Four horror movies to stream now

By ERIK PIEPENBURG

‘Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round’

His name is Mr. Jensen (Michael Gilio), but his furry puppet pals call him Jimbo. Soft-spoken and 1950s dad handsome, James is the host of a low-budget children’s television show who welcomes his audience to join him on the patio of his little house with a little garden that’s all just a little too creepy. When James spies a package inside his friend Marty the mailbox, James says to the camera: “I am fond of things that come in plastic bags.”

The problem James is talking about on the episode that anchors Aidan Leary’s crackling feature debut is his inability to recall anything about his life except a deadly fire that he recollects in flashbacks that look like a fun house on fire. “Remembering hurts,” James says after sawing into his leg with a knife, but doing so is “how you heal yourself,” not noticing that the skin under his bandage is seeping blood.

Past traumas have sharp claws that dig deep in Leary’s strange and surprisingly heartfelt film, a combination of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” “Avenue Q” and George Romero at his most existential (and gruesome). Gilio is exceptional as a man whose bright eyes and rigid bow tie betray the lifetime of pain underneath. Kyle William Stephens’ music is a wicked delight, especially in James’ mournful final number. (Stream it on Screambox.)

‘Buffet Infinity’

I love a buffet. The new one in Westridge County, a neighborly community in suburban Alberta, looks particularly good. It’s got “intimate fine silverware” and “legendary Jamaican jerk mahi-mahi.” There’s a sinkhole nearby, but the owners swear it won’t affect business hours. The demons? That’s another story.

This buffet is fake — consider me disappointed — but the weirdness is very real in this creepy oddity from Canadian writer-director Simon Glassman. The film defies easy categorization and description; to call it a film is even a stretch, since it’s really a series of fictional news reports and commercials for local businesses (cars, insurance, an attorney) that get increasingly macabre and creature-featurey as the film progresses. By the bonkers ending, you may never look at a chafing dish the same way again.

Besides being formally ambitious, the film is also an unsettling meditation on the erosion of community — a funny valentine for fans of the public access satire “WNUF Halloween Special” and analog horror series like Local 58 TV. Genre fans who want to check out one of the weirdest movies of the year should sample this nutty smorgasbord. (Rent or buy it on major platforms.)

‘Screamboat’

If, like me, you’ve taken the Staten Island Ferry after the clubs close late Saturday night, you know that the trip can be a singular kind of terrifying. That’s nothing compared to what the ferry riders endure in this silly but entertaining and ultra-gory horror comedy from writer-director (and Staten Island native) Steven LaMorte.

Like “Mickey’s Mouse Trap” and other recent scary-Mickey films, “Screamboat” takes advantage of the copyright expiration of “Steamboat Willie,” Walt Disney’s 1928 animated short that marked the debut of Mickey Mouse. (The same public domain Wild West has horror-fied Winnie the Pooh, Popeye and Betty Boop.) Here, LaMorte set (and filmed) his movie almost entirely on the Staten Island Ferry as it’s terrorized one night by a ratty little creature who whistles as he stalks and slays his victims, including wasted woo girls and the boat’s hotheaded crew.

Buoyed by lowbrow effects, the film is a dumb-fun mashup of horror genres — slasher, disaster, survival, juvenile comedy — that feels whole, thanks to character actors who take stupidity seriously. (An animated segment about the monster’s back story is a lovely surprise.) (Stream it for free on Amazon Prime Video.)

‘The House Was Not Hungry Then’

There’s slow burn horror and then there’s Harry Aspinwall’s transfixing house-possessed film. It’s set in the Scottish countryside where a man (Clive Russell) poses as a real estate agent to lure visitors to an empty old home. As the title suggests, the house has a taste for humans, although Aspinwall is too clever a storyteller to lean on gore to drive his story. (There’s none.) The house speaks, nonverbally — there are subtitles — which is good for Caroline (Bobby Rainsbury), a young woman who befriends the house during visits there to look for her estranged father.

Aspinwall’s camera barely moves as characters wander between empty rooms, calling to mind a more formally adventurous and deliberately paced “Presence.” Fixed wide shots are underscored with noise that sounds like rain hitting windows, echoing the most unnerving stretches of the experimentally spectral film “Skinamarink.” Stephen D. Grant’s cinematography is sad and soft, beautifully accentuating the film’s exploration of grief. It’s horror that just might break your heart. (Rent or buy it on major platforms.)