Malum

In 2014, Anthony DiBlasi made 'Last Shift' on next to nothing: a nightmare set in a police station on its last night, which became a small festival favourite. Nine years on, the director, who had produced two Clive Barker adaptations including 'The Midnight Meat Train', remade it himself with more money. 'Malum' tells the same story but goes bigger on the cult, on the heroine's family and, above all, on the blood.

A year ago, officer Will Loren helped take down a cult that was abducting young women. That same night he shot several colleagues at the station and then killed himself. Now the building is closing, and his daughter Jessica, a rookie, asks to work the final shift there on her own. She wants to understand what happened to her father, and she's barely speaking to her mother, who has turned to drink.

The night starts quietly, with a homeless man hanging around the door. Then come the threatening calls, a pig with a pentagram daubed on its back, and visions Jessica puts down to a toxic leak. John Malum's followers are still out there, and the god they pray to seems to have plans for her.

Jessica Sula, from 'Split' and 'Skins', plays the lead, and DiBlasi asked her not to watch the first film. Natalie Victoria is back as Marigold, the part she played the first time. It was shot in Louisville, Kentucky, in the summer of 2022, from a script by DiBlasi and Scott Poiley again. Poiley died a few days after the shoot wrapped, and the film is dedicated to him.

It opened in 249 American cinemas on 31 March 2023 and reached British ones in April 2024, on a double bill with 'Hunt Her, Kill Her'. Horror critics mostly liked it and praised the practical effects, while others missed the simplicity of the original.

• Drama
• Horror
• Mystery