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By Svetlana Fedotov

The fifties were a weird time for horror. Alfred Hitchcock was the darling of the horror world with his psycho-sexual twists and anything not done by him came in the form of giant ants or giant blobs or giant tomatoes. With psychological crusades and atom bomb fears fed in nightly news bits to houses across the country, it was no surprise that author William March used the former to create one of the most feared little girls in the country: Rhoda Penmark. Though The Bad Seed, like many great works, didn’t get famous until his death a month after its release, it forced a whole new generation of parents to look at their kids cross-eyed whenever they seemed just a little too polite. Unfortunately, the book didn’t exactly age well, but luckily, I’m a sucker for old horror and just managed to stick it out long enough to type up this review.

As mentioned, the book revolves around little Rhoda Penmark, the world’s most polite little girl: with blonde pigtails and matching blue eyes, she is the image of a perfect childhood, but underneath all that lies the heart of an ice cold killer. Despite her mother Christine choosing to ignore the most obvious signs of a serial killer, even she can’t turn a blind eye when bodies start piling up everywhere the child goes. Soon, Christine begins researching her bloodline and what she learns will shock her family to the core. Where does little Rhoda get her murderous tendencies and how does Christine tie into it?

The Bad Seed reads a lot like the movie adaptation that came out two years later, that is over-acted, drawn out, and closely shot. It sounds like an awkward description of a book, but the writing is such a product of the cinema at the time, that you can actually imagine the characters acting out the story in that flowery, post radio acting that was so popular at the time. Unless speech patterns have greatly changed between now and then, the dialogue is very stiff and it doesn’t seem like how people would interact normally. It’s very kitschy. The story was pretty solid though. I mean, who doesn’t love murderous children? The out-layer of the story, that is, not delving any deeper than the words on the paper, is a lot like a Twilight Zone episode. Moral and ethics and all that jazz, and it has a pretty interesting twist at the end. If you do decide to ‘read into’ the story, it’s a very obvious metaphor for the nature vs. nurture angle in terms of teenage crime. Is Rhoda a product of her environment or is was it something more primordial? Honestly, it rings of pro-eugenics.

Even the characters are thinly veiled metaphors for different aspects of the human psyche. Greed, jealousy, indecisiveness, evil, yadda yadda yadda and along with the pseudo-psychotherapy quirks of side character Monica Breedlove, the whole work quickly devolves into some kind of Fruedian wet dream (who, yes, does get mentioned in the book). Really, the book is only scary if you have never picked up a psychology book in your life or you’re Dr. Suess and you’re already terrified of children. So is there any reason to read it? Well, I’ll tell you the same thing I tell people about old horror comics: when this work came out: it was the first one to do something like an ‘evil child.’ Sure, now it’s simply become a tired trope, but this is where the tired trope came from. This book was one of the foundations of modern horror, just like Tales from the Crypt was for modern horror comics. It’s worth the read just to see how it all started. The Bad Seed brought new ideas and set new standards to an emerging field of cinema.

Though, if anything, you can always watch the two movies instead or see if Eli Roth ever delivers on his promise of a remake. I haven’t seen either the fifties or the eighties version, but from what I hear, aside from the ending, it’s exactly like the book.

By Tristan Bishop

The film industry, like most creative industries, is notoriously tough to break into. For every A-list movie star at the top of their game, a pyramid made up of thousands of less fortunate souls lies beneath them – a few of them might be well-known character actors, and a few more those supporting faces you recognise but don’t know the names of. On the level below that a few hundred who occasionally work in less high-profile productions, TV, adverts, etc, and below that an entire sea of people who never got a break, whether from bad luck or lack of talent, and who end up giving up on their dreams and presumably settling down with a ‘proper’ job somewhere.

Eat, the debut feature from writer/director Jimmy Weber (he has previously worked on a number of genre shorts) is the story of an actress who is very much on the lowest step of that pyramid. Novella McClure (played by Meggie Maddock) is an actress who hasn’t worked in three years, despite an obvious talent and good looks. Until now she’s been able to survive on an inheritance, but the money has run out, she’s behind on her rent and her eccentric landlady has had to serve her with an eviction notice. She’s now in her early thirties, and, gallingly, seems to be over-looked at every audition she attends in favour of a younger woman (most notably the bitchy Tracy, played by Dakota Pike). When one of the assistants at a casting mentions that her boyfriend might have some work for Novella, she assumes she is being fooled into a porn audition, and reacts furiously. On the angry drive home, Novella has a strange and uncontrollable urge, and takes a big bite out of her own arm, waking up confused and scared. Despite her initial horror, and subsequent hospitalisation (which sees her treated as a suicide attempt), Novella finds that every time stress or tragedy strikes, she gets an overwhelming urge to tuck into herself…

Well, it should be fairly obvious to anyone reading that Eat is functioning very much on a metaphorical level; obviously there is a very specific parallel to be made with eating disorders here, a very real affliction to many trying to make it in the acting/modelling worlds, but there also appears to be a more general metaphor at work with regard to the self-destructive nature of those who work in the creative fields (and one which is hammered home by the final shot of the film). But metaphor itself is a hard sell to an audience – and is generally only effective if contained in an entertaining or engrossing narrative, so we have to judge Eat on whether it works this way. And it very nearly does.

The film’s best attribute is the cast. Maddock shines here, giving an emotional depth to a character that most would judge on sight as yet another bottle-blonde actress. One scene in particular, where she delivers a soliloquy at an audience, only for it to have unexpected consequences, is actually pretty moving. Respect should also be given to Ali Francis, in the role of Candice, Novella’s best friend, who might just have her own agendas in trying to help Novella (as well as some telling misapprehensions about exactly what is happening to her), and an amusing comic turn by Maru Garcia (in her first screen role!) as Novella’s landlady, Eesha. Also worthy of note is the look of the film – There’s a dash of Nicholas Winding Refn’s hyper-colourful style here (which impresses from the off with the candy-coloured credits over electro-pop music), and far from being just a hipster appropriation, it actually works thematically here (with the idea of Hollywood being surface-obsessed). Also the gore is suitably icky and impressive – self-cannibalism is a naturally disturbing idea, and to have it displayed so graphically is doubly so – I believe I actually said ‘yuck’ out loud once or twice (I was watching it on my own).

In the end, however, I felt some ambivalence towards Eat. Despite the obvious aesthetic pleasures (both nice and nasty) on show, and the touching moments driven by Maddock (who I would love to see more of), the final pay-off just doesn’t work; it’s too obviously metaphoric, and moves into a realm of fantasy which isn’t mirrored by earlier events. It’s one of those ‘oh.’ moments which unfortunately derails so many films, and leaves the viewer unsatisfied and annoyed, especially when they have been intermittently involved in the narrative.

With that in mind, Eat is still worth a watch, although I would place it firmly in the ‘flawed but interesting’ category.

Eat is available now on Region 2 DVD from Monster Pictures.

By Ben Bussey

It can’t be a good sign when, halfway through watching a newly released French horror movie, you find yourself pondering what happened to the days when so much of the most exciting horror around was coming out of France. Really though, where did it all go wrong? French filmmakers were responsible for so many of the most intense, visceral, attention-grabbing genre entries of the early 21st century; movies like Haute Tension, Ils, Inside, and (even though I’m among the few that consider this last one ridiculously overrated) Martyrs. But at some point in the last five years or so, Gallic horror seemed to lose its sting, the next wave of filmmakers sidestepping the unrelenting harshness of Aja, Laugier and co in favour of more fantastical concepts, yet attempting to retain that same intensity. Yet while the likes of The Horde, Mutants and Goal of the Dead proved a bit mediocre and forgettable, this much I can say without hesitation: they look like indisputable masterworks next to Dead Shadows.

It really, truly makes me sad to say this, as Dead Shadows is a movie which at one point I’d held high hopes for, even if this was primarily down to the striking poster art which we first saw way back in 2011 (artwork which has been recreated with reasonable accuracy for this new DVD release). Of course, any time a film sits on the shelf for such a long period of time, the seeds of doubt are inevitably sown, particularly when festival screenings don’t garner much of a buzz either. So I’m sad but not especially surprised that, now Dead Shadows has finally limped out onto UK DVD and VOD, it proves to be a feeble sci-fi horror with neither the budget nor the know-how to do justice to a potentially great monster movie premise. Evocative of any number of genre greats, all it really succeeds in doing is making you wish you were watching those instead.

It all starts off promisingly enough, opening shots of an initially peaceful outer space showing something earthbound (The Thing/Predator homage: check), before we come down to earth to see a husband and wife row, overheard by a young son, turn fatal. Fast forward a bit and the young lad has grown up to be Fabian Wolfrom’s nerdy, neurotic twentysomething, working from home as a technical support, surrounded by movie posters and film geek paraphernalia and pumped full of anti-depressants. Of course, this being a movie aimed at similarly socially-dysfunctional nerds, our young hero inevitably has a fantasy female living in the flat opposite, who, following a very vocal bust-up with her last boyfriend, quite happily welcomes this perfect stranger in, not finding it the least bit inappropriate that he opted to walk right into her flat uninvited when he happened to notice the door was ajar. As it happens there’s a comet passing over that evening, and soon enough our readily available dreamgirl invites our socially awkward stud-in-sheep’s clothing to an apocalypse party, where yet more readily available women (many of whom are dancing just in their bras because girls do that at house parties, don’t they?) will behave suggestively toward him for no discernible reason. Anyway, the comet starts to effect people, some of them start turning into zombies, some start spouting tentacles, weedy loser must find his inner hero and fight back, but there may be more to him than meets the eye, yadayada… can I go watch Night of the Creeps and/or Night of the Comet instead?

It’s not just that Dead Shadows is a shallow, mean-spirited, passive-aggressive revenge of the nerds fantasy, painting pretty much every character other than the lead as either a sexually permissive, intellectually redundant bimbo or a belligerent predatory alpha male and inviting us to delight in their gradual obliteration. Plenty of perfectly entertaining movies have followed a similar ethos – but they pulled it off with a panache that Dead Shadows completely lacks. It’s flat as a pancake visually, both the practical and CGI FX are a let-down, the action sequences are poorly executed: it all smacks of a desperation to seem cool, dark and edgy, and falls short by a very wide margin. The end result just feels weak, and somewhat pretentious.

Once again – I really, honestly wish I had something nicer to say. I love a good creature feature, and would love to see more of them from the indie horror scene, but if they continue being on a par with this and the likes of Almost Human – once again, I’d sooner go grab my copy of Night of the Creeps again…

Dead Shadows is available now on DVD and VOD in the UK via Bulldog Film Distribution.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

Damned on Earth begins with a scene in which a woman runs through a wooded area as a lumbering, anonymous man chases after. She falls over a bit. Then she dies. The only narrative twist to this is that this isn’t a precursor to a bog-standard would-be slasher classic, but instead it kicks off a German comedy about the eons-long battle between heaven and hell. In that regard, Damned on Earth deserves some credit – an evidently very low-budget film, this is at least lesser-trodden ground than what could have been, I don’t know, a found-footage zombie film, or something.

That’s essentially where my admiration of the film stops, though, as Damned on Earth is a boring, unfunny mess of a film. The film follows Amon, a demon in a human host body, as he is tasked by Luzifer with returning the rogue Belial to the fiery pits of hell, but finds himself caught up in the outbreak of all-out war between the legions of heaven and hell after the peace treaty between them is broken when Belial kills an angel. Along for the ride are various angels, demons and other Biblical characters, including Amon’s sidekick, Samsaveel, who is a massive sex offender and the worst thing in the whole sorry mess of a film.

With my apologies to long-time readers for being predictable, but yes, this film’s depiction of women and, in particular, the character of Samsaveel (who, at various points in the film, is both a man and a woman), pissed me off enough that if there were any other redeeming qualities to the film, I sure couldn’t see them. All the women are victims, sex objects or bitches, and while it’s fair to say that none of the male characters are particularly well-developed, this was just something that irritated me from the get-go. Meanwhile, Samsaveel is a walking rape joke, so to say that I found him, the main source of humour in the film, really unfunny, is a bit of an understatement. When it becomes apparent that Samsaveel must embody a human woman, I briefly hoped that maybe this would lead to an interesting development of the character but instead the rape joke just kept walking on.

I say that Samsaveel is the main source of humour in the film, but in all honesty, it’s hard to tell. I don’t want to be so unkind as to say that ‘what did I expect from a German comedy’, but I can’t say that I laughed at all while watching the film. Maybe I really was just missing the jokes. Each character is introduced with on-screen text about them (in Comic-Sans, even!) which I think is meant to be amusing…but the humour really fell flat with me. This is true of the rest of the film, where all the interactions with the demons and angels are filled with swear-words and underdeveloped grotesqueries, such as the drunk and disorderly Jesus or the Sharon-Stone-in-Fatal-Attraction Lilith. If the film was aiming to make some sort of comment on modern religion or the state of the church then it’s as mishandled as the humour. The one joke about priests and paedophilia is so strained that its impact is completely lost. When your character pointedly states “Know how many priests went to hell last year?” there is absolutely no need to follow it up with what might be the laziest punchline in the whole film – “Paedophilia and so on.” The film’s heavy-handed attempts at humour aren’t helped much by the really rather clumsy performances from the majority of the cast. They’re not all terrible, but hardly any of them are any good – Noah Hunter as Luzifer isn’t half bad, and Julia Jütte brings an effective sense of sleeze to her otherwise over-the-top performance as Samsaveel. The cast isn’t really given much to work with in the script, and the costuming is so uninspired that I can imagine the best of actors struggling to get into their role fully.

The war which unfolds between the legions of heaven and hell is, ultimately, a bunch of people dicking about in a field with some sub-David Muñoz gore effects and a standard computer effects package. In and of itself that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t make for very entertaining viewing when coupled with such a misguided sense of humour. Personally, I found there to be little in the film to really recommend it, despite the fairly unusual concept.

Damned on Earth is available to view on demand now at Vimeo.

Damned On Earth from Spontitotalfilm on Vimeo.

By Ben Bussey

Back in March 2014 I saw a movie called The Invoking. It was a no-budget production from a young cast and crew, following a bunch of friends heading out to a remote, hitherto unknown location, where, following a liberal side order of personal drama, something vaguely spooky occurs. It bored the living shit out of me to the extent that I didn’t so much review the film itself as write an extended list of things that no-budget indie horror filmmakers should not do if they expect to create work that anyone is likely to wind up giving a damn about; all the cliches, all the mistakes that we see again and again and again and again from indie horror movies, leaving so many of them insufferably boring.

Now, in July 2015, I’ve just seen a movie called Invoked. Guess fucking what.

Opening with one of those delightful title cards informing us we’re about to be shown the last footage of a bunch of young folk who mysteriously disappeared – joy of joys, it’s found footage (one of the few cardinal sins last year’s The Invoking was not guilty of) – we spend a few minutes in the company of policemen who appear to be filming on something that’s been at the bottom of a pond since 1997, before cutting to – would you believe it – the inside of a car, where – would you believe it – a bunch of pretty, fun-loving twentysomethings are driving off to – would you believe it – a remote location far off in the wilderness for a weekend of partying. They’re an amiable, gender-balanced bunch, three guys and three gals, some of whom are coupled off already, others clearly hoping to do so. They talk incessantly and leave the camera running for no readily apparent reason the whole journey, until they reach their destination – an abandoned youth hostel on a small island only reachable by rowing boat. They get in there, continue to talk incessantly and keep the camera running for no readily apparent reason, then crack open the beers and spark up some spliffs, until finally someone suggests doing a seance, as is of course the norm on these occasions. But when they do, they come to suspect they may have disturbed the rest of a spirit which wasn’t feeling particularly restful to begin with. Will they get to the bottom of the mystery? Will they get out of there alive? Will we see any of it in clear shots which last more than a fraction of a second without excessive camera shake and even more excessive screaming? I say again… guess fucking what.

Okay, indie filmmakers. I guess you weren’t listening last time, so I’m going to say it again: please, please, please, for your own sake and everyone else’s, when you are setting out to make a no-budget horror movie, be brutally honest with yourself, take a good long look at your material, and ask yourself – is this actually interesting in any way, shape or form? Do we have striking moments which command the audience’s attention – genuine laughs, genuine thrills, genuine scares, anything we haven’t seen before? Do we at least have a catchy, memorable title which is likely to stick in the viewer’s memory? Because I refuse to believe that anyone in their right mind thinks that a found footage kids in a cabin ghost movie called Invoked does any of those things. It’s nothing more than a half-arsed rehash of material which has already been rehashed half-arsedly more times than I care to count, and if anyone honestly thinks it’s bringing anything remotely new or different to the table I would have to seriously question how much that person knows or cares about the horror genre.

Here are some synonyms for ‘invoke’: pray to, call on, appeal to, plead with, supplicate, entreat, solicit, beseech, beg, implore, importune, petition. I do all these to any filmmakers contemplating making their own found footage horror movie. Either make it much, much, much more creative, engaging, witty and suspenseful than Invoked, or just don’t make it at all. Please. There’s far, far too much of this worthless, lifeless, witless, gutless, soulless crap out there already.

Invoked is out on Region 2 DVD on 17th August, from Left Films.

By Quin

I have to admit that I had to look up the definition to the word “culling” and found that it meant “a selection from a large quantity; reducing the population of a wild animal (specifically an inferior or surplus animal) by selective slaughter.” In the final minutes of the film, the word is used once. Even in the context of the scene, I still had to look it up to be sure of its meaning. In fact, it feels like they must have already had the title attached to the script, then when they got toward the end they figured they should throw it in. Without giving away the ending, I must say that the implications of the title make the subject matter of the film infinitely darker than one gets from just looking at the screen and watching the movie. The potentially pitch dark themes just aren’t all there and what is there is slight. The Culling is nothing more than a young people on a road trip movie where they take a detour into a typical low-budget horror movie.

In the first seconds of the film, we see a screaming woman running from something. If I wasn’t reviewing this, I may have stopped right there. Way too many horror films open like this. In this case it was quick and served virtually no purpose toward getting to the actual story. Already feeling annoyed, the opening credits sequence made me more-so. Bad fonts and bad music mixed with cliched horror images do nothing to engage the viewer, wasting time in what is already just an 80 minute film.

The group of young people in the film are a typical assortment of what you get in a movie like this. In this case, they’re in a van on their way to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. There isn’t much of any talk about music and it’s safe to say their only interested in partying. On the way, they stop at a restaurant that ends up being closed. Just as they’re about to take off, they find a little girl. She says that she was with her Grandpa and she doesn’t know where he went. The group has a great opportunity here to call the police and then be on their way to Austin to enjoy some of the next big things in rock music before the rest of the world gets a chance. Of course, if they did that, this wouldn’t be a horror movie. Their reasoning skills are immediately called into question when they collectively decide that waiting for the police would take up too much of their time. Obviously, the only other thing to do is put the kid in the van and drive her home.

There is really nothing worse than a horror movie with a faulty or unbelievable premise. Sure it works when the movie is silly and fun. The Culling is pretty silly but not in a fun way. The group arrives at the girl’s home, but no one is there. The girl says her parents are probably out looking for her. The group that wouldn’t wait for the police (and still has the option of calling them here) decides to wait for the parents in a creepy old house with a strange little girl. By this point, the viewer has already seen shadows moving around the house and heard growling noises. The parents return and are briefly more skeptical about the group of people, than the fact that their daughter is safe and back home. The little girl’s parents are played by Johnathon Schaech and Virginia Williams. Their acting is the only good acting in the film. There’s some bonding time and conversation while drinking around a camp fire just before an injury (complete with dodgy first-aid; Seriously how hard is it to apply pressure and not move the patient?) leaves the group alone with the girl again. This is the half way mark of the film and finally we get to see some action. There is some fairly tight tension, but it’s regularly halted by the bad acting and terrible visual effects.

There is one tiny easter egg I found in the film that I think is worth noting for music fans. As I said, a film where the characters are going to South by Southwest should have more references to music. Early in the film, before the road trip, someone is having an instant message conversation. It goes fast and it’s extremely convoluted. Perhaps it holds clues that will be useful to some people. What I found interesting was a quick flash of a clip from a Clinic music video. Clinic is a great post punk/experimental band from Liverpool that I love. I saw them in Los Angeles at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go around 2003 and I didn’t even know they were still together. So I guess what I’m saying is that I did get something valuable from The Culling. Unfortunately that’s about all I got out of The Culling. I wouldn’t waste my time on it if I were you, but you should go watch some Clinic videos. That’s something I can recommend.

The Culling is available now on VOD and digital download from Millennium Entertainment.

By Jamie Brownlie

To quote Operation Ivy, “Here we go again.”

Six friends on vacation in Lithuania meet the exotic Luta at a party. Two of them decide to follow her back to the tattoo parlor where she works to get work from The Artist, the master tattooist. Torture ensues and it all caps off with an incredibly improbable and displeasing ending.

I’m not a dick, I swear to God I’m not. I know my ex-wife and probably quite a few of my friends are somewhere rolling their eyes, but it’s true. I don’t write these reviews to be a dick. I don’t get any sort of satisfaction out of slamming the hard work of others, it’s quite the opposite actually. I want to like every movie I see. Big budget, low budget, no budget: I want to love them all. I yearn for that escape one gets when losing themselves in a movie. Sadly, I haven’t reviewed a movie yet for BAH that I loved. There’s been one that I sort of liked, one that I wanted to like and two that I hated.

The Parlor or Anarchy Parlor (horrible, horrible name) as it was originally released almost got me. For the first thirty minutes or so I thought that maybe BAH had finally sent me a movie I could get behind. It’s beautifully shot and features some great acting from its antagonist, The Artist (played spectacularly by Robert LaSardo). Then it all just sort of falls apart.

This is torture porn, through and through. We’re treated to repeated scenes of victims having their skin slowly and excruciatingly removed from their bodies, in very realistic graphic detail. If you’ve read my other reviews on BAH you’ll know I’m not a fan of the torture genre. I don’t mind gore. I don’t mind graphic killing. Hell, I honestly don’t even mind a movie that uses torture as a device to further the plot, but even this old desensitized horror hound can’t and won’t enjoy the slow prolonged torture of others, even in a celluloid setting. I don’t get off on it.

But that’s neither here nor there when it comes to the actual quality of the movie in question and if truth be told, from a technical standpoint, it’s extremely well done. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, being well shot, the sound is perfect, the lighting is perfect, the set dressing is excellent, and it uses the native beauty of the Lithuanian setting wonderfully. When one looks at it with these things in things in mind, it holds up to any movie I’ve seen in quite a while. However, when you get into the more creative aspects, like the script and acting, it’s definitely behind the curve.

The acting is all over the place with most of it on the bad end of the spectrum. Since it was actually filmed entirely in Lithuania, I’m assuming they hired all of the non-featured actors locally and it shows. It’s mostly stiff and amateurish. The leads are somewhat better, although they play stereotypes so their portrayals are pretty much predefined. The arrogant jerk is adequately jerky, the meek friend is perfectly meek and the douchebag is punch-in-the-face douchebaggy. The two female leads, not including the final girl, are interchangeable and really don’t do much in or for the movie besides show their boobs and die horribly.

The antagonists are the movie’s strong point. Robert LaSardo is great as the Artist. He plays the film’s bad guy with a cool calmness that is a refreshing change from the usual over the top psycho we see in most movies of this type. He brings a low-key professionalism to the role that helps elevate the movie to a level above what it deserves. Also of note is Sara Fabel, playing the role of Luta. While not the greatest actress, she is so smoking hot (Google Image her, you won’t be disappointed) and so perfect as the tattooed psycho apprentice of the Artist that you can’t help but think about her after the movie ends. Of course, the fact that she is, as mentioned, smoking hot and spends most of the movie either naked or scantily clad helps in that regard.

Sadly, for all the good brought to the table by our antagonists, it’s all washed away by the script. I mentioned earlier that the characters are all stereotypes, and it’s to a point that is painful. Everyone is in such a defined role that nothing they do is a surprise and plot twists are seen coming from a mile away. Plus, with the exception of one of the secondary female leads, all of the characters are pretty much completely unlikable. As a writer, if you want your audience to feel any sympathy for your characters as they’re being tortured, you have to develop an emotional attachment for us to cling to. That attachment wasn’t there so I never really felt sorry for them, I just felt uncomfortable as I watched them slowly flayed.

Mostly, I found it boring with it dragging horribly in its middle act, and with an ending that made no sense that I felt was unnecessary and out of place. I also kept thinking it was overly long but it comes in at the industry standard 90 minutes. It did feature some of the hottest strippers I’ve seen in a movie, so I guess it’s got that going for it.

Watch it if you like this sort of thing, otherwise avoid it like the plague.

Anarchy Parlor is available now for on-demand and download in the US, via Gravitas Ventures.

By Tristan Bishop

Freshness is a rare thing for us horror fans. The very nature of genre is repetition, after all – and so over the past hundred years of horror films, the same situations, characters, locations, set-ups and pay-offs appear again and again. A lot of films actively homage past pinnacles of the genre, many others blatantly rip off whatever is doing good business, but it’s not that often that the old tropes get arranged in a way that surprises those who have seen more than a few dozen horror films. Of course there’s joy, even comfort, to be found in the way things get rehashed and re-packaged but rarely do we see something which confounds our expectations, and it’s often genuinely exhilarating when this happens. In the past twelve months I’ve see precisely two films which have made me feel this way, one being David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (my review), and the other being a low-budgeted little film from New Zealand called Housebound.

With new films I try to make a point of knowing as little as possible about them when I go in – not that easy in the era of the internet, where it’s almost impossible to look at social media without someone speculating (and I’ll admit it’s sometimes me) about the new trailer for the latest blockbuster sci-fi or superhero movie. Which is one reason film festivals are such a pleasure – I generally have no idea about the content of a film being shown so far before its (probable) release. This was the case with Housebound (which I caught at 2014’s Abertoir fest) – aside from knowing there was a buzz about it, and that people whose opinions I trust rated it highly, I knew nothing about the film whatsoever. In that spirit, My synopsis of the film will ignore everything after the first twenty minutes. Trust me, it’s for your own good.

Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly) is a bit of a troubled young lady. We are introduced to her as she is attempting to indulge in the robbery of an ATM. Unfortunately her partner-in-crime manages to be a little clumsy with his sledgehammer and knocks himself out, botching the job entirely, and ensuring they get swiftly picked up by the police. It turns out this isn’t the first time Kylie has been in trouble, and thus she gets sentenced to eight months house arrest. Kylie doesn’t have the best of relationships with her mother or step-father, and reverts to insolent type as she lounges around their large but run-down house, annoying them by raiding the fridge, smoking indoors and hogging the TV with old films when it’s Coronation Street night (this is a thing in New Zealand?). It’s a good job the house is large, as Kylie has been fitted with an ankle alarm by their friendly neighbourhood security contractor Amos (a charming performance by Glen-Paul Waru), which will go off if she decides to leave the premises. One night when Kylie turns on a radio phone-in show she hears the voice of her mother talking about supernatural experiences in the house. Kylie, being your no-nonsense type, isn’t having any of it, but late one night she follows the ringing of her phone into the cavernous basement, and thereby sets off a sequence of events which form the next, glorious, eighty minutes of the film.

I’ve described Housebound as a roller-coaster ride before, and I’ll stick by that on second viewing, although it’s one which doesn’t shed any of its thrills through familiarity – although I knew what was coming I was still impressed by the technical skill with which writer-director-editor Gerald Johnstone pulls it off. Far from throwing us around at random tangents, every little twist and turn is well-signposted (and not obviously so) and makes logical sense in the context of what has come before. Much has been made in previous reviews of the amount of humour in Housebound too – in fact it has so many laughs (including some very subtle ones I missed on the first viewing) that one could almost class it as a comedy, were it not dealing with some fairly disturbing subject matter, or if it wasn’t so genuinely, teeth-clenchingly tense on occasion. Genres are balanced so well here, in fact, that it makes it look easy, and makes the viewer question why more films don’t attempt (or succeed at) this. There’s even some sparing but suitably nasty/hilarious gore gags in there.

Whilst much of the praise must obviously go to Johnstone here, we shouldn’t overlook the cast. All the main characters in this film give pitch-perfect performances; all of them are at home with the dead-pan comedic nature the film demands, although there are also scenes where they show something a little deeper – a touching scene between Kylie and her step-father Graeme (played by Ross Harper), for instance, with the man attempting to open up. Rima Te Wiata, who plays the mother, has been rightly singled out for praise in genre awards, but special mention must also go to the aforementioned Harper, Waru and O’Reilly too.

I’ve been trying to think of a negative point about the film, and it’s been very difficult to come up with anything. The closest I’ve been able to get is that the colour scheme, consisting mostly of brown, black and grey, is a little drab, but it perfectly suits the dusty, run-down old house it is, for the most part, set in, and as such I can’t really call it a fault, especially when everything else, from the editing to the sound design is pulled off beautifully.

It’s quite a surprise, therefore, to learn that a US remake of Housebound is due in 2016. One wonders, aside from some marquee casting, what needed fixing in the first place. It would be a real shame to have such a little gem of a film sullied by messing with the timing or diluting the humour.

As it stands Housebound is a pretty near perfect film, and if you missed it on the big screen, I would recommend you catch at home, with the lights out, as a late night weekend treat. You won’t regret it.

Housebound is out now on Region 2 DVD from Metrodome.

Review by Nia Edwards-Behi

Crawl or Die has got one of those posters that immediately makes me roll my eyes. Girl, in her skivvies, dodgy Photoshop. That eye-roll reaches critical when I remember that this film used to be called Crawl Bitch Crawl, an even more terrible title now that I’ve seen the film. But, credit to the film, this was nowhere near the travesty I was expecting from my first impressions.

The premise is simple: a security team protecting the last fertile human woman on a mission to a new Earth find themselves and their quarry trapped in a labyrinthine tunnel system when it turns out that this planetary safe haven is, well, really not so safe. The scout of the team, Tank (Nicole Alonso), finds herself increasingly fending for herself as the tunnels become tighter and the alien threat gets closer.

From the outset of this review I ought to stress that for what is clearly a very low budget film, Crawl or Die is impressive. Were it not for some frankly terrible sound design, its low budget would barely be noticeable. This is self-made, micro-budget work, and it is credit to director/writer/editor Oklahoma Ward and star/producer Alonso that the film is as good as it is. That being said, there is plenty I didn’t like about the film. Knowing the micro-budget nature of the project I feel a bit mean-spirited outlining some of those things, so I do really hope that the comments are as constructive as they can be.

As I’ve already alluded to, there is a big problem with the sound design of the film. Luckily, the film doesn’t feature much dialogue, and this is a wise choice, because the dialogue is, at times, unintelligible. This is partly because it’s not been recorded well but also because there is an incessant cacophony of noise playing on the soundtrack. Given the filming conditions – in tiny, 50ft tubes – I do wonder if the choice of noisy, distracting soundtrack is masking elements of whatever was recorded. Either way, I found it quite frustrating at times, though eventually it became the white noise I presume it was meant to be.

The script for the film is quite ingenious as just enough information is passed on to the viewer that we understand the (admittedly basic) narrative. The dialogue, when there is any, is weak at best, and there is a truly awful exchange that ends the film. The film is at its strongest when there are far fewer players on the screen and fewer still words being exchanged. The downside to the excellent and increasingly claustrophobic setting is that we have very little idea of the outside world, and no information is provided of it via the characters, bar one, slightly ham-fisted, flashback early on which establishes the film’s premise. When the film drags a bit – and drag it does at times – a bit of real-world grounding might have helped.

Thankfully, the film rests primarily on Tank’s shoulders, and Alonso does enough to make her likeable and believable within the film’s necessarily restrictive setting. I enjoyed that no personal information was given about her, all we know is that she is an elite member of the planet’s best security squad, and that’s all we need to know, too. This is an astonishingly demanding role in terms of its physicality and Alonso pulls it off incredibly well, and it’s refreshing to see a genuinely physically demanding role, rather than one edited to look like one. I certainly do think the shedding of her clothes is clumsily done in the film, just like on the poster, even if not entirely unnecessary once the tunnels get smaller and smaller. I suppose there are thankfully fewer gratuitous arse shots than I expected, even if the very nature of the film requires that there are, indeed, plenty of them.

Ultimately, I think Crawl or Die under-serves itself by ‘just’ aiming to be a thrilling, action-packed film about a badass central character. While that’s all well and good, a little less noise and a bit more pause for thought would, for me at least, have made the film a lot more interesting. Its premise that a virus has made almost all women on Earth infertile, and that the last remaining fertile woman must as a result be considered a possession rather than a person, is extremely under-developed. The film was at its strongest in its middle section when Tank and Package are alone. Alonso and Torey Byrne play excellently together, their under-stated dialogue really making them work to make us care, and they’re successful. If a bit more of the film had been like this – rather than focusing on Tank the Solo Badass – I think I would have been more impressed.

Just as the potential for a more interesting narrative is underdeveloped in the film, its hyperactive sense of what an action film should look like is overdeveloped. The film is ingeniously shot in its tunnels and really effectively conveys a sense of claustrophobia. It’s a shame, then, that there are unnecessary flourishes of dodgy CGI effects at times, as they’re really not needed. Thankfully these flourishes are confined to the earliest part of the film. Likewise, we really didn’t need to see as much of the creature as we did – more so given its unsurprising similarity to a certain xenomorph – and the few scenes of gore don’t really add much to the film as a whole. A bit more faith in Ward’s own directorial ability to carry the film would have made for a better final product, I think.

All in all, Crawl or Die is an entertaining enough film once it gets going, and certainly impressive for its budget. It would have been much better at a trimmer 75-minutes rather than its somewhat bloated 90, as shimmying through tunnels can get a bit dull after a while. The promise of sequels doesn’t entirely fill me with hope, but I think with a little bit less blind-adulation of its main character and a bit more due attention to the potentially interesting story that’s to be told here and the sequel could well out-do the first.

Crawl or Die has its UK TV premiere on the Horror Channel (Sky 319, Virgin 149, Freesat 138, Freeview 70) at 10.55pm tonight, 17th July 2015.

By Ben Bussey

The latest from US no-budget indie horror filmmaker Dustin Wayde Mills is based around a simple but potent “what if” question. Our protagonist is an anonymous serial killer played by Reagan Root, who in the opening scene emotionlessly puts a gun to her head and ends her own life. The big “what if,” then, is what if suicide is not a way out? What if those stony-faced old religious types are right, death is not the end, and that which waits beyond proves even worse for those of us who have – ‘ulp – sinned? This is what our anti-heroine finds herself facing, and – as you might anticipate – the situation doesn’t exactly turn out to be a barrel of laughs.

We’ve been following Mills’ work on and off for some time now at Brutal As Hell, though given how prolific he is (averaging around four releases a year for the last few years) it can be tricky to keep up. Aside from being fiercely independent – making movies with a distinct personality for the equivalent of small change – Mills is also admirable in his refusal to rest on his laurels, progressing from the self-consciously tacky B-movies he started out on (e.g. Puppet Monster Massacre, Bath Salt Zombies, Kill That Bitch) into considerably darker and artier territory in his more recent work (Her Name Was Torment, Applecart), but all the while keeping a firm emphasis on his key fascinations of bloodshed and nudity.

A Black Heart in White Hell very much belongs to the latter, artier end of Mills’s ouevre, and certainly sees the director further exercise his taste for flesh and blood. As with his last feature, offbeat portmanteau Applecart, this is a black and white, entirely dialogue-free film (two words scrawled on a mirror aside), conveying the story by action alone. Also in common with Applecart, A Black Heart in White Hell is an easy enough film to summarise – the title alone more or less says it all – but a trickier one to categorize, existing in some twilight haze between arthouse and exploitation. On top of which, it seems to further defy categorization in that, at a little over 30 minutes long, it seems too short for a feature film, yet a little too long to really class as a short. All in all I don’t think it’s necessarily the most interesting or engrossing of Mills’s more recent films, but it’s certainly another striking piece of work.

Root, in her film debut – and a pretty meaty first role it is, absence of dialogue notwithstanding (not that that ever hurt Holly Hunter) – is on screen for more or less the duration, and like most of Mills’s earlier leading ladies she spends the bulk of that time completely naked, or clad in little more than white underwear and blood. Mills has long understood the old maxim that nudity is the cheapest special effect, and the easiest way to keep the viewer at attention – but the key thing is that his films generally don’t stop there, making a point of providing the audience with some more substantial food for thought once they’ve had a taste of the eye candy. However, in the case of A Black Heart in White Hell, I can’t help feeling the film pretty much says all it has to say early on. It takes a cyclical format as Root’s killer forcibly relives her murders and suffers the karmic consequences, and by the time the second murder comes around it’s quite clear what’s going on, so in some respects the film carries few surprises beyond that point. That said, the ways in which Root is punished for her sins do get progressively more bizarre and extreme; Mills might almost be making up for the lack of gore and creature FX in Applecart, as it gets piled on pretty heavy here by the end. This absurd splatter might threaten to derail the otherwise sombre tone, but at the same time it does further cement the weirdness of it all.

Quite what Mills is saying with this film, if anything, is very much left open to interpretation. It’s easy to view it as an exercise in Catholic guilt, or simple sadistic voyeurism; yet some gender-war commentary is detectable too, given all Root’s victims are male. A Black Heart in White Hell might be all, some or none of these things, but it’s a noteworthy curiosity, if a little insubstantial; I find myself wondering if it might have been more effective in a shorter format as a final chapter on Applecart. Existing Mills fans will definitely be interested, although if you’re new to his work I’m not sure this would be the best place to start: I’d suggest Skinless, which probably offers the best balance of Mills’s sleazier and artier impulses.

A Black Heart in White Hell is available on demand at Vimeo, and on DVD from the Dustin Mills Productions store.