The Round-up: the horror!

Oz PERKINS, ANTHONY Perkins’ lookalike son, scored an early acting credit as ‘young Norman Bates’ in Psycho II. Now his first films as writer-director are lurking on ondemand platforms and are well worth a look.

February features demon possession and murder in a snowbound girls’ school, and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives In The

House is set in the home of a dying novelist (Paula Prentiss), which either inspired her book, or is haunted by its heroine. These allusive, icily beautiful movies are as likely to frustrate as beguile, but showcase strong leads (Emma Roberts, Ruth Wilson) acting out of their (and everyone’s) comfort zones.

The British indie horror scene is so busy that unheralded franchises are wriggling into existence. Drew Casson’s alien-invasion picture The Darkest Dawn is a sequel to his earlier Hungerford, with sisters struggling to get out of London as spaceships hover overhead. Now-familiar Britain-in-ruins stuff is well done on a tiny outlay. Even more on the cheap is Warren Speed’s Zombie

Women Of Satan 2. This resurrects the director-star’s hardly beloved Pervo The Clown, who is clunkily pursued by burlesque dancers who (like some film-renters) want revenge for the earlier movie. In the words of Ricky Jay in Boogie Nights, “It is what it is.”