeps in a jar.

This being an arac-attack film, Sting grows to horrific size — enough to give even the most hard-nosed he-man a case of The Shivers. Like Charlotte’s stepdad (Ryan Corr, Wolf Creek 2), who serves as the building’s super. We meet him running the basement’s trash compactor, which practically screams, “See you back here for the showdown!”

So originality isn’t Sting’s strong suit. Nor did I want it to be. From a spider movie, I seek only three things:
• spider action
• and lots of it
• without shoddy CGI

Is that so much to ask? Not for writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner. One of Ozploitation’s rising stars as the creative force behind the Wyrmwood zombie franchise, he delivers on all three. In initial, tiny form, Sting is computer-generated — required for the incredible title sequence, depicting the spider crawling through a dollhouse — but done without cutting corners. When the arachnid grows (and grows!) to sizes not even Australian spiders get, Sting is presented as a practical, in-camera effect, meaning it’s all the more terrifying — doubly so being built by Wētā Workshop, known mostly for its stellar work on everything Peter Jackson.

Although no Arachnophobia, Roache-Turner’s Sting does take a cue from John Goodman’s exterminator by casting Jermaine Fowler (The Blackening) to function as similar crowd-pleasin’ comic relief: “Let’s kill this bitch!” He nearly steals the show out from under all eight legs, a pair of balls and a couple of good jumps. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.