The City of the Dead, 1960 (Learn how to fight the Witches- People who made Pact with the Devil.)

The City of the Dead (U.S. title: Horror Hotel) is a 1960 supernatural horror film directed by John Llewellyn Moxey and starring Christopher Lee, Venetia Stevenson, Betta St. John, Patricia Jessel and Valentine Dyall. The film marks the directorial debut of Moxey.[4] It was produced in the United Kingdom but set in America, and the British actors were required to speak with North American accents throughout.

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In 1692 in fictional Whitewood, Massachusetts, a witch named Elizabeth Selwyn is burned at the stake. Before her death, Selwyn and her accomplice, Jethrow Keane, sold their souls to Lucifer for eternal life and revenge on Whitewood in return for providing the Devil with two yearly virgin human sacrifices on the Hour of Thirteen during Candlemas Eve and the Witches' Sabbath.

In the present day, following his lecture on witchcraft, a university history professor, Alan Driscoll, advises an interested student named Nan Barlow to visit Whitewood during her vacation to slake her interest in witchcraft by studying Whitewood's history. Nan settles in The Raven's Inn, a hotel owned by eccentric Mrs. Newless, becoming acquainted with the only normal-seeming local resident Patricia Russell, who loans her a book on witchcraft. Reading the book, Nan learns that this night is Candlemas Eve.

She is lured down to the basement and is restrained on a satanic altar by Mrs. Newless and members of her coven. Mrs. Newless reveals herself to be Elizabeth Selwyn before proceeding to sacrifice Nan.

Two weeks later, Nan's concerned fiancé, Bill Maitland, and her brother, Richard, learn The Raven's Inn does not exist in any phone directory. They are visited by Patricia, who is also concerned with Nan's disappearance. The men travel separately to Whitewood, and Bill barely survives a car crash caused by an apparition of Selwyn.

Richard reaches Whitewood and meets up with Patricia before visiting her grandfather, Reverend Russell, who reveals that Whitewood is under the control of Selwyn's coven. 

Soon after, Patricia is kidnapped as the coven's sacrifice, and Richard attempts to save her before they are cornered in the graveyard. Professor Driscoll is revealed to be a coven member. A severely-injured Bill arrives at the last minute and succeeds in extricating a large wooden cross from the ground. After being gravely wounded by Selwyn, Bill uses the last of his strength to burn the coven members alive under the cross's shadow. Selwyn escapes during the chaos. Her pact with the Devil has been undone by the intervention, and Richard and Patricia find her charred corpse in the hotel which was earlier revealed to have been built on the site of her burning.

RATING: 10 STARS

Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave, 2005

Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (also known as Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave from the Grave) is a 2005 made-for-television action horror film directed by Ellory Elkayem and starring Aimee-Lynn Chadwick, Cory Hardrict, John Keefe, Jenny Mollen, and Peter Coyote.

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The film opens with Charles Garrison arriving at a mortuary with a canister of Trioxin. He is greeted by a team of Interpol agents whose goal is to destroy the last of the canisters to avoid another incident. Nevertheless, one of them sprays three corpses with the gas, and revives them. Charles is killed during the incident, along with the mortuary owner and one of the government officials.

It's Halloween, and Jenny with Julian, Cody and Becky, the last three survivors of the previous film, are now in college and they receive notice of the "murder" of Charles. Julian and Jenny go to search for and possibly sell what belonged to Charles, and they find the last two barrels of Trioxin. One of them is taken to Cody, who tests the chemical inside it. Jeremy, Jenny's brother, tastes the chemical when he thinks that it is a drug similar to ecstasy, but he goes into a spasm, in which he foams at the mouth, and later describes what it was like. The chemical is named "Z" for its zombie-like effect on the living.

Cody, Jeremy and Shelby extract the chemical from the canister and they put the liquid extract into pills which they sell to Skeet, so he can sell the drug around the school. While Skeet informs everyone to only take one pill at a time for health reasons, most take more than one pill at a time which speeds up the process that causes humans to reanimate as zombies.

Gino and Aldo Serra, the only survivors from the beginning of the movie, recognize what is going on when they are shown the severed head of one of the zombies, and they go to question Julian, knowing that he is familiar with Trioxin, but he does not tell them anything of the canisters that he and Jenny discovered. Sometime later, people are turning into zombies, and the drug is being passed around a rave and getting out of control, Cody and Shelby are killed. Jenny kills Zombie Jeremy. 

Seeing no other option, Aldo calls in military assistance, but he is told that an American bomber plane is already on the way to the ravelocation. The plane launches a bomb which detonates in the center of the rave. Jenny and Julian emerge from the rubble alive and Aldo asks where’s Gino and tries to find him. It is unclear if Gino died during the blast. At the end of the film, the Tarman desperately tries to hitchhike a ride to the party, but to no avail. After scaring away a woman who almost gave him a ride, he has no choice but to walk to the party, yelling his trademark "Brains!" as he goes to the party.

Rating: 10 Stars

Red Dot, 2024

Red Dot is a 2021 Swedish drama thriller film written by Alain Darborg with Per Dickson and directed by Alain Darborg. The film stars Nanna Blondell, Anastasios Soulis, Thomas Hanzon, Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Kalled Mustonen and Tomas Bergström. It premiered on Netflix on February 11, 2021.

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After his university graduation ceremony, David (Anastasios Soulis) publicly and awkwardly proposes to his girlfriend, Nadja (Nanna Blondell), which she happily accepts. A year and a half later, however, they are stressed due to work and school and fight frequently in their apartment in Stockholm. The stress is compounded when Nadja learns that she is pregnant, which she is unhappy about as she is studying to be a doctor and she is not sure if she and David should be parents. She decides to keep it a secret from David. Nadja opens up to an older neighbor, Tomas (Thomas Hanzon), and he assures her that she and David will be great parents; he insists that parenthood is life's greatest gift and implies he has lost a child of his own. The next morning, David surprises Nadja with a camping trip to see the northern lights, and the two reconcile and take the trip with their dog, Boris. While stopping for gas, David encounters two locals, brothers Jarmo and Rolle, and is made uncomfortable by their rough mannerisms and their truck bed full of dead game. As he has difficulties taking his car out of park, he accidentally bumps into the brothers' truck, leaving scratches. David chooses to drive off instead of saying something, which annoys Nadja. When they reach their destination at an inn, the woman at the front desk treats them strangely and silently refuses to serve them, leaving her brother Einar to imply that she's not used to seeing an interracial couple. He learns of their itinerary and offers to host them at his cabin in the wilderness. Nadja becomes nervous seeing Jarmo and Rolle in the establishment, and when they leave, they discover that someone has keyed their car and vandalized their bumper sticker with a racial epithet. Angered by this, Nadja spots their pickup truck later on the drive and scratches it with a screwdriver, narrowly avoiding retaliation when the brothers catch her in the act.

The couple camps beneath the northern lights, and Nadja reveals she is pregnant, which makes David nervous and unsure. Their conversation is interrupted when they spot a red dot on the wall of their tent. They first assume that it is a laser pointer prank, but quickly realize that is a laser sight from a rifle and guess that the brothers are attacking them in revenge for the car damage. Boris escapes into the wilderness while they try to hide, and they hear gunshots and the sound of Boris whining. After they are shot at, they flee into the forest and hear their pursuers chase after them. After spending the night hiding in a small shelter, they return to the bloodied campsite and find all their belongings missing, and Boris's severed head in the tent. While searching for any remaining possessions, David is injured when his arm gets caught in a hunting trap. Finding nothing to help them, they set off to find help. However, they are soon shot at again, and David, increasingly losing blood, hallucinates a boy in a winter coat staring at them. David is shot in the shoulder while Nadja escapes unhurt, and the two search for each other as a snowstorm sets in. Nadja realizes that she has run atop a frozen lake, and as David searches for her, he falls in and is narrowly rescued by her. The couple finally makes it to an emergency cabin, where they phone rescuers and are told they will have to wait until the storm passes for help.

The next morning, they hear a vehicle approach the cabin and realize it is an armed (but unaware) Jarmo, who works as a mountain rescuer. Escaping through a back window, they flee into the woods and seek shelter in what is revealed to be the den of a hibernating bear. Jarmo discovers them, but before he can shoot, Nadja shoots him with a flare found at the cabin. David's condition deteriorates as they progress, and he hallucinates the boy again and begins mumbling about guilt. Spotting Einar's cabin in the distance, Nadja runs ahead to get help for David, but encounters Rolle on the way. Rolle seems confused by her appearance, but before he can act, David knocks him unconscious with a rock, and the two make it to Einar's cabin. Einar appears to call for help, but Nadja realizes that he is contacting someone else, and Einar suddenly becomes aggressive and locks them in a room discovered to be covered in stealth photographs taken of the couple.

Finally, Tomas arrives with a rifle, and the truth is revealed: the day of the couple's engagement, Nadja attempted to perform oral sex on David as they drove home, and a distracted David struck and killed a pedestrian -- the boy he had hallucinated earlier, who was also Tomas's son and Einar's nephew. David chose to drive off instead of calling the police as Nadja wanted, which left her wracked with guilt. On that day, Tomas had been playing with a drone with his son, which had caused him to run into the road; however, the drone also captured the couple's license plate, and a grieving Tomas tracked them down and moved into a nearby apartment to surveil them. Tomas is intent on inflicting revenge on the couple for callously driving away and had been behind the earlier murder attempts. He now decides to become more sadistic and tries to get David to use a power drill to torture and kill Nadja's child, and he shoots David in the knee when he does not comply. Tomas prepares to kill them both but is interrupted by the arrival of a furious Jarmo, who has tracked down the couple. In the confusion, Tomas shoots and fatally wounds Jarmo, who accidentally does the same to Einar, and Nadja and David escape while Jarmo and Tomas struggle for a rifle.

Nadja and David attempt to flee, but David cannot escape with his injuries. He tells Nadja to run, and when she stumbles upon the unconscious Rolle, she decides to take his rifle and save David. However, when she returns, she hesitates while trying to shoot him and is shot in the head and killed instantly by Mona, Tomas's wife and Einar's sister encountered earlier at the inn. A traumatized David begs to be killed as well, but Tomas refuses, telling him that he can now understand how he felt after his own son had died. Mona and Tomas depart as David is left sobbing in the snow.

Rating: 10 Stars

Colors of Evil: Red" 2024

 

When a girl's body is found on a beach, a prosecutor teams up with the victim's mother on an impassioned quest for the truth.

Colors of Evil: Red" is a Polish film that premiered on Netflix on May 29, 2024. Directed by acclaimed director Adrian Panek, it follows the story of a prosecutor named Leopold Bilski (played by Jakub Gierszał. The film is based on the popular Polish book of the same name, Kolory Zła: Czerwień by Małgorzata Oliwia Sobczak.

In the movie, a Tri-City beach becomes the scene of a dramatic discovery when the sea washes up the body of a young girl. The victim's unusual mutilation points to murder. Prosecutor Leopold Bilski, an ambitious and tenacious investigator, leads the investigation. The victim's mother, Judge Helena Bogucka, is also involved in the case. As they follow the clues, they uncover a connection to a murder from 15 years ago, leading them to one of the seaside clubs. The investigation reveals the dark face of the criminal underworld in the Tri-City area, much to the discomfort of the local police.

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Rating: 10 Stars

Dancing for the Devil: The 7M Tiktok Cult, 2024

 Netflix’s new docuseries “Dancing For The Devil” delves into the shocking cult allegations at an LA church and talent agency.

The series focuses on the alleged cult-like atmosphere that TikTok dancers signed to 7M Films had to endure, with controversial pastor Robert Shinn at the center of the story.

Miranda Derrick, a TikTok dancer, is also a key figure in the controversy surrounding the cult, which has sparked widespread interest and discussion.

Check the Instagram Accounts below for clues.

Miranda Derrick, Melanie Wilking, James Derrick @dbash_2, Vik White @itsslavic, Aubrey Fisher @_aubreyfisher 

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TIME NEWS

The Chilling True Story Behind the Netflix Documentary Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult

The documentary series Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult, now streaming on Netflix, traces the formation of the management company 7M Films by founder, Robert Shinn, who is also a Shekinah church pastor. Over three episodes, Dancing for the Devil reveals claims from multiple former 7M members about how Shinn abused and manipulated them and created a cult-like environment.

The series largely focuses on the stories of two different pairs of sisters who worked with Shinn—the influencers Melanie Wilking and Miranda Derrick (formerly Wilking) and Melanie and Priscylla Lee. The Lee sisters came to know Shinn after joining his Shekinah church in 1999 as young Korean immigrants. They integrated themselves into the church community and began living in a house with other church members. Melanie Lee eventually escaped the home and left the church, trying to bring her sister with her, but Priscylla refused to leave—causing them to be separated for a decade.

Shinn founded 7M in 2021 and the lines between his church and the talent management company have always been blurry. Melanie Wilking and her parents first brought attention to the darker side of 7M in a 40-minute Instagram Live in 2022, in which they tried to reach out to Miranda, saying they had not being in touch with her for years. The family shares tearfully in Dancing for the Devil that Miranda joined a “religious organization” in late 2019 and was told to cut them out of her life.

Dancing for the Devil explores how Shinn used his influence as a pastor to form a TikTok dance management company. The series also shows how Wilking’s Instagram Live became the catalyst for multiple publications to investigate 7M, giving former members and their families a chance to share their stories.

How Robert Shinn went from Shekinah Church to 7M Films

Robert Shinn's LA-based Shekinah church started out small, Melanie Lee explains in the series. “There were maybe 15 people, and that included his family and his sister Catherine’s family,” she says. She adds that Robert and Catherine “promised” her and Priscylla all of the love the two of them “never really experienced.” Over the years, Shinn opened several businesses, including a café, two mortgage companies, two real estate companies, and two flower shops. Lee says in the documentary that employees of these businesses were made up of members of the Shekinah church. She says the employees were paid very little (she was paid $100 a week) and worked 12-hour shifts.

Shinn’s interests shifted following a failed attempt as a Hollywood executive producer—and he began the management company 7M Films and found the dancers, including Miranda, on social media. He saw them as a new revenue stream.

Through 7M, Shinn was able to get the dancers in his management company opportunities like commercials, bookings on The Ellen Show, and dancing at the Los Angeles Clippers games. He still led the Shekinah congregation, which included many of his clients, whom he bragged about during his sermons. Dancing for the Devil details how the influencers on his roster sought out Shinn's approval by proving they would do whatever it took to get his attention.

The series also details Shinn's controversial practices as a leader. Former members have accused him of sexual, emotional, and financial abuse. Shinn, 7M, and Shekinah Church did not participate in the documentary series. He has denied sexually abusing members of the company or the church.

Why 7M members had to cut off their families

One of Shinn’s most controversial practices was telling his followers that they needed to “die to” themselves and their families. One former 7M dancer explains the concept in the first episode: “Dying to yourself means that whatever you want or whatever you need, you have to ‘die to it,’ because whenever you die to something, it’ll come back to life and resurrect.”

Another former 7M dancer adds that they were taught to “die to your family in order to save them,” referring to the chance of them “getting into heaven one day.”

We see this “dying to your family” play out with the Wilking sisters. In the series, Melanie Wilking explains that she and her sister were inseparable until Miranda joined 7M, even going so far as to get married without telling her family.

Miranda is now in contact with her family after Shinn changed his tune in July 2022, following the departure of multiple 7M dancers from the company. He suggested that it would be better for 7M congregants to be in contact with their families.

Ni una Mas, Raising Voices, 2024

Raising Voices (Spanish: Ni una más) is an Spanish teen drama television miniseries based on the novel by Miguel Sáez Carral. It stars Nicole Wallace, Clara Galle, and Aïcha Villaverde. The series premiered on 31 May 2024 on Netflix.

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The plot follows the plight of 17-year-old Alma and fellow friends Greta and Nata. Their normality is upended the day Alma hangs a banner in their high-school reading "watch out, there is a rapist hiding in there".

CAST

Nicole Wallace as Alma

Clara Galle as Greta

Aïcha Villaverde as Nata

Teresa de Mera as Berta

José Pastor as David

Gabriel Guevara as Alberto

Eloy Azorín

Ruth Díaz

Iván Massagué

Rating: 10 Stars

Old, 2021

 Old is a 2021 American body horror thriller film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan. It is based on the French-language Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters. The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen, Aaron Pierre, Embeth Davidtz, and Emun Elliott. The plot follows a group of people who find themselves aging rapidly on a secluded beach.

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Guy and Prisca Cappa are going through a separation. To avoid saddening their young children, Maddox and Trent, the couple take them to a tropical resort as a final family vacation. At their hotel, Guy and Prisca are given complimentary drinks, and the children befriend Idlib, the resort manager's nephew. At night, Maddox and Trent overhear their parents arguing and play a message decoding game with Idlib. During the argument, it is revealed that Prisca has a benign slow-growing ovarian tumour.

The next morning, the manager invites the family to a secluded beach where three additional parties are present: rapper Brendan "Mid-Sized Sedan" and his female companion; surgeon Charles, his elderly mother Agnes, his wife Chrystal, and their young daughter Kara; as well as Jarin and Patricia Carmichael, a close-knit husband and wife. Trent discovers the corpse of Brendan's companion. Charles grows suspicious of Brendan, who reveals that he has been experiencing nosebleeds because of his hemophilia. After the children rapidly turn into teenagers and Agnes suddenly dies, the families conclude that the beach is aging them, with the occupants undergoing the equivalent of one year of aging every 30 minutes. At least one member of each family has an underlying medical condition. They discover that trying to leave will result in them blacking out and waking up back where they left.

In a fit of rage, Charles cuts Brendan with a pocket knife, and the group watches as his injury quickly heals. Prisca's supposedly slow-growing ovarian tumour rapidly grows in size at a life-threatening rate. Charles performs a successful surgery to remove it. Brendan discovers that the body of his companion has fully decomposed in a matter of hours. Kara and Trent continue to age into their late teens, and after having sex with each other, Kara gets pregnant at a rapid pace. She gives birth, but the baby dies due to the time rapidly passing. The attempts to leave grow increasingly tense as Charles's worsening schizophrenia causes him to kill Brendan. As the day goes on, Jarin drowns, Kara falls to her death, and Patricia suffers a fatal epileptic seizure. Guy's eyesight blurs, and Prisca suffers hearing loss. Trent and Maddox discover the notebook of a previous traveller, along with indications of their being watched. At night, Charles attacks Guy and Prisca in a schizophrenic episode; Prisca runs as Charles continues to attack Guy. Chrystal's hypocalcaemia results in her bones rupturing, killing her. Prisca returns and slashes Charles with a rusted knife, instigating a fatal blood infection that kills him. An elderly Guy and Prisca make amends before dying moments apart from each other.

With only the now-middle-aged Maddox and Trent remaining by the next morning, the pair construct a sandcastle. They revisit a secret message given to them by Idlib, which Trent deduces is connected to an underwater coral passage. Believing that the passage will allow them to leave the beach without losing consciousness, he and his sister start swimming through the coral. After they seemingly fail to emerge from the water, a resort employee who is monitoring them reports that the entire group has died. He gives the news to the manager, who warns of a previous incident where a guest almost escaped from the beach. The manager then announces that trial 73 has concluded.

It is revealed that the resort is a front for a research team from the pharmaceutical company Warren & Warren that was conducting clinical trials of new medical drugs, which are administered to guests with medical conditions by spiking their drinks. Because the beach naturally accelerates the lives of the guests, the researchers have been able to complete the lifelong drug trials within a day. The researchers lure a new group to the beach, but are interrupted by Trent and Maddox, who survived their underwater swim, using the notebook as evidence that they give to vacationing police officer Greg Mitchel, who informs his boss of the researchers' crimes. The researchers are mentioned to have been arrested, with subpoenas sent to the rest of Warren & Warren, as Greg plans to reunite Trent and Maddox with their aunt.

Rating: 10 Stars