In a Queens apartment, Laura (Laura Dooley, TV’s Mr. Mercedes) discovers her roommate, Elizabeth, is dead — like, a stinky two days dead — but signs of neither struggle nor trauma exist. Arriving to investigate are detectives Miller (Frank Wihbey, 2015’s The Sadist) and Richards (Adrienne King, 1980’s Friday the 13th). Perhaps, Miller suggests, Laura should to a hotel for the night? No go; she can’t afford a room (yet has no qualms about calling crime-scene cleaners minutes later), so she’ll just stay put.

From there, The Dead Girl in Apartment 03 alternates between two things: Laura in apartment 3 (not “03,” title be damned), and Richards and Miller discussing the case. Only one of these branches extends toward intrigue. Naturally, it’s the former, as Laura hears mysterious scratches and doors opening on their own, panics when the electricity go out and sees weird cultists pop up who look straight off The Long Night’s call sheet.

A true narrative doesn’t take hold until the final 20-minute stretch, when Laura learns about her roomie’s favorite hobby. Graft the film’s opening 10 minutes onto that (minus the two-minute Bond-villain speech) and, wow, writer/director Kurtis M. Spieler (New York Ninja) would really have something.

As is, a meandering middle hinders a decent ghost story. It’s also longer on atmosphere than action, which isn’t automatically a strike against The Dead Girl in Apartment 03; good when your eyes dart about the frame to look for an approaching wraith, but bad when the photography is so dark, you have to squint to spot. No worries — the score by Satanic Panic ’81 lets you know each and every time Elizabeth’s ghost appears. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

A classified ad seeks a quintet of participants for an experimental film. The project entails the five living together in a suburban house, their every move and conversation recorded “for VHS.” Selected are a narcissistic actress (Nichole Pelerine), a woman-hating hack stand-up (Danny Terranova), an academic sweater guy (John Fairlie), a socially withdrawn artist (future WWE Diva Amy Weber) and a riot grrrl type (Promise LaMarco). The latter works at Hot Diggity Dog, where she pees into the lemonade of impatient customers.

The most annoying among them — it’s not even close, even with all being unlikable — gets killed pretty quickly. Immediately, the house goes into lockdown mode, sealing the contestants inside for some devious Big Brother shit. See, the home is equipped not only with cameras, but traps, from a razor ’frigerator to ankle pinchers popping outta drywall. The Property Brothers would shit!

Sounds sweet, right? Agreed, Kolobos does. Yet in co-directing their own script, Daniel Liatowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk are unable to get their immense ambition to pay off. The biggest factor of dissatisfaction is the amateurish acting — some so poor, I cringed. The gore effects made me cringe, too, but because they’re good; particularly brutal is the unfortunate meeting of a character’s face and the harsh corner of a bathroom countertop.

While the death sequences (and a resulting disco-ball head) are inspired, the whole of the Nebraska-shot indie is not. Even the starting credits rip off Goblin’s Suspiria score as brazenly as Richard Band did Bernard Herrmann for Re-Animator. Worse, the killer is exactly who you expect. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.