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By Keri O’Shea and Ben Bussey

Given how Blumhouse Productions have come to more or less completely dominate theatrically released horror these last few years, and how frequently their output leans toward ghost stories and/or found footage, at a glance it’s easy to assume their latest release Unfriended might not offer anything new. However, your intrepid BAH editors were sufficiently intrigued by the trailer and premise for director Levan Gabriadze’s film to venture out to the cinema on opening night – and, happily enough, wound up pretty glad they did.

Read on for their largely spoiler-free reflections, conducted as ever in a Facebook message chat – which seemed a little too appropriate under the circumstances…

Ben
(Checking in first) Right then – ready when you are.
Are you there?
OMG WHY ARENT YOU REPLYING
STOP FREAKING ME OUT UGH
DO NOT ANSWER IT KERI! NOOOOO!!!

Keri
Ha ha! Sorry Ben, contrary to our young protagonists I just had to wash up. Right, then…

Ben
Ah yes, the key thing that sets us apart from them – responsibilities!

Keri
Indeed!

Ben
Beyond the social responsibilities so central to the film, of course.

Keri
Well, I think that brings us on to one of the strong suits of the film, personally. It did a good job of capturing lolspeak in its natural environment…

Ben
Definitely. While I don’t personally use Skype, everything else about how the action played out felt very true indeed to the contemporary online experience. Well, I haven’t been stalked by a ghost, but you get the drift.

Keri
As I’m talking to you, I’m skipping back and forth between Last.fm, Tumblr and Twitter, so although I’m more or less a generation older than those kids in the film, it all rings very true! It was a clever framework – having everything unfolding via the different sites and messages received by one girl. Multi-media horror.

Ben
So how do we class Unfriended – a genuinely new angle on found footage, or something all of its own?

Keri
I do think it’s a new angle, yeah, even if not a new genre altogether. It happens in real time for one thing, so it disposes of the whole ‘tapes found somewhere’ shtick which dogs a lot of movies. Also, although you have young people zipping around between Skype and other sites, it all occurs within the space confines of a laptop – which again, gets rid of a lot of tropes we’re tired with. (Well, I am.)

Ben
Yeah, you’re definitely not alone on having long since grown exhausted with the found footage routine. As you’re well aware, whenever we get the screener discs in for the latest straight-to-DVD found footage movie, it’s become like an unlucky dip for the BAH writing team; nobody wants them, but everyone has to take one for the team now and then. Sitting down to watch them, I’m invariably bored shitless within half an hour if not sooner. That’s what made Unfriended so very refreshing: I was honestly never bored, not for a moment. Annoyed occasionally, but definitely not bored.

Keri
Yep – it did have a good pace. It gave just enough in terms of characterisation for us to accept, then ploughed on with its story. So – what annoyed you then?

Ben
I guess once we reached the final act and all the adolescent drama came to the forefront. I accept that it was necessary for the narrative and central theme, but as someone once said, I’m too old for that shit. I just wanted to slap them all and say “wait until you’ve got bills to pay you little ingrates. And get off my lawn.”

Keri
They were definitely Valley brats, yeah.

Ben
Of course, having said all that – young people do genuinely get depressed, even suicidal over this kind of teenage drama, as petty as a lot of it might seem to us jaded old codgers. So Unfriended is definitely addressing pertinent issues in an effective way – and crucially, I think, not in a judgemental way. The sexual politics of this one sit a lot better with me than those of It Follows.

Keri
On that topic, another thing it did well was illustrate how all proportion can go out of the window with things of an online nature. I mean, even we see it – people who seem to live for FB, or on the reverse of that, people who have no bearing to their online persona, and seem genuinely surprised when it turns out someone’s none-too-pleased by their online actions. But the way in which a moment’s joking around for one person can be life-changing (and even life-ending) for another… I don’t think the internet and etiquette have really caught up to one another, try as we might to promote this.

Ben
Trial by social media doesn’t look likely to die out anytime soon, alas.

Keri
And as such, for a 17 year old, being shamed online not only has massive significance, but to the perpetrators it’s something and nothing a lot of the time. “I didn’t mean anything by it” etc. I think the film wove a moral in about that… like, how passively Blaire, the main character, is revisiting a Youtube clip of their old classmate’s suicide… We’re meant to be revulsed, surely.

Ben
I’m SO glad all this wasn’t around when I was a teen. Back then if we used the internet at all it was to wait an entire day for a Quicktime video to load only for it to freeze within 0.5 seconds.

Keri
Ha ha, halcyon days.

Ben
But I digress… yeah, the seemingly casual viewing of a suicide video – right down to the fact that Blaire stops watching almost as soon as the gun goes off, despite the fact that we see there’s another minute or so of footage left. That clinical sense of detachment the internet can provide, making it all seem less real somehow. In a way – and I can’t quite believe I’m about to make this comparison considering how I hate the film in question – it brings to mind Diary of the Dead, which regularly beats us over the head with the message of how this generation seems incapable of processing events without video footage. The difference is the makers of Unfriended quite clearly understand how modern social media works, whilst Romero didn’t seem to really connect with what he was trying to tackle at all.

Keri
It was an odd blend of old ghost fable and modern, wasn’t it? The whole ‘one year since’ idea is as old as the hills…

Ben
Yeah, it’s like Prom Night or any number of bog standard slashers all over again. That’s another reason I enjoyed the film so much more than I was expecting – that it took such a stock premise, and a semi-found footage approach, yet made it feel genuinely fresh and engaging.

Keri
It knew when to poke fun at itself too…which can be risky, as it can blow the suspense altogether. Here, though, seeing as how this is the internet we’re talking about, it fitted very well.

Ben
The use of music was quite good. Funny yet creepy, kind of in the same vein as a Freddy Krueger joke. I did wonder if some of the deaths were a little too goofy, though.

Keri
I personally found it a lot creepier when the footage just started to warp and then went out altogether. You have to admit, when it starts doing that it’s pretty horrible. Mind you, I had a terror of Max Headroom as a kid so any sort of looping or similar…..UGH OMG

Ben
I liked how they did the scrambling image on the Universal logo at the opening too. I’m sure we all thought for a second, “oh great, the digital projector’s fucked!”

Keri
Well considering where we were watching it..! Wasn’t beyond possibility. But yeah, good move by them. And then the Chatroulette scenes, ha ha – standard.

Ben
Not nearly enough cocks, surely?

Keri
Well – at least they were in some way representative!

Ben
Going back to the subject of where we were watching it – I suspect we were among the oldest people in the room, but even so it was a very well behaved young audience. This definitely had some bearing on my own enjoyment of Unfriended, as I know a big part of what puts a lot of more devoted horror fans off mainstream films is how frequently the screens seem to be full of – well – dickheads.

Keri
Yeah, spotty herberts on an endurance mission, or else people who couldn’t put their phones away if they tried. Which led to one of the funniest moments for me last night – when the film had a mobile buzzing on silent and at least ten teenagers jumped out of their skins thinking it was theirs!

Ben
Ha! I must have missed that.

Keri
Look, if that’s what it takes to get people to turn the fucking things off then I welcome the new wave of internet ghosts.

Ben
Yep. Turn it off or Laura Barns will get you. But going back to what I was saying about being engaged from start to finish – what I particularly enjoyed about Unfriended was how it demanded you pay attention throughout, not just listening and watching several screens but reading as well. Quite a feat when you consider how subtitle-averse the wider audience tends to be. Contrast that with the standard found footage approach, where there are so many lulls, so many protracted silences, it’s no wonder people in the audience get vocal, impatient and unruly.

Keri
True. And as you say, the written English was truncated and sometimes a bit of a challenge (for us, I mean), but you had to read and watch carefully. Plus no one once said ‘Why are you filming?’ which is always a plus…

Ben
Indeed – and little to no shakey cam!

Keri
There is a God.

Ben
Hallelujah, Hare Krishna.

Keri
So – I guess we have pretty much said all we might want about Unfriended.

Ben
Yeah, I think we’ve just about covered it. I haven’t been looking too closely at the reviews but I gather it’s been getting a bit of a lukewarm response – so once again, call us Contrary as Fuck.
That said – I’m not too encouraged to hear they’re already working on a sequel. I really feel this would work best as a one-off unless they’ve got something very special planned. We don’t need another Paranormal Activity, as Tina Turner might have once sung…

Keri
Overall, I liked it. Although it used a few elements I definitely don’t like usually (bratty teens, for one) it did enough with them to make it work. I think its frame was ingenious and by and large, used to good effect (a few quibbles about what was shown and what wasn’t notwithstanding). It would be difficult to repeat this success and engage viewers all over again.

(Moment of no activity)

Ben
Keri are you there?
Why aren’t you replying???
OMG WHATS HAPPENING ARGHHH

Keri

OMG IS THIS YOU
QUIT IT

Ben
Never have I ever… walked out of a Blumhouse film thinking “wow, that actually is one of the best new horrors I’ve seen for a while.”

Keri
Likewise! Besties.

Unfriended is in cinemas now, from Universal.

By Keri O’Shea and Ben Bussey

Oh dear, looks like we once again need to contemplate changing the name of this site from Brutal As Hell to Contrary As Fuck. Everyone and their uncle seems to be currently raving about It Follows, and not without just cause: it’s rare that we see such a well-publicised major theatrical release afforded to a no-star horror movie from indie beginnings which isn’t a sequel, remake, reboot or otherwise regurgitation. Our own Tristan caught an early look at it in January and was also mightily impressed, so when Keri and myself ventured out to see it on opening weekend our hopes were high. However, soon enough we were both left wondering quite what It Follows had done to provoke such widespread enthusiasm, as we found every bit as much to dislike in the film as there was to admire.

We discuss the matter at length – and in heavy spoilers – below…

Ben: Okay. Well first off, I think the only way we’re really going to be able to do this is going into full spoiler territory. Readers who want to go on unspoiled are referred to Tristan’s review – although I would say he’s a bit more positive about it than I am.

Keri: Yep – agreed. So – I think my first comment would be along the lines of what you said to me at the screening we went to. We see a hell of a lot of indie films passing through – some great, some godawful, and every shade in-between. What has It Follows managed to do that a million other indies fail to do – how is it the film has garnered so much attention, with a trailer running on mainstream TV?

Ben: Yeah, I’ve been pondering that one a lot and I honestly can’t put my finger on it. Looking back at what we saw at the 2014 fests, It Follows doesn’t necessarily seem any more commercial than, say, Starry Eyes or Spring – yet Starry Eyes went straight to DVD and Spring’s getting only a limited cinema release next month I think.

Keri: Very strange, and maybe blind luck – though if the filmmakers have any tactic for achieving this sort of exposure, they should bottle and sell that. It’s frustrating actually, as a fan – the sheer amount of films I see that never get to this stage. But that’s the game, I guess.

Ben: I dunno – maybe it’s a slightly easier sell inasmuch as it relates to a more universal adolescent experience? Putting the whole supernatural stalker STD thing to one side, it’s essentially about teenagers hanging out in the summer, and the bonds that form under those circumstances.

Keri: Hmm, I dunno. Honestly, Spring’s about a summer love affair, Starry Eyes is about ambition – all pretty universal and recognisable. But I guess we could talk a long time about the whys and wherefores.

Ben: True. And I suppose they’re both a bit more out there – not that It Follows is necessarily much more down to earth. Still, the key macguffin of the supernatural stalker that never looks the same twice – that is a pretty cool idea, and put to good use.

Keri: So yeah, onto It Follows itself. It’s gotten a lot of praise, and its unstoppable, morphing predator is one big reason why. On reflection now, do you find it was effective?

Ben: I do, yeah. It was an interesting device, never knowing who the threat was – so anytime you see an unfamiliar person walking towards the main character Jay, you’re immediately put on edge. That gave the whole thing a nice slow-burning tension. The problem for me was that it didn’t go anywhere with that – it was all build-up and no pay-off. It was as if by the final act they literally didn’t know what else to do with it.

Keri: I was gunning for the film at first – I thought the slightly Scream-esque beginning (where what might be the heroine gets offed in record time by…something) was really promising, mysterious. And the build-up was interesting. When I realised that the premise was so shaky (and I’ll get to the use of sex in a while) it did feel like a let-down. That’s the other side of the whole ‘good idea’ thing. It needs fulfillment.

Ben: Like you said to me on the night, it needed just a little more exposition. Clearly they wanted to play it mysterious, and that worked up to a point, but it became evident about 30 minutes before the end that they had no idea where they were going with it. As such it’s no wonder it ended on such a total anti-climax (or that’s how it felt to me, at least). And just to do the anal pick-holes-in-their-logic thing, it was never clear how the ex-boyfriend knew so much about the bloody thing when he apparently picked it up from a one night stand he never saw again…

Keri: True. Or, considering how quickly It had tore through the guys on the boat, how anyone survived for any length of time.

Ben: I forget, did we learn that the guys on the boat had died? As I recall they left that whole thing very ambiguous.

Keri: We sort of did as It was back after Jay within a few hours!

Ben: Well, they must have been easy pickings, then. And speaking of ambiguities, there was the strange question of when exactly it was meant to be set.

Keri: Yes – I did read David Flint’s review after we got back, and he alluded to the director’s assertion that the film should exist in a sort of non-time, not easily traceable to any specific era. The director wanted the film to have a timeless quality to it; I just found it disorientating, personally, and also if you want that timelessness then there are more sound ways to go about it.

Ben: As opposed to basically everything being 80s except a clam-shaped kindle. (Heheh, clam.)

Keri: Smacked of hipster. She needed to poke around in her clam (chortle) so she had a ready supply of literary quotes. God forbid she read books for that! And analogue is cool…

Ben: That just seemed an odd choice, as everything else about it belonged to an older era – the square analogue TVs that only seem to show 50s sci-fi, the cinema with a live wurlitzer player. I forget what the cars were like but I suspect they were what would be described as vintage.

Keri: Trying to obfuscate on the era, I’m sure – but it just dislocated the film to an extent.

Ben: The music too seemed almost more 80s than 80s. I mean yes, some films from that era do use some fairly screechy synth scores, but not quite to the extent they are here. In a way It Follows reminded of Nicolas Winding Refn and the Maniac remake, with the use of that kind of soundtrack balanced with slow build up – the difference being that Refn’s films and Maniac have those crescendos of violence that punctuate that quietness. It Follows rarely does that, even when it is violent.

Keri: Yeah, it had an odd effect. John Carpenter’s loudest moments all the time. All part of the retro/unretro thing it had going on.

Ben: But one of the big sticking points for both of us, I think, was the strange attitudes toward sex.

Keri: Absolutely. Sex and sexuality has been used as a prompt for horror for years – but this unseemly? It seemed to be conflating sex with revulsion in a …well, in a way that troubled me. I know you don’t go to horror for your cool PC attitudes to sex, but still.

Ben: It was as though this monster essentially just was sex personified – and evil. See how frequently It took some highly sexualised form – often naked people, generally grotesque.

Keri: The most horrific (and it was effectively horrific, no doubt about it) scene for me was the kitchen scene. Did you read that the same way I did? To me it looked like a traumatised rape victim turned monster. I also thought it was the same girl as the prostitute at the end, but I may be wrong there.

Ben: With her teeth all mangled, clothes torn, pissing herself – yeah, she certainly seemed like a rape victim. Not sure if it was the same woman as one of the prostitutes at the end but they certainly were presented in much the same way – as a figure of revulsion. I guess the question is, are we meant to share in that revulsion, or take it as indicative of Jay’s own sexual anxieties? And I’m really not sure about that one. This is clearly a film that’s screaming out for in-depth Freudian analysis (let’s not forget It appears as her dad near the end) and there are many people far more qualified than me to get into that.

Keri: Hopefully this isn’t one of those films for which the director thinks first of the film academics… See, the way I read the ending, he didn’t sleep with the prostitute, went home and had sex with Jay anyway, and as they walk off together into the sunset, the figure slowly approaching them up the pavement is It… He couldn’t beat his revulsion for the hooker, nor his desire for Jay. And then they really are fucked.

Ben: Again, like the boat scene it was ambiguous – but it didn’t seem like he was slowing the car down. Either way the ending didn’t seem to be saying other than “and so it continues…”

Keri: Yes, agreed with that. After seeming to deliberately conflate sex with STDs – Jay’s almost always absent mother wonders aloud if her daughter ‘caught something’ and Jay herself was peering into her own underwear after the encounter she first had – this is a sign of the times perhaps, of a world where sex is terrifying and harmful. (I could do a joke here about how It kicks someone’s back doors in…)

Ben: Must admit I felt some empathy for the lad. I know many of us had female friends as teenagers who were a bit crazy and we were so anxious to “help” them… I mean, to be in a situation where you might be able to fuck your dream girl AND feel all morally dignified and selfless in doing so, that’s a proper win-win.

Keri: For a few hours maybe!

Ben: Ah, but what a glorious few hours…

Keri: Ha ha!

Ben: Other big win for the lad – he got to accidentally shoot clam girl.

Keri: Ah yes, the possibly unintentional humour surrounding the world’s worst plan…

Ben: Again, this is where just a smidgen more exposition would have helped. They’d already shot the thing in the head and it had got straight back up – why the hell did they think electrocution would be any different?

Keri: Hmm, this is a film where It can pop up anywhere but they assert that getting in a car would get you ‘ahead’ of it somehow. I don’t know.

Ben: Nor do I – and alas, I suspect the writer-director didn’t either. But still, it’s a supernatural entity and as such not subject to the human laws of physics and whatnot, so I guess it’s all cool beans. (Sorry, not sure why i just used the phrase ‘cool beans.’ At least it wasn’t ‘amazeballs.’)

Keri: We’re at risk of just picking holes in the plot, I realise – and your phrases are getting more and more odd. Maybe we should wrap it up here…

Ben: Yeah, fair enough. Your final thoughts?

Keri: Okay, for me, an intriguing set-up with some genuinely creepy early scenes unfortunately collapsed underneath its own weight – not so much because the idea couldn’t be sustained throughout, but I think what pushed me away overall was the odd, unsettling attitudes to sex it held. Even if deliberately using that theme to create horror, it still felt like it was too heartfelt a message in several places.

Ben: Agreed all around. We have dwelled a bit heavily on the negative, and there is in fact a lot to admire about It Follows – it looks and sounds great, it is often quite tense and atmospheric, and the young cast are pretty good all in all – but if someone were to tell us tomorrow that it’s covert propaganda for that whole teen abstinence movement they have in the US, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. And I’m very surprised more people haven’t taken It Follows to task for it.

It Follows is out now in the UK & Ireland via Icon, and opens in US cinemas on March 13th from Radius-TWC.

By Ben Bussey

I can think of almost nothing more certain to make every reader aged over 30 wince in agonising realisation of their own increasing years than the fact that Drew Barrymore has just turned 40. How could it be that the cute little moppet who melted the hearts of the world in ET is now on the precipice of middle age – older than either Steven Spielberg or Dee Wallace were when that time-honoured classic was made? If ever we needed a stark reminder of how long ago the 1980s were, this is it; oh, how fast the years slip by.

Of course, ‘old before her time’ is kind of recurring theme in both the life and career of Drew Barrymore. As well as being the most notable child star of her generation – notching up appearances in a few minor genre hits like the Stephen King movies Cat’s Eye and Firestarter (as well as having made her debut in Ken Russell’s Altered States) – she also became one of the most extreme embodiments of all the worst child star cliches: booze, drugs and attempted suicide all before she was even 15. No doubt going through such troubles as Hollywood royalty makes the road to recovery that bit less treacherous, but even so, a cursory glance at the fates of any number of other former child actors underlines that things could easily have turned out a whole lot worse for Ms Barrymore. As it stands, she turned it all around beautifully, carving a prolific career as an actress and producer, and showing potential for a bright future in directing too based on her distinctly above-average coming of age chick flick Whip It.

And yet, between her years as an early teen trainwreck and a rom-com queen, there was that intermediate phase that all former child stars – or at least, former child actresses – inevitably go through; that time when they have to brush off the remnants of the cutesy image of days gone by, and declare in no uncertain terms that they’re all grown up now. We know the drill: nude photo shoots, high profile significant others, and a series of darker, edgier, overtly sexual roles. This period would be a rite of passage for the actress and the audience alike, in particular those viewers who came of age around the same time these films emerged – and revisiting these films in later years may well prompt somewhat complex reactions.

Ask any thirtysomething in 2015 (and yes, the current writer fits that category), and they will surely agree that Drew Barrymore pretty much wrote the book on being a big screen bad girl in the 1990s. Of course plenty of other actresses had made a similar transition before and since; notably, Linda Blair had embraced exploitation in the early 80s, resulting in such enduring cult classics as Chained Heat and Savage Streets; and in the immediate wake of Barrymore, Alyssa Milano would follow in her footsteps to more unabashedly sleazy effect with both Embrace of the Vampire and, notably, a sequel to the film which is the cornerstone of Drew Barrymore’s early 90s bad girl legacy: Poison Ivy. Made when Barrymore was still only 17, the now-familiar tale of a teen tearaway who worms her way into an affluent household via manipulation and seduction is a curious reflection of how such themes were handled in the early 90s, for while the concept is pure B-movie sleaze, it strives to treat its subject matter rather more seriously than we might have expected.

From the opening moments, Poison Ivy knowingly plays on the audience’s familiarity with Barrymore’s own troubled history. Memorably introduced on a rope swing over a gaping ravine, grunged-up to the nines with unruly blonde hair, battered biker jacket, cowboy boots and practically non-existent skirt, Barrymore’s anonymous loner – christened Ivy by the film’s real protagonist, Sara Gilbert’s Sylvie (who it seems safe to assume is so named in reference to Sylvia Plath) – is dished up to us as romantic nihilism personified. Gilbert’s teenage angst narration and subsequent conversations with Ivy are heavy with would-be intellectual ruminations on sexuality, class, life, death and suicide, all seemingly designed to hammer home that these are deep, intelligent, sensitive adolescents; all quite impressive at the time, but all rather grating now. Baggy tie-dye T-shirts, torn denim and big boots abound, rigidly tying the film to the era, and up to a point it does feel like a pretty decent encapsulation of the Generation X vibe that prevailed at the time – and the open hostility inspired by Ivy’s tattoo and nose ring (all fairly commonplace now) underline that, by and large, we’ve made some advances in the years since.

However, the early 90s was also the era of a somewhat different cultural movement; the rise of the erotic thriller. Poison Ivy attempts to mesh grounded young adult drama with a Red Shoe Diaries brand of glossy sexploitation, all soft focus and droning saxophones, and the two prove awkward bedfellows. While melodrama is never far from the surface – particularly in the thunderstruck, hanging from the balcony finale – Poison Ivy never seems to stop playing it straight. As a result, the film quickly lapses into inadvertent camp, and may well leave one wishing they’d just said to hell with it and fully embraced the inherent trashiness of it all, as would be the case in the increasingly porn-ish follow-ups with Alyssa Milano and Jaime Pressly.

Proceedings would be played even straighter in Barrymore’s other 1992 bad girl film, Guncrazy. Based on the 1949 movie of the same name (I gather it’s a loose remake, though I haven’t seen the original), the film again sees the actress take on a damaged goods white trash role as a trailer-bound teen who shoots dead her abusive stepfather and hooks up with a paroled convict (James LeGros), the two of them bonding over a shared passion for guns – and inevitably they’re on the run soon enough. This film again seems to capture the 90s zeitgeist pretty well: from the premise alone there’s a very True Romance/Natural Born Killers-esque vibe to it, but Guncrazy actually hit screens before either of those. Alas, it’s nowhere near as good, despite its fairly charismatic leads and above-average support from Billy Drago, Michael Ironside and a rather squandered Ione Skye. Like Poison Ivy before it, Guncrazy is a little too preoccupied with its own seriousness to wind up being much fun, but in this case it’s bordering on dour. Again, one can’t help wishing they could have gone just a little more Linda Blair with it.

It seems incumbent to mention that both Poison Ivy and Guncrazy are the work of female writer-directors, Katt Shea (previously responsible for Stripped To Kill and its sequel, subsequently responsible for The Rage: Carrie 2) and Tamra Davis (whose CV also includes Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison and Britney Spears’ Crossroads). This may well reflect how this era of Barrymore’s career saw her repeatedly cast as the strong young woman; while her characters were far from heroic, they were all in their own way battling adversity, standing up for themselves, and embracing their own sexuality. There would seem to be steps taken away from standard male gaze territory toward a greater emphasis on the female perspective, with at least a soupcon of male subservience. Barrymore is the object not only of desire, but of obsession, devotion, worship; the men in these movies are quite literally falling at her feet. Note that most of the love scenes she has in these films – Poison Ivy, The Amy Fisher Story (true life-based TV movie covering very similar thematic territory), Doppelganger – show her receiving oral sex. Yes, 90s men know that a woman’s pleasure comes first. It’s also curious to note that her nudity in these films also tends to be limited to the side angle; I don’t recall sideboob really being a thing in the 90s, but perhaps this is another place she was ahead of the curve. Hmm… trying to find a way to tie that in feminism, but I’m drawing a blank. Full frontal shots more male-gazey, sideboob less so…? Yeah, that’s not the strongest argument I suppose. Never mind. We all love sideboob, don’t we?

Anyway, now that we’ve mentioned both sideboob and Doppelganger… if Poison Ivy, Guncrazy and The Amy Fisher Story seemed a little too eager to suck the joy out of it all, Doppelganger sure does redress that balance. One of Barrymore’s few horror roles as an adult, writer-director Avi Nesher’s gleefully ridiculous 1993 movie sees her take on yet another troubled young woman role (this time a rich brunette, just to mix it up), but happily throws logic, restraint and any pretence of good taste out the window early on, as Barrymore’s New York heiress hides out in LA to escape her own phantom double. So is she just insane, or is she genuinely haunted? The film itself doesn’t seem to know most of the time; indeed, the finale goes from assuring us that it’s all in her head, to showing us that it isn’t in a very gooey, Hellraiser-esque fashion. Yes, it’s delirious to the point of complete incoherence, but given what a tepid period the early 90s was for horror, Doppelganger surely deserves points for enthusiasm.

The early 90s would see Barrymore continue to play the bad girl sex object with brief cameos in Waxwork 2, Wayne’s World 2 and Batman Forever, a couple more dramatic roles in Mad Love and Boys on the Side, and a more mainstream turn in that cowgirl flick called – funnily enough – Bad Girls. However, by the time she surprised cinemagoers everywhere by dying in the first scene of Scream (and I assure you, it was a big surprise at the time), she had pretty much left that phase behind her. For those of us with a deep appreciation of trash, it’s hard not to look back on those early 90s movies without being just a little disappointed; the opportunity was there for her to out-Linda Blair Linda Blair, but Barrymore took the more dramatic path. But that would seem to be a good reflection of how these things were in the 90s; all a little too anxious to be taken seriously.

Thank goodness, then, for the Charlie’s Angels movies. Yes, I said it. I know, they were overpriced blockbusters responsible for unleashing one the blandest Hollywood hacks of our time in McG – but damn it all, they’re so much fun. Attractive women in eye-catching outfits having spectacular wire-fu fights (when wire-fu still felt fresh) in the midst of utterly absurd plots? Really, who can’t find some enjoyment in that? They do once again see Barrymore a little too eager to play the dramatic card at times – in both films, the few solemn moments invariably centre on her character – but this is easier to accept when all other areas so readily venture into the guilty pleasure territory that her earlier films sometimes seemed anxious to avoid. I mean, if you can’t appreciate her in the Evel Knievel jumpsuit pictured above, then you have my sympathies.

It would be easy to be snide about the bulk of the work she’s done in the years since, given that – producing and co-starring in Donnie Darko aside – it tends to be nothing but rom-coms, and anyone who’s into horror and exploitation is generally expected to hate such films. Well – I for one am happy to declare that I don’t automatically hate all rom-coms, particularly not when they’re delivered with the warmth, sincerity and charm that Barrymore invariably brings. Somehow I find it unlikely we’ll ever see her return to full-on psychotic sexpot mode again, but whatever Drew Barrymore may do, she’ll always have at least a hint of that bad girl twinkle in her eye, and I daresay that’s enough.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

Back in 2010, I put on an event to mark the first Women in Horror Recognition Month, the painfully punny Ghouls on Film. I’ve always wanted to do another, but that scarce modern commodity of ‘time’ always seems just a little bit too far out of my grasp. I mean, I was busy when I put Ghouls on Film together, but somehow since then it’s always been much harder to get something together, not least of all because a year on from Ghouls on Film I was helping out with the equally as punny Abertoir.

I’ve been tearing my hair out a bit trying to come up with something to mark this year’s Women in Horror Recognition Month. Boss Ben suggested a reflection upon that event, almost as something of a guide to organising a film event, particularly as I have amassed, in the time since, a little bit more expertise thanks to my work with Abertoir. I’m usually quite loathe to think of myself as an expert in anything, but when you’ve been doing something for five years it’d be difficult for anyone not to pick up at least a little bit of know-how. I won’t call this article a how-to, and it’s certainly not exhaustive, but hopefully I can write something that people thinking about putting on their own film event might find helpful. Here is some broad advice then, from this woman in horror, to anyone who’s thinking about putting on a film event.

– Don’t be afraid to be amateur. I should note this is not advice on how to put on a super-professional film festival with huge name stars and big release films. That is a lot more difficult, expensive and time-consuming than what I did with Ghouls on Film. This is about just doing something because you want to make it happen. That’s not to say that you can’t get a big film or a big guest or be extremely professional with your low-budget grassroots event, but please don’t look at my advice and expect that to happen without either a lot of extra work or a stroke of good luck.

Bearing that in mind, remember also, there is nothing wrong with an ‘amateur’ event. As long as you have not mis-sold your event, people are not going to criticise you for, say, not starting exactly on time (as happened with Ghouls on Film), or if your venue was not entirely ideal (as happened with Ghouls on Film). As much as I am generally cynical about people, for the most part, if people are coming to a small film event, they are there because they are enthusiasts, and aren’t going to seek absolute perfection from an independent event. That being said, imperfection is only excusable if you’ve made the utmost effort to make your event the best you can. If you’ve just been lazy, then it will show in other ways too, and people will notice and they will be rightly unhappy about it.

– What do you want to do? Before you dive headlong into planning the intricacies of your event make sure you know exactly what it is you want to do. An event to tie in with something like WIHM makes that quite easy, so in my case, I wanted to put on an event celebrating women in horror. In a bit more detail, I didn’t just want a day of films, so I broke it down: a showcase of short films, a discussion with guests, and two feature films. Your event can be as simple or as complicated as you want, and by all means be ambitious, but make sure it’s something you’ll realistically be able to do.

– Find a venue. This is important. I held my event in Birmingham, even though it would have been much easier to do it where I actually live. My reasoning for this was simple: would many people come to my event if I hosted it on the far coast of rural mid-Wales? Well, no, they wouldn’t. It’s naturally tempting to take an easy route to something like this, but you have to bear in mind your audience. If your event’s focus is on something local, then of course keep it local – if my event was about Welsh films, for example, I wouldn’t have taken it to Birmingham (obviously). If you’re lucky, you might already live in or near a big town or city where people can easily get to your event.

To find a venue, I simply searched online for places that could be hired, and sent around some emails, asked about some prices, and made a rough decision based on that information. However, I did also visit the venue, even though it involved 6 hours of train travel there and back again, because you don’t want to show up on the day of your event and be confronted with something completely unexpected. That effort will pay off.

You want to make sure your venue is suitable. That doesn’t necessarily mean hiring out a cinema, if it’s out of range of your budget. It might be a multi-purpose auditorium (that’s what I went for), or a function room with a projector, or the back room of a pub, or a lecture theatre. While budget is naturally an extremely important consideration, please do not under-value the films you’ll be showing. If you find a venue within budget but the sound system is sub-par, or the screen is decrepit, or whatever, keep looking. You might find somewhere else. If you don’t, so be it, but chances are you will. You need to respect the films you’re screening, and you need to respect your audience, who have made the effort to be there.

– Reach out, and make the most of social media. Without the internet, Ghouls on Film would have fallen flat on its face. Even before I’d secured a venue or finalised plans, I was able to gauge interest, and ask for advice and feedback. You might think that an 8-hour marathon of nothing but you and your mates’ films is the best thing ever, but other people might not.

Once you’ve got your venue/time/date sorted, social media is a wealth of free publicity. You will almost certainly rely on friends, and indeed with WIHM there was, and is, of course, a network of people who will happily spread the word for you. It sounds obvious, but don’t just make an event page on Facebook and let it sit there. Invite people, ask them to invite people, post the link to groups and pages, spread the word on Twitter…you might want to judge for yourself the fine line between promotion and spamming, but you will have to do that work yourself.

Do not be afraid to reach out to people. Don’t just rely on blogs and websites within your niche, either – find local newspapers, blogs, or groups who might promote your event. Even if you send out 20 emails and only have one blog post anything, that might get 5 more people through your door. There will always be people willing to help, in whatever way they can – for example, my poster was designed by someone I followed on Twitter, who was willing to do that for me in exchange for a bit of mutual promotion.

Indeed, this isn’t just for the purpose of promotion, either. Ghouls on Film wouldn’t have had any content if not for making contact with people via social media. While I was lucky enough to be put in touch with one or two short filmmakers through my links with Abertoir, the majority of what I screened was picked from films sent to me, or through sending messages and asking to see people’s work. This goes for guests too!

– Be prepared to lose money. This is the biggie. If you are setting out to put on a one-off event for the purpose of making money, you are a) doing it for the wrong reasons and b) going to be extremely disappointed. I’m not saying money is the root of all evil, or anything – money is nice, and obviously if you are planning on making a career out of putting on film events then actually making money might start to be more important. However, if you’re putting on an event for the first time, please let me tell you in all seriousness that doing it for the love of it is extremely important.

Why are you going to lose money? To break down where my money went: venue hire, guest travel, printing costs, my own travel, and my own accommodation. If you’re putting on a bigger event, you might also be dealing with appearance fees and screening fees too. Some of these costs might not be huge (I reeled off my posters at the uni library, and made the cheaper black and white versions more interesting with my own ‘bloody’ handprints), and some of them might not even apply to you, but it’s a sensible to approach an event with the expectation that will cost more than you first think.

Costs are one thing, but what about income? I did charge an entry fee: £6, for the day. I don’t think you should be afraid of that, and by all means be upfront, I was. I explained that I was charging a fee to cover the costs of the event. Was I expecting to cover the full costs? No, but it certainly reduced the loss that was made. 40 people came to my event, if you want an idea of what sort of income did not cover the costs. Of course, had 100 people attended, I probably would have covered the costs (I can’t honestly remember what it all cost me, in the end), but I didn’t set out expecting even 40 to come along. Expect to lose money, and any financial outcome will be satisfying.

To close, I feel it’s important to note that I think I was extremely lucky with my event. My content was good, I had a recognisably-named guest in Emily Booth, and people supported me, both in promoting the event and in attending. Was it easy? No. Did it leave me out of pocket? Yes. Was it a great experience and would I do it again? Of course I bloody would. It’s worth adding, even if just for trivia’s sake, that some of the fine sorts of people who came out to support the event were our very own Ben, Keri and Steph, and look where we all ended up. Putting on an event like this is something I’d genuinely encourage people to do, moreso if it’s in conjunction with a broader movement or theme you’re particularly passionate about, women in horror or otherwise. Even if all you’re doing is hiring out the back room of a pub and screening an independent film you really believe in, doing so is an incredibly rewarding and worthwhile experience.

Editor’s note: here’s Ben’s coverage of Ghouls on Film from February 2010 – reviews of Slaughtered and the world premiere screening of Dead Hooker in a Trunk (who knew…)

By Tristan Bishop

At the dawn of the 1980s John Carpenter was riding high on the success of Halloween, which had been released in 1978, and had, after many months and much word of mouth, become an enormous success, making upwards of $65,000,000 on a budget of just over $300,000. Nowadays of course the major studios would have immediately secured him to direct the latest mega-budget release, but back then things obviously played a little differently, as Carpenter’s next project was the 3 hour long 1979 made-for-TV Elvis: The Movie, starring Kurt Russell as the titular bequiffed hip-swiveller. Next up Carpenter signed a two picture deal with AVCO Embassy which resulted in 1981’s $6 million budgeted Escape From New York, and 1980’s considerably more modest $1 million production The Fog.

Despite pretty much defining the genre cinema of the late 70’s/early 80’s, Carpenter was looking back as much as he was looking forward – for a man that changed the face of horror films with Halloween and its fully-formed slasher template (although he took inspiration from 1974’s Black Christmas and the giallo films of Dario Argento), Carpenter’s love for the cinema of the 40’s and 50’s shines through in his earlier work, especially the films of Howard Hawks, whose work Carpenter remade twice – once unofficially (Assault On Precinct 13 being an urban update of Hawk’s western Rio Bravo) and once officially (The Thing is based on Hawk’s 1951 The Thing From Another World). The Fog was intended as another exercise in mining the favourite films of Carpenter’s youth, this time the creepy black & white ghost stories of the 1940s; presumably Carpenter had the eerie, low-budget films of Val Lewton (Ghost Ship, Cat People) in mind, which would have been a world apart from the gore-splattered celluloid making waves with horror audiences back in 1980.

Apparently inspired by seeing a rolling bank of fog whilst visiting Stonehenge in the UK, Carpenter and his producer (and ex-girlfriend) Debra Hill took this visual image and welded it to the plot of the 1958 British sci-fi movie The Trollenberg Terror (known in the US as The Crawling Eye), a superior sci-fi offering which featured alien creatures hiding in the mist at the top of a mountain. Carpenter and Hill then co-scripted a story about the sleepy Californian coastal town of Antonio Bay, which comes under attack from murderous ghostly pirates hunting for their long-lost gold, during the towns 100th anniversary celebrations. The basic idea was pretty straightforward, but featured a nice twist (SPOILER ALERT!) whereby it transpires that the founders of Antonio Bay deliberately caused the shipwreck which originally killed the aforementioned pirates, and used their ill-gotten gains to build the town and church, which works a ‘sins of our fathers’ angle into the plot, and asks questions about personal responsibility, the moral status of organised religion, and possibly even comments on the birth of America itself.

Anyone familiar with Carpenter’s work in his peak period will be aware of his knack of putting together a great cast, and The Fog is up there with his best, pulling together people he had previously worked with in Charles Cyphers as a weather man, and Jamie Lee Curtis as a spunky hitch-hiker, quite apart from the virginal college girl that made her name in Halloween; established but culty actors in Hal Holbrook and George ‘Buck’ Flower; Carpenter’s then-wife Adrienne Barbeau taking the lead role as Stevie Wayne, the owner/sole DJ of a jazz radio station based in a lighthouse; her friend Tom Atkins stealing the show with an unrepentant masculine charm as a beer-swilling driver who literally picks up Jamie Lee Curtis; and even a bona fide old-time Hollywood star – and, in what is probably nowhere near a coincidence, Curtis’ real-life mother – in Janet Leigh as the town mayor. With such a large cast for what is basically a quick, low-key horror picture, you might think that you might have a bit of a mess on your hands, but here it really serves to make the town of Antonio Bay feel real and alive, especially in the way that the characters interconnect at various points – Stevie Wayne’s voice drifting over the airwaves in scenes where she is otherwise not present brings a solid sense of place and community.

Unfortunately, on his first viewing of a rough cut of The Fog, Carpenter was deflated – “I had a movie that didn’t work, and I knew it my heart.” As previously mentioned, audiences in 1980 expected more visceral scares (Cronenberg’s Scanners had just hit the box office by this point), and Carpenter went back and added more footage with the ghostly pirates (on the original attack on the Seagrass, the pirates were not seen at all!), more gore (although The Fog is hardly a gorefest), and, perhaps most iconic of all, the opening scene with John Houseman as Mr Machen (one of a great many in-jokey names referencing horror films, books and Carpenter’s buddies that appear in the film!) reading ghost stories on a deserted beach to a group of children at midnight. The reshoots apparently make up half an hour of the film itself.

Yet despite these production problems, and an initial dismissal by critics of the time (which is common to nearly all of Carpenter’s best work) the film works as well now as it did in 1980, as a limp and easily-dismissed 2005 remake helped to highlight. I’ll make a personal confession here – I LOVE The Fog. I probably watch it on average once every six months. I can quote along with the dialogue word for word. I was even inspired to start a radio station by Stevie Wayne’s character in the film (sadly I still don’t get paid for that OR live in a lighthouse yet). If I wasn’t quite so wary of stating ‘favourite films’ I’d call it my favourite film. But why? It doesn’t have the scares of The Haunting (1963) or the visceral buzz of The Texas Chain saw Massacre (1974), nor the layered intelligence of Don’t Look Now (1973), and it’s certainly not a perfect film – see the rather perfunctory script, one or two great lines excepted.

Well, I think it’s a combination of factors. Firstly, it’s concise at 89 minutes – a remarkable achievement in editing considering the large cast and amount of event in the film. Secondly, it looks and sounds amazing – Director Of Photography Dean Cundey worked with Carpenter again (after first collaborating on Halloween) and brings a similar crisp widescreen vision to the sleepy coastal town locations (one of which is Bodgea Bay, which was famously used in Hitchcock’s The Birds), and Carpenter’s own soundtrack, whilst not as iconic as his scores for Halloween or Assault On Precinct 13, is just as effective, with sparse synth work and tumbling piano lines. Thirdly, it’s just damned creepy at times – the sequence at the start of the film at the dead of night with lights mysteriously coming on, car alarms going off and the contents of a local shop shaking and shuddering is one of Carpenter’s most effective sequences, and the ghostly pirates, shown in silhouette with demonic glowing eyes are an impressive threat (their leader Blake, incidentally, is played by FX whizz Rob Bottin, who would become a household name to horror fans for his work on Carpenter’s The Thing). Or it could just be that Carpenter’s love of folky ghost stories, comics and Italian horror combined here to make something appealing to fans of all three.

So 35 years on, like all of Carpenter’s work from his golden era, The Fog stands up better than it ever has, and if it’s been a while since your last viewing, or if you’ve never before visited Antonio Bay, now might be the best time to look for The Fog.

By Quin

I must admit, when it was decided that we would be doing a series of special features dedicated to our own childhood terrors, I felt a bit perplexed and the anxiety came flooding in. Not because I didn’t want to revisit all of the things that scared me as a kid. I’m perfectly fine with delving into my dark side and looking around; I also don’t mind sharing personal stories. The thing that made me nervous was the fact that I have included stories about my introduction to horror in almost every retrospective I’ve done here at Brutal As Hell. I talked about how I lost sleep after watching Pet Sematary because every time I closed my eyes I saw Zelda. I mentioned that I saw An American Werewolf in London at a very young age, thanks to a clueless babysitter. I talked about how important seeing A Nightmare on Elm Street was for me – in fact it felt like a rite of passage. It’s pretty clear to me that personal stories are my angle. It’s my main goal as a critic to explain the best I can, what my experience is like with any given film, and I guess giving some personal history helps all of that happen. Later this year, I’ll be writing a 40 year retrospective on Jaws. I’ve never even been in the ocean and I’ve always lived within walking distance of it. But, Jaws freaked me out probably more than anything else I’ve ever seen. I’ll tell you why this summer.

So, hopefully you can see my dilemma. I’ve already written this essay and I don’t think I should repeat myself too much. There are other films I could talk about. I remember being scared to death of the 1983 Disney film Something Wicked This Way Comes based on the Ray Bradbury book. This one’s kind of strange, but I was also frightened of the 1976 version of The Blue Bird directed by George Cukor. I think that was the first thing that scared me, but I watched it anyway. My family had a VHS copy of it and I watched it way too many times. I saw it again recently and I can’t figure out why I was so scared or why I was so drawn to it as a kid.

In all of my anxiety over what to write, I almost didn’t write anything. The voice in my head told me to just sit this one out – no one will notice anyway – and then a few days ago something amazing happened. My nephew who is 3 walked up to me, looked right at me and said, “Quin, do you like horror movies?” Holy crap, was my mind blown. It was exactly the last thing I expected to ever hear out of that kid’s mouth. My eyes widened and I felt sort of dizzy. I smiled and said, “Yeah!” I said it the way you might when someone you haven’t seen in ten years asks, “Hey are you, so-and-so?” Like I said, he’s 3, so that was about the extent of the conversation. But my eyes immediately shifted to his mother – my sister. She was grinning just like she did when we were kids. It was that I know something you don’t know grin. I’ve seen that grin a lot. She told me that for about the past month, there has been a billboard by their house advertising The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death. She said that my nephew looks right at it every day and seems drawn to it, but she thinks it also makes him a little uncomfortable too. She’s a great parent, so they’ve had conversations about it and apparently this is where she told him to ask me about it. Am I glad that he did. Even knowing how his question came about, I’m still amazed and more than a little touched.

So there you have it – my contribution to the childhood terrors series. As much as I enjoyed the first Woman in Black film, I had no intention of seeing the sequel. But now I feel like I have to. I’m still going to wait until I can rent it from Netflix. I mean, I’m not paying to see that. But I think it’s unavoidable – that film is always going to be important because it’s the first time I ever heard my nephew talk about horror. It certainly made my fricken millennium. I’ll let you know when he sees his first scary movie, but I won’t be the one to show it to him.

By Tristan Bishop

I admit it – I’m slightly late on my end of year list, but then I’ve never been one to keep up with the latest trends, so, like a middle-aged man desperately trying to cling onto his youth by pumping the latest deep house sounds out of his iPhone on the back seat of the bus, I bring you my Top Ten of 2014 whilst everyone else is getting on with living in the present.

To be honest, 2014 is a bit of a strange year to evaluate – in fact the only trend I’ve really spotted is that the traditional horror film seems to have been in a recession, and genre film in general has been twisting into new and interesting shapes. Scanning my list there is actually only one film here which I would consider a traditional ‘horror’ film – and even that could be deemed a social realist drama in disguise. Nonetheless this blending of styles has resulted in an end of year list which can stand happily against any other year in the past couple of decades. Here’s to an equally interesting 2015!

10. Cold In July

Jim Mickle is turning out to be one of the most interesting directors working in American cinema. 2010’s Stake Land announced his arrival as a horror talent worth paying attention to, and 2013’s We Are What We Are managed the impossible and proved to be an English-language remake of a foreign film that was easily the equal of the original (and possibly even surpassing it). This year he branched out from straight horror with Cold In July, an adaptation of Joe R Lansdale’s novel, which manages to knock even Mickle’s previous films out of the park. A thriller which confounds the expectations constantly – by turns chilling, moving and utterly hilarious, and blessed with a trio of excellent central performances. (Keri’s review.)

9. Gun Woman

Regular BAH readers will know we have a big thing for the queen of modern Japanese cult cinema Asami, so this film was like a gift from the heavens. A lean, grim exploitation film about a former drug addict (Asami) who has been trained as an assassin. In order to bump off the VIP she is after, she has gun parts implanted in her body and has to pretend to be a corpse (don’t ask). Cue most of the film featuring a naked Asami as an angel of death, her wounds (from where she has to retrieve the gun parts) a ticking clock as she races to complete the task in hand before she bleeds to death. Woozy, violent, nasty and stylish, this harks back to the heyday of 70’s Japanese ‘pinky violence’ cinema, and proves the queen is very much here to stay. (Ben’s review.)

8. The Editor

I’ll admit I was expecting not to like this. My previous experiences of the Aston 6 crew had been varied; I pretty much hated Manborg, although I had enjoyed some of their short features, but their tribute to the golden age of Italian cult film is in a different league. Spot-on in look and feel, the jokes range from very silly slapstick to some surprisingly obscure references (Hitch Hike, anyone?) Add a couple of excellent bit parts from the legendary Udo Kier (who gets to deliver the best line) and Human Centipede 2’s Laurence Harvey, and you’ve got a great deal of fun on your hands, although it probably helps to have at least a vague grounding in the source material. (Nia’s review.)

7. Tusk

Now here’s a film that a great many claimed was one of the worst they have ever seen. I would put to those people that they really need to watch more bad films. Yes, Tusk is flawed, and it’s fundamentally weird as hell (it’s also ~extremely~ talky), but it manages a lot of laughs, some unexpectedly powerful scenes, and at least one moment of genuine horror which blows everything else this year out of the water. Add to this two show-stealing performances from Michael Parks and a certain Hollywood A-lister who will remain nameless (no spoilers here), and you have something worthy of attention. You’ll believe a walrus can talk!

6. The Forgotten

I’ve covered The Forgotten in full here recently, but suffice to say this slow-burning urban British ghost story is a film which blends a great setting (an abandoned council estate) with genuine affection for the abandoned characters it features, and the low-key chills it generates will linger in your memory long after the latest Hollywood slice of spooky bombast has faded. (My review.)

5. Captain America : The Winter Soldier

Not quite your average BAH material, I’ll admit, but as a huge fan of Marvel’s cinematic output this one managed to surpass all expectations. The first Captain America film was an enjoyable enough superhero origin story which hit a slightly sour note by casting aside the expected epic action scenes in favour of human drama. The Winter Soldier manages to keep the soap opera to a minimum (despite containing one scene – incidentally originally intended for the first Avengers film – which might bring a tear to the eye) in favour of a frankly brilliant (and very timely) meditation on the issues of surveillance in society, which just happens to beat The Avengers for spectacle, laughs and thrills. The only film I went to see three times in 2014.

4. Only Lovers Left Alive

A vampire romance for grown-ups! And waaaaay better than that might sound. Jim Jarmusch’s undead love story eschewed sparkly emo cliché and told a story of two ageless vampires who live oceans apart yet cannot live without each other. Pop culture references from through the 20th century (and beyond!) weave throughout the script, it looks utterly gorgeous, and there’s a fantastic soundtrack of gloomy drones and old-school soul, but the beating, engorged heart of the film is the chemistry between lead actors Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. (My review – Nia’s review.)

3. Godzilla

For a film which divided much opinion, it’s appeared on a lot of end of year lists on this here site! The reason for this is pretty simple – we love our giant monsters, and they’ve probably never been done better than they have in Gareth Edwards’ reboot. Yes, there’s lacklustre human story going on here but who cares – we all know it’s filler for the main event, and when it gets going fans of the Big G will be leaping from their seats with delight – old-school monster mayhem with cutting edge digital effects. And you can skip the bits with the people when watching it at home. (Ben’s review.)

2. Housebound

Here’s one which has united film festival audiences in praise wherever it has been shown. I caught this at Abertoir without knowing a single thing about it, and it as an absolute joy to experience cold. Therefore in the spirit of this I will give away nothing except that Housebound is one of the least predictable genre pieces I have ever seen, flitting from thrilling to spooky to gruesome to laugh-out-loud funny at regular intervals. Do yourself a favour and catch it soon. (Nia’s review.)

1. The World Of Kanako

A quick read of the plot synopsis makes this sound like a Japanese variant on Taken, but what we have instead is an ultra-violent, hallucinogenic trip to hell with a main character who we alternately find ourselves hating and cheering on at various points throughout the film. Tetsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls/Memories of Matsuko) here unleashes his best stylistic flourishes around a compelling, sweaty lead performance by Koji Yakusho. Kanako’s world might contain some places you would rather not visit, but the trip itself is the key here. (My review.)

By Matt Harries

I’ll begin my preamble by holding my hands up and admitting that I lag somewhat behind my cohorts on BAH when it comes to the latest horror – especially the independent variety. Perhaps because I spend so much time digging around in the musical underground, I tend to arrive upon the lesser known films rather later – usually after recommendations from sites such as this one. So in this list I’m offering a slightly different perspective, incorporating small screen as well as cinematic high points from 2014. Mark me down on kvlt points if you will, but there was some great stuff right under our noses that definitely deserves a mention to fans of dark, thoughtful and hard-hitting storytelling.

1. True Detective

That (for me) the best moments from the moving image this year generally came not from cinema but from ‘long form’ television is testament to the ever increasing quality and depth of small screen entertainment in recent years, rather than a comment on the relative struggles of mainstream horror/genre film – indeed, 2014 has by all accounts been a strong year for indie horror. In the end though, TD’s pairing of those up-and-coming young bucks McConaughey and Harrelson proved utterly inspired, and showed the powerful allure of television for some big names in the acting world. Taking full advantage of the extra time and space of an 8 episode series to develop character and storyline, TD’s ingenious use of converging timelines and superb performances by the leading men resulted in some of the richest and most immersive viewing on offer in all formats. The ‘long shot’ episode showcased arguably one of the finest heist/shoot-out sequences I’ve ever witnessed on film, and Matthew McConaughey’s portrayal of Detective Rustin Spencer ‘Rust’ Cohle realised a truly memorable amalgam of Roky Eriksson’s psychedelic paranoia and Thomas Ligotti’s black hole existentialism. Completely recommended to fans of Lovecraft, Lynch, the Coen Brothers and the Hannibal Lecter mythology.

2. Gone Girl

One of the dwindling pleasures in modern cinema seems to be the tension arising from the viewer not knowing exactly where the film will end. Gone Girl was a film I knew virtually nothing about when I went to see it, and as the central premise arose and evolved – Rosamund Pike’s Amy Dunne disappearing from her home in suspicious circumstances – I was kept guessing right until the end. The twisting of the plot was in itself a real pleasure but there is a lot more to it than mere cleverness; an excellent cast sees Ben Affleck’s star continue to rise, as he is perfectly cast as Amy’s husband Nick. Pike is similarly excellent as the complex and conniving Amy, while Carrie Coon as Nick’s sister and Deadwood’s Kim Dickens as the leading detective assigned to the case offer fine support. A film that works as a confusional whodunnit and internecine thriller as well as offering a sharp comment upon relationships and the media, Gone Girl displays a hugely impressive depth of scope.

3. Fargo

Back to t’telly, and another sign of how far it has come in recent years with the Coen brothers Joel and Ethan (who of course directed the 1996 film of the same name) now lending their talents to the first season of this FX anthology as executive producers. As with True Detective’s Matthew McConaughey we have a leading man who is very much at the forefront of some of the biggest movies currently laying waste to multiplexes across the globe, Martin Freeman. The Hobbit star plays everyman with an edge Lester Nygaard, and it is a real pleasure to see him take the character William H. Macy so excelled in portraying (as Jerry Lundegaard) in a new direction while retaining much of his underdog qualities. In terms of his morality and motivation Nygaard sits somewhere in the middle between opposite forces personified by the vulpine Billy Bob Thornton as killer Lorne Malvo and Alison Tolman as Deputy Molly Solverson, very much a force for light and as similarly excellent as 1996 Academy award winner Frances McDormand. For anyone who enjoyed the original film, Fargo the series showcases the classic quirky small town characters you expect from the Coens, whilst retaining the black-comedy element that helped make the original such a success. However, it is Thornton’s turn as the malevolent and seemingly omnipotent Malvo that really drives the story forward.

4. Hannibal

Now in its second season, Hannibal continues to provide some of the most mind-altering entertainment out there as Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham and Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter continue their deadly dance. The show fluctuates between stark, meathook reality and a hallucinogenic visual style seemingly gleaned from PCP induced psychosis, while featuring some of the most elaborate deaths imaginable and a deliciously murderous take on haute cuisine (or should that be a haute cuisine take on murder?). Mikkelsen’s Lecter draws upon the familiar combination of predatory social Darwinism and cultural superiority, but his brooding presence and more youthful physicality allows him to make this incarnation of the character all his own. Witness the brilliant beginning of the second series; Lecter clashing with Lawrence Fishburne’s Jack Crawford in an epic battle that plummets us into a future in which Crawford takes refuge in Lecter’s pantry, bleeding profusely from a wound to the neck. Then the clock is rewound to 12 weeks earlier, and the tale begins to unfurl again. The cast is uniformly excellent, with Dancy, Mikkelsen and Fishburne supported by a powerful female presence, with Caroline Dhavernas, Gillian Anderson, Lara Jean Chorostecki and newcomer Katherine Isabelle all excelling in important roles. Besides, what’s not to love about a show of which Bryan Fuller, the man who developed it for NBC, said “When I sat down to do the script, I was very consciously saying ‘what would David Lynch do with a Hannibal Lecter character? What sort of strange, unexpected places would he take this world?’”

5. Under The Skin

Surprise! Okay, perhaps not. The film that truly, er, got under people’s skins this year, Under the Skin has been discussed by greater minds than mine already on this site in some depth. A wonderful example of the enduring fascination afforded to something mysterious and unexplained, something that defies easy classification. Unsettling and thought provoking.

6. The Babadook

A powerful study of the life shattering effects of grief, The Babadook is a resolutely grim depiction of one woman’s struggle to raise her young son following the tragic death of his father. As she battles to hold on to the vestiges of normality, Amelia ( the excellent Essie Davies) initially invokes our deepest sympathy as she is beset by the seeming tyranny of her difficult son Samuel (Noah Wiseman). The discovery of a mysterious book heralds the coming of a darkness that threatens to claim Amelia’s sanity and as she begins to unravel, the life of Samuel as well. Finally it is young Samuel who surprisingly proves his strength, as we learn that some things have to be endured – you can’t get rid of the Babadook…

Honorary mentions (all genres); Starred Up, ’71, Oculus, Coyote, Wolf Of Wall Street, Housebound, Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead, The Rover, Edge Of Tomorrow.

Man of the Year – Matthew McConaughey for ‘Rust’ Cohle (True Detective).
Woman of the Year – Rosamund Pike for Amy Dunne (Gone Girl).
Best Soundtrack – True Detective, closely followed by Only Lovers Left Alive.
Two to Watch – Trevor Juenger (Director/Writer, Coyote), Cary Joji Fukunaga (Director, True Detective).
Best Comic Turn – Jonah Hill (Wolf Of Wall Street).
Best Use of Cheese Grater – Housebound.
Winner of the ‘Please No Sequels’ Award – Dracula Untold.

By Quin

I realize that last year I proclaimed just how much I love lists, but I must echo something that was always said by Roger Ebert, especially in the last few years of his life. When making his end of the year favorites lists he insisted that the best are the best – ordering them is silly. This makes a lot of sense. I would also add that that lists are fluid and always changing. Even my favorite films of all time go up and down on the list depending on my mood. Keep in mind that Penny Marshall’s Big is in my top ten and it always will be no matter what. So without further ado, here are my top ten for 2014 – a list of 10 films that are all great and all made me feel something. I hope they make you feel something too.

10. The Town that Dreaded Sundown – A remake of a film that desperately needed to be remade and it was done with charm and the most beautiful swirling cinematography I’ve seen in a while.

9. Life After Beth – The best zombie film of the year, and let’s face it, there’s going to be a lot of these for years to come. Aubrey Plaza is a comedic genius.

8. The Sacrament – I have no problem admitting that I’m a huge Ti West fan. I’ve liked everything he’s ever done and House of the Devil and The Innkeepers have both made my top ten lists in their respective years. The Sacrament takes a narrative that so many of us know about and makes it real. The whole Jim Jones thing is pretty terrifying. The documentaries are great, but this film really makes you feel like you’re there.

7. Willow Creek – I’ve been a huge fan of Bobcat Goldthwait’s comedy for over 20 years. When he started making movies, I was right there with him. Shakes the Clown, Sleeping Dogs Lie, World’s Greatest Dad and God Bless America are all amazing. But Bobcat has managed to take the Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967 and add this story surrounding the investigation and make it scary as hell.

6. Summer of Blood – Onur Tukel has made a hipster vampire film and for that I say thank the Lord. It’s smart and funny and my Brutal As Hell review will appear soon.

5. Soulmate – Being in the US, hulu.com has made this film available in its entirety. There has been a huge fuss over the opening scene and the meaning behind it. My opinion is that this film does not suffer without the opening scene. There are still many clues that fill the viewer in on what’s going on. The rest of the story is beautiful. The best ghost story of the year.

4. Only Lovers Left Alive – Jim Jarmusch is a genius and add vampirism and you have nothing short of brilliance.

3. Housebound – A funny, creepy and original film. The best acting, direction and twist.

2. Under the Skin – A beautifully disturbing film that manages to combine Eraserhead, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Koyaanisquatsi and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

1. The Babadook – Like going through the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland on acid. Yes, it’s as great as that sounds.

A few of my least favorites of the year are The Pact 2, Alien Abduction, Afflicted and Tusk. Kevin Smith makes me want to die (Comes the Krampus better be amazing, but I won’t hold my breath.) Two movies that were just okay are Found and See No Evil 2. Found had major problems, but was entertaining and brutal. See No Evil 2 was pretty bad, but entertaining and the Soska twins have proven that they know what they’re doing.

I missed The Green Inferno due to the release of that film and I fully expect A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night to be one of my favorites of the new year.