A Shot-on-Video Spell Cast With Real Devotion

Read Time:6 Minute, 12 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Coven Of The Black Cube
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Genre: Horror, Romance, Queer Horror, Shot-on-Video, Underground Cinema
Year Released: 2024, 2026 Blu-ray
Runtime: 1h 37m
Director(s): Brewce Longo
Writer(s): Brewce Longo, Zoe Angeli, Josh Schafer
Cast: Morrigan Thompson-Milam, Zoe Angeli, Josh Schafer, Kasper Meltedhair, Tina Krause, Joe Swanberg, David "The Rock" Nelson
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.bloodsickproductions.bigcartel.com, www.mvdshop.com, or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: There’s a certain kind of underground horror movie that doesn’t care if people think it's popular or if it fits any norm. It knows exactly who it’s for, knows exactly how it wants to look, and knows that any idea of perfection is far less important than conviction. COVEN OF THE BLACK CUBE has that kind of confidence. Directed by Brewce Longo and co-written with Zoe Angeli and Josh Schafer, this is the sort of handmade, shot-on-video genre picture that feels like it was willed into existence by people who love scrappiness, love tape-era horror, love queer subculture, and love the idea that cinema can still feel dangerous, horny, funny, and deeply personal all at once.

The setup sounds like someone tossed a stack of 90s direct-to-video VHS, a true crime paperback, a goth mixtape, and a bottle of fake blood into a blender and somehow got something coherent (for the most part) out of it. A coven helps unhappy wives murder their husbands. A slacker turns a pizzeria into a video rental shop. A lonely soul gets pulled into a doomed romance with a serial killer. On paper, that sounds like far too much movie for ninety-seven minutes, and honestly, part of the charm here is that COVEN OF THE BLACK CUBE never really tries to smooth out those wrinkles. It’s sprawling in the way many regional oddities used to be, throwing out ideas because the filmmakers clearly believe the accumulation of texture matters just as much as neat structure.

That texture is the whole draw. This movie doesn’t just imitate 90s SOV horror; it lives inside that world. The 4:3 framing, the fuzzy, static-filled images, the locations, the rough edges, the hand-built style, it all feels like an act of devotion rather than empty nostalgia. There’s a big difference between a movie that uses retro aesthetics as a costume and one that genuinely understands what made that era of filmmaking feel alive. COVEN OF THE BLACK CUBE gets it.

For all its witchcraft, murder, and sleaze, this isn’t just a stack of cult-movie references stitched together. Beneath the blood, jokes, and weirdness, there’s a queer romance that gives the film something more than novelty. The connection at the center of the story gives the chaos a pulse. Instead of treating its romance as decoration or as bait for exploitation, the film leans into it as the heart of the whole thing. That matters. It gives the story a tenderness that makes the uglier, nastier material land harder.

Morrigan Thompson-Milam and Zoe Angeli are crucial to the experience. Their work gives the movie a reason to exist beyond aesthetic appreciation. In a film like this, performances don’t need to be perfect in the conventional sense, but they do need to feel committed, and this cast commits. There’s a rough, but genuine quality to the acting that suits the material. Everyone seems to understand the exact focus this film needs, which is a lot harder to pull off than it sounds. Underground horror falls apart fast when the cast doesn’t believe in the tone.

The material around the coven is especially fun. This isn’t clean, distinguished witchcraft. It’s grubby, low-rent, and tactile. The occult here feels connected to budget decor, dusty retail spaces, sex panic, bad decisions, and women trying to claw back some power in a hostile world. That gives the film a charge. It isn’t trying to be elegant. It wants to be sticky. It wants to feel like an object you found at the bottom of a milk crate under a folding table in some dim convention hall, with a photocopied cover and a warning from the seller that “this one’s a lot.”

This is absolutely the kind of movie that will lose some viewers on contact. If you need clean structure, slickness, or a story that always prioritizes clarity, COVEN OF THE BLACK CUBE is going to test your patience. The plotting can feel broken at best. Scenes sometimes exist more for atmosphere or attitude than for progression. There are stretches where the movie seems more interested in hanging out in its own world than moving efficiently from one narrative point to the next. For the wrong audience, that’ll read as self-indulgence.

What really sticks with me is how specific the movie feels. In a genre landscape flooded with interchangeable content, COVEN OF THE BLACK CUBE has an actual identity. It has the fetishization of objects, local color, queer desire, regional grime, tape-era horror worship, and a genuine affection for outsiders. It feels like it was made by people who weren’t trying to break into the industry so much as leave their own weird little mark on the margins.

COVEN OF THE BLACK CUBE won’t work for everyone, and it definitely isn’t trying to. But for viewers who respond to underground horror with real personality, for anyone who misses the days when a film could feel like a transmission from the house next door, and for people who want queer genre filmmaking that’s sweaty, funny, damaged, and full of love for the form, this is a pretty easy one to get behind. It’s crude, romantic, ugly, and charming in exactly the way it needs to be. This is the kind of movie that earns its cult status. Not because it’s enough to cross over, but because it’s too specific, too committed, and too lovingly deranged to be mistaken for anything else.

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[photo courtesy of BLOOD SICK PRODUCTIONS, MVD ENTERTAINMENT]

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