Tag Archives: Horror

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ROWS (2015)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

Rows is available for rental or purchase on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: David W. Warfield

FEATURING: Hannah Schick, Lauren Lakis, Nancy Murray, Joe Basile, Kenneth Hughes

PLOT: The daughter of a prolific real estate developer must find her way out of a mysterious maze after she attempts to deliver an eviction notice to a malevolent tenant.

COMMENTS: If you’ve driven across the American Midwest and Great Plains in summertime, you’ve probably been witness to a notably dissonant image: vast fields of corn and wheat, dotted with a mix of ramshackle, rotting old farmhouses and barns teetering on the brink of collapse, contrasted with brand-new, modern houses with lush green lawns and a pair of fresh-off-the-line pickup trucks parked out front. You zip through an economic metaphor, a thruway uniting past and present, a great big landscape of disconnect. Rows knows this feeling. Rows is clearly stimulated by the perplexing feelings that this vision inspires. And Rows is still trying to figure out what comes next.

The world that Rose (get it?) stumbles into bears some of the marks of that confusion. She’s a pretty, rich girl whose only job is doing office chores for her daddy. She’s already feeling the pain of her privilege. As a result, she’s nervous long before she first sets foot inside the house of Mrs. Haviland to boot her from the premises, but her encounter with the woman (and her highly suspect cookies) is proof of how dangerous it is to leave suburbia to venture into America’s breadbasket. We know Rose is going to have to do some penance. What’s intriguing is that her punishment seems to be mental, as she finds herself in a recursive loop which drags her and her friend Greta into the inescapable maze of the cornfield, with escape leading inevitably back to the farmhouse. It’s very nearly Groundhog Day meets Drag Me to Hell.  

Writer-director Warfield puts a lot of skill on display. The film is fantastically shot, making the endless fields of corn look both alluring and ominous. (Surprisingly, the classically Midwestern settings were shot in Maryland.) He also has a knack for pacing; even when Rose’s traps and time loops feel inevitable, there’s a steady unfolding of dread that keeps the psychological horror fresh and visceral. If you aren’t particularly interested in logic or the familiar beats of storytelling, then Rows is a reasonably impressive effort. If anything, the cracks start to show when the script actively adds new elements to keep things interesting, like the addition of an outsider character posing another threat to Rose and Greta, or the out-of-left-field introduction of some malevolent spirit trying to seduce Rose’s father. Rows plays the weird card very effectively, especially once you recognize the repetition that serves as Rose’s purgatory.

When you move past the film’s gimmick, you have a production that looks good but has no real depth. The movie never invests in its characters, for example, especially Schick, the only person in the film we can be certain is real. Without that, the appeal is reduced to its lead actresses wandering through the cornfields in tight tank tops. (The performances are serviceable, although the leads seem to have matriculated at the Joey Tribbiani School of Acting.) The script never really wraps up its intriguing plot, framing the climax as Rose finally learning to look deep inside herself, but then couching it inside other Twilight Zone-ish twists. Rows has some solid tricks up its sleeve, but that only makes the stab at some sort of relevance feel not just unearned but premature. It’s a pity, because there’s genuine filmmaking talent at work, and Warfield has stumbled on to an issue and a community that could really be at home in the thriller and horror genres. There’s some interesting houses along this road, but ultimately a lot more empty fields of grain.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…events become increasingly surreal… a difficult film to synopsise without giving too much away. Partly because its story is such a strange, dreamlike one… becomes something of a chore to keep caring for an answer to its mystery once you hit the midway point. Interesting, but flawed.” Stuart Willis, Sex Gore Mutants (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by Jay. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

Capsules

CAPSULE: HOUSE OF DREAMS (1963)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

“The house stood alone,
a mere ghost in the midst of the modern, uncaring world.
Within her skeletal fibers secrets remained secluded forever.
The only one who might have revealed them
was now lying in a world where neither time nor flesh existed.”

– quote from Lee Hansen’s novel in House of Dreams

DIRECTED BY: Robert Berry

FEATURING: Pauline Elliott, Robert Berry, Charlene Bradley, Lance Bird

PLOT: An author writing about a haunted house begins having eerily prophetic nightmares.

COMMENTS: A low-budget horror film made by college students, House of Dreams is, understandably, an amateur effort. It’s also rather impressive for what it manages to accomplish with limited resources and a novice crew. It contains way too many uninteresting scenes of marital bickering, broken up by far too few dream sequences. Reverse the proportion of dream to reality and it would be a satisfyingly weird little chiller along the lines of Carnival of Souls (to which it’s often compared). House of Dreams doesn’t quite succeed in sustaining a spooky atmosphere but, in its best moments, it conjures surreal dreamscapes worthy of ‘s Blood of a Poet.

Lee Hansen (Berry) suffers from writer’s block. As he struggles to complete his latest novel, he begins experiencing disturbing dreams. If that wasn’t bad enough, his wife Elaine, a recovering alcoholic wrestling with her own demons, accuses him of neglecting her. She wants to take a vacation to rekindle their romance but he insists on finishing his book first. What seems like a responsible adult decision backfires on him as the subject of Lee’s book, the “old Winninger place,” takes over his unconscious mind.

Filmed on location in an actual rural Indiana “haunted” house owned by the director’s mother, House of Dreams makes good use of a genuinely creepy setting. Each of Lee’s nightmares begins with him driving to the dilapidated house and slowly approaching it from the front walkway. He reluctantly enters the front door which, of course, opens on its own to welcome him. What happens next varies from dream to dream but, amid the usual ghostly tropes, some startlingly original images appear, each nightmare concluding with a frightening final scene.

Creative use of interior architecture and unusual camera angles add to the mood of unease. With a few simple props and generous use of chiaroscuro lighting, Berry and his cinematographer show how less can be more when it comes to crafting suspenseful horror. The minimalist soundtrack, an original score, also takes a less-is-more approach.1 Occasional metronomic tappings add tension to the scenes of everyday life, and menacing electronic organ strains accompany the dream sequences. A scene in which Elaine suddenly appears in Lee’s study, wearing a ghostly white dress, feels all the more unsettling for taking place in complete silence.

As tragedies begin to befall Lee’s family members, he realizes his dreams foreshadow things to come. Unfortunately, the family drama element of the plot isn’t very compelling. The student actors aren’t quite up to the task, and unnecessarily long conversations are a major weakness in the script. Pauline Elliot isn’t bad as Lee’s wife,  and Berry does his best in the lead (a role intended for a professional actor who ended up declining the part). As director, actor, writer, and editor, Berry demonstrates a solid grounding in the fundamentals of storytelling. Footage of the Winninger place, including shots of the dramatic staircase and the overgrown well, periodically intercuts the domestic moments, illustrating the house’s growing hold over Lee and his relatives. White roses, briefly glimpsed in the opening act, recur throughout, a symbol whose full significance isn’t revealed until the very end.

Eventually, Lee decides to investigate the Winninger house in real life—or is he already trapped inside the nightmare? His penultimate foray plays out like all the other dream sequences. Lee drives to the house, he hesitates on the walkway, and the front door hangs open, taunting him to enter. Will Lee escape the house’s strange power or has he already become its final victim? Fans of low-budget ’60s horror will find House of Dreams worth a visit.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an arduous regional horror, shot for peanuts in Decker, Indiana by a group of film students in 1963. Like the long-lost sibling of Herk Harvey’s altogether more interesting Carnival of Souls (1962) this throws any established notions of narrative and logic to the wind but, unlike Harvey’s enduring diamond in the rough, fails to engage the hapless audience.”–Kevin Lyons, The EOFFTV Review 

1An alternate score written in 2019 received Berry’s approval, and the latest Blu-ray release from Vinegar Syndrome/Bleeding Skull includes both.

House of Dreams [Blu-ray]

House of Dreams [Blu-ray]

  • Region Free Blu-ray

New starting from: 36.99 $

Go to Amazon
Capsules

CAPSULE: THE LIVING DEAD GIRL (1982)

Leave a comment

La morte vivante

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Françoise Blanchard

PLOT: Summoned home by the familiar strains of a music box, Hélène finds her deceased best friend transformed into a blood-thirsty revenant.

Still from The Living Dead Girl (1982)

COMMENTS: Abandoning the laissez-faire surrealism of his 1970s films, Rollin entered the ’80s with a more traditional, blood-soaked horror effort. Living Dead Girl boasts a more straightforward and coherent plot than many Rollin movies, with one gory set-piece after another. The script minimizes his usual wordy exposition on the existential quandaries of the vampiric condition, allowing the drama between the two leads to unfold amidst plentiful killings. There’s nothing especially weird about this one, but it may appeal to fans of low budget ’80s horror.

Catherine Valmont (Blanchard), the scion of an aristocratic family, comes back to life when a minor earthquake spills the toxic waste that some unscrupulous corporation has been hiding in her family crypt. When the men disposing of the chemical barrels decide to rob her tomb, they get more than they bargained for as she rises from her coffin. At first, Catherine seems almost zombie-like, murdering indiscriminately without knowing why she’s compelled to do so. As she returns to her family’s ancestral chateau, she gradually recovers memories, including of her childhood friend, Hélène (Pierro).

Unlike most Rollin films, this pair of female protagonists have a backstory, which adds a surprising degree of emotional depth as the narrative builds towards an agonizing climax. Catherine and Hélène swore an oath to be blood sisters as children, including a promise to follow each other even in death. A music box symbolizes this promise. Catherine’s ability to play it for Hélène, even in her undead condition, reinforces the bond between them.

Quickly realizing that Catherine needs human blood to remain in a living state, Hélène progresses from unwilling accomplice to determined murderer in her desperation to keep Catherine “alive.” As their relationship pivots, a side plot emerges involving an obnoxious American tourist who’s convinced something strange is going on in the old chateau. A typical nosy photographer stock character, as seen in many American horror films from the 1930s-40s, but at least in this case she gets what’s coming to her.

Philipe D’Aram, the composer for Rollin’s Fascination, returns with an uninspired synth-inflected score that does nothing but accentuate the sparseness of the story. Though the kills keep coming, with plenty of gratuitous blood and nudity, the overall pacing is slow, dragged out by unnecessary scenes of local color. Living Dead Girl lacks Rollin’s typical dreaminess but still has moments of startling beauty. Its strength lies in the performances of Pierro and Blanchard. Thanks to their intensity, this is one of Rollin’s most strangely moving films, with a searingly unforgettable final scene.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…one of [Rollin’s] most lyrical and haunting achievements… the film never releases its grasp on the viewer’s imagination and conjures up a strange fairy tale ambiance…”–Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital (UHD release)

 

The Living Dead Girl (US Limited Edition

The Living Dead Girl (US Limited Edition 4K UHD)

  • The Living Dead Girl (US Limited Edition 4K UHD)

List Price : 54.99 $

Offer: 32.99 $

Go to Amazon
List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BACKROOMS (2026)

8 Comments

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING:, ,

PLOT: A frustrated furniture-store owner discovers a seemingly infinite maze of mysterious rooms in the back of his store, and invites his therapist to help explore them.

Still from backrooms (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Explore the labyrinths of the unconscious in this ambiguous and terrifying psychological horror.

COMMENTS: Clark is a frustrated, divorced wannabe architect barely making ends meet at his crappy furniture store. He drinks too much and is unhappy enough that he goes to see a therapist, Mary, to vent and role-play his breakup with his wife. While investigating an electricity bill that’s much higher than it should be, Clark discovers he can pass through a wall in his basement to enter a maze of backrooms filled with odd phenomena. Mary is skeptical when he tells her of his explorations, but when he fails to show up at a weekly session, she follows him into the backrooms.

Thirty-something furniture salesmen and female psychologists do not seem like the kind of protagonists 20-year old director Kane Parsons would pick to pilot his feature debut film, but herein lies Backrooms‘ genius. Parson wisely outsourced his script to television writer Will Soodik. Soodik delivers an unexpectedly rich scenario that pries into Clark’s insecurities and Mary’s traumatic backstory without fully explaining them, leaving Parsons free to expend his youthful creativity on designing the rooms themselves. The film’s interlocking chambers feature improbable geometries, optical illusions, out-of-place objects like heaps of stacked furniture, piles of laundry, dead birds, sneakers half-submerged in the floor, and so on. The deeper we penetrate into the maze, the more surreal the objects we find—and eventually, people (of a sort) show up. Everything is built wrong, as if misremembered or imagined by an alien intelligence trying to recreate human artifacts based on a stock photo image library, with little understanding of the ways objects actually relate to each other in the physical world. The constructs recall the uncanny, too-many-fingered visions that AI regurgitated only a few years ago. How and why were these created, by whom and for what purpose? The indeterminate grotesqueness of Backrooms simulacra gives the film uncanny power; the resonance with its characters’ psychological flaws imbues it with meaning.

There are two potential pitfalls with Backrooms. The first is the expectations set by locating the film within the horror genre. Backrooms is at its best when dwelling within its own unease: it does not need (many) monsters, stalkers, jump scares, or scenes of bloodletting to liven it up. These elements do show up, but miraculously, the story survives its chase scenes, ending by circling back to its inexplicable roots. A looming issue, however, may be the audience’s insatiable thirst for “lore,” which, if improperly indulged, can lead to the biggest buzzkill of all: “explication.” Backrooms 2 probably would be—and, I strongly fear will be—a terrible idea. As a standalone work, Backrooms beautifully expands upon the promising but narrow premise of the original shorts, adding depth and forming an ambiguously closed circle. Please, don’t push your luck. At the tender age of age 20, Parsons should still have decades of completely original nightmares to dredge up from his fertile unconscious.

Audience notes: The theater was fairly full for a weekday evening showing in the expensive “Xtreme” format. There were no walkouts (with one exception I’ll mention at the end). There were more teenagers there than I expected, sitting in the front rows for an immersive experience, to boot; I should have been able to predict this knowing of Parson’s YouTube audience, but it still surprised me. One parent brought two boys, estimated ages 7-11. The younger got scared in the middle of the film (during a scene where they discover a Christmas tree in a red-lit room) and his mom had to escort him out (I don’t know if he returned later). The older boy was heard to exclaim “that was scary and weird!” when it was all over. I’m considering adoption.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It is ambitious, eerie, frustrating, hypnotic, and deeply weird, a film that would rather haunt the edges of your understanding than hand you a map.”–Doug Jamieson, The Jam Report (contemporaneous)