Happy beginning of June, everyone! Now that summer is just about in full swing, we have a look at the horror and sci-fi VOD releases coming our way this month, in case you prefer to beat the heat from the comfort of your own couch while catching up on movies.
June’s VOD titles are an eclectic bunch, with a little bit of something for every kind of fan out there. The month kicks off with the release of the sleep paralysis thriller Be Afraid today, and then things pick back up on June 6th with a handful of titles making their way to digital platforms, including Aaron’s Blood, Dark Signal, Besetment, and one of my most anticipated indie movies of the year, Let Me Make You A Martyr, which co-stars Marilyn Manson.
The following week, both The Belko Experiment and Camera Obscura make their VOD bows, and just a few short days later, one of my favorite films out of Fantastic Fest 2016, Ana Lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch, is getting a release from NEON. June’s VOD titles wrap up on the 30th with both Darkness Rising and Bag Boy Lover Boy.
Be Afraid (AMBI/Samuel Goldwyn Films) – June 1st
Not long after John Chambers and his family arrive at their new home in a small country town of Pennsylvania, John begins to experience sleep paralysis. Lying there paralyzed, trapped within his own nightmare, otherworldly beings visit John. They are entities, which exist in the darkest shadows of the night, and can only be seen out of the corner of one’s eye. These encounters begin to haunt John, transforming to complete terror as he discovers the entities’ sole purpose... the
abduction of his seven-year-old son. In the end, John will uncover the town's horrific secret, a portal on his land, and make one last attempt to save his son before the shadow people permanently take him away to their world.
Aaron’s Blood (Gravitas Ventures) – June 6th
Aaron copes with his new life as a single father and the distant relationship he shares with his only child Tate. A timid hemophiliac, Tate is roughed up at school by the chief bully causing a massive nosebleed that lands him in the hospital fighting for his life. He makes a miraculous recovery after a necessary blood transfusion, but Aaron begins to notice progressively strange behaviors in his son. Faced with the grim possibility that his son could be becoming a vampire, Aaron enlists the help of a local vampire hunter and embarks on a frantic search to find the source of the infection to stop the transformation before it’s too late.
Besetment (Uncork’d Entertainment) – June 6th
Amanda Millard, struggling and desperate for a job, takes a position at a hotel in a small town in Oregon. It’s a creepy, back country kind of town but owners Mildred Colvin and her son Billy seem nice enough at first. It’s not long before Amanda discovers their real intentions, and her struggle to make a living becomes a nightmarish fight for her life.
Dark Signal (XLrator Media) – June 6th
The spirit of a murdered girl returns with a message for the staff of a local radio station.
Good Mourning Lucille (Breaking Glass Pictures) – June 6th
On the 6-month anniversary of her twin sister Rachel’s disappearance, Lucille invites Rachel’s dearest friends to a remote villa to create a remembrance video, but everyone brings a lot more than memories to share. In a night of scandalous secrets, unexpected debauchery and ruffled feathers, Lucille attempts to find out what happened to her sister, which ‘friend’ is responsible for it—and how to catch it all on camera.
Let Me Make You A Martyr (FilmRise) – June 6th
Let Me Make You A Martyr follows Drew Glass (Niko Nicotera), a young man recently returned to his hometown after years away who crosses paths with his adoptive father, local crime boss Larry Glass (Mark Boone Junior) and reconnects with his adopted sister and love interest June Glass (Sam Quartin). Determined to run away together and escape their complicated past, June and Drew concoct a plan to kill Larry. Unfortunately, Larry finds out about the scheme and hires a hit man of his own (Marilyn Manson) to resolve the problem.
Manhattan Undying (Momentum Pictures) – June 6th
Max is a talented young painter with a cult following for his hyperrealist style. Frustrated, he is squandering his life with drugs and excess until he learns that he has only weeks to live with advanced lung cancer. He decides to work on one last masterpiece instead of clinging to life with rigorous medical treatment. Vivian is a beautiful vampire preying on men who objectify women. She yearns to see her herself and understand the infatuation of her victims. Vivian and Max's paths cross when she appears in his studio so he can paint her portrait. Max seeks to find immortality in his final work inspired by Vivian while Vivian struggles to model for him. Their deep understanding and common plight develops into an impossible love. They both face a challenge of choosing between immortality or eternal love.
Patchwork (Infinite Lives Entertainment) – June 6th
A bombastic throw-back horror-comedy that follows three young women who go out partying one night, and find themselves Frankensteined together in one body. Now, they must put aside their differences so they can find who did this and exact their revenge!
Prisoner X (RLJ Entertainment) – June 6th
As the world rages in war and civil strife, CIA agent Carmen Reese arrives at a secret underground prison to interrogate a captured terrorist with links to recent attacks on American soil. But the prisoner is more than he appears – he has arrived from the future with ninety-eight other time travelers who are still at large, and wreaking havoc across the globe. Now, it’s a race against the clock as Carmen and the prisoner engage in a battle of wills to see whose version of the future will triumph.
The Belko Experiment (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment/Orion Pictures) – June 13th
From writer, producer James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2), director Greg McLean (Wolf Creek, Rogue, The Darkness) and producer Peter Safran (The Conjuring, Annabelle), comes the story about a group of 80 American employees who are tested in a twisted social experiment of bone-crunching horror! Belko Industries, a normally calm workplace, gets a rude awakening when a mysterious voice on the intercom orders them to participate in a ruthless game of kill or be killed in a blood-soaking battle royale at their office building in Bogotá, Colombia. As the terror escalates, so does the body count. Everyone is a competitor and everyday objects become deadly weapons. Let the corporate carnage commence!
Camera Obscura (Chiller Films) – June 13th
A veteran war photographer with PTSD sees imminent deaths in his developed photos, questioning his already fragile sanity and putting the lives of those he loves in danger.
12 Feet Deep (MarVista Entertainment) – June 20th
Sisters Bree and Jonna get trapped beneath the fiberglass cover of an Olympic sized public pool after it closes for the holiday weekend. They find themselves at the mercy of the night janitor, Clara, who sees the trapped sisters as an opportunity to solve a few problems of her own.
The Bad Batch (NEON) – June 23rd
The highly anticipated follow-up to Amirpour’s acclaimed directorial debut, 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night', THE BAD BATCH follows Arlen (Waterhouse) as she is unceremoniously dumped in a Texas wasteland fenced off from civilized society. While trying to orient her unforgiving environment, she is captured by a savage band of cannibals and quickly realizes she'll have to fight her way through her new reality. As Arlen adjusts to life in 'the bad batch' she discovers that being good or bad mostly depends on who you're standing next to.
Bag Boy Lover Boy (Severin Films) – June 30th
In this “sincerely disturbing” (Indiewire) debut from co-writer/director Andres Torres, a slow-witted misfit named Albert (Jon Wachter, giving what HorrorNews calls “the best male performance in a horror film this year”) sells hot dogs all night from the most unsanitary food cart in downtown Manhattan. But when he’s invited to become the new model for a manipulative fetish photographer, Albert will be exposed to a seething city underbelly where desire masquerades as perversion and depravity poses as art. It may shock you. You might even be appalled. But you have never seen anything quite like BAG BOY LOVER BOY.
Darkness Rising (IFC Midnight) – June 30th
A house’s horrifying secrets are resurrected in this blood-drenched supernatural nightmare. For years, Madison (Tara Holt) has been tormented by the memories of a traumatic childhood incident: when she was a girl, her mother murdered her younger sister, and nearly killed Madison, too. Joined by her fiancé (Bryce Johnson) and cousin (Katrina Law), the now-adult Madison returns to the home where it happened just before it’s slated to be demolished. Seeking closure, the trio instead find themselves ensnared by the same evil presence that drove Madison’s mother to unthinkable violence. It soon looks like history may repeat itself… Cult horror icon Ted Raimi costars.
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
Daily Dead's Official Podcast! Daily Dead's Official Podcast!
