House of Dust (2013)

Fresh out of a mental institution, Emma is dropped off at college with a supply of meds and hopes that her hallucinations have disappeared.  Her roommate Gabby introduces her to the two guys across the hall and invites her to a keg party. Woohoo, college!

The campus has an abandoned asylum on it, which seems like a terrible idea. What college student wouldn't want to explore an old building or have a party in it?  The building was the sight of experimental lobotomies until a patient and doctor were murdered. So you just know there's got to be some bad mojo around there.

Gabby and the two guys convince Emma to sneak into the building with them, where she promptly wanders off.  The other three go into the basement and accidentally break a jar containing the cremated remains of psychotic patients. Inexplicably their souls possess the students.

Her friends begin acting strangely and creepily.  Emma, who didn't breath in the corpse dust, starts believing her meds aren't working because she is beginning to see people who aren't actually there.

The synopsis for this movie states these kids are med students, but I find that hard to believe since they are pretty lackadaisical in their studies.  The only class mentioned is psychology, which the snotty girls in school state is what the stupid kids take (even thought they all all in the same class).

This is so tame it's practically a TV movie, with minimal blood and killings that are essentially off screen.

Catacombs (1988)

A few hundred years ago in the catacombs under a monestary, priests lock up a demon that looks like a crazy Kim Fowley with Edgar Winter hair.  In the present day, the monastery still exists and young teacher Elizabeth arrives to stay for awhile.  Most of the priests are gracious, except for weirdo Brother Marinus who is convinced that having a woman there will bring evil upon them.

Whether it's true or just coincidence, one of the brothers is down in the catacombs, sees the seal across the demons tomb, and promptly removes. it  No one shall ask why he wouldn't know that a sealed room should not be opened.  Oh well, he can't be very popular with the others because after he dies, no one notices he's missing.

Timothy Van Patten is Father John, the youngest priest. In fact, he's the only young priest, which makes it strange that he's also the most boring priest. He spends his time lying on the floor muttering, being kind, or talking to Elizabeth. He's a level headed guy but he's questioning his faith.

Meanwhile there's a brother in the basement eating a candy bar and the life-sized sexy Jesus nailed to the cross has extricated himself and is starting to head his way. Well this isn't going to work out well for anyone.  So now we've got a demon who can possess inanimate objects. So that's different.

This may have been an okay movie if it weren't so incredibly boring.  Although the demon escapes, not much happens until the last part of the movie.  You keep waiting for him to show up, but nope.  It's just people talking and wandering around underground, or Brother Marinus scaring the heck out of the other brothers with his screeching about the evil of a woman in the monastery.

The best part of the film is when the credits rolled and one of the characters was Possessed Albino.  Wait? So that wasn't a demon?  It was just a possessed albino?  What the hell?  So why did his body  look fine 400 years later, other than an old face?  Surely a demon can't keep a human body looking young and maintain a six-pack while chained to a wall.

One last thing, they must have spent most of their money on the candle budget because there are candles lining every corridor in the catacomb

Little Dead Rotting Hood (2016)

Worrying that she may be getting too old to keep a small town safe from the wolves that prowl the local woods,  a witch decides to pass her gift on to her granddaughter.  This involves her granddaughter Sammy being mauled by a wolf, burying her body deep in the ground with a sword and red hooded cloak, and killing herself on the grave.

When Danny learns the old wolf lady has died, he's concerned about his girlfriend Sammy.  But the Sheriff isn't concerned since he's got a dead body on his hand which might be a homicide and Sammy has run away before.

Danny decides to drown his sorrows at a college kegger in the woods.  But things go horribly wrong when some of the kids are attacked by wolves.  With more dead bodies on his hands, the Sheriff decides to kill some wolves.  When he runs into a strange woman in the woods where a hunting party are attacked, he starts wondering what is really going on in town.

This movie seems much longer than it actually is. It's an Asylum production so you know it's going to be schlocky and not very good.  The old wolf lady is too young to be known as the old anything or called a coot.  And it's odd that the Sheriff doesn't seem to know Sammy even though she lives in town. Also with all the wolf attacks in town, they have a free officer to babysit the Sheriffs kids at the police station, even after they're down a deputy.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)

Being a Scout in high school is not cool, which is why Ben and Carter want to quit.  They want to go to parties and hang out with girls.  But the only other person in their scout troop is Augie, who they've been friends with since they were kids.  Augie loves being a Scout, and Ben doesn't want to hurt his feelings by quitting.

When Carter manages to score an invitation to a rave for the high school seniors on the same night they are going camping with the scout master, Carter convinces Ben that they should sneak off to the party after Augie and the leader fall asleep.  But only the three teenagers show up for the camping trip because  their scout leader, like most of the town, is a zombie.

Earlier that day, a test subject quarantined in a laboratory bit a janitor and a scientist, which started the zombie outbreak.  Ben and Carter team up with a stripper who bought them alcohol earlier in the night.  They meet up with Augie and try to figure out what is going on, how to get out of town, and decide to stop by the rave to make sure Carters sister got out of town safely.

I liked this movie.  It had some good laughs, and although sometimes it veers into questionable territory, overall it was entertaining.

Hallows Eve (2014)

While at a local haunted attraction, a group of mean teenagers bully a little girl who stutters and tends to tattle on people. They pelt her with pumpkin guts and chase her through a corn field where she ends up getting mowed down by a tractor.

Ten years later, the mean kids are all grown up, the haunted attraction is in full swing for Halloween, and for some reason that is never explained, the kids are given complimentary passes each year.  Well I assume these kids are the same ones from the opening scene. It's impossible to tell because no one looks the same, but since it's been ten years, the bullies should now be in their mid twenties which appears to be the age of this group.

But then a character utter one sentence that totally destroyed the time line.  While talking to one of the twenty somethings, Danielle Harris says, " Well you and your friends parents weren't the nicest kids back then."  Wait, what?  So the characters parents were the bullies from the first scene of the movie? Or is it just this one kid along with his friends parents, as the sentence awkwardly implies?   Or were the bullies the college kids we've been watching the whole movie? The question is never cleared up. And if these college kids are actually supposed to be teenagers, then the parents who bullied the girl must have all had kids at age ten.  The only thing we can definitively confirm is that the little girl run over by the tractor is now a teen and has a disfigured face.

There are other things that also make no sense.  Why does the family give complimentary passes  every year the the kids (or kids of) the teens who bullied their daughter?  Why does loser pothead Rudy actually plan in advance to look in the teenage girls window?  He's ten years older than her so it's extremely creepy.  Why doesn't the girl have any shades since she's living on the ground of the haunted attraction?  When her father and mother figure out Rudy was at the window, why don't they ever say anything to him or kick him out of the haunt?  Why do Rudy's two friends who arrived with him completely disappear after this scene, never to be mentioned again?

The movie was filmed at the Bates Motel haunt. As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity.  Even though it's not very good, it gets their name out there and is going to help business. The hame of haunt sounded familiar and I realized they'd also filmed The Bates Haunting at the same place.  Filming at a haunt can be mutually beneficial - the haunt gets free advertising and the movie has ready made spooky sets.  Unfortunately neither movie is very good, but it did make me look at their website once I figured out it was a real place.