I got a late start to the horror game. When I was younger, I was derisive of the genre, which is code for being too chicken shit to explore it.

Sure, I grew up watching Universal horror with my father and Uncle, but it wasn’t until the past couple years when I first saw Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and Night of the Living Dead, which so happened to coincide with securing a (blessedly short term) position at Famous Monsters magazine.

Luckily, this newfound love of horror has taken place during a revitalization of the genre, thanks to Blumhouse Productions, filmmakers like Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, Ti West and Joe Begos who revere their 80’s roots, and a growing international scene that has included The Babadook, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and Housebound. This trend has continued in 2015 with films like It Follows, and will only grow as we enter Halloween season and the festival darlings arrive in theaters and on demand.

Outside of The Witch, no indie horror film has been met with more buzz than IFC Films’ Irish horror film The Hallow (originally known as The Woods).

And after watching writer-director Corin Hardy’s film in the worst possible fashion for a horror movie (during the day, with a screener link on an iPad), I can see why.

It has a classic (read: yawn) premise: new parents Adam (Ripper Street’s Joseph Mawle, AKA Benjen Stark) and Clare (Bojana Novakovic) have recently moved to the remote Irish countryside, bringing their baby boy and Border collie along for what turns out to be a dangerous ride. They live next to, or practically within, an ancient forest, one whose land and trees are being sold for lumber by the government because of Ireland’s sorry economic state. The woods aren’t too happy about this. Or more accurately, the creatures that inhabit it aren’t.

Adam, flippantly disregarded as a “tree doctor” by superstitious locals, is studying the trees before the lumberjacks arrive, making him a villain in the town, who all know that “the Hallow” should not be messed with. Hardy has fun with this, utilizing Game of Throne’s Michael McElhatton as the dangerous neighbor, trying to warn Adam and Clare of their impending doom in hilariously scary ways. The Hallow is a movie where Roose Bolton comes ‘round with the bloody Necronomicon (okay, so it’s a gnarled, creepy book of fairy tales, but same diff), and that’s about when it elevates beyond its stock premise and gets to the crazy (fiery scythes and Cronenbergian horror).

That crazy has a lot to do with parasitic fungus; it’s rare to find that as the vessel of horror, and even rarer to see “fungal research advisor” in the credits, as Hardy’s film delights in oozing, sticky, muddy sludge seeping through every nook and cranny. The Hallow is a homemaker’s nightmare before we even glimpse the awesome woodland zombie dead-eyed Gollum’s crawling about, baby hungry.

The Hallow doesn’t tread any new ground (particularly when it comes to Clare, who isn’t given much to do beyond screaming, running and baby-holding until the end), but it’s a tremendously enjoyable throwback, with more than just jump scares. In addition to Bolton, Hardy employs Spaced and Luther star Michael Smiley as the unhelpful cop archetype, another self-aware wink to the monsters in the woods genre. But what really makes The Hallow memorable is the stellar (and practical) creature FX. The “hallows” are terrifically rendered, and the superlative sound design sells the whole thing.

It’s easy to judge horror movies, but right now, indie horror is some of the most fun you can have at the movies, and Hardy’s The Hallow is an exceptional example of that.

The Hallow arrives On Demand November 5, and in theaters starting November 6.

During the fateful first get together of the Writer’s Meeting in Burbank (a group now forever known as “Hear Me Out, Bro!”), one of my friends brought up the film A FIELD IN ENGLAND.

I had heard of the movie, as it played at the Beyond Fest, which means one thing: it’s weird as shit. Aforementioned Writer Friend confirmed this, when he said he went to a screening and was offered shrooms by someone else in attendance. He declined the offer, never having taken shrooms and wisely resistant to experimenting for the first time in a public venue.

For a couple days I just thought this was an amusing anecdote. Then, on this particular Thursday night (Feb. 13th), faced with the possibility that I may never get the chance to see A FIELD IN ENGLAND in its proper venue, it was the only thing I could do without tearing off my apartment’s wallpaper. My apartment doesn’t have wallpaper; that’s how dire a situation it was, exacerbated by this trailer:

A FIELD IN ENGLAND was ending its run at Cinefamily‘s not-so Silent Movie Theater, an awesome local theater recently renovated and under new ownership (with JGL, Phil Lord and Michael Cera on the advisory board), playing both the classics (like Chaplin-era classics) and new, trippy films like Ben Wheatley’s newest. Not only would I miss out on the chance to see this bizarre movie about a few 17th century British civil war deserters in theaters, I’d be missing a chance to see it at the Silent Movie Theater, on one of their comfy couches that take up the first few rows, AND, I’d miss the possibility of seeing a psychedelic movie on psychedelic drugs. So, I made sure that didn’t happen.

I’ve done shrooms once, and it was alternately one of the best and worst moments of my life, but it also revolved around an (admittedly obvious) movie: PINEAPPLE EXPRESS. For a couple hours, I was one of James Franco and Seth Rogen’s pals, along for the ride, kicking out the windshields and giggling with them.

Then, I was forced to endure the movie a SECOND TIME (I couldn’t move from the couch; the only thing I managed to do was rub the hardwood floors lovingly with my feet), and that led to vomit, massive embarrassment and darker thoughts than I’ve probably ever had. I wanted to go to the hospital, or bang my head against the toilet to blissfully pass out for a little while. I was prepared to live the rest of my life in a psych ward in a straitjacket, with my parents looking down at me in disappointment. Miraculously, friends and WALL-E managed to drag me out of the darkness and into the light of the stars.

Having had this experience, I felt like I was ready for A FIELD IN ENGLAND, and thought the movie would be better for it.

I hopped on the bus, and arrived way too early. I purchased my tickets and walked around Fairfax, determined to squeeze out even more fun into this evening. After a Yelp search and a few circles around the block that likely made another moviegoer believe I was chasing him, I ended up at…

The Dime. The place is exactly the dive one wants at about 1:38 AM. At 8 PM on a Thursday, there was about 4 people in the bar, and the tiny space felt darn right huge and comfortable, a feeling never shared after 10 PM. From my painful conversation with the hot bartender, I learned that the Dime had DJ’s every night (every night). I also learned that a dive bar in LA means $9 well vodka drinks. The Dime is not the right name, though it does have one of those old-school cash registers:

The vodka soda at least was strong, and it readied me for the mindfucks to come.

Unfortunately, no one offered me shrooms. I don’t know if I didn’t qualify, if Shroom Dude wasn’t in attendance, or if my writer friend just happened upon a miracle (and wasted it). Until I arrived there, it seemed to me like it was a veritable certainty, as if my ticket entailed I receive a handful of smelly, awful tasting psychotropic drugs.

Alas, it was not meant to be (or perhaps thankfully, judging from my only other experience), and I think the movie was worse for it. I had no idea what was going on, and while I know that was the point, I feel like I just wasn’t on the same plane of existence with the characters, the filmmakers or the writers (Amy Jump and Ben Wheatley). This movie demands another frame of mind and a lack of sobriety, and I celebrate it for that. It’s essentially MONTY PYTHON meets David Lynch and Ingmar Bergman.

Even so, it managed to be hilarious at times, and if you desire random penises and other disturbing images of violence, sex and god knows what, wrapped around by an absorbingly eerie score, A FIELD is for you. There’s even a scene where one of the soldiers is literally choking on mushrooms, and I can’t imagine this movie puts you in good, magical happy trip land based on its fucked up content.

While I was disappointed by the movie and the experience as a whole, I’m glad I went for it. I could’ve stayed home and caught up on AMERICAN HORROR STORY, but instead, I tried to live out my own episode. These are the kinds of things I’m in LA for; these are the kinds of things we live for. I’d rather go and experience the weird, than for a moment regret I didn’t.

I also ended up getting a business card out of it for an event planner who once raised money for charity by traveling across the world wearing only a Tuxedo. Yes, the guy rules.

To figure out how to see A FIELD IN ENGLAND, check its website. Its apparently on demand, available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and during the summer of its release, you could’ve seen A FIELD IN ENGLAND…in a field in England. That would’ve been everything.