She’s got a massive piece due, but her inspiration is lacking, until a wild night of sex and drugs and maybe blood-drinking unlocks her mind and leaves her feeling more furiously ready to paint than ever. Dora Madison stars as an artist trying to make rent whose agent sucks and whose brain is creatively blocked. This is horror filmmaking at its most stripped down. And while you’ll have to wait until next year for the latter, the former is now available for your twisted enjoyment. Writer and director Joe Begos has been getting a ton of buzz this year for his insane double drop of Bliss and VFW. Belzebuth is gritty, intense, and at times terrifying. The deaths are heinous, but they don’t veer into exploitative, and the lead cop who was touched by tragedy at the start of the film finds himself in the middle of god and the devil as he fights to save a young boy. But these are not crimes of men, and supernatural investigators are brought in to assist local police in rooting out the unholy origins of some approaching evil. That event lays the groundwork for a shocking string of murders that will take place years later in the same town, targeting local children.

The story starts in the delivery wing of a Mexican hospital where a nurse goes rogue and carries out an unspeakable killing spree. It is hard to do possession and exorcism and make it feel fresh, but that’s exactly what director and co-writer Emilio Portes pulls off with Belzebuth.

Having the Warrens anchor the whole affair brings that warmth and familiarity that Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson have mastered as paranormal-investigator lovebirds, and building the action around a night with the babysitter gone wrong makes this quaint haunted-house outing feel like just the right kind of teen scream for a summer horror movie. And listen, the third Annabelle movie doesn’t break any new ground, but it is a damn fine time at the movie theater. The motto for the Conjuring’s expanded-universe movies has generally been “Good enough!” While there are some jump scares to be had among the franchise, outside the core components of Ed and Lorraine Warren, most entries feel like they’re on cruise control to keep this big machine rolling for New Line.

Best movies 2017 sp far