A long time ago, a friend gave me a copy of Gerald Brittle's The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren, and warned me not to read it before going to sleep. I did him one better; I didn't read it at all. But director James Wan did, and now we have The Conjuring franchise, a series of wildly successful horror films that, at the very least, gives critics nightmares of irrelevance. Because whether or not the people who tilt the Tomatometer like these films, the MoviePass masses eat 'em up. Scott Marks didn't much care for The Nun, the series' latest installment, but he reports that the Thursday night screening was just packed. (Just now, he's off to see Peppermint to get the bad taste out of his mouth; he promises to report back.) He wasn't too pleased with The Wife, either, so it seems celibacy isn't the issue. But the mother who needs a nanny for her were-baby in Good Manners? That he liked.

As for me, I was impressed by both the feral We the Animals and crazed Madeline's Madeline, two films about young people that, coincidentally, feature their encounters with old-style videocassette porn as significant plot points. And I was almost impressed by Destination Wedding, which doesn't have any porn, but does have a protracted (but thoroughly untitillating) sex scene between Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder.

Also opening but, alas, unreviewed: Christian widow story God Bless the Broken Road, outlier offspring doc Far from the Tree, and cops of color doc Crime + Punishment.