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2020 has not been an easy year on cinemagoers, in fact it has been the worst since some of the earlier days of the medium. Still, despite the disappointed sighs that have grown among audiences when hearing another much anticipated film has been delayed further, there has been some plucky films that have thrived at this time of panic. Many of these films have been ones which have solely enjoyed huge VOD success but Brett and Drew T. Pierce’s (known and credited collectively as The Pierce Brothers) horror film The Wretched, is a film which has indeed hit VOD but also cinemas, doing particularly well at select drive-ins Stateside, as it topped the box office six weekends running. The first since Avatar to do so (obviously with wildly different box office takings). And little wonder too, because The Wretched is a film perfect for a drive-in experience and a brilliant throwback horror flick.

While vampires and zombies are evergreen horror movie favorites, the motion picture arts have not been particularly kind to that bush-league cousin, the killer tree-spirit. Two of the better-known among relatively few examples are esteemed by bad movie aficionados: There was 1957’s drive-in special “From Hell It Came,” in which an actor lumbering around in a large tree-stump costume squeezed victims to death with his branches; and 1990’s “The Guardian,” a homicidal-wood-nymph thriller that flopped so badly director William Friedkin omitted any mention of it from his otherwise comprehensive career memoir.

There will, happily, be no such cringing required by either makers or viewers of “The Wretched,” an accomplished second feature by Brett and Drew T. Pierce (billed as “the Pierce Brothers”) that is good fun in a vaguely retro, “Lost Boys”-type teen horror way. The absence of marquee value in cast or franchise terms may relegate it to home formats.

“Mickey and the Bear” reps an assured feature debut for Annabelle Attanasio, who wrote and directed this straightforward but skillfully nuanced drama about a troubled father-daughter relationship. Camila Morrone plays the titular motherless small-town Montana teen who needs to decide if what she wants from life is more than just being the minder of her Ptsd-afflicted father, an Iraq war veteran.

There’s nothing wildly original in form or content to this modest tale. But it’s never obvious or melodramatic, delivering a satisfying degree of emotional resonance while providing James Badge Dale an arresting role as the problematic dad.

Though we don’t get this intel until fairly late, Mickey’s mother died of cancer — like, apparently, quite a number of people do in Anaconda, Mont. (a town that had a longtime mineral-processing plant generating hazardous waste). Ever since that unspecified point in time, Mickey, an only child, has been housekeeper,...