“Love At What Co$t” (*1/2 out of four) was a sordid underworld melodrama not worth the cost of a rental about a single mother (Diamond Starr) with a secret life as a stripper who meets a record producer (Kaamel Hasaun) who draws her into a world of duplicity, sex, and danger that she finds hard to turn away from. Routine enough to insult anyone’s intelligence and with ugly dialogue and violence shoved in your face in equal measure. Starr also directed, executive produced, and casted but I sure hope this clunker wasn’t a labor of “love” for her.

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“Rockabye” (** out of four) was a gritty but limited street melodrama about a woman (Annie Ngosi Ilonzeh) whose father (Donald Brumfield, Jr.) dies by suicide but the more she investigates the more she begins to wonder if there was more than meets the eye especially as both her and his friends (Claudia Jordan, Garret Davis, and others) start dying one-by-one. Fast-paced enough to keep it watchable but covers all-too-familiar territory and thus never fully detonates. Similar to director Chris Stokes’ 2023 similarly titled “Rock The Boat.”

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“The Final Party” (* out of four) was a grindingly ugly, unpleasant horror psychodrama about a group of elite scholarship students (Elia Berthoud, David Christian, and others) whose graduation party is crashed by a group of psychopath cultists (Arya Shahbazy and Adem Yilmaz) who want to re-enact their childhood torments. Or something like that. Viewers who make it to the end of this mess will feel tormented enough on their own. Brutal film full of in-your-face violence and made even worse by overwrought acting.

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“Anaconda: Blood Coil” (*1/2 out of four) was a listless continuation of the series about a group of friends (Belle Taylor, Olivia Burley, Page Haim, and others) who go on vacation in the Amazon and are terrorized by multiple anacondas who are on the prowl and scowl their every move. Recommended ONLY for those who thought the 1997 original wasn’t that great because this makes that one look like “Halloween” by comparison. CGI snake effects aren’t bad considering film’s threadbare budget but the snakes are otherwise the best actors (and characters) in the film.

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“Betty’s Revenge” (* out of four) was an insufferable horror dud about a group of college seniors (Samuel J. Bennett, Faith McKinstry, Emma Claire Dykes, and others) who stumble onto the title character Betty (Hannah Fierman) who is a former cabaret owner who has evolved into a sociopathic/psychopathic killer who (yawn) stalks-and-slashes all of them one by one. Full of annoying characters with even more annoying in-your-face acting but even this doesn’t keep the movie from being dull. This “revenge” is preferable to Montezuma’s- but not by much.

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“Axes And Os” (*1/2 out of four) was an utterly generic and forgettable slasher thriller about four college friends (Jamie Bernadette, Stephanie Kirves, Cass Huckabay, and Heather Fraley) on a weekend getaway who are hunted by an axe murderer but they soon turn the tables on him and the hunter becomes the hunted. Litany and library of horror movie cliches from (off the top of my head) “Sleepaway Camp”, “Deliverance”, and “Friday The 13th.” Duds like this were much more fun in the 80’s.

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“Creatures Of The Night” (*1/2 out of four) was a sodden horror thriller about a rogue drifter (Michael Socha) who wanders into a castle in the English countryside from a family (Andrew Readman, Ricky Tomlinson, Dean Ackerman, and others) and finds that it is inhabited by bloodthirsty werewolves and he has to fight tooth-and-nail to get out. He should have wandered to a video store and rented “The Howling” instead because that was a werewolf movie made with wit and style. One good rampage scene is film’s only pulse but that comes at the end.

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“Don’t Answer” (**1/2 out of four) was a mildly effective horror psychodrama about a criminal psychopath (Jack Amsler) who is released back to society due to overcrowding at the incarceration asylum; upon being released, he gets a job as a delivery driver where he resumes his violent impulses leading to the town on edge and his prison psychiatrist/officer (Annabel Storm) trying to track him down. Hindered by a low budget and horror-movie minimalism but is tense and creepier than most of its ilk and holds your attention. Film ends with scary statistics about delivery drivers and murders that may surprise you.

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