"Stinking in the basement is OK if you're reading the right books."

Meth heads, am I right? You ever watch them shop? They twitch like insects as they flitter about from one shelf to the next, every product a magic bauble that must be scrutinized carefully and purchased at once. The clerk, keeping watch over this frenzied spree, anticipates a respite as they approach the counter with arms full of impulse items, when suddenly the meth heads see a rack of butane lighters, and have to click all of them five to eight times in a desperate search for "the good one.'

Can you imagine what a meth head would do with a few million dollars in a warehouse full of film-making gear?

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Evil Within.

I can't say for certain whether oil heir Andrew Getty ever visited such a warehouse, but he did die in 2015 with toxic levels of methamphetamine in his system after having spent $4 million to $6 million on making this damn scary movie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it remained unfinished when Getty died, but producer Michael Luceri made the final edits to get the film released. Plenty of web sites are carrying the story, and they're all practically the same, so let's just talk about the movie.

A mentally retarded man named Dennis (Frederick Koehler) has had escalating night terrors about a blue Michael Berryman since he was a child. In a recent dream, Berryman stapled a zipper to Dennis's back, so he can unzip his skin and try to crawl inside it, sorta like in Freddy's Revenge. In fact, there are a lot of elements of classic horror films in play here. While it's a unique story, there are elements reminiscent of Hellraiser and a Nightmare on Elm Street in it, with maybe a dash of dialogue from The Exorcist, and topped off with a little homage to Psycho.

Dennis's brother John (Sean Patrick Flanery) is his caretaker. John puts up an antique mirror in Dennis's room one day. Dennis hates it and throws a fit, until his reflection starts talking to him. Dennis and his reflection have long conversations and one day the reflection suggests that if he wants to be smarter, he needs to kill a cat, starting Dennis down the path of serial murder.

Trippy, disturbing and intense, The Evil Within is a hidden gem that's worth watching a couple times to see all the stuff you didn't notice the first time. It streams on Amazon Prime.