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Review by Tristan Bishop

It’s surprising how few films there are about killer foodstuffs out there. Attack of The Killer Tomatoes (1978) comes to mind, as does Larry Cohen’s The Stuff (1985), but aside from that (and the less said about Charles Band’s Gingerdead Man the better), it’s a strangely underused concept. Happily the idea of what we eating turning against us has found possibly its most satisfying incarnation in Noboru Iguchi’s absolutely barking horror comedy Dead Sushi.

This is the story of Keiko (Rina Takeda), a young girl who is training with her father to become a sushi chef. She fails to live up to his high standards, and so runs away ashamed, and goes to work in an inn. Keiko finds herself bullied by the other girls who work at the inn, and, after embarrassing herself in front of a group of visiting businessmen, gets reprimanded by the owners, Mr. and Mrs Hanamaki. Fortunately the caretaker, Mr Sawada, is a kindly old soul who takes pity on her, noticing that she has the hands of a sushi chef.

When Keiko ends up insulting the entire group of businessmen, and the inn’s resident sushi chef (who is having an affair with Mrs Hanamaki – played by the fabulous Asami), a brawl erupts, made more disastrous by the arrival of a mysterious tramp, who turns out to be a former employee of the businessmen’s company, and who just so happens to be responsible for a formula that is able to revive living tissue, but has the side effect of turning the reanimatee into ‘vicious monsters’ capable of infecting others with a bite. When the tramp is fatally shot, he sends out his pet squid (which he keeps in his jacket, of course) to take its revenge on the company, and to build its own infected empire…

I first caught this film at Abertoir 2012, and it was perfect in a midnight movie slot, going down a storm with a possibly slightly inebriated crowd. If you think the film sounds crazy from the brief plot outline above, the second half of the film brings tuna monsters, sushi zombies, flame-thrower sushi, sushi nunchuks, a flying sushi battleship and even Eggy, an egg sushi ostracised by his fishy peers, who can spray acid and is also a damn fine singer too. If all this sounds too much like entertainment we also get some informative chat about the best way to appreciate sushi.

There’s little to pick holes in with a film this fast-paced and out there – the script is perfunctory, some of the gore gags go on far too long, and the effects are often on the very cheap digital side of things, but there’s so many ideas being flung at the screen it doesn’t really matter. Iguchi knows how to direct comic book style action, and he doesn’t hang around setting up a fairly large cast for this kind of film, before getting more and more outrageous as the film progresses. Dead Sushi has a sweeter, lighter touch among all the mayhem too, with messages about being true to yourself and never giving up. There also appears to be an anti-corporate theme underlying proceedings.

The film’s main attraction here is Asami, an ex-porn star who is beautiful, an incredibly versatile actor, whether being kick-ass or helpless, and seems to be game for absolutely anything – in some of the stranger moments from the film she performs ‘that special Japanese kiss that uses an egg’ (what?) and even does a show-stealing robot dance!

If you’re familiar with the Sushi Typhoon family of film-makers, or with Iguchi’s other works like Machine Girl (2008) or the excellent Mutant Girls Squad (2011) you will already know whether you are going to enjoy this. If you are a newcomer to this peculiarly Japanese form of gore comedy, however, Dead Sushi might just be a perfect way to test the water. Just remember to order the egg.

Dead Sushi hits Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray on 23rd September, from Monster Pictures.

Review by Ben Bussey

There’s nothing quite like a sequel that doesn’t understand why the first film worked. Sometimes the exact same team gets back together on both sides of the camera – say, Ghostbusters 2, Men in Black 2, Highlander 2, or even (shudder) The Hangover Part 2 – and, lacking any real motivation beyond the money, they just go through the motions like last time, resulting in something of a similar shape and texture to what went before, but with barely a sliver of the soul. Ah, but when a new guy comes on board, reputedly a big fan of the first film and eager to do it justice, yet quickly reveals himself to have neither the skills of his predecessors, nor the critical appreciation of just what made the first film good: that’s a special kind of wrong. And that’s Jeff Wadlow’s Kick-Ass 2.

Okay – maybe I’m being too unkind there. Perhaps it’s fairer to say this is Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass 2. I can’t say categorically if that’s the case, not having read Millar’s second volume – but based on the first book, and what many trusted sources tell me about its sequel, I get the distinct impression this movie is considerably closer to Millar’s vision than the first Kick-Ass movie. And if so, then this is as good a case in point as any to demonstrate that sometimes, loyalty to the text isn’t all its cracked up to be.

Spoilers for the original Kick-Ass (both comic and movie) coming up – don’t worry, I’ll lay off anything too major from the new movie.

Here’s the thing about the original Kick-Ass comic – it’s a nasty piece of work. And I don’t mean that in a good way. It’s spiteful and mean-spirited from beginning to end, leaving a rancid taste in your mouth like week-old fried chicken that probably wasn’t even that trustworthy when it was first cooked. If filmed exactly as written, I find it very difficult to envisage Kick-Ass having won anything like the number of fans it ultimately amassed. The movie worked because of screenwriting duo Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman, who kept the stuff from Millar’s book that really worked – Dave Lizewski’s everyman awkwardness and can-do attitude, Hit-Girl’s Tasmanian Devil energy and insanity – and amplified these. Then they took the uglier, crueller stuff (for which Millar seems to have quite the hard-on), and quite sensibly binned it. Rather than being humiliated at every turn and left jerking it to pictures of his dream girl sucking someone else’s dick (which she texted him), Dave actually gets the girl instead. Big Daddy meanwhile, rather than being a deranged sociopath with a completely invented backstory (and not even Hit Girl’s real dad), got to be a bona fide ex-cop and loving father, who – despite his little (ahem) quirks – really did have the best intentions for his daughter, and his city. And, of course, Vaughn and Goldman brought the jet pack.

This overriding optimism really brought Kick-Ass to life; it was great feel-good entertainment. Yes, it was ridiculously violent, and much of that violence was the handiwork of a little girl, but – whatever the claims of it being an examination of what might really happen if normal people attempted superheroism – it was ultimately a completely cartoonish fantasy, in no way reflective of reality, and all the better for it. Doubtless some will dispute this, complaining that Vaughn and Goldman declawed and sugar coated Millar’s vision, and Wadlow has done the source material justice by keeping it meaner and – wait for it – darker. Well, if that’s how you feel, Kick-Ass 2 is all yours. Rest assured this time around plenty of bad stuff will happen to those who don’t deserve it, none of it ultimately serving any ostensible greater good, and if you want to hail that as being more ‘real,’ then good for you I suppose.

Even without the tonal shift, though, Kick-Ass 2 falls right into that usual sequel trap of basically retracing the exact same steps as its predecessor. Where last time Dave (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) started out daydreaming of becoming a superhero, now he’s quit and is daydreaming about becoming one again. Where gangster’s son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) was anxious to earn his dad’s respect and join the family business, here he’s desperate to be feared by basically everyone, thus renames himself The Motherfucker. Oh look, there’s another sequel trap Kick-Ass 2 falls into: contradicting that which went before, given Kick-Ass ended with the former Red Mist declaring his intention to become a supervillain, and yet the narrative picks up a few years later and he’s only just realised that’s what he wants to do. And so it goes: both guys don costumes and hit the streets, only to find it all gets a bit real. Then we get to the inevitable surrogate for Nicolas Cage’s Big Daddy: Jim Carrey’s Colonel Star & Stripes, who – after all that hullabaloo – turns out to be a fairly minor player in proceedings, and even though Carrey’s playing very much against type, he doesn’t really appear enough to make much of an impact.

The only stuff here that isn’t basically part of the existing blueprint is the plot thread centring on Mindy/Hit Girl. I had been particularly concerned how her scenes would play out, as considering she’s now in her mid-teens, there was always a huge risk of it getting a bit creepy. Happily, both Wadlow’s script and camera avoid sexualising Moretz, even whilst taking note of the hyper-sexualised teen culture into which Mindy is more or less unwillingly being inducted. The problem is, none of it’s particularly new or interesting, covering ground that’s long since been well documented in the likes of Heathers, Mean Girls and – my personal favourite – Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl. Maybe if Mindy’s queen bitch nemesis Brooke (Claudia Lee, another under-18 who most definitely is sexualised) turned out to be in some way part of The Motherfucker’s nefarious (not to mention extremely non-specific) schemes, that might have lent it some weight; alas, beyond a really pathetically silly act of revenge that one can imagine Michael Bay pissing his pants laughing at, none of it goes anywhere. As kind of a side effect of that, The Motherfucker has to have a sadly underdeveloped henchwoman dubbed Mother Russia (the imposing Olga Kurkulina), just so Hit Girl has someone to fight in the finale.

That’s pretty much the problem with Kick-Ass 2 in a nutshell: basically everything that occurs is an arbitrary set-up by which we can justify violence later on. This includes the moment which, outside of Carreygate, would seem to be the biggest cause of controversy in the movie: the rape scene, apparently toned down from its equivalent in the comic and treated as a joke at the would-be rapist’s expense. Misguided doesn’t even cover it, and once more it’s painfully clear that the assaulted character – yet another totally underdeveloped, two dimensional new arrival – is there for no other purpose than to give Kick-Ass another motive to seek revenge. Very sloppy, very stupid.

All this said, though, I don’t mean to suggest Kick-Ass 2 is by any means an outright disaster. The core cast all do their best with what they’ve got, and the action sequences are for the most part pretty well done, suggesting Wadlow might have a decent future doing straight-up action flicks. I just hope he’s kept from writing his own scripts in future, as that’s where Kick-Ass 2 really pales in comparison to its predecessor; where Vaughn and Goldman brought real warmth, humanity and wit, Wadlow (or, again, maybe Millar) seem anxious to cater to your average thirteen year old boy’s notion of what constitutes great comedy and storytelling (hurhur, she said ‘snatch;’ hurhur, his dick got bitten). Sure, that hormonally imbalanced little misanthrope within us all may find Kick-Ass 2 a fairly satisfactory experience, but on the whole there’s surely no avoiding how half-baked and by-the-numbers it all is. Kick-Ass worked perfectly well as a standalone movie; methinks that’s probably how it should have stayed.

Kick-Ass 2 is in cinemas pretty much everywhere now, from Universal.

Review by Annie Riordan

“Wanting people to listen, you can’t just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you’ll notice you’ve got their strict attention.” ~ John Doe, Se7en

I haven’t read any reviews for Elysium yet. I try not to read reviews for films I know I will be reviewing myself, eventually. But with 500+ movie nerds on my FB page, it’s kinda difficult to keep myself from hearing about whatever is currently dominating the cineplex screens. So, I knew going in that Elysium was directed by the same guy who directed District 9, that Matt Damon was in it, and that everyone’s biggest gripe with it thus far was the “thinly veiled” message it touted about healthcare and immigration.

To which I respond with: “Well DUH!” Did we all just forget about his first movie, “Apartheid Is Bad” aka District 9? Subtlety is not in Blomkamp’s vocabulary, people. The sooner you accept that fact, the sooner you may be able to enjoy the perfectly enjoyable and subtlety-free “Rich People Are Evil” aka Elysium. It’s not going to win any awards for in-depth character studies or underlying metaphors, but if you like watching things explode and seeing bad guys get their butts kicked, this isn’t such a bad way to waste two hours.

The year is 2154. Los Angeles is a blasted ruin. We assume that the rest of the world is probably just as shitty, but we’re focusing on L.A. here because downtown L.A. already looks like a cancerous tumor festering on the ass of the world, so it’s not much of a stretch to picture it as a post-apocalyptic Mecca. Also, it’s been entirely taken over by Mexicans. It’s every conservative Republican’s worst nightmare, except there’s no Republicans or conservatives left on terra firma: they’ve all rocketed off to Elysium, a super huge space station where everything is perfect, no one ever gets sick or old and every sprawling manicured mansion comes with a built-in medpod, a device that looks like a cross between a tanning bed and a full body x-ray machine which is capable of scanning every cell in your body and removing all trace of disease in 30 seconds or less. Everything is sunshine and whitebread up on Elysium. You can almost hear the theme song from Leave It To Beaver playing softly in the background.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, everything is shit on a shingle. Things are so shitty, in fact, that modern day Port-Au-Prince looks like a fucking resort spa by comparison. Amid the smoke and despair is Max, a Messianic Matt Damon with prison tattoos and a heart o’ gold. Max works the assembly line in the factory where police droids are manufactured to keep guys like him in line. Max is just trying to keep his nose clean after a stint in the Big House. Once upon a time, he was the best carjacker ever, a legend amongst thieves. Now he’s just Max, the last nice white guy left in the world. Slow motion Kodachrome flashbacks tell us that Max is an orphan, raised in a convent by nuns who amazingly weren’t sour-faced harridans with a penchant for physical abuse, and while there he made a lifelong friend in Frey, a pretty little girl whom he promised to take to Elysium someday. Okay, admittedly, we’re hit over the head repeatedly with the sweet flashbacks and childhood promises and the Mother Superior’s foretelling of Max’s specialness, and it all becomes just a little too cloying. My advice: hold your nose and swallow. We’ll get to the fun shit soon enough.

Anyway, one industrial accident later and Max receives a death sentence. He’s received a lethal dose of radiation and has five days to live. He knows his only chance for survival is to get to Elysium and find a medpod. So he does what any ex-con does: he goes back to the criminal underground looking to cash in on some favors. A seedy guy called Spider sets him up with a suicide mission: kidnap some guy, steal the information implanted in his brain and hijack a space transport thingie. Then, breach Elysium’s atmosphere, find a medpod, access the secret military spy satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit over the midwest, ID the limo by the vanity plate “MR. BIGGG” and get his approximate position, reposition the transmission dish on the remote truck to 17.32 degrees east, hit WESTAR 4 over the Atlantic, bounce the signal back into the aerosphere up to COMSAT 6, beam it back to SATCOM 2 transmitter number 137 and down on the dish on the back of Mr. Big’s limo… It’s almost too easy.

Okay yeah, I totally stole that last bit from Wayne’s World, but that’s about the jist of it. Anyway, they nail the corporate asshole (played by William Fichtner, who played the corporate asshole in The Dark Knight) and download the info, killing him in the process, and then realize that the info they stole is a reboot system for Elysium which Super Pinch Faced Jodie Foster is planning to upload so she can declare herself President of Elysium and kill anybody she wants to. If they can get Max up there and plug him into the hard drive, they can seize power and save the whole world!

Except Jodie Nail-File-Face Foster has an ace up her sleeve. His name is Kruger, as in Freddy, and he’s played with loathsome glee by Sharlto Copley, who played the good guy in District 9. Kruger is a despicable pig, a murderer, rapist and all around Not Very Nice Person. However, he’s been granted a full pardon and reinstatement as Big Bad Thugmeister in Charge of Army Dirtbag by Jodie Envelope-Opener-Face Foster if he can deliver Max to her undamaged so she can pull the reboot program out of his skull.

Things explode, there are slo-mo Matrixy fight sequences in which bones and armor shatter like glass, people die and pretty soon Max, his soulmate Frey and Frey’s dying-of-leukemia daughter are on their way to Elysium for Act III, which could not possibly be any cheesier if Europe’s “The Final Countdown” had been playing in the background the entire time.

I woke up this morning to complete this review and see that, seemingly overnight, the conservative party is throwing a tantrum over this film, not because the injustices it portrays are inaccurate, but because they are dead on correct. Blomkamp himself has stated that, although this movie takes place 140 years in the future, it is very much a statement about what is happening in this country right now. Believe it or not, I do not get paid to write these reviews, and so must earn a living by day working in the healthcare field, watching people get sick and die, many of them unable to afford their own medication despite the fact that most of them are employed and have insurance. Blomkamp’s message may be heavy handed, but if a smack across the face with a sack full of hammers is what is needed to get people’s attention, then so be it.

Okay, must reign self in before I go on an indignant pro-socialized medicine tear here. Suffice it to say: this film pissed off Rush Limbaugh, Mr. Oxycontin-Stuffed-Pork-Roast Himself. That in itself is reason enough to go see it. Maybe if enough people go see it, Rush’s fat tur-duck-en of a face will finally explode just like that dude in Scanners. Sorry, I can’t refrain from the Wayne’s World quotes today.

But hey, you don’t have to want to seek the political message within, addressing the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. There are plenty of reasons to go see Elysium on the big screen: #1 – stuff explodes. #2 – Diego Luna as Damon’s BFF Julio is smoking hawt in a Latino-version-of-Norman-Reedus kinda way. #3 – more stuff explodes. #4 – Sharlto Copley has nipple headlights. #5 – a shit ton of exploding stuff happens. #6 – Jodie Open-Razor-Blade-Face gets her comeuppance. #7 – there’s really not much else in the theaters right now worth watching. #F – you’re a gimp.

You get the idea.

Elysium is out now in the US, and hits the UK this Wednesday, 21st August, with alternate Scooby-Doo/Thelma and Louise endings. (Okay, not the last bit.)

By Ben Bussey

The origin of the species. Not a bad name for a book, that. Also, it’s something that will always be of interest to anyone with a vaguely inquiring mind: the question of just where we human beings came from, how civilisation as we know it came to develop, and how we existed before. As well as being a long-standing area of scientific and historical research, it’s also something that has fired the imagination of storytellers for eons, all the way into the age of cinema, where we’ve seen primitive people clashing with prehistoric beasts in the likes of Harry O. Hoyt’s The Lost World, Don Chaffey’s One Million Years BC, and of course Jim Wynorski’s Dinosaur Island… ahem.

Back in 1981, director Jean-Jacques Annaud sought to unite the realms of imagination and real science with Quest for Fire. Billed as a ‘science fantasy adventure,’ the movie is set around 80,000 years BC, following an early homo sapiens tribe, who have found fire but don’t yet have the smarts to create it themselves. When an attack of troglodytes results in their only flame being extinguished, they need to go find it again, and so three of their number – Everett McGill, Nameer El-Kadi, and the king of make-up movies Ron Perlman – venture out into a harsh wilderness to find someone who does have fire, and take it; or maybe, just maybe, learn how to make it on their own.

Now, I’m going to level with you: I found Quest for Fire pretty tough going. One can hardly accuse a 90 minute movie of outstaying its welcome, but when it’s 90 minutes of unintelligible grunting without too much in the way of discernible plot, it can rather put a strain on the attention span. The ample extras on the disc, including an in-depth making-of documentary, do put it all into context, demonstrating the huge amount of research that went into every area of putting the film together, including a unique language devised for the film by none other than Clockwork Orange writer Anthony Burgess. All very impressive of course, but does it necessarily make for a film you’ll actually want to watch? It’s challenging stuff, for sure; I can honestly say I was as often frustrated by the film as I was mystified by it.

We can see a great many parallels here with many of the tribal movies that have come since, such as John Boorman’s The Emerald Forest, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, and indeed James Cameron’s Avatar; but where those films for the most part prioritised the action-adventure elements over the anthropological, Quest for Fire seeks to balance the two more evenly, and I’m not sure it ever quite strikes the right balance. There are large sections in which it has the feel of a nature documentary, where the only thing missing seems to be David Attenborough’s narration. Even so, there’s no shortage of thrills and spills. There are numerous quite gruesome battle sequences, put together in a traditional action-adventure style, with stirring music from Philippe Sadre. We also have a fair few animal attack scenes featuring real wolves and lions; way more exciting than the almost certainly CG-addled takes on such material would be today. Even so, the somewhat unconvincing woolly mammoths are a little harder to take seriously; and indeed, some of the primitive make-up jobs have aged pretty badly, which might result in unintentional comedy value for some.

Then there’s the question of sex. This being a tale of primitive man, we don’t get a lot in the way of tender loving romance; perhaps unsurprisingly, there are a fair few moments here which can only be classed as rape scenes. As such, it’s interesting the BBFC have passed the film uncut as a 15; presumably this is down to the anthropological angle, the sense that this film is simply showing things the way they were from a detached perspective. Even so, there is a hint of old-fashioned love story in here, as Everett McGill’s hairy northlander grows romantically attached to Rae Dawn Chong’s lithe and perpetually naked girl from the south. Her presence amongst the three men seems to prompt a change in attitudes among the men; they develop courtesy and humour, which only serves to boost their camaraderie. It is interesting how the film conveys character development without the use of recognisable dialogue, and not by having everyone shout “akeeta, akeeta” all the time as was always the case in the old Hammer cave people movies.

Quest for Fire most definitely isn’t going to be for everyone. It is without doubt a very unique piece of filmmaking, and while its tightrope walk between art-house experimentation and rip-roaring adventure doesn’t quite work for me, I can see how it might well capture (or even, as the trailer below puts it, ‘arouse’) the imagination of some viewers.

Quest for Fire is out now on Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray, from Second Sight.

Review by Ben Bussey

It’s 2013, and as the V/H/S movies and The ABCs of Death have firmly established, the anthology horror movie is very much back in vogue. Is this why Little Deaths is only reaching DVD now, more than two years after it was first screened? Maybe; maybe not. But we should be happy enough to welcome it into the fold. Dispensing with the usual bridging device, this movie gives us three completely separate stories from distinctive British horror filmmakers Sean Hogan, Andrew Parkinson and Simon Rumley.

As the title might imply – what with ‘la petite mort’ being a euphemism for orgasm (thank you, Alexis Arquette in Bride of Chucky) – while the stories may be unrelated, sex plays a major role in all of them. It’s interesting how the short narrative format seems to attract more filmmakers to tackle stories with sex at the forefront. This was very much the case with The Theatre Bizarre, and more than a few chapters of The ABCs of Death – and of course V/H/S, whose sleazy handling of the matter was a huge part of what made that film so distasteful to me, and to plenty of other people I could mention (including but not limited to our own Annie). And of course, Little Deaths predates all those anthology movies, even if it’s the last to gain a wide release. I’d say Little Deaths might anticipate the less-than-sunny view of human relations that we have had in anthology horror movies since; but hey, this is horror, it doesn’t tend to take a particularly sunny view of anything.

I’d rather avoid summing up the plot of each film, simply because when discussing a short, it’s all too easy to inadvertently give too much away. Like all good horror short stories, these present you with a grim little world which, by way of various twists and turns, only gets grimmer, not to mention a good bit weirder. We have lies, manipulation and betrayal in abundance, people revealing themselves to be more than they first appear, and naturally a succession of very downbeat conclusions. While fantastical elements are present, with one instalment boasting a supernatural twist and another even a streak of sci-fi, there remains a degree of blunt realism. As will come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen Simon Rumley’s previous films, his concluding chapter is by far the most realistic, and almost certainly the most grim.

Yes – the words ‘grim,’ ‘dark,’ ‘moody’ and other such miserablist synonyms can all be applied to Little Deaths. Subsequently, what we’ve got here is a film which is easy enough to admire, but – to my mind – doesn’t offer much to actually enjoy. And I know, that probably isn’t the name of the game here, particularly with Rumley’s entry – much as how no one was meant to come out of The Living and the Dead or Red White & Blue with a big old sloppy grin on their chops. I guess we must again take into account that Little Deaths was made in 2010, and first shown in 2011; the last gasp (or so I truly fucking hope) of the torture era. We have incarceration, abuse, people tied up and tied down, rape – all those essential elements of 2000s horror which have long since grown tiresome in their overfamiliarity. No, Little Deaths is not eroticising its atrocities – the intent is to unnerve the viewer on a deep, gut level. Which is fine. But, for this writer at least, that approach has run its course.

Still, having said all that, Little Deaths definitely warrants attention. It’s very atmospheric, it looks and sounds great, and boasts good performances all around. Above all, it highlights a distinct approach to the genre being taken by British filmmakers, boding well for the future of the genre in the UK at a time when, to be frank, a lot of new British horror is falling way short of the mark. Whilst their work might not always resonate too deeply with me personally, I do appreciate that we need filmmakers like Rumley, Hogan and Parkinson, venturing outside of the obvious with noble experiments such as this.

Little Deaths is out now on Region 2 DVD, from Monster Pictures.

Review by Ben Bussey

Rock’n’roll, and Satan: not unlike Britain and America, it’s one of those enduring ‘special relationships,’ the source of endless joy for some and endless anxiety for others. I’m often surprised how rarely the subject rears its horned and/or heavily hairsprayed head in the movies. To my mind, 1986’s PMRC-baiting heavy metal horror Trick or Treat remains the best Satanic rock movie yet made; more recently it’s been touched on in Diablo Cody’s bitterly disappointing Jennifer’s Body, and Rob Zombie’s heavily divisive The Lords of Salem. However, five years ago there came a low-budget Satanic rock movie which went under the radar somewhat, only to slip back into the leathers and make a comeback here and now in 2013. Ladies and gentlemen, let your horns fly for The Devil’s Music, the fourth and almost certainly best film yet from British indie horror filmmaker Pat Higgins.

Presented in documentary format, we are told the thorny tale of rock superstar and tabloid sensation Erika Spawn (Victoria Hopkins), a modern day proponent of classic hard rock theatrics. Filthy lyrics? Check. Provocative costumes? Check. On-stage shock tactics with plenty of fake blood involved? You betcha. Naturally, this makes her the idol of thousands, and public enemy number one to thousands more. She even manages a coveted Christmas number one, knocking wholesome ex-boy band singer Robin Harris (Scott Thomas) off the top spot. But when her band’s inner sanctum allows in a seemingly innocent groupie fangirl named Stef Regan (Lucy Dunn), slowly but surely a sinister shadow falls across the golden glow of Erika’s success. Some of it is the standard rock’n’roll clash of egos; but some of it is coming from an altogether different place. Can anyone be sure what is or is not part of the show anymore?

A little background on writer/director Pat Higgins: I first became aware of him a little over three years ago when his movie Hellbride was released. I didn’t give it the kindest review ever, but it was readily apparent that Higgins and company were at least putting forth the effort, which – to be frank – can’t always be said of microbudget horror. This, it seems, was good enough for Mr Higgins, for – even though I wasn’t much nicer about his next films, Bordello Death Tales and Nazi Zombie Death Tales – he still makes a point of letting me know about whatever he’s got coming out. And I’m certainly glad of that, for while The Devil’s Music is by no means without its little problems, it’s a smart, well-structured, intriguing movie that really manages to subvert expectation.

Approaching a microbudget film requires entering into a slightly different mindset as a viewer. It’s all too easy to see the home video-ish aesthetics and immediately dismiss the whole enterprise as a piece of crap offhand; I can’t deny I’ve been known to do just that myself. But if we accept right away that it isn’t going to look as sharp and polished as a bigger budget production, we can simply get on with the key matter at hand: engaging with the film itself. And The Devil’s Music certainly is engaging. The choice to make the film a mockumentary – not, repeat NOT found footage – was a wise move, not only because it excuses that home video-ish feel, but also as it feels the natural way to recount a rock’n’roll story. Some aspects do strain credibility a little: while the backstage camcorder footage is fine, cutaways to rather unconvincing looking TV interviews and mocked-up newspaper headlines do rather break the verisimilitude. Making Erika Spawn the biggest rock star in Britain was, perhaps, biting off more than a microbudget production can chew; the few scenes of gig footage are clearly done in pretty small venues, and the music videos are hardly a match for those of, say, Marilyn Manson (a figure who it seems safe to assume may have influenced the movie somewhat).

The mockumentary format also demands a level of naturalism to the dialogue which isn’t always totally there, and I think this is more to do with Higgins’ writing than any of the performances. Cy Henty (star of all Higgins’ work to date) has a meaty role as Erika’s manager, and makes for a pretty convincing music industry sleazebag, but some of his lines are a little too overloaded to sound entirely natural. As Erika, Victoria Hopkins is a commanding presence, although her accent is a little wobbly; another thing I have to question is whether it was really necessary to make the character American. That aside, Lucy Dunn is excellent as the shrinking yet insidious Stef, and Jess Luisa-Flynn also does great work as the über-bitch bassist Adele.

The greatest compliment I can pay to The Devil’s Music – and it’s really something that deserves to be emphasised – is that I honestly didn’t see where it was going. Ten, twenty minutes in, I was fairly sure I knew how it was all going to end… and boy, was I wrong. This, I’m sure we can all agree, is a rare thing these days, and that alone would be enough for The Devil’s Music to warrant attention. But above and beyond that, it’s a genuinely interesting piece of storytelling with something to say about the scapegoating of rock music, and just where the real evil may reside in popular culture.

You can watch The Devil’s Music in full below – or visit Jinx Media.