Dear Watchers,On this Genre Movie Wednesday, we have a couple of indie movies set in the woods: one centered on a summer camp, the other on an abandoned home. So surely, everything will be perfectly fine. Our horror expert, Erik Piepenburg, has plenty to say about why his two selections are both worth a look. One might make you nostalgic. The other might make you grateful that the worst days of the Covid-19 pandemic are past. Both should get under your skin. Read Erik’s thoughts below, then head here for three more of his picks. Happy watching. ‘Marshmallow’
Where to watch: Stream “Marshmallow” on Shudder. Morgan (Kue Lawrence) is shipped off to summer camp, even though he is still mourning the sudden death of his grandfather. One night, the counselors tell a campfire ghost story about a maniac doctor who created monsters out of mutilated bodies he stored at his cabin. The campers are warned that they may encounter the boogeyman doctor roaming the grounds. It’s best not to know much more about this shape-shifting film by the director Daniel DelPurgatorio before watching. The film isn’t set in the 1980s, the Golden Era of summer camp horror movies, and that’s a good thing: Deliberately setting it in the ’80s might have risked making it feel like a nostalgia play, when really its themes of loss, identity and memory are timeless, much as they are in “The Plague,” a stellar new horror film about tween anxieties. Andy Greskoviak’s script loses steam midway through, as it relies too heavily on cat-and-mouse games. But then comes a twist that subverts expectations about what summer camp horror should be. ‘No More Time’
Where to watch: Rent or buy “No More Time” on major platforms. Death, isolation and conspiracy theories are just three of the pandemic-era horrors that drive this eerie thriller, the debut feature from the writer-director Dalila Droege. To escape city life, a couple (Jennifer Harlow and Mark Reeb) drive until they reach a mostly deserted mountain town, one of many such communities barely hanging on in an America under siege by an unnamed contagion. Armed and on edge, they settle in at an abandoned home and get to know the few neighbors they have, including a little girl who claims her mother flies in the clouds. What this couple doesn’t know is that they’re being monitored by a mysterious stranger who communicates with trees, the kind of supernatural touch that Droege uses sparingly, to her film’s benefit. What the story lacks in plot, it makes up for in a mood that’s as artful as it is disorienting. Jay Keitel’s stark cinematography and Mary Ellen Porto’s unnerving sound design do the heavy lifting, alternating between chilling and warm, mirroring how horribly topsy-turvy our world felt not that long ago. If you’re willing to revisit that sanity crushing time, this film is worth the nightmare it might trigger.
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