elizanightmares

A killer premise-one of America's eeriest unsolved crimes-gets filed down into a pretty generic teen haunting. The movie opens promisingly and the house is shot with some moody, late-night atmosphere; a couple of jolts even land. You can see the outline of a lean small-town chiller in there.

But once it pivots from true-crime unease to off-the-rack possession, the air leaks out fast. The lore is thin, the scares arrive pre-packaged (black contacts, glitchy "voices"), and most violence happens off-screen. Dialogue runs stilted, the emotions feel prefab, and the casting doesn't help-these "high-schoolers" read a decade older, which breaks the spell. Using a stand-in location instead of the real, famously cramped house only adds to the disconnect; you never feel the specific weight of that history.

A couple of character actors pop, and the photography isn't amateur hour, but the film keeps teasing what it might be rather than becoming it. If you want an atmospheric sleepover spook with low intensity, this will do in a pinch. If you came for a Villisca story with teeth, it's a miss.

Zach Cregger doubles down on voice and ambition here. From the jump, you can feel a filmmaker who knows exactly what tale he's telling: a small town knocked sideways by a single, chilling event, then peeled back in smart, interlocking POVs. It's tense, funny in quick, nervy bursts, and confident about when to withhold and when to snap the trap shut. The premise is a banger, the kind that lodges in your head on the drive home, and the craft around it-blocking, sound, those creeping "wait, what am I actually looking at?" shots-keeps the nerves humming.

Performances land across the board, and the structure lets moments rhyme in satisfying ways without turning into a puzzle-box flex. Some viewers will want a harder edge or a louder final movement; I was into the tone Cregger strikes-methodical, wry, and unnervingly assured. If you like a little process with your panic, this delivers.

Also: there's a lively, spoiler-aware chat with Cregger on Last Podcast on the Left that's a perfect companion listen-such fun.

A current-feeling Korean shocker that skips the usual ghost-girl playbook and still gets under your skin-slow start, strong finish.

A found-footage livestream that actually earns its jumps: a small crew chases views inside a derelict asylum, wiring themselves with body-cams, mics and a drone. No long-haired specters here-just oppressive rooms, nasty little sound cues, and camera "glitches" that keep yanking your eye to the wrong place before something moves in the right one.

The warm-up is long, and the banter can feel like padding; character work is thin, and the lore stays sketchy by design. Once it kicks into gear, the second half is a tight, claustrophobic run of set-pieces that had me tensing up more than once. If you've seen Grave Encounters or vibed with Session 9, you'll clock the beats. But the staging is sharp, the cast feels plausibly "on-stream," and the tech touches make the scares land harder than they should.

Heads-up: frequent jump scares, flicker/glitch effects, tight spaces.