Southbound

Southbound (2015) is a horror anthology you can watch online on iFILM. Five tales, several directing teams, one endless desert highway that nobody seems able to leave.

Two men race down the road with floating, skeletal things trailing them in the sky. An all-female band breaks down and accepts a night with a welcoming but deeply off couple. A driver hits a stranger by accident and finds that the emergency dispatcher on the line gives instructions no sane person would expect. A brother hunts for his missing sister in a roadside bar in the middle of nowhere, and a vacationing family walks into a house where someone was clearly waiting. The stories bleed into each other — a face from one segment drifts to the shoulder of the next — until it dawns on you that this stretch of asphalt is some kind of purgatory.

The film comes from talent behind the V/H/S series, including David Bruckner and Roxanne Benjamin. The budget is small and the bet is on mounting dread rather than gore for its own sake. If straight-ahead slashers have worn thin for you, this looping structure hits differently. Stream Southbound (2015) online on iFILM.