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Demián Rugna’s  Terrified  has been continually treating viewers with its unique vision of terror and continues to do so today with new viewers arriving at its haunted suburban landscape. His latest feature film  When Evil Lurks  takes Rugna’s relatively small scale approach and applies it to a larger world. By continuing to focus on small communities Rugna manages to keep the stakes and tension high while implicating just how far the ripples of consequence go. The impressive thing about  When Evil Lurks  is how it approaches its world-building. Everything becomes revealed through necessity or the stubborn nature and actions of our main characters, brothers Pedro and Jimi Yazurlo (Ezekiel Rodriguez & Demián Salomón, respectively). Deep in the woods where the two brothers live, a gunshot rings in the distance which alerts them to investigate its meaning. Press enter or click to view image in full size Courtesy of Shudder and IFC Films. A Shudder and IFC ...

Genre-blending cautionary tales have been in vogue since the rise of works like  Black Mirror , Love, Death + Robots, Electric Dreams … and so on, even portions of Guillermo del Toro’s recent anthology series  Cabinet of Curiosities .  Their themes are mostly one-note, showing how humanity has strayed from its well-intentioned path to use its technological tools for sinister purposes on an institutional or smaller societal scale. Divinity  is very much a story in the vein of the above series and is ultimately focused on examining at some greater length the implications of developments we only dream about. Jaxxon Pierce (Stephen Dorff) is a business mogul with a monopoly on the population within the substance known as Divine, a drug that literally provides the user with immortality in their current form. Press enter or click to view image in full size Stephen Dorff as “Jaxxon Pierce”, Photo by Danny Hiele. Courtesy of Utopia and Sumerian. Jaxxon inherits the company a...

Investigation is the bread and butter of David Farrier, a journalist who excels in uncovering bizarre people — and the situations they stir up. This time the subject in question gets too close for comfort in Farrier’s life, and it’s not something he could ever have seen coming. After discovering an antique shop in his neighborhood that extorts people parking in their private lot after hours, Farrier chooses to write about its ludicrous practices that happen to be perfectly legal. Once word spreads from his own inquisitive platform, Farrier hits a nerve with the shop’s owner. A lawyer who appears to represent the antique shop sends him a cease and desist letter, threatening legal action if Farrier’s defamation continues. What follows is a highly unpredictable string of events that leads Farrier to investigate and, in many cases, reinvestigate — the true identity of a man named Michael Organ, whose name is first encountered on the cease and desist letter. It morphs into a personal story ...

The entertainment industry is full of toxic people surrounded by circles of apologists, standing at odds with those they’ve helped abuse and alienate. Dan Richards, former child star, receives a distressing phone call amid a tumultuous episode of clinical depression. Whatever future he had been planning for himself has now become impossible; instead, his next plan shifts to moving back to his home state of Florida to live with his parents. On a whim, he puts together a party of his best friends to surround himself with and eventually makes an announcement to them about what has been going on. The news Dan delivers is at once heartbreaking for all those who showed up for him and serves as an excuse for himself to spiral once more, drinking himself into a stupor multiple times before the festivities come to an end for him.  The Send-Off  offers candid moments between people during this party that show how each friend of Dan’s really feels about him, even in an environment where ...

Cru Ennis and Lee Roy Kunz’s film  Deliver Us  sets itself apart from other titles in the religious horror genre by starting with a small focus and widening to something unexpectedly and suddenly on a grand scale. The filmmakers start to morph their story from its tight and arresting opening, serving what seemed like a private, personal approach of a divine miracle in the horror world, to something much more high-stakes and bombastic. Sister Yulia (Maria Vera Ratti), a nun in a remote convent becomes pregnant by immaculate conception with twins and is convinced that one child is good and the other evil. Father Daniel Fox (Lee Roy Kunz) accepts one last job before retiring to spend more time with his wife (Jaune Kimmel), to determine whether or not her pregnancy is part of a prophecy of the rebirth of the Antichrist. For its first act,  Deliver Us  stays relatively focused, soaking in a paranoia of the other that religious horror can do so well. When Fox discovers tha...