Lena Simon (Brittany Lucio) is dealing with her car breaking down on the way to work when she's surprised by motivational speaker Scotty Sharpe (Newton Mayenge), who offers to take her to work instead of waiting for a tow truck. His offer of dinner turns out to be the perfect relationship until she starts to suspect him of cheating on her. Her friend Toni (Donna Glytch) suggests that she work with MaMa Ti'Mun (Tangie Ambrose) to do a voodoo spell on him, which will keep her in love with him once he eats special herbs inside a bowl of spaghetti. It makes him even more loving but also turns him into a killing machine.

Also: He may be a criminal and not just a motivational speaker. She also has a brother named Meatball (Markice Moore) who is on house arrest.

Director Adam Gierasch has an interesting background. He was one of the writers of movies like the Tobe Hooper remake of Toolbox Murders as well as his movie Mortuary. He also was one of the writers of Argento's Mother of Tears and the remake of Night of the Demons, which he directed along with Autopsy, Fertile Ground, House by the Lake and the "Trick" part of Tales of Halloween. He's working from a script by Dempsey Gibson, Markice Moore and Jason Rainwater.

His director's statement really goes for it: "I was drawn to the unique story of Spaghetti as I was immediately reminded of Brian DePalma movies that I love, and I also loved the idea of a predominantly African-American cast. Lena is haunted by surrealistic nightmares like Carrie is, and then finds out that the man that she's falling in love with is anything but normal. He has a terrifying set of skills that he can't even remember, which turn him into a cold-blooded killer. In my approach I utilized the neon color of De Palma's Body Double and the unmotivated light of Dario Argento's Suspiria, while adding in as much blood as I could to grind it all together and make the perfect bloody, scary, funny stew. For my score I tapped Slasher Dave, the creative force behind the band Acid Witch, to embark on composing for the film. His unique approach pulls from The Exorcist (especially "Tubular Bells") and John Carpenter's Halloween. To make the voodoo elements work I had him put in a lot of tribal drums. Finally, we used a real goat for the voodoo ceremony (although of course it left set unharmed.) It was some of the most fun directing I've had in a long time, and probably the nicest, coolest cast I've ever worked with."

I'm a big Acid Witch fan, so I was glad that I read that. It makes sense why the opening - filled with AI generated animated art of women and spaghetti - feels so sinister.

The IMDB reviews for this movie are interesting. Either they're ten out of ten reviews that claim that it's "A Savory Fusion of Narrative Brilliance and Visual Delight" or a one out of ten that says, "The uncanny resemblance to Indian cinema becomes evident, particularly in the implausible death scenes."

People will be stabbed in the face, a woman's face will explode and yes, that goat shows up. I will say that this movie takes itself seriously - despite being about a woman putting her period blood into a pasta dish for her cheating man - and it looks way better than any other modern horror movie on Tubi, complete with cool gel lighting and some really great gore. It goes hard when it doesn't have to and for that, you should respect it.

I thought I was about to find another Black Giallo movie and I did, but was also amazed to find out that it was made by someone who actually worked with Argento. You can still be surprised.

Right, well I will be the first to admit that I had never heard about this 2023 movie from director Adam Gierasch, and yeah I definitely found the movie's title to be stupid and corny. But at the same time, the title was actually sufficiently silly to make me pick up the movie, so it worked, didn't it?

And with "Spaghetti" being a horror movie that I hadn't heard about, much less actually watched, of course I opted to sit down and see what writers Dempsey Gibson, Markice Moore and Jason Rainwater had to offer. Now, the movie was labeled as a horror movie, but it certainly wasn't a horror movie, it was a thriller at best.

The storyline in "Spaghetti" turned out to be a surprise actually. I wasn't expecting the movie to be entertaining, much less actually catering to my interest in movies, but the writers managed to make the script interesting. Sure, there were some aspects to the movie that felt out of place with the overall presentation of the movie, but it panned out nicely enough anyway. I was genuinely surprised with the script and storyline here, so thumbs up to the writers for that accomplishment.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Spaghetti". However, I will say that the acting performances in the movie were actually better than I had expected for a movie titled "Spaghetti", for better or worse. I was especially impressed with the performance of Donna Glytch (playing Toni), despite her not having a leading role.

I am not overly keen on movies of this caliber, and rarely sit down to watch them. There are far less entertaining movies out there of the same caliber as "Spaghetti", which actually made director Adam Gierasch's movie somewhat of a refreshing gust of wind. And I have to say that the movie was definitely surprised me.

I was perusing the reviews for "Spaghetti" and found it suspiciously odd that out of the twelve reviews that the movie had received, at the time of me writing this review, then eleven of them had rated the movie a nine or ten out of ten stars rating. Sure, that wasn't dubious and questionable at all.

Visually then "Spaghetti" was actually good. It wasn't a movie that made use of an overwhelming amount of special effects, but whatever effects and props were used actually served the movie quite well, and that added to the overall impression of the movie. And there were some pretty interesting visuals throughout the course of the 81 minutes that the movie ran for.

My rating of director Adam Gierasch's 2023 horror movie "Spaghetti" lands on a six out of ten stars, which surprises even myself.