Corinna Faith’s The Power is an archetypal example of a horror film with a killer premise and very little notion of what to do with that premise. Set in a decaying London hospital in early 1974, the film follows young nurse Val (Rose Williams), who has the misfortune to start her first job in the middle of the coal miners’ strike and attendant government-imposed blackouts. So: A creepy, half-abandoned setting lit only by candles and lanterns, and a heroine who is still haunted by her own childhood terrors. Unfortunately, Faith’s approach, while fittingly moody, is also dreadfully aimless. The film is stacked with repetitive scenes of Val wandering about in the darkness, being terrorized by jump-scares. The Power eventually shifts gears, but not for the better, deteriorating into stock demon-possession silliness and a thuddingly obvious “mystery” that clashes with the film’s suffocating gothic atmosphere. It wouldn’t be half as exasperating in it didn’t feel like so much wasted potential.

Rating: C

Now available to stream from Shudder.

Emma (Jill Awbrey) and her husband Henry (Bart Johnson) arrive at an isolated, ultra-modern rental home for a long weekend getaway, ostensibly for the purpose of working on their teetering marriage. Soon, however, they find that the building’s sophisticated security has been hijacked by a menacing observer (Travis Cluff), whose distorted voice forces them to play-act through a retrograde perversion of domestic bliss, under pain of remote-controlled “correction.” Held was written by Awbrey, and it’s plain that her screenplay has social-commentary ambitions, but directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing can’t shake the stench of bargain-bin imitation that clings to the whole thing. (The film repeatedly prompts unfavorable comparisons to The Stepford Wives, Saw, Frontier(s), and Get Out.) Still, there’s a shiver of queasy mystery to the proceedings, where it’s never quite clear where the unseen authority figure is going with their sadistic games. That is, until the Big Reveal between the second and third act, at which point Held devolves into more conventional survival-horror tedium.

Rating: C-

Now available to rent from major online platforms.

Christopher Smith’s 1930s-set haunted-house tale The Banishing has a few tick marks in its favor. It boasts a terrifically musty gothic atmosphere, Sean Harris as a menacing occultist, and some genuinely spooky visual-effects trickery, mostly involving mirrors and reflections. However, the film is also one of those horror flicks that seems to be throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks: lurking ghosts, creepy dolls, murderous monks, sexual scandals, seances, madness, and, hell, why not toss some Nazis in there, too? Harlots’ (2017-19) Jessica Brown Findlay stars as the dissatisfied wife of a stifled minister (John Heffernan) who practically twitches with inadequacy. His latest posting in a small village apparently requires them to live in a notoriously haunted manor, and soon they and their young daughter are bedeviled by strange, violent visions. On the level of individual scenes, The Banishing is often deliciously effective, but the story is astonishingly unfocused and unintelligible for a film that is, in essence, a ripoff of The Shining.

Rating: C

Now available to stream from Shudder.

Travis Stevens’ campy vampire flick Jakob’s Wife has one big thing going for it: the winning presence of apparently ageless horror veteran Barbara Crampton, now fully a decade into her B-movie renaissance. Crampton plays Anne, the reticent and vaguely dissatisfied wife of small-town minister Jakob (fellow horror icon Larry Fessenden). Following an encounter with a shadowy entity (Bonnie Aarons) nesting in an abandoned factory, Anne discovers a fresh, vampy confidence – as well as a craving for blood. Stevens’ film at times leans into the kind of kitschy, over-the-top gore that seems designed to amuse the filmmakers rather than the audience, but there’s some deceptively smart stuff lurking underneath the film’s low-budget cheese. Vampire tropes aside, the plot often zigs when the viewer expects it to zag, and although the screenplay is hokey, it expands its scenario logically and imaginatively. In the end, however, Crampton and Fessenden are the main reasons the film’s low-key satire and wild character swerves work as well as they do.

Rating: B-

Now available to rent from major online platforms.

It’s a bit embarrassing how badly Boys from County Hell wants to be Shaun of the Dead (2004). There are worse films to emulate, of course, but Chris Baugh’s horror-comedy lacks the scruffy charm and tonal agility that made Shaun such a landmark. Pitting a gaggle of small-town Irish misfits against an awakened vampire lord, Boys at least adds some original twists to the canon of cinematic nosferatu lore, linking its distinctly unsexy fiend to ancient cairns and a unique species of blood magic. This, unfortunately, is where the film’s novelty ends. Baugh attempts to wring humor from dimwitted characters standing around gawking ineffectually at the midnight-movie craziness unfolding around them. There are scattered moments of gory, deadpan humor that elicit a chuckle, but these are rare: Generally, the comedy is as ineffective as the film’s feeble stabs at pathos. People perish in scenes that are meant to be tear-jerking, but it’s hard to care when everyone is such a one-note, cartoonish character.

Rating: C-

Now available to stream from Shudder.

Singer-songwriter Grey (Lauren Beatty) is struggling with mental-health issues and a sophomore album that just isn’t coming together. Which is why she elects to work with Vaughn (Greg Bryk), a legendary producer with a shady reputation. Grey believes that spending a week or two at Vaughn’s secluded studio will pull her out of her creative slump – and perhaps exorcise her visions of animalistic violence. It’s obvious that Bloodthirsty is going to be revealed as either a vampire movie or a werewolf movie, and for a while the film’s primary (one might say only) point of interest lies in its indefinite trajectory. Spoiler: It’s werewolf, which is an admittedly unexpected choice for a story about the toxic, symbiotic relationship between an ingénue and her Svengali. Unfortunately, Bloodthirsty doesn’t have much else going for it, preferring leaden thematic declamation and tediously predictable plot beats over the measliest scraps of originality. Ultimately, It’s the kind of low-budget horror that does little to justify its own existence.

Rating: C-

Now available to rent from major online platforms.

There’s a winning indie scrappiness to Gabriel Carrer and Reese Everneshen’s absurdly bloody survival thriller For the Sake of Vicious, which was shot almost entirely in one location and fueled primarily by its practical gore effects. Things start out in a deceptively slow-boil mode as a nurse (Lora Burke) arrives home to find a man (Nick Smyth) holding her landlord (Colin Paradine) hostage in her kitchen. What begins as a morally ambiguous three-way psychological struggle escalates into a gruesome action free-for-all, as the arrival of masked goons quickly complicates an already tense situation. Be warned: For the Sake of Vicious is bone-crunchingly, stomach-churningly violent, a showcase for the kind of grubby, confined-space brawls designed to make the viewer squirm. However, Carrer and Everneshen are so concerned with maintaining momentum that they sacrifice narrative clarity. The film eventually gives up entirely on explaining what the hell is going on, preferring to pile one left-field development on top of another until it practically collapses from exhaustion.

Rating: C+

Now available to rent from major online platforms.

There are a lot of disparate ingredients swirled together in Things Heard & Seen, a chilly Hudson Valley ghost story by directing duo Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor). Conventional gothic creepiness mingles with grotesque domestic drama and 19th-century spiritualism to create a slightly more polished version of midcentury schlock like The Screaming Skull (1958) and Tormented (1960). It helps, certainly, that the cast is overqualified for this pulpy material, particularly Amanda Seyfried, holding the sillier parts together with her marvelous, wordless reactions and sharp-eyed, righteous anger. Ostensibly, the film is about the haunted farmhouse her character and her smarmy professor husband (James Norton) have just purchased, but Things is more concerned with how the same patterns of deceit, abuse, and violence repeat throughout history. Frankly, the feature is kind of a mess story-wise, and frustratingly uncertain about what it wants to emphasize. Yet, although it’s a preposterous and somewhat artless B-picture at bottom, it’s also damn watchable in its way.

Rating: B-

Now available to stream from Netflix.