Prolific production company Mahal Empire gets Lost when an airliner bound for Puerto Rico is struck by lightning and goes down down down, in Bermuda Island. Washed up on the shore of what looks like paradise, the survivors face no food, no potable water, no aloe vera, no Wi-Fi and a band of green-hued, limb-ripping creatures on the loose and out for blood.

Looking not unlike homemade Predator costumes, these beasts treat the survivors’ tummies like your grandma does dirt when it’s time to plant petunias. Meanwhile, in hopes of saving alive, the humans split into two factions. One is led by a regular Robinson Crusoe (a fully OTT John Wells, The Penny Dreadful Picture Show) who claims to have been trapped in the Triangle for 100 years. The other, fronted by a surly ’n’ burly FBI agent (Wesley Cannon, who also produced) who just copies the other guy. And Mahal Empire regular Sarah French (Death Count) finds a reason to disrobe.

Although Bermuda Island is goofily constructed and unleashed on the cheap, first-feature director Adam Werth makes the trip a hoot. He even comes close to earning that proverbial extra half by not pretending the movie is anything other than a brainless B-level outing. With no shortage of goop and a squishy soundtrack to boot, it strongly resembles a modern-day addition to Hemisphere Pictures’ beloved Blood Island trilogy. Whether in daylight or the dead of night, scenes always offer clear views of carnage.

While not every actor is as comfortable on camera as French, Wells or the cameoing Tom Sizemore, who perishes before the plane crashes, several Mahal Empire players are legitimately funny in their roles. Sheri Davis makes for a commendable ever-complaining Karen type; Greg Tally is a near-riot as a pretentious Goth named Midnight; and then there’s Alexander Hauck, somehow able to tell a monster that just ripped his heart out, “I hope you get food poisoning.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Judging by the viral noise on TikTok — a terrible way to live, IMHO — you’d expect the $15,000-funded Skinamarink to be the next Paranormal Activity. It’s not.

That’s not necessarily a negative. It all depends on the criterion being judged. To consider just the potential for word-of-mouth wildfire among the age groups reacting to its trailer on social media: Do you believe the average millennial or Gen Zer has the patience to sit through 100 minutes of an experimental film? Because that’s what Skinamarink is, one rung above pure abstraction. The majority of moviegoers of any generation don’t possess the palatability for something so mass audience-unfriendly; David Lynch’s Inland Empire finally can cede the title.

Again, not necessarily a negative. While clearly horror, the debut for Canadian filmmaker Kyle Edward Ball is the type of work that nearly defies criticism. Nothing about it operates by notions of convention, yet it represents a singular creative vision free of outside interference or concerns about commercial potential.

In 1995, two young siblings can’t locate their dad in the house. Stranger, the doors and windows — and even the commode — start to disappear; chairs sit on the ceiling. Thumps are heard, as is a disembodied, casually threatening voice. Sound scary? It should.

Through low angles, deliberate misframing and fuzzy imagery that simultaneously suggest surveillance footage and a pirate broadcast, Ball starts at a level of disorientation and builds trepidation from there. As the kids go about their mundane existence, no longer able to tell day from night, only the glow of the television — with its constant parade of public-domain cartoons — offers any comfort (not that “Cobweb Hotel” does). Jolts of terror disrupt that semblance of normalcy.

Ball’s lo-fi aesthetic extends to the sound, humming with the warm pop of vinyl. On its own, that aural element could offer womb-like comfort, but contributing to a whole, it helps make Skinamarink the closest approximation of a dream a feature has achieved. This is no catalog of jump scares; it’s art. —Rod Lott