What's new on VOD this week?

The Halloween Season is in full-swing now, and the VOD releases keep getting bigger and better, week by week.

All nine of this week's VOD releases look great in their own way, but if we had to pick only three movies from the below list to see this week, aside from the two that we've already seen,* it would have to be Automata, The Canal, and The Houses October Built.

*We've already seen Dead Snow 2 (review HERE) and The Purge: Anarchy (review HERE).

Man, this is going to be a fun weekend of movie watching.

Automata: Jacq Vaucan, an insurance agent of ROC robotics corporation, routinely investigates the case of manipulating a robot. What he discovers will have profound consequences for the future of humanity.

Automata looks like it could be interesting, even with the mixed reviews that it's getting. We're suckers for a good dystopian/post-apocalyptic story, so we'll give it a go. It's playing at our local AMC 30, so maybe we'll even check it out on the big screen... or maybe we'll just stick to VOD in case it sucks.

The Canal: Film archivist David suspects that his wife Alice has been cheating on him with Alex, one of her work clients. This stress is compounded when David's work partner Claire gives him a reel of to-be-archived footage that shows that his house was the setting for a brutal murder in 1902. Becoming progressively more unsettled and unhinged, David begins to believe that a spectral presence is in his house. When Alice goes missing shortly afterwards, David contacts the police- only to become the prime suspect in her disappearance. As the police grow more convinced that David has murdered his wife, he struggles to find proof of his growing suspicion that something otherworldly was instead responsible.

We've been anxiously awaiting the release of The Canal since the beginning of the year, and it will be our priority watch this weekend. If it plays half as creepy as its trailer does, we'll be more than pleased. Bring it on!

Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead: If the worst day of your life consisted of accidentally killing your girlfriend with an axe, chain-sawing your own arm off, and watching in horror as your closest friends were devoured by a zombified Nazi battalion, you'd have to assume that things couldn't get much worse. In Martin's case, that was only the beginning.

Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead (read our review HERE) is finally hitting VOD today, making it a perfect rental for the Halloween Season! We loved the hell out of this movie, and if you're in the mood for a fun Horror flick amidst all of the terrifying ones you're no doubt watching these days, then this is most definitely the ticket.

The Devil Incarnate: A newlywed couple encounter the remains of an ancient curse, only to reawaken its dark legacy.

Another week, another movie about a pregnant chick being toyed with by the forces of darkness. Honestly, after this year, Haunted Pregnancy should be its own sub-genre. This one looks painfully generic, but you never know, maybe it will surprise us and end up being good. Or not.

The Devil's Hand: When young girls start to go missing within a religious cult, older followers fear a long-told prophecy while the younger members suspect abusive elders are killing them off.

This one's got a strong cast (Colm Meaney, Jennifer Carpenter), but its PG-13 rating makes us wonder if it's going to feel watered-down, like so many PG-13 Horror flicks do. We're definitely still going to watch it, but we're just not expecting it to blow our socks off or anything. For that reason alone, it just might end up being good.

P.S. We liked this movie's original title, Where the Devil Hides, much better. The original poster was cooler too.

The Houses October Built: Beneath the fake blood and cheap masks of countless haunted house attractions across the country, there are whispers of truly terrifying alternatives. Looking to find an authentic, blood-curdling good fright for Halloween, five friends set off on a road trip in an RV to track down these underground Haunts. Just when their search seems to reach a dead end, strange and disturbing things start happening and it becomes clear that the Haunt has come to them...

Now this movie looks like it's right up our alley. We loved the trailer, and the movie's premise is unique enough, so maybe it will end up being one of the best Found Footage flicks of the year? We're really, really hoping that's the case.

Mercy: Two young boys move with their mother to take care of their dying grandmother at her decrepit farmhouse. When they suspect that the elderly woman they love has encountered a dark spirit, they fear she might not be the only one who won’t make it through the summer alive.

The first of two Blumhouse Productions that was abruptly dumped onto VOD this week with no notice whatsoever, Mercy is a movie based on the Stephen King short story, Gramma. We remember reading Gramma way back in the 80's, when books of his like Skeleton Crew were our childhood Bibles, and we remember it scaring the shit out of us. Will the movie be as effective? Who knows, but we won't miss the chance to see a Stephen King movie that has H.P. Lovecraft ties, no matter what the outcome.

Mockingbird: Three individuals each receive an anonymous, unmarked video camera and a horrific ultimatum to continue filming… or die.

And here's the 2nd Blumhouse movie to be dumped on VOD this week in clandestine fashion. As tired as we are of the whole Found Footage conceit, and against our better judgement (instincts, even), we're really excited to see Mockingbird. The fact that it was dumped onto VOD with no fanfare at all, and by a Production Company as big as Blumhouse, gives us plenty of pause though.

The Purge: Anarchy: A young couple works to survive on the streets after their car breaks down right as the annual purge commences.

Oh look, another Blumhouse production... they really were everywhere this year, weren't they? We really disliked the first Purge movie, and so we had zero interest in seeing this follow-up effort. Turns out that we not only ended up liking The Purge: Anarchy (read our review HERE), but it's also one of our favorite movies of the year. We won't be renting this one, because we're buying it when it hits Blu-ray in two weeks, but for those of you who passed on it in theaters this Summer, you could do far worse with your rental $$$ than to spend it on this superior sequel.