In Who Hugs the Sea, Egyptian filmmaker Mahmoud Mahmoud delivers a deeply meditative short that drifts between dream and reality, emotion and abstraction. Known for blending spiritual reflection with cinematic experimentation, Mahmoud—an independent director and screenwriter, member of both the Egyptian Syndicate of Cinematic Professions and the Australian Academy of Cinema & Television—once again uses film as a poetic vessel for human experience. This is not a movie to be “understood” so much as felt. Mahmoud’s storytelling draws inspiration from masters like Tarkovsky, Kim Ki-duk, and Fellini, using silence, symbolism, and shifting time as his tools.
Read MoreTravis Turner (2021)
Travis Turner, directed by Mike Klassen, is a 1 hour 12-minute drama that follows a high school kid throwing a party under unusual circumstances. Despite a promising premise, the film struggles to deliver a compelling experience. The central performance, by Nick Szeman, is notably polarizing.
Read MoreSinful (2020)
Rich Mallery’s Sinful is a tense, if flawed, crime-thriller that explores the dark aftermath of a violent act and the psychological unraveling of a young couple. Newlyweds Remy and Salem find their honeymoon abruptly cut short after committing a gruesome crime, forcing them to hide out in a mysterious house as an unsettling darkness creeps in. At just 1 hour and 15 minutes, the film packs a lot into a tight runtime, but not always with the polish or clarity one might hope for.
Read MoreScary Tales: Dead Zone (2023)
Scary Tales: Dead Zone is a low-budget horror anthology that attempts to weave three separate stories into a single frame narrative, but unfortunately, it struggles on nearly every front. Directed by Geno McGahee and starring Chris Spinelli, Lorrie Bacon, Mark Carter, Eric Michaelian, and Adriana Medina, the film offers glimpses of creativity but largely fails to deliver suspense, scares, or coherent storytelling. The premise is straightforward: a couple gets lost in the woods after an argument, encounters a strange man, and is drawn into his bizarre stories, supposedly inspired by his days as a detective.
Read MoreBikini Hackers (2023)
Scott Hillman’s Bikini Hackers is an audacious, if uneven, entry into his repertoire of low-budget, camp-leaning cinema. Clocking in at a brisk 67 minutes, the film attempts to merge comedy, crime capers, and a playful take on lesbian romance, centering on a group of women who plot to redistribute wealth by taking down a major corporation—all while clad in bikinis. The premise is delightfully ridiculous, and for about half the runtime, the film delivers exactly the sort of chaotic charm Hillman fans might hope for.
Read MoreMad Cowgirl (2007)
Gregory Hatanaka’s Mad Cowgirl is an audacious plunge into the surreal and the grotesque, a film that refuses to be tamed or neatly categorized. At its core, it’s the story of a woman, played with volatile intensity by Sarah Lassez, who discovers she is dying of a brain disorder and embarks on a hallucinatory journey that quickly spirals into violence, madness, and eroticized chaos. From the opening moments, the film establishes itself as a piece of uncompromising, fevered cinema—simultaneously alluring and unsettling.
Read MoreAwakening of Emanuelle (2021)
At just over an hour long, Awakening of Emanuelle attempts to recast the classic Emanuelle persona into a modern thriller-drama centered on a fashion model seeking reinvention. Nicole D’Angelo leads the cast with Adam Weston Poell, Chris Spinelli, Lynn Ellison, and Jason Toler supporting, under the direction of D’Angelo and Gregory Hatanaka. On paper, it promises a darkly seductive journey of self-discovery—but in execution, it’s far more uneven than the title suggests.
Read MoreMuerte: Tales of Horror (2018)
If you’re in the mood for a low-budget, high-gore horror anthology that leans hard into B-movie territory, Muerte: Tales of Horror might just scratch that itch. Directed and co-written by Christopher Ambriz, this Texas-shot feature delivers three macabre tales wrapped in a supernatural frame story involving a cursed comic book and an unsettling occult shopkeeper. The movie opens with a seemingly ordinary theft: a teen named Zak is asked to swipe a mystical cloth but instead grabs a graphic novel called Muerte.
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