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Vince Vaughn stars opposite himself in the action comedy “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice,” an R-rated gangster movie that had SXSW in stitches during its Saturday night world premiere.

Out March 27 on Hulu, the film, directed by BenDavid Grabinski, follows mobster Nick (Vaughn), who travels back in time so that Future Nick and Present Nick can save fellow gangster buddy Mike (James Marsden) from being murdered. Eiza González plays Alice, a woman caught between these two dangerous men, as the four of them (does that add up?) face assassins, kingpins and coke-sniffing henchmen. The ensemble includes Keith David, Jimmy Tatro, Stephen Root, Lewis Tan, Ben Schwartz, Emily Hampshire and Arturo Castro.

Grabinski introduced the film by reading some remarks written on his phone. “This following speech was saved in my Google Docs as the speech I’d give if ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ wins an MTV Movie Award,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure those don’t exist anymore, which sucks shit.”

Setting the stakes, he added, “Movies are the best thing in the entire world. Movies are why I get up in the morning. Movies are why I exist. Movies bring me joy, and you are all about to watch a fucking movie. It’s a movie made by a major studio with movie stars and jokes and fights and surprises and explosions, a lot of music and a time machine.”

The movie is full of laugh-out-loud moments and absurd, violent fight sequences. And — no spoilers — a famous action movie star makes a surprise cameo as a hit man.

“It’s just so nice to have an original idea made,” Vaughn said during a post-film Q&A.

González, who also stars in another SXSW headliner, “I Love Boosters,” said she was “terrified” signing onto “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” because “I’ve never done comedy.”

“Be kind to me,” she pleaded with the audience. “This is the first I’m doing it. I was really nervous.”

Vaughn assuaged his co-star’s nerves: “I thought you were super funny. It’s so surprising to hear you say you were nervous, because you were so confident. You had so many great ideas, and I thought you were terrific in the film.”

In “Hokum,” a new supernatural horror outing from Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy, an American writer, Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), finds himself on the verge of finishing his popular book series about a conquistador with a bleak ending. McCarthy opens the film in the desert with the conquistador from Ohm’s imagination about to commit murder. The scene is interrupted when in the scribe’s home, shrouded in darkness, eerie sounds distract him from what’s on his digital page. The jump scares start there but will only intensify when Ohm travels to the wooded area in Ireland where his now deceased parents spent their honeymoon.

With two other horror features to his name (“Caveat,” “Oddity”), McCarthy has mastered how to conjure up unnerving scenes in mundane spaces, but in this case the accumulation of ideas inside his cauldron makes for a convoluted concoction.  

During the first act, McCarthy plants several characters in and around the charmingly outdated hotel where Ohm is staying for the viewer to suspect of wrongdoing later on. There’s the elderly owner (Brendan Conroy), whose only scene sees him spook a pair of children by telling them about a vicious witch from folktales. Witnessing this interaction with disdain, Ohm reveals his antagonistic personality. He wants to be left alone to work, but he’s an author of substantial fame, so the employees, among them the well-meaning receptionist Mal (Peter Coonan), are curious about his visit. Scott plays to his strengths as a performer with an ironic demeanor well-versed in deadpan humor. In an early scene, he viciously belittles timid bellhop and aspiring writer Alby (Will O’Connell). Scott inflicts Ohm’s nonchalant meanness with a piercingly perverse matter-of-factness that places the character as far away as possible from the realm of likeability. He’s an arrogant jerk.

Lurking in the forest is Jerry (David Wilmot), a vagabond living in his van, whose animosity with Fergal (Michael Patric), the inn owner’s prickly adult son, will play a role in how the days ahead will go haywire. And then there’s Fiona (Florence Ordesh), a bartender whose exchange with Ohm introduces him to the mystery of the honeymoon suite, which hasn’t been used in years. Fiona and Alby suggest the reason could be the presence of a witch. Ohm, a cynical skeptic, dismisses their claims. On that same night, Halloween, a suicide attempt, and a disappearance rattle the old hotel. McCarthy then thrusts Ohm into a pursuit of the truth, and of Fiona’s whereabouts. He eventually arrives in the dreaded honeymoon suite.

The time that Ohm spends trapped in that off-limits room, overnight and in near darkness save for a small lamp, packs the film’s most effective scares, but even as information about what’s occurring at this establishment comes to light, more questions about how it’s all meant to fit together arise. The talent of cinematographer Colm Hogan maintains every object and Scott legible to the eye during this extended passage where everything appears coated in gray hues. The hotel’s outdated amenities and overall look — you can almost whiff a musty odor emanating from its dusty fixtures — lend themselves to the narrative: an old bell that communicates with reception or what looks like a dumbwaiter that goes down to the basement are integral to how the plot unfurls. McCarthy astutely uses specific production design elements to heighten the uneasiness of these sequences.

Nightmarish visions of Ohm’s childhood involving his mother suggest that his personal trauma is also haunting him here, not only the witch that Alby claims to have seen before. Though intensely disturbing, a scene where a TV shows a distorted iteration of a character that Ohm watched as a kid rings out of place, even if the context involves his mother’s tragic passing. On top of these apparitions, a human foe, whose motives for committing a crime seem rather nebulous, also exists. The combination of ghosts, dark magic practitioners, and a flesh-and-blood villain turns “Hokum” into an overstuffed, otherworldly entanglement. In that sense, the content lives to its title as a collection of larger-than-life bizarre elements.

McCarthy’s previous effort, “Oddity,” about a spirit haunting a home, was a more focused exploration of unseen presences interacting with the mortal plane with righteous intentions. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of terror inducing imagery in “Hokum” that will satisfy the craving for a visceral scare. These shots mostly come in the form of horrifying faces or masks that momentarily peek through the darkness. Probably none of them match the shock of one particular instance in “Oddity,” but McCarthy knows the language and timing to deploy these moments and succeed at jolting the audience.

McCarthy subverts expectations in that most characters reveal themselves to be the opposite of the archetypes they were broadly painted as, and yet that doesn’t make “Hokum” feel more original. The filmmaker’s desire to give Jerry a bit of a back story beyond his life on the outskirts of society doesn’t extend to any of the other characters but does somewhat bond him to Ohm in a morbid manner: they both feel judged over the death of a loved one. Buoyed by Scott’s level-headed turn — he doesn’t transform into a scream king — “Hokum” is a proficient horror exploit, which hinges on atmosphere instead of gore, even if its many frightening threads feel disjointed, like rooms in distinctly different hotels.

Between exploring new interests, engaging with new styles and making new friends, our young years are a searching pursuit of identity, and thus one of cinema’s enduring topics. That quest is very much at the heart of director Katie Aselton’s lovely coming-of-age drama “Their Town,” a familiar yet cozily comforting film about the soulful kinships that emerge when we least expect them, enriching our world in ways that are permanent and singular.

A warm family affair on the page and off — the script is by Aselton’s husband Mark Duplass, with the lead played by their daughter, Ora Duplass — “Their Town” doesn’t just wink with its title at Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer-winning play “Our Town.” It also embraces its small-town spirit beautifully, finding meaning in life’s ordinary moments when everything else seems high-stakes. Ora’s Abby is certainly experiencing one of those extreme crossroads in her young world, when her boyfriend Tyler (William Atticus Parker) exits the school play they’re co-leading. Does that mean he just doesn’t want to be in a production that he deems stupid, or is a break-up imminent — especially considering Tyler hasn’t always been faithful?

To the relief of their exceedingly vocal and dramatic director Mr. Elliot (Jeffery Self, vibrant despite an overwrought part that errs on the side of comic-relief cliché), Abby half-heartedly stays behind, getting paired with Matt (Chosen Jacobs) instead. Except Matt had only signed up to do stage work, and isn’t all that interested in playing a romantic lead. Still, the two decide to spend some time after school and practice their parts jointly anyway.

At first, Abby’s reluctance to stick with the play doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially because we get a strong sense of character from her: “I am my own person,” she insists, early in the film. But when we meet her mother Janet (Kim Shaw), the pieces of the puzzle snap into place. Having been let down by men before, and hoping for a less tough life for her daughter, Janet seems to encourage Abby to stick with the popular Tyler as a way out, confusing her about what her individual priorities should be.

In an especially well-written and deftly orchestrated scene where Janet and Abby quarrel, with Matt overhearing from another room, their mother-daughter dynamic comes into sharp focus with heartbreak and humor. In the heat of the fight, Janet’s protectiveness of Tyler is surprising: Shouldn’t she encourage her daughter to build a life on her town terms? Then we realize the very point at the heart of “Their Town” (and perhaps our own memories of youth): Grown-ups are older but not always wiser, and young instincts can sometimes be the right ones.

Settling into this realization, we can blissfully enjoy the unforced chemistry that emerges between Matt and Abby when they head to his family home — a lot more upscale than Abby’s — for practice. We learn that Matt’s parents have been divorced since his father Anthony (Daveed Diggs) came out as a gay man. A loving father, he now often visits his boyfriend Wei (Leonard Nam) abroad, checking in with Matt via Zoom daily. (An especially amusing Zoom call makes for another memorable scene in the film.)

With their past connections delightfully rediscovered and all the cards on the table, the youngsters spend the evening strolling around their town over confessional conversations, bringing to mind the relaxed rhythms of Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy. While their exchanges aren’t quite as deep as Jesse and Celine’s, Abby and Matt are still wonderful screen partners, and ones we root for. A winsome scene with Gloria (Annie Henk), the owner of a taco truck that Abby frequents, furthers that sentiment. Elsewhere, the crisp New England environs of Bangor, Maine provide a stunning backdrop for the proceedings — charming, but not romanticized in an overly syrupy way.

“Their Town” is less successful when it dials up the dramatic intensity by teasing a mental illness angle for Matt, explaining the episodes that forced his family to move. Fluid and organic until then, the film stumbles a little with this revelation, with even the young cast seeming ill at ease as they navigate a storyline that almost comes out of nowhere. This also makes us question other narrative choices: If Matt’s struggle is so recent, how is his father this comfortable leaving him alone for long periods of time?

Still, “Their Town” finds its footing, thanks mostly to its exceptional performances and Aselton’s sharp, unfussy direction, which allows the leads’ chemistry and the locale’s warmth speak for themselves. In return, we gladly embrace the gentle touch of this small and spirited film.

The catchy premise motoring “Sender,” a story about a harried woman who moves into a rental home and quickly becomes inundated with packages she didn’t order, transforms beyond its simple, straightforward hook. Writer-director Russell Goldman re-fashions the puzzle box constraints of his short “Return to Sender” into an intricately-faceted feature, making way for a deep character study to emerge, crawling under our skin to truly unnerve in its damning examination of how commercialism is insidiously interwoven into our daily lives. Boldly off-kilter, brilliant and bizarre, its dark humor and taut psychological horror are laced together in a delightfully heady blend.

Julia (Britt Lower) has recently experienced a few major lifestyle changes. She was fired from her low level job, quit drinking and moved into a rental home three weeks prior to when we first meet her hiding in the kitchen at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. After the group breaks for the day, she introduces herself to Whitney (Rhea Seehorn), who appears to be struggling with some light anger issues on top of her drinking problem. Julia asks for Whitney’s help on her sobriety journey, but Whitney is reluctant to agree, offering a recommendation for a different rehab program. Whitney’s compliance doesn’t really matter anyway as Julia is hell-bent on having her as a sponsor, so when Julia’s overbearing, soft-spoken sister Tatiana (Anna Baryshnikov) drops by to check on her, Whitney can provide a buffer.

Meanwhile, mysterious packages begin showing up to Julia’s home from an Amazon-esque e-commerce site, Smirk. First, it’s a lipstick that’s similar in color to her own signature shade. But then the goods become specifically targeted to items in Julia’s hazy, destructive past, from condoms to jugs of protein powder that her former colleague (Utkarsh Ambudkar) now sells. Even a creepy, homemade duct tape balaclava mask shows up. Not knowing how to proceed, she consults the kindly Smirk delivery driver she’s befriended, Charlie (David Dastmalchian), but he’s not much help either. Julia’s psychosis starts to shatter, overcome by cardboard shipping boxes and torturous insomnia. Matters worsen for her when Tatiana moves in and Whitney disappears. It’s up Julia to battle her way through the corporate red tape to uncover the answers for herself, which turns into trippy, mind-blowing insanity and shattering revelations.

Goldman keeps things moving at a quick clip to augment the film’s atmospheric pull and tighten the tension. Making the unreliable narrator a recovering alcoholic gives the prickly psycho-thriller a character-driven edge. Her journey towards long-lasting sobriety aligns with her unfolding detective work to find her anonymous aggressor. Characters’ emotional catharses are earned. The mystery of who’s behind it all is revealed in an amusing manner, unfolding before we’re ahead of anyone on screen and never collapsing into lazy, expository speech dumps. Editor Marco Rosas’s montages and abrupt cuts give the proceedings an electric energy and deliberate discomfort.

The auteur places us directly in his heroine’s tormented psyche through the use of ingenious sound design (courtesy of Nathan Ruyle’s outside the box thinking), unsettling cinematography (courtesy of Gemma Doll-Grossman’s innovative utilization of blurred-edge lenses and light) and a percussive score (courtesy of Gavin Brivik’s compositions forming a cohesive identity through their disparate rhythms). Distressing environmental sounds – like the low crackling hum of a guitar amp ready for use, Julia’s booming punches as she pries open her mystery deliveries, or the sharp surprise of a blender or shower turning on – plug us into Julia’s destabilizing experiences. Her sobering memories are accompanied by stark, cold daylight, shot with a handheld camera to express immediacy and intimacy.

Because the dialogue is perhaps a little too lean, we’re left to infer some of the character construction through the world these players inhabit. Melisa Myers’ clever production design adds intrigue. Julia’s mixed medium mural hanging on her family room wall clues us into her cluttered, frenzied mindset. Rather than show her living quarters growing messier the longer she’s tormented by her stalker escalating their threats into excruciating psychological warfare, it’s a shrewd juxtaposition to see her home transformed into a tidy, attractive and cozy space.

The ensemble elevates the sharp material. There are no weak links in the cast either. Lower has the yeoman’s task of heightening the narrative’s frenetic unease. In her capable hands, her flawed heroine is infused with an innate rootability. We like her in spite of her caustic tendencies. She’s absolutely captivating, adopting an imposing physicality when guarded, yet shrinking when scared. She gets her steps in by pacing, jittery from chugging Celsius energy drinks. Seehorn is equally as magnetic a performer. Though she doesn’t have a lot of screen time, she’s a looming presence, thanks to her curt way of dealing with her pesky, persistent charge. Baryshnikov is the soul of the film as the beleaguered victim of Julia’s hijinks. Yet it’s Dastmalchian who serves as the MVP of the supporting cast. He’s charming, tender and vulnerable, striking up sweet (but never saccharine) rom-com-inspired chemistry with Lower.

In addition to Goldman’s visual dexterity capturing his anti-heroine’s insular life, he exercises a compelling gift for world-building. The prologue, featuring a disabled elderly woman (played by an almost unrecognizable Jamie Lee Curtis, who also serves as the film’s producer) feeling suicidal after opening a package containing a meaningful childhood memento, hints at a larger context in which the filmmaker’s thematic and narrative concepts could exist outside of one film. It’s perfectly suited for expansion through spinoffs, sequels and prequels. With a creeping dread bubbling beneath the surface, ruminating on the ease with which bullies and corporations inextricably insinuate themselves into our lives, “Sender” deserves to be added to your cart.