213 BONES (U.S., 2025)
Official synopsis: The film follows a group of anthropology students as they discover that studying the past can be deadly in this slick, smart whodunnit horror. When they begin finding human bones and personal property scattered around their campus, it becomes clear that a gruesomely masked maniac is brutally targeting them, and late-night study sessions turn into a frantic race to solve the attacker’s identity before they all end up as a textbook homicide case. It’s left to Sheriff Bracco, Laurie, the County Coroner and their teacher, Kelly, to help find out who the real bone-crunching assassin is before another innocent becomes the next victim.
If you’re looking for an entertaining throwback to 1990s whodunit horror, director Jeffrey Primm has you covered with 213 Bones. College-age characters trying to find out who the killer is, a masked murderer making short work of those folks, red herrings, kills aplenty — it’s all here. The characters aren’t as broadly written as they sometimes are in other throwback slashers, so they’re generally more interesting to follow than the norm. The members of the sizable ensemble cast — a few standouts include Luna Fujimoto, Toni Weiss, Hunter Nance, and veteran character actor Dean Cameron — give engaging performances, and Primm, who cowrote the screenplay with Dominic Arcelin, makes a solid debut at the helm. Added bonus: the soundtrack of eighties and nineties rock and pop songs is terrific! For a fun stalk ‘n’ slash that presses the nostalgia buttons, you really can’t go wrong with 213 Bones.
THE RED MASK (U.S., 2025)
Official synopsis: When Allina Green [Helena Howard], a hotshot indie screenwriter, is hired to revive a cult slasher franchise, she and her fiancée Deetz [Inanna Sarkis] retreat to a remote rental to “method write” a fresh take. But as Allina’s script begins to rewrite itself and two unsettling strangers [Kelli Garner as Claire and Jake Abel as Ryan] show up claiming to have booked the same cabin, her weekend writing retreat becomes a terrifying descent into fandom, identity, and a legacy she never asked to inherit.
Screenwriters Samantha Gurash and Patrick Robert Young pack plenty of social commentary and meta elements into the slasher The Red Mask, and director Ritash Gupta shows himself up to the task of making it all work, with the help of game cast and crew. Howard nails her performance of Allina, a writer who is suffering through creativity issues but sure of herself as a person, and Sarkis is also great as Allina’s supportive girlfriend Deetz, who is reluctant to let her father know about the romantic relationship between the two young women. Garner and Abel are highly effective portraying creepy uberfans of the Red Mask franchise who embody not only toxic fandom but also personal philosophies quite different from our protagonists. The “I don’t want politics in my horror movies” folks will find themselves addressed here, including being reminded of how much horror movies are often a reflection of the political climate during which they are made. But what about the horror in The Red Mask, you may ask, and well you may ask? There are plenty of set-ups, false scares, real shocks, the red stuff, and gorehounds will be treated to one highly memorable kill, so no worries in that department.
The Red Mask celebrated its World Premiere at FrightFest 2025.
