WE ARE STILL HERE [2015]

Director Ted Geoghegan's feature length debut, We Are Still Here, is a loving homage to the works of Lucio Fulci with a heavy dose of American Gothic.
After the tragic death of their son, a middle-aged couple move out to an isolated country home that is feared by the townsfolk that surround it...and with good reason.
Like The House of the Devil, the film mimics the look, tone and editing techniques of the '70's and it does so with great success making for a short but scary little ghost story.  The gory practical effects take center stage, but it sure helps that classic scream queen Barbara Crampton is on board, almost shadowing over Lisa Marie's painfully horrible performance.  It's refreshing to see a cast of old folks take on the nasty ghoulies, which makes for unfamiliar territory resulting in scares that are all the more effective.

3½ tasty socks out of 5

UPSTREAM COLOR [2013]

Writer/director Shane Carruth returns to the world of film nine years after his sci-fi cult classic debut Primer with an even more baffling headtrip in Upstream Color.
A complicated story about what I assume is about 2 completely unrelated people who unwillingly become part of a science experiment that binds their identity and behavioural cycles with a parasite that is passed onto pigs and then orchids.  Carruth adopts the lost daydream style of Terrence Malick where time means nothing and dialogue is merely background noise, all to rely on the picture and emotions to tell the story.
It might be more of an enjoyable film had Carruth not made so many quick edits and allowed the viewer to study and feel each shot for a bit longer.  In the end the quick edits hurts a "thoughtful" film like this quite a bit.

3½ pig-farming sound FX samplers out of 5