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SHE LOVED BLOSSOMS MORE arrives as one of the most unusual films that I’ve seen lately, and that’s saying something. This feature resists easy categorization and pushes firmly into the terrain of the Greek “weirdwave.” Directed by Yannis Veslemes, the film fuses grief, science fiction, surreal horror, and an undercurrent of bleak comedy into a deliberately confounding story of three brothers attempting to undo the permanent. What begins as a strange family drama quickly morphs into something far less stable — a feverish meditation on memory and mourning where logic crumbles as easily as the flowers that line its title.

Dan Curtis’ influence on horror television in the 1970s can’t be overstated. Having already carved a space for Gothic melodrama with DARK SHADOWS and expanded into cult TV films like THE NIGHT STALKER, he continued to explore eerie stories through ABC’s Wide World Mystery. The Kino Lorber collection LATE-NIGHT MYSTERIES rescues four of those productions—SHADOW OF FEAR, THE INVASION OF CAROL ENDERS, COME DIE WITH ME, and NIGHTMARE AT 43 HILLCREST—and brings them into HD for the first time. What emerges is a window into a lost era, when horror was filtered through the constraints of broadcast television, yet often found inventive ways to unsettle the audience.

KILLING FAITH takes the bones of a classic western and stitches them together with something far more haunting: a sense that the land itself has been cursed. Set in the Arizona territory of 1849, the film drops us into a plague-scarred desert where superstition and science are at war. On one side, a grieving doctor numbed by ether, clinging to what little logic he has left; on the other, a mother convinced her daughter’s strange affliction is nothing less than demonic. Between them lies the question the movie keeps circling: is the evil real, or are we simply desperate to believe in it?

FREAKED is the kind of movie that shouldn’t work—and somehow it does. It’s a gleefully obnoxious corporate satire wrapped in a carnival of latex, clay, and rubber, where every frame is crammed with jokes that flow from absurd wordplay and blink-and-you-miss-it visual gags. What gives it staying power isn’t just the noise; it’s the unity of its attitude. This thing is committed. The film’s whole ethos is “too much,” and that maximalism becomes the point.

Few horror films from the early 1980s blur the line between fantasy, industry satire, and straight-up slasher excess quite like THE LAST HORROR FILM. Directed by David Winters, it reunites Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro, who had already left a mark together in MANIAC, but here the dynamic takes on a different tone. Rather than the oppressive grimness, this one turns Cannes itself into a stage for obsession, paranoia, and guerrilla-style filmmaking that still feels chaotic decades later.

THE ICE TOWER doesn’t open with chaos. Instead, it settles into a quiet, unsettling rhythm that seeps under the skin. Set in the 1970s, the story follows Jeanne, a runaway orphan who stumbles into a film studio. There, she discovers a production of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’ in progress and falls under the spell of Cristina, the star playing the role. What begins as fascination quickly deepens into something more dangerous, with Jeanne caught in a web of glamour, authority, and quiet menace.

Stelvio Massi’s THE .44 SPECIALIST (originally released in Italy as Mark colpisce ancora, or Mark Strikes Again) lands in the heart of the Eurocrime boom of the 1970s, when gritty realism and relentless violence defined a whole generation of Italian cop thrillers. As the third entry in the “Mark” trilogy, it brings back Franco Gasparri’s Inspector Mark Patti for another dive into the murky intersection of crime, politics, and undercover policing. Kino Lorber’s 2025 Blu-ray release resurrects the film for a new audience, reminding us why these poliziotteschi films still pulse with raw energy decades later.

ALMOST HOME opens with an intensity that doesn’t come from gunfire or explosions but from the silence of a man’s haunted mind. At just 20 minutes, this short film confronts a reality that persists with you: the wars many veterans fight don’t end on foreign soil. Director Menhaj Huda and writer-performer Kamal Khan craft a deeply personal story that tackles identity, trauma, and community in ways that feel both universal and yet also specific.

V/H/S/HALLOWEEN understands the job. Eight films in, this series knows that the most valuable thing it can offer isn’t lore, world-building, or IP maintenance; it’s a grab bag with teeth. The seasonal angle finally gives the franchise a backbone it has flirted with in previous installments but never fully embraced: jack-o’-lanterns, neighborhood rituals, home hauntings, gritty camcorders, and urban legends traded over sugar and fear. What’s different here is focus. Instead of a scattershot mix where one great short has to drag three middling ones up the hill, this entry aims for a baseline of “good” with multiple spikes into “nasty, memorable, and maybe great.”

RAW MEAT sits at the intersection of urban legend and social rot, a lean, grimy British horror that uses the London Underground like a haunted cathedral. A nineteenth-century cave-in strands a work crew beneath the city; generations later, the last survivor surfaces, broken by isolation and driven by a wretched kind of need. That core idea—civilization gliding on rails while something else festers below—gives the film its staying power.

GOOD BOY takes a premise that seems almost too simple—experience a haunting through a dog’s eyes—and treats it with a straight face and a careful hand. The result is a lean, tactile thriller where the camera crouches to floor level, the edges of the frame feel unsafe, and every empty corner becomes a question. Ben Leonberg’s film lives or dies by the honesty of that point of view, and it largely lives: not by turning the dog into a human surrogate with quippy inner thoughts, but by building a level of attention—ear twitches, held stares, cautious steps—that the audience learns to read. It’s a clever gambit executed without cheats, and it gives the familiar haunted-house shape a freshness.

COYOTES opens with a family barricaded in their Hollywood Hills home while a pack of coordinated coyotes circles for the kill. That’s the hook, and the movie never tries to disguise it with faux depth or extended mythologies. It leans instead into a feral, fast, and funny survival story, the kind that clicks when the filmmaking trusts the audience to ride the turbulence rather than explain it. Colin Minihan’s direction understands the basic appeal of the siege: a defined space, a visible threat, and a dwindling margin for error. From there, the film balances dread with deadpan humor and a social commentary that keeps the experience intriguing as the body count rises.

THE PARTISAN approaches a towering legend with reverence and a cool head. Building a narrative around Krystyna Skarbek—Britain’s first and most daring female spy—should be a layup for tension and complex moral stakes. The elements are here: clandestine routes through occupied Poland, a web of informants, and betrayals that cut both personally and politically. What emerges, though, is a careful, even tasteful spy film that often plays as if it fears its own pulse. It’s earnest, staged, and led by a committed performance from Morgane Polanski, yet the story’s sparks don’t catch fire as often as they should. The result lands in that frustrating middle ground: a subject worthy of greatness delivered at a steady simmer.

HELLOWEEN sets itself a tricky target: bottle the collective anxiety of the modern-day clown craze and spin it into a narrative with a darker, razor-edge. Rather than treating it as random, the film imagines a conductor behind the madness—a killer whose carnival persona becomes a recruiting poster for rage, revenge, and anarchic spectacle. That premise is the film’s core. It’s topical without being trapped in the news cycle, and it lets the story grapple with the way fear travels: faster than facts, stickier than reason, and dangerously easy to weaponize. Even before the first real stab of violence, the movie treats rumor like an accelerant—and then lights the match.

CREEPSHOW 2 carries the weight of a sequel to one of horror’s most beloved anthologies. With George A. Romero and Stephen King returning as creative forces, and Michael Gornick stepping up from cinematographer to director, expectations were high. What audiences got wasn’t quite the same—three tales instead of the five that filled the original—but not without its charms. It’s a film that splits horror fans: some embrace its grim humor and grotesque energy, others find it a pale shadow of its predecessor. I fall somewhere in between; the film has its moments, but it never hits the same level as the original.