Odessa A’zion (“Hellraiser”) plays Tara, a teenager in contemporary Fall River, and a descendant of the Borden family. Tara faces typical growing pains — her boyfriend Carl (Michael Cooper Jr., “On the Come Up”) is going away for college; she and her younger brother Caleb (Jackson Dean Vincent, “The Secrets We Keep”) bicker over their infant brother Jack; parents Emily (Leslie Bibb, “Running with the Devil”) and Ben (Dermot Mulroney, “The Mountain Between Us”) are having difficulties, leading Caleb and Tara to wonder which parent they will end up with. There is also the matter of Tara’s aunt Diane (Mary Buss, “Lord Finn”), locked away in a psychiatric hospital because she murdered her infant child, a crime linked to the infamous ancestor.

Perhaps more pressing is that there are murders taking place in Tara’s neighborhood. The police initially treat them as missing persons, but the audience are treated to scenes of murder. These sequences are suspenseful as the victims sense someone is nearby, sometimes in isolated surroundings like a pre-dawn jog through the town, or during a walk home through woods. But other murders take place within the home, making it clear that nowhere and no one is safe. The murders are shocking and brutal, featuring ample blood spatter but also injury detail. This makes the film wince-inducing, especially when limbs are split, accompanied by screams of agony. No quick and simple kills à la Michael Myers here — while the killer’s face remains out of shot, the ax and its impact are there for all to see.

Who is responsible for these murders? Each victim is linked to Tara. Could someone be striking on her behalf? Is Tara losing her grip on reality? Or is there something supernatural at play? This obscured face or silhouette of the killer sets up a whodunnit, perhaps akin to “Scream,” and The Inhabitant does borrow from the slasher genre with its stalk and slay set pieces, though the wider context is more reminiscent of psychological/supernatural horrors like “Secret Window,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Gothika,” where the source of the horror is ambiguous. Lauder’s direction as well as Kevin Bachar’s script maintain this ambiguity throughout the film. At times we are drawn towards one suspect, but as more details are revealed, we are treated to other plausible answers. Dream sequences as well as a seance are thoroughly eerie, with quick cuts creating a distorted perception, closely tied to Tara and ensuring the viewer is as confused as the protagonist or indeed those around her.

Furthermore, the environment in which this takes place itself feels inhabited. Tara’s home is an extensive interweaving of rooms and corridors, a place of comfort but also tension and even menace. Tara’s relationship with her parents is as fractious as that between them, and her best friend Suzy (Lizze Broadway, “Ghosted”) is her closest confidant. It turns out, however, that there is more to Suzy than meets the eye. While her character is perhaps under-served, the attention paid to her allows the film to refer to various issues around identity and relationships. Sequences focused on Suzy are among the most tragic, not least because she is the one Tara can always go to, but Tara remains ignorant of much of Suzy’s pain.

Pleasingly, the film’s focus is maintained on the females, with the male characters — Carl, Ben, Caleb — kept on the periphery. Horror is well served when focused on women, because of the genre’s inherent concern with victimhood. The frequent victim position of women, such as Tara receiving unwanted male attention and the institutionalization of Diane, adds to the sense of women’s compromised subjectivity. The largely absent father suggests that Emily is neglected, and that Tara must force a space for herself, which is all the more difficult when her own mind is unreliable. Thus, one could read the murders as a violent eruption in the face of female suppression, just as much as a mental illness or a family curse, although the uncertainty that pervades the film allows for multiple readings.

This uncertainty is facilitated with a fluid visual style, including long panning takes as well as a delicate shifting of position within shot/reverse-shot patterns. During an early conversation between Tara and therapist Dr. Sanchez (Sabreena Iman, “The Line”), the camera pans behind one character’s head but instead of completing the motion in that position, we cut to a completion of the motion behind the other character’s head. Meanwhile, a jarring editing pattern continues throughout, as past and present, memory, dream and reality cut between each other. This style keeps the viewer off balance, as confused by what could be happening as Tara. This lack of clarity, combined with the visceral and indeed emotional violence, ensures that The Inhabitant is eerie, gripping and shocking, with an ambiguity between the psychological and supernatural as sharp as an axe blade.

This description could apply to many a haunted house film, from “The Innocents” to “The Others” to “The Awakening.” The Night House offers genre tropes familiar to fans of those films, but also throws in some unexpected features. Beginning with slow panning shots of an opulent and very modern house by a lake, we quickly learn that this is the home of Beth (Rebecca Hall, “Godzilla vs. Kong”), recently widowed after her husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit, “Brave New Jersey”), an architect who also designed the house, shot himself without warning. Beth is dealing with her grief both at home and in her work as a high school teacher, when she is further disquieted by a mysterious presence in her house. Is the presence the product of her bereaved and confused mind, or is there something supernatural at work?

While the film is a bit disjointed initially, director David Bruckner uses this disjointing to unsettle the viewer, as mysterious images and dreams during the first act seem to clarify that this is indeed a haunting. More often than not, films of this type maintain ambiguity until the finale as to whether the events are psychological or supernatural. In this case, however, the question appears to be answered relatively early, but as Beth learns more about Owen, the mystery deepens and other horror tropes creep in with increasingly crawly effect. Reversed images, the sight of Owen standing naked on the water, a palatable sense of malevolence and a secret life all disrupt any sense of certainty. Most significantly, we learn of Beth’s own past trauma, not directly associated with Owen’s suicide but a life-shaping event in its own right.

In her matter-of-fact and often quite aggressive response to the threatening mysteries that she encounters, Beth is more interesting and varied than the standard gothic heroine. There is no running around in a nightie and coming over all tremulous here. At times, she is more reminiscent of a slasher final girl, apt to call out her non-corporeal visitor with a bottle of brandy to hand or head out into the woods with a powerful flashlight. Her investigation becomes obsessive but remains understandable, as she flicks through Owen’s phone and computer, follows his purchase trails to rare bookstores and confronts friends and new acquaintances with similar resolve.

Onscreen throughout most of the film, Hall commands the screen with great presence. Her luminous eyes convey pain and anger in equal measure, especially in a crucial scene when the camera eases behind her, crossing the 180-degree line as the film itself takes a significant turn. She is ably supported by the rest of the cast, especially co-worker Claire (Sarah Goldberg, “Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town”), the best friend we should all be so lucky to have, as well as her neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall, “Breaking Brooklyn”) who offers advice both useful and patronizing. In his brief appearances as Owen, Jonigkeit displays a touching innocence, while still hinting at something below the surface.

If you’ll pardon the cliché, the house is also a wonderful supporting character. Production designer Kathrin Eder makes this modern structure both efficient with clean lines, while also being warm and inviting. Thus, when the very building becomes untrustworthy it is all the more unsettling. Figures in the architecture take form and just as quickly disappear, creating some intense set pieces and startling jump scares. The director of photography, Elisha Christian, lenses the daytime sequences in warm light while at night the shadows take on multiple dimensions, suggesting both familiar and unfamiliar darkness. Beth’s discovery of another house, that of the title, extends the central conceit of haunting and trauma manifesting physically through structures, with further revelations to be found. The final sequence is quite literally gut wrenching, but it is notable that the film is also deeply sad. Like many a tale of haunting, The Night House covers the five stages of grief, with Beth demonstrating fear, anger, denial, bargaining and acceptance. This is possibly by rote and the viewer may find themselves anticipating the next stage, but the film also probes the compelling question of mortality. What do we believe happens after we die? Is it more or less comforting to believe that there is something after death, or nothing? The Night House uses these questions to great effect, and while the finale may be a little rushed, it remains an eerie investigation that lingers in the mind like echoes of a near death experience . . .

Inversion and mirroring permeate Candyman, as reflections prove untrustworthy and become the source of fear, and the film as a whole reflects an array of social and political tensions. Director and co-writer Nia DaCosta, along with fellow writers Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, perform a remarkable reclaiming of discourse and the cinematic space, with an unveiled marrying of social and supernatural horrors. In doing so, this film more than equals the challenge of following on from Bernard Rose’s “Candyman,” a deserved classic of 90s horror.

Unique in its tale of an urban legend bogeyman of sheepskin coat, hook hand and covered in bees, Rose’s adaptation of Clive Barker’s tale “The Forbidden” spawned two sequels and made an iconic figure out of Tony Todd. Despite this, the original has some problematic elements, most especially the appropriation of Cabrini Green, an African American district of Chicago, by a white filmmaker. DaCosta embeds her film in the black community, incorporating class, stratification and even artistry into an insightful treatise that also engages with myth, voices and the power of stories.

Beginning in 1977, we are introduced to Cabrini Green and its people, including a grinning yet sinister man who steps out of the walls, and the far more menacing police who utilize excessive force at the possibility of a possibly dangerous black man. Sounds familiar. From there we jump forwards to the present day and our main characters, Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, “The Trial of the Chicago 7”) and Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris, “If Beale Street Could Talk”), a couple who have very much benefited from gentrification. Living in an opulent apartment where they entertain Brianna’s brother Troy (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, “The Argument”) and his partner Grady Greenberg (Kyle Kaminsky, “DriverX”), Anthony paints bold and provocative art while Brianna manages a gallery that exhibits his work alongside other socially active artists. Troy’s story of Helen Lyle’s (Virginia Madsen) investigation into the urban legend of Candyman inspires Anthony to research Cabrini Green. Further information from locals, especially William Burke (Colman Domingo, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), sparks Anthony’s creativity as well as eerie images in the mirror, before violent death comes a-calling.

DaCosta deftly handles the escalating horror. Wide-angled shots allow for uncanny figures to enter domestic space, from Anthony and Brianna’s home to that of art critic Finley Stephens (Rebecca Spence, “Saint Frances”). Space is further disrupted as the murders begin — a sequence in an art gallery begins with glimpses in the various mirrors before bodily harm takes place. A murder is observed through a long shot of an apartment window, the camera steadily moving back to capture the indifferent expanse of plate glass as a life is brutally snuffed out. A sequence in a high school bathroom is largely expressed audibly, the audience’s perspective is restricted to that of a girl in a cubicle, privy only to screams, pleas and the sound of ripping flesh, and a brief glimpse in a compact mirror.

Despite being largely restricted to glimpses such as this, the iconography of Candyman is unmistakable. The figure, complete with coat and hook are all present, as are the bees, that bump against both sides of the glass as well as provoking the mutilation of flesh. An early sting develops into an infected wound and an entire body becomes corrupted along with a mind. DaCosta maintains an element of ambiguity — how much of what we see is Anthony becoming delusional, and how much is supernatural?

While this ambiguity is ultimately resolved, it allows for an interesting consideration on artistic creation. Artists are often presented on screen as tortured geniuses, isolated from the world because of the worlds that struggle to escape their own heads. Anthony is a committed artist, but his art is placed within a social context which makes him more engaging. The sequences where he paints are dynamic but not romanticized — painting is important to him and the work is shown to be impactful, but the viewer is not expected to suspend other concerns, a point we are reminded of by Brianna’s critique of Anthony’s paintings as well as his response to news reports that mention his name. Later, as his work becomes darker and his mind distracted, we may well side with Brianna as she becomes quite reasonably afraid of Anthony’s increasing obsession. Anthony’s journey through the film is certainly compelling, but it is not one we necessarily approve of. Brianna serves as the viewer’s surrogate to the increasingly horrific acts, while also displaying the common sense so often lacking in horror films. In one very witty moment, she looks down a flight of steps into a dark basement and quickly decides “Nope,” as we all would. A minor flaw in the film is that her backstory is underdeveloped, hinted at with a couple of flashbacks that could have been expanded.

This treatment of gender also extends to the visuals. Anthony is repeatedly shown shirtless, his physique presented as a visual spectacle in another nice inversion of the standard male gaze of cinema. Combined with the narrative shift in the final act, Candyman is as much Brianna’s story as Anthony’s, exploring the conceit of bearing witness and spreading the word. On a related note, DaCosta also brings in the unique element of shadow puppetry, a visual storytelling technique that beautifully expresses hideous racial violence, from the various incarnations of Candyman to actual events such as Emmett Till and George Stinney.

The inclusion of such history, as well as the various characters referring to racial segregation and oppression as well as gentrification, raises the specter of the politics overwhelming the story. Black lives certainly matter in this story, but there is a clear indication that to polite American society they do not, as the true face of fear is all too human (and white). But this is what makes Candyman an important black film. For a community who are eternally reminded of being lower tier, it makes perfect sense that their story is interweaved with bloody supernatural horror. Within the film, Candyman serves as a reminder that racial violence is ongoing. As a film, Candyman insists that the viewer take note, remember and spread the word. Say his name indeed.

Almost two centuries later, Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, “Rampage”) buys coffee from a truck in the early morning before he gets a call to head out to small town Banfield, MA — “A little piece of God’s county.” A farmer relays a story about his cows being mysteriously mutilated, and is astonished when Gerry inquires about the farmer’s teenage son who, according to the benign spray-painted marking left on the cow, is probably a Metallica fan. The two men wander over to a twisted oak tree in the field as Gerry’s attention is drawn to an object catching the sunlight; he discovers a small doll in a hollow at the base of the tree. The doll is bound by chains and a small engraved plate that reads February 31, 1845 — an impossible date. Annoyed because his time was wasted and driven by the desire to get a story somehow, Gerry stomps on the doll and asks the farmer to pose next to it, fabricating a story about mutilated cows and a mysterious talisman found in a nearby tree.

Later that night, Gerry drives through the dark, winding roads on his way out of Banfield. He swerves to avoid hitting a girl standing in the middle of the road and crashes into a tree. Emerging from his car, Gerry follows the barefoot, white-nightgown clad girl back to the twisted oak where she drops to her knees and passes out. Bringing her to the nearby church, Gerry discovers she’s Alice (Cricket Brown, “Dukeland”), the orphaned niece of Father Hagan (William Sadler, “Bill & Ted Face the Music”). At mass the next day, Alice rises from her seat in the front of the church, and leaves the church with young girls trailing behind her; she walks directly to the oak, and laying her hands on its trunk, speaks to the astonished crowd behind her. She has seen a vision of a woman bathed in white light, and she tells them she has seen Mary. Within days, people gather around the church asking for Alice to heal their ailments, and the Boston Diocese sends representatives to investigate. As Alice continues to hear from Mary, her fame grows, and her miraculous gifts garner more and more attention to the small town. But Gerry, on the other hand, starts having visions himself — visions of a dark hooded figure with skeletal hands, and he begins to wonder if these miracles are a different type of fabricated story, one that will have dire consequences for the townspeople . . .

Based on James Herbert’s novel The Shrine, writer/director Evan Spiliotopoulos’s The Unholy is a tale about how a young girl’s religious faith is manipulated by an evil entity, and how the adults around her desperately yearn for something good in the world, oftentimes causing them to disregard signs of trouble. Cricket Brown plays sweet devout Alice with wide-eyed wonder, and her charm shines through as the type of girl any community would immediately support as a young prophet. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is well-cast (arguably typecast) as the gruff and scruffy Gerry, a washed-up journalist who ruined his career by fabricating news stories for fame and recognition; his skepticism plays at center stage when he deals with Diocese representatives Bishop Gyles (Cary Elwes, “No Strings Attached”) and Monsignor Delgarde (Diogo Morgado, “The Killer”). They grant him exclusive access to Alice, and he plays well back and forth between the kind yet past-his-due disbeliever and shady storyteller looking to cash his way back into the business.

Brown and Morgan are skillfully supported by Sadler and Katie Aselton (“Black Rock”) who plays Dr. Natalie Gates, a woman fiercely protective of Alice. They are very believable as the adults who most care for Alice’s well-being and play wonderful contrasts to Elwes’ smarmy Bishop. When Elwes appears on screen, you are most reminded of watching “Law & Order” episodes; when a bigger name cameos, you know they’re likely to be playing the bad guy, and Elwes’s caricature-ish Massachusetts accent doesn’t help his believability. There are some bright lights in Alice’s supporters, most notably Madison LaPlante as a teenage girl who desperately needs to believe in Alice’s miracles, and Sonny and Danny Corbo who play Toby Walsh, the wheelchair-bound teenager whose sweet and shaky first steps are among Alice’s first miracles. Seeing the Corbo boys on-screen brings a special smile to my face because they’re local actors from my home state — shout-out to Little Rhody!

As a whole, The Unholy works as your standard PG-13 horror fare; there are plenty of jump scares (many of the ineffective variety) and the story unravels in the expected ways. Characters investigate the local history in cobwebbed storage areas and shadowy archive libraries, and there’s little ambiguity behind the character arcs. Each character plays out exactly as you expect them to, and the convenient revelations appear just in time to move along the story. Adult horror fans have already seen (and seen and seen) the tropes found in this film, but young teenagers will enjoy it as an early entrance into religious horror. It’s not a bad or boring film by any stretch, but it’s not something that will have much staying power in the long run.

Director Seth Breedlove’s (“The Mothman Legacy”) newest documentary The Mark of the Bell Witch traces the history of this local legend, basing its details on the Adams community’s primary text — M.V. Ingram’s The Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch — and explanations from various historians, folklorists, and paranormal researchers. Narrated by Lauren Ashley Carter (“The Mind’s Eye”), the film pieces together excerpts from Ingram’s text and conversations with experts with dramatic reenactments of key events. Breedlove’s storytelling style is engaging and well-researched, with legends and interwoven interpretations that cover all the various angles of the story. He focuses on the localized legend, but also on the power of oral tradition and community identity, and how individuals often grow up with local stories, taking on their history as a badge of pride.

The documentary includes modern interpretations as well as more historical theories regarding what might have caused the Bell Witch haunting. Was it a demonic possession of prepubescent Betsy Bell (Amy Davies, “Momo: The Missouri Monster”), the young, innocent daughter of a well-to-do businessman? Perhaps the witch was the angered spirit of a local woman outcast by the community who felt she was wronged by John Bell (Thomas Koosed)? Were these terrors the aftermath of young Drewry Bell’s (Grayden Nance, “Momo: The Missouri Monster”) disturbance of a nearby Native American burial site? Breedlove’s organization takes us through one theory after another, and his researchers and experts share their thoughts, their experiences, and their opinions about what could have been at work in what is now Adams, TN. No stone is left unturned, though, unfortunately, no concrete answers have ever been determined.

The tale has been adapted into films, including, most notably, 2005’s “An American Haunting,” but this documentary leaves out the sensationalized dramatizations, sticking to conversations with the experts — the foundations of classic oral tradition. When he does choose to include reenactments, Breedlove’s characters and sets are simple, to-the-point, and focused more on the voiceover narrations than the visuals. No outlandish or cheesy Hollywood CGI special effects tarnish the retelling of the Bell Witch and her historical torment of a quiet, esteemed family.

Fans of true hauntings will appreciate the direct nature of The Mark of the Bell Witch, and Breedlove’s careful research brings to light the many dark corners in this chapter of American folklore. Hopefully, like the spirit itself (portrayed by Seth’s wife Adrienne), this documentary will gain in strength as more and more people become aware of it, talk about it, and share it with others.

It is said to be a harbinger of doom, akin to the Garuda from Hindu mythology or a Banshee from Irish folklore. Its presence is seen as a message from the spirit-world that tragedy is afoot — signaling death, particularly of a close family member.

Beginning in 1966, over two hundred sightings of the creature were reported in the area. Residents were terrified; children couldn’t sleep. Then, one week before Christmas in 1967, disaster struck as the town bridge collapsed, claiming 46 lives. Since then, whilst appearances of the Mothman have dwindled, his legend has grown. In 1975, supernatural journalist and famous “UFOlogist” John Keel chronicled the events in “The Mothman Prophecies,” which led to the 2002 release of a Hollywood movie of the same name, staring Richard Gere and Laura Linney.

Such attention has made Point Pleasant a hotspot for fans of the paranormal. A large statue of the winged beast stands in the town center, while the Mothman Festival (now on its 20th year) draws over 10,000 visitors every year. The creature has not only become a part of the town’s identity, but something of a national fable. Yet, according to writer/director Seth Breedlove (“Terror in the Skies”), the Mothman has not disappeared into history and stories, but instead lies hidden in the present.

At times, Breedlove’s film which is meant to highlight its omnipresence, The Mothman Legacy, can feel like a piece of fan fiction. It was financed through a Kickstarter campaign (presumably by other paranormal enthusiasts) and is dedicated to The Wamsley family — owners and curators of the world’s only “Mothman Museum.” The 77-minute runtime presents various interviews with them and other Mothman witnesses, each describing their encounter and respective visceral terror. Breedlove inserts creepy graphics, sound effects, and visualizations of the creature to give the stories legitimacy and make the sequences flow like a typical horror movie, and though the result can be a little obvious, it is still deeply unnerving.

The film attempts to provide some background context to the legend, however, it still feels aimed at Mothman aficionados rather than Mothman novices. Personally, as a non-US resident, I’d never heard of the Mothman. Yet it has something of a cult status, with the museum itself even featuring in the apocalyptic videogame “Fallout 76,” released in 2018.

For viewers already familiar with the books, films and games dedicated to the creature, The Mothman Legacy will serve as a welcome appendix that keeps the legend alive. For everyone else — the documentary provides enough of an opportunity to learn and catch up, while an insidious fear builds of what could be lurking outside. Speaking as someone in the latter category, the movie left me locking my windows extra-tight, nervously listening for the thrust of wing-beats across the silent night sky.