Basements were built for shelter and storing wine. But I suppose they’re good for caging humans, too, which is how Dr. Blackwood (Bill Greer) makes use of the space in the desert castle serving as his sanitarium. It’s where, amid other misdeeds, his ever-blinking hunchbacked assistant (Pierre Agostino, The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher) whips an underwear-clad cutie until her back resembles a bag of spilled Twizzlers.

With box walls that scream “magnet-school Shakespeare,” the castle doubles as the residence for Dr. Blackwood and his basically R-word sister (Lynne Marta, Blood Beach). Into this intermingling of mental illness and domestic bliss steps Diane, aka the new Mrs. Blackwood (Deedy Peters, channeling the confidence of Martha Raye in her Polident commercials).

Once she starts poking her nose into his bizness, her husband starts gaslighting her so she won’t notice the lady he sticks in a box with a snake. Or the guy he guillotines. Or the eye exam conducted via fireplace poker. And especially not the murders being committed by a cave monster, played by quick shots of red bicycle-handle streamers.

Meanwhile, from certain side angles, Dr. Blackwood’s hairline resembles the shape of a Southwestern or Midwestern state. I’m going with New Mexico.

Absolutely zero possession occurs in Help Me… I’m Possessed!, but I hardly care because then we would be denied that wonderful title. Although directed by Charles Nizet (The Ravager), this bargain-basement potboiler is written by the Blackwoods themselves, Peters and Greer, both way over their heads. At least their script goes out of its way to treat the mentally ill with respect rather than stereotype them … okay, yeah, I’m totally kidding there, as you can see.

A decade after playing this pic’s fire-and-brimstone physician who achieves a sexual thrill for decapitating a guy, Greer went on to produce more than 100 goddamn episodes of TV’s Charles in Charge. Shoulda quit while he was ahead. —Rod Lott

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Maybe it’s a “me thing,” but if I had a comatose child whose life were dependent on electrical machines and other things to work without a hitch, I wouldn’t knowingly move my loved ones into a legendarily haunted house, no matter how many points the realtor sacrificed to lower the principal.

Yet Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character does just that in Amityville: The Awakening. The 10th official entry in the storied (get it?) Amityville Horror franchise, the Franck Khalfoun film cannily exists in the real world. Its characters discuss not only Ronald DeFeo Jr.’s family slaughter of 1974, but George and Kathy Lutz’s (fabricated?) experiences that informed Jay Anson’s 1977 bestseller, which a student recommends, and 1979’s blockbuster movie, which they watch — after briefly considering Amityville II: The Possession and outright deriding the Ryan Reynolds remake, as one should.

That’s a fun conceit in what is a resoundingly dull picture — something to be expected when your lead is the vapid Bella Thorne (Boo! A Madea Halloween), more tabloid personality than actress, as attested by a résumé that extends from the Disney Channel to hardcore pornography. Thorne plays Belle, a single vowel away from her own first name, underlining the low-stretch demands of her role as twin sister to James (Cameron Monaghan, Tron: Ares), the aforementioned vegetative boy who can’t move anything but, we presume, his bowels.

Once 112 Ocean Avenue trots out its usual unlisted amenities — voices from beyond, swarms of CGI flies, dogs driven bonkers, et al. — James’ condition ironically shows signs of inexplicable improvement. Why, it’s almost as if he’s possessed by those vague demonic forces in the cellar’s bricked-up passage to hell.

Amityville: The Awakening is one odd duck feathered with questionable creative choices that suggest a problem-plagued production — not from any Satan basements, but worse: Dimension Pictures’ meddling head honchos Bob and Harvey Weinstein. They copresent with Blumhouse, which aligns with this viewer’s feeling of Awakening having one foot stuck in the teen-horror past as the other struggles to reach as far forward as possible. We know Khalfoun is more than capable of crafting suspense, as his P2 debut and Maniac remake prove, but this tired exercise is merely a jump-scare-a-palooza free of imagination and the ill at ease.

Although toilet goo appears to be absent this go-round, it’s not; the movie itself is a bowl of that. —Rod Lott

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No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers — unless you’re stuck in summer school. Mark Harmon is nowhere in sight. Instead, we get Charlie (one-timer Simon Wallace), who arrives to class like he’s King Shit, although he’s gangly, mainlines Tic-Tacs and wears rollerblades. 

Most repellent, Charlie runs a movie review website. Assumedly this keeps him up late, because he keeps drifting into sleep glorious sleep. (However, his “reviews” appear to be one phrase and a letter grade.) Every time he falls aslumber, he’s in a self-contained dream on campus, thus affording the shaggy Summer School the veneer of a horror anthology. Among its five directors is Mike P. Nelson, who graduated to bigger, better things like the 2021 Wrong Turn reboot.

In these nightmares, Charlie might encounter vampires or spider-masked furries. He could find himself the subject of a satanic sacrifice, complete with gored chicken. His teacher (Jennifer Prettyman, Zombie Dollz) and security officer (Ty Richardson) could be gun-toting Nazis, or he could be pursued by horny hillbillies who think his shirtless self looks “finger-lickin’ good.” 

Regardless, each time he dies, he wakes up in class again — sometimes alone, sometimes among classmates like the bleached-blonde, Jennifer Tilly-ish Lindsey (Amy Cocchiarella, who should be the lead). It’s all a bit much and unable to sustain itself. Paired with somnambulistic pacing and pauses, the murky videography really harms engagement. And with Charlie front and center, Summer School all but challenges us to hang with it. He’s arrogant and looks like he never met a comb. Where’s Freddy Krueger when you need him?

The “shock” ending isn’t one, signaling its own approach with everything but an overweight guy in an orange vest and hard hat. Let’s just say I wonder if Charlie promised his Terry Pratchett paperbacks to anyone. You’re better off auditing actual summer school than viewing this remedial Goosebumps. To quote the movie’s poetically sassy line, “You’re welcome, dillhole.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.