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By Stephanie Scaife

Although Cronenberg had made a name for himself in the 70’s as the master of low budget gross-out body horror with the release of Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977) and The Brood (1979) it wasn’t until the release of the slightly more accessible sci-fi action flick Scanners (1981) that he really hit the mainstream and garnered a level of box office success.

For those not already in the know, Scanners is about a group of people with telepathic and telekinetic abilities known as “scanners” who are being hunted by a nefarious corporation called ConSec, which under the guise of protecting the public from these scanners is actually trying to harness their abilities for their own evil plans. Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) is a scanner with particularly powerful abilities who is captured by ConSec and pitted against Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), a rogue scanner who is planning to create his own scanner army to declare war on ConSec.

Scanners isn’t the strongest film in narrative terms, perhaps due to the screenplay not having been finished prior to filming, and Lack’s acting abilities are precisely that – lacking – making it for the best that after this brief dalliance with fame he returned to his original calling as an artist. However, Scanners still has a lot going for it, most famously the exploding head scene, apparently constructed with the use of a watermelon and a sawn-off shotgun, which holds up today and looks absolutely fantastic on Blu-ray. Michael Ironside is an absolute joy to watch as Revok and his final showdown with Vale is really quite something. The score by Howard Shore is some of his finest work in my opinion too. Scanners is very much of its time, and although Cronenberg has made many better films (The Brood, Videodrome, Naked Lunch to name a few) this remains one of his most well loved and best known, making its arrival on Blu-ray a must have for any fan.

Also arriving on Blu-ray are Scanners II: The New Order (1991) and Scanners III: The Takeover (1992) both of which I’d been completely unaware of until the screeners arrived on my doorstep. Released ten years after the original and with no involvement from Cronenberg, both are predictably rubbish. Filmed back to back and directed by Christian Duguay (Screamers, The Art of War) they are stand alone films that bare little relation to the 1981 film and contain none of the original cast or characters.

Although made in 1991 Scanners II: The New Order looks far older than that, not least of all due to the appalling mullet sported by the central character David Kellum (David Hewlett) and the dated production values. The plot is in itself fairly thin on the ground, centring around Kellum, a lowly country boy who after stumbling across a crime scene is caught on CCTV killing an armed robber using his scanner abilities, which brings him to the attention of a shady cop with delusions of grandeur who soon drafts Kellum to aid him in tracking down criminals. The only mildly interesting thing in the film is Raoul Trujillo who takes his scenery chomping to a whole new level as evil scanner Peter Drak. Overall though I found The New Order to be dull and almost entirely forgettable. I don’t know if after ten years the rights fell into the public domain or were available super cheap because there is no other tangible reason why anyone involved with the original would have allowed this film to be made.

As if that wasn’t bad enough Scanners III: The Takeover (also known as Scanner Force) arrived shortly after, and although directed by Duguay it is another stand alone film that doesn’t follow on or use any of the characters from the first sequel. Helena Monet (Liliana Komorowska) is a female scanner who after taking an experimental drug that blocks moral conscience becomes a power hungry mad-woman bent on global domination. In some ways the sheer ridiculousness of The Takeover makes it slightly more watchable than The New Order, stand out scenes such as Helena exploding a pigeon using her scanner abilities because it shits on her and a kung-fu/scanner fight in an Asian marketplace, which are at least faintly amusing.

Cronenberg’s Scanners is a classic, and in the unlikely event that you haven’t seen it then I highly recommend that you rectify that immediately. You can’t do much better than this excellent Blu-ray, which although slim on bonus features comes with a host of new and insightful interviews with the cast and crew. The release of the two sequels seems unnecessary and for completists only; mercifully both discs were vanilla so I didn’t have to sit though any special features.

Scanners, Scanners II and Scanners III are all out now on Region 2 Blu-Ray from Second Sight.

Review by Tristan Bishop

Do you remember the J-horror boom of the early noughties? My first experience was The Ring, on an Asian VCD purchased in London’s Chinatown after reading about the buzz it (and the subsequent sequels) were generating in Japan. This was sometime in 2000 – by then the film had been out in its native country for two years (we were pretty slow to catch on in the West), but thankfully this meant I could then binge on a succession of films inspired by the success of Hideo Nakata’s smash hit. The initial impact of these films can’t be dismissed – the likes of Ju-On and Dark Water (my personal favourite) eschewing both the extreme gore of previous Japanese horror cinema and the done-to-death ‘smart’ teen slasher films from the US in favour of slow-burning supernatural creepiness. They were a breath of fresh air that the genre desperately needed. Of course all great success must be replicated and copied until all we are left with is faded celluloid facsimiles, and by 2007 the genre reached its conceptual nadir with the release of Exte, a film about, I shit you not, haunted hair extensions.

But J-horror wasn’t exactly gone forever. Instead it went travelling to the USA, changed its identity and ended up making a pile of money by heavily influencing the current wave of big budget ghost stories – The Woman In Black (2012) and Sinister (2012) are both good examples of the J-horror ethos writ big, making a pile of cash and no doubt about to influence the next five years of horror cinema themselves.

The interesting thing about The Echo is, on first viewing, I imagined it to be a film knocked out in the shadow of the big budget ghost boom. But it isn’t. It’s from 2008 for one thing, and only just making its UK debut – which in itself would be cause for concern. It is also, it transpires, a remake of a 2004 Filipino film called Sigaw, which I am ashamed to say I had never heard of (although it was apparently a box office smash in its home country). And it is a remake which is also by the director of the original (one Yam Laranas). Keeping up? Well done.

Bobby, played by Jesse Bradford (of Swimfan fame!) has been released from prison, and moves back to his late mother’s apartment in New York’s East Village. He attempts to rebuild his former life but everywhere he looks his former friends no longer want anything to do with him. He manages to find a job at a garage which employs ex-cons, and looks up an old girlfriend, Alyssa (played by Amelia Warner), which doesn’t go all that well at first. However, Bobby is nothing but persistent, and Alyssa, it transpires, feels some guilt about his incarceration (I’m not going to spoiler this as it gets treated as a big reveal later in the film, although not to any great effect to be honest).

Of course there are more sinister things going on, and no sooner than Bobby starts hearing strange noises and finding bloodstains in the apartment, he discovers that, prior to her death, his mother began to lock herself in her apartment for weeks on end. He soon starts to seemingly hallucinate crying women outside the apartment, and things start to build to a head when he overhears his neighbour, a police officer, being abusive to his family. Eventually Bobby will need to confront whatever demons are at play – but are they real or in his mind?

The first problem with The Echo is one of over familiarity. Anyone who has seen a few of the J-horror pics mentioned above will find nothing new here. I personally guessed at the course of the film around twenty minutes in. The second problem is the acting. Bradford is, well, exceedingly average at best (and looks remarkably like a younger Matthew Fox from Lost), and aside from Kevin Durand (a familiar face from such fare as Wolverine, Real Steel and, oddly enough, Lost!), who is badly underused in his role as the sinister cop, turns out to be the best actor here. They aren’t given a heck of a lot to do with a by-the-numbers script, either, which lacks decent characterisation or believable dialogue.

What is to enjoy is the slick direction of Laranas, who ensures the film at the very least looks like it cost a lot more than the $5 million budget (as estimated on a certain film database, anyway) and he and cinematographer Matthew Irving (who also shot Quarantine 2 and Dolph Lundgren-starrer Stash House) pull off some very pleasing set-ups and camera movements – I was even reminded of Mario Bava at a couple of moments in the way which the camera tells the story far more impressively than the perfunctory script. I can’t deny a couple of creepy moments earlier on too, although by the time we understand exactly what is going on any tension has been replaced by tedium.

I can see why The Echo has only now been released – the ghost story boom is at its height, with Dark Skies currently in cinemas, Insidious part 2 around the corner, and any number of Paranormal Activity films defying logic by smashing the box office again and again, but do yourself a favour and don’t bother with this one. It really is very dull.

The Echo is out now on Region 2 DVD from Metrodome.

Review by Ben Bussey

As much as I generally prefer not to make bold predictions of things which may or may not come to pass, I’m about to make one now: Spring Breakers will be for the 2010s what Trainspotting was for the 1990s. This is an era-defining, genre-defying film that will be adored, obsessed over and endlessly, endlessly debated. It will inspire analysis of infinite variety: there will be feminist readings, socialist readings, Christian readings, humanist readings, anarchist readings, psychoanalytical readings, every-which-way readings; it will be related to the global financial crisis, US foreign policy, the gun control debate; Steubenville will almost certainly be brought up, even though the film was shot before that shameful story made the news. Many will hail the film as a cautionary tale for the iPhone generation, the ultimate vilification of today’s morally bankrupt, decadent capitalist culture, and its wilful ignorance and irresponsibility; but not unlike Scarface (which Spring Breakers’ characters declare the greatest movie ever), and indeed Trainspotting, it is every bit as likely to be embraced by those who adhere and/or aspire to the very ideology which it critiques.

Also – loads of girls in bikinis. Loads of them. And quite a lot of bare breasts too. So everyone’s a winner, right?

As is probably evident, Spring Breakers is a film with a great deal in it, and as such it leaves you with a great deal to think about, so it’s tricky to know where to begin when approaching it as a reviewer. I suppose the most pertinent question given the genre-orientation of this site is, just how do we class Spring Breakers? Is it exploitation dressed as art house? Art house dressed as exploitation? Mainstream, teen-friendly multiplex fare with an indie edge? Sleazy titillation justified by the pretence of social commentary? All/some/none of these? Phew… funny how the harder I try to clearly and succinctly express the essence of Spring Breakers, I only find myself asking more questions. I suppose in a sense that tells you all you need to know.

Who am I kidding? Of course it doesn’t. Bloody hell… you know, earlier today I read a very nice, very honest piece by Simon Brew at Den of Geek, detailing why he didn’t feel capable of giving Spring Breakers a proper review, and I’m starting to see where he was coming from. But in the interests of keeping it simple (though it might be a bit late for that now), let’s address the simplest question of all: is Spring Breakers a success, or not? And in the manner of dear departed Roger Ebert, my answer is a very comfortable thumbs up. Yes, Spring Breakers is challenging, thought-provoking and daring, but it also never forgets to be entertaining. Some will love it, some will hate it, but surely no one will sit back completely unmoved either way.

Harmony Korine, I must confess, is not a filmmaker with whom I’m especially well acquainted; though I’ve long been familiar with his name, I’ve never made a point of seeing all his movies. This being the case, I obviously can’t comment on how Spring Breakers sits within his filmography, but from what I gather of his work I would assume this film isn’t too far removed, aside from the sun-kissed setting and Disney Club alumni casting. There’s a very indie rhythm at play here, a fly-on-the-wall feel to the camerawork, and a disorienting, not-quite-linear feel to the editing, with sporadic jumps back and forth in time and snippets of dialogue repeated several times over, lending the film a spaced-out, half-remembered dreamlike quality that’s very in-keeping with the chemically-charged nature of proceedings. A mainstream audience may be drawn in by the presence of James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez and the promise of plentiful Girls Gone Wild-esque action, but Korine isn’t going easy on them. Sure, it’s not the hardest film to follow plot-wise, and there’s eye candy aplenty to keep even the laziest viewer watching, but this is filmmaking that demands your involvement and doesn’t tend to spell things out in black and white.

As regards that Girls Gone Wild element: yes, as established Korine has put together a very attractive young ensemble, and yes, they do spend the vast majority of their screen time wearing little more than bikinis. Nor does the camera spare their scantily clad forms from close scrutiny, with an abundance of lingering close-ups on their girly parts, and more than a few noticeable moments in which, when there’s a slight lull in action, the camera dips to show us their bodies again for a moment, for no discernible reason other than to keep our attention. In other hands this might seem crass and sleazy in the extreme, yet somehow that’s not the case here. The film is in large part exploring the voyeuristic nature of Spring Break culture, and it could hardly do this without showing that voyeurism. However, the more we are bombarded with hyper-sexualised imagery, the more profoundly unsexy it all seems; take the jocks with washboard abs holding beer cans at crotch-level which they pour onto the faces of topless girls lying below. We might note that while Rachel Korine has the most on-screen nudity of the core ensemble, the scenes in which she appears nude are amongst the most distressing moments in the film. And then there’s Selena Gomez: she may be 20 years old, but by God, she is so young-looking… maybe this is down to the fact that I have a daughter myself, but when things start to go sour for the girls, I couldn’t escape a gut-pulling feeling of paternal concern. This, I have no doubt, is very much the point; to hook the audience with the ‘good girls gone bad’ angle, and then turn that around by reminding us what a vulnerable position these characters really are in.

However, this is not to say that the overriding message of Spring Breakers is “oh, pity these poor exploited girls being taken advantage of by sleazy, dangerous guys.” Far from it. Yes, Franco’s wannabe gangster Alien is very much used to personify the belligerent underbelly of bling-bling hedonism, and when he barges his way into the lives of the girls by bailing them out of jail it’s readily apparent his motives are less than altruistic. Even so, it is also readily apparent that the girls are well aware of the kind of guy he is, and may even be a few steps ahead of him; so when they find themselves caught up in the indulgent lifestyle funded by his ill-gotten gains, just who is exploiting who – and which among them is really the more dangerous party..?

As to exactly what Spring Breakers is saying about Spring Break culture overall – whether it’s attacking the greed and decadence, or offering a peepshow-like window into that world for the curious – well, if there was an immediately obvious answer to that question, there wouldn’t much to discuss afterwards, would there? Once again, this is a film that’s custom-designed to be talked about far and wide, and I think it more than warrants that. An early contender for the end of year best-of lists, Spring Breakers is a truly captivating piece of filmmaking, and sure to prove a valuable time capsule of a particular facet of 2013 youth culture in years to come. Also, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we start seeing pink unicorn balaclavas and luminescent bikinis at Halloween.

Spring Breakers is on general release now, via Vertigo Films in the UK.

Review by Dustin Hall

The Evil Dead remake is a fucking fantastic modern horror movie. However, is it “The most terrifying film you will ever experience?” That’s a tough call. There’s lots of jump and squirm about in this movie but, on a personal note, I went to this film accompanied by a friend who’s a huge pussy when it comes to horror films (for reference, he refuses to watch Paranormal Activity 2-4 because he was plagued by weeks of nightmares following the first) and he walked out absolutely unphased. Laughing at some parts, in fact. And for a film that is supposed to have abandoned all of its camp elements, that could be seen as a problem. So let’s break it down.

Oh, and, Spoilers, obviously. We’ll try to keep them minor in nature.

First off, you can’t talk about Evil Dead without mentioning its pedigree. Evil Dead has somehow managed to become a horror franchise, despite its lack of milking the cash cow. With half as many movies as Freddy and a third as many as Jason, it has remained as one of the best known names in the genre. And when that giant, red, Evil Dead logo blasted onto the screen, the audience went nuts. Perhaps I’m biased in this, but I consider the original movie to be one of the Holy Grails of horror. Sure, some prefer the 2nd movie, but for myself it will always come down to that original story of helpless horror at a cabin in the woods, those video nasty days as a banned film spoken about in hushed whispers, and the avant garde film-making of a young Sam Raimi who did not have a single fuck to give beyond scaring the shit out of people. But now we have to acknowledge that for a young film audience, the movie looks dated, the errors in the film stand out just a little too much, and Ash, our sole-survivor, is associated more with quips and slapstick than with horror. Maybe, for that, it is time to revisit the original concept, and see if there’s still anything to it. Anything that can leave an audience pissing their pants.

With that in mind, it was a ballsy move, opening the film with a scene based on absolutely nothing from the original film. Rather, we are treated to a bit of backstory about how the dreaded book (not actually the Necronomicon, in this edition), got to the cabin. We see the last moments of the previous group of survivors, and the final possessed from that group. There’s barbed wire, strange witchcraft rituals, deformed hillbillies, animal corpses abound, human immolation, and then a point blank shotgun blast to the face. Boom! The title: EVIL fucking DEAD. A great start.

As the movie settles in, we’re treated to more familiar fare. The new crew of five, David, Eric, Mia, Olivia and Natalie (their first initials spell d-e-m-o-n, *wink*), have already arrived at the cabin, and are ready for their weekend. This time, rather than a simple party or vacation, the kids are brought out with a bit more purpose. Mia (Jane Levy, Fun Size) is a recovering drug addict, and her friends have brought her out to isolate her and cut her off cold turkey. Her estranged brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez, Dead Girl), has returned from isolation to help her out, and acts as our focal center. The plot device works really well. All of Mia’s stories about seeing things in the woods are played off as either lies or panic attacks by her friends, and adequate excuse for everyone to actually ignore the distraught victim in this situation. When Mia finally becomes our main possessed, everyone blames her self abuse, her lashing out, everything on drug withdrawal. Having lived with someone who suffered similar mental breakdowns before, I appreciated the portrayal of the withdrawals and the panic attacks very much. They are based in genuine experience, and lend themselves well to the story.

With all of this drama building up the momentum to the eventual release of our demons, we have plenty of moments to learn about our characters. But still, not all of the five come off equally. David, Eric, and drug-addled Mia are all fairly fleshed out, but our two remaining female companions Olivia and Natalie are superficial at best. Olivia’s only role is ‘nurse lady’ and has little development beyond that, while Natalie, David’s girlfriend, has maybe five lines the entire film. Maybe if we’d known more about them, the horror elements surrounding them might have worked better.

Ah, yes, the horror. How about that.

I can pinpoint the exact moment that the audience stopped being scared by the proceedings. The tree rape sequence, alluded to in the trailer, was well done, the possession of our first two victims were shocking and stirring and brutal, the suspense leading up to their reveals adequately administered. But it was when the remaining three teens run off to the shed to lick their wounds, and they fix everything up with duct tape, that’s when you’ll hear the first giggles. And then when a human arm gets severed, and they have to fix it… with duct tape. Yeah, a few more laughs. And finally, when they need to get someone back on their feet, and so the remaining characters, with no medical training ever insinuated, make a defibrillator out of a pair of syringes, some wire, a car battery, and some duct-fucking-tape; I am not even fucking kidding, the audience loses it. For a movie that worked so hard to eliminate all elements of camp and be taken so, so seriously, moments like these just worked to pull the audience right back out. Toss in the stream of obscenities that Mia spews out, like Reagan in the Exorcist, and you’ve got some more giggles. We may have fainted at that kind of behavior 40 years ago, but now the audience just laughs every time a demon talks about sucking cocks.

Maybe the threat was just too generic. The Candarian Demons are replaced by the generic demons of the book, itself just a grimoire and not the Necronomicon, from which we can read the demon’s name is ‘Shaitan’. Christian demon lore *yawn*. Or maybe it was the plot point of needing to kill five souls in order to raise an abomination from the ground, the same plot just used in Evil Dead parody/homage Cabin in the Woods. Regardless, it just didn’t bring enough home to make us afraid of the trees, and the dark, and the isolation. Maybe nothing can anymore. Or maybe I’m asking for too much, hoping people will be afraid of any film today they way they used to be of the video nasties.

The fact that the film loses the ability to scare the audience at any point is too bad, because there is so much to love about the new Evil Dead. The reverence for the old material is there, which is great, and the new additions really shine. Visually, the film is marvelous, with clear visuals that hide none of the action or gore. The camera, much like Raimi’s original work, is constantly moving, pulling the audience along with the characters, deeper into a scene, or right up to the gore. It feels fast, it feels alive and intense. It just looks and feels fucking awesome, frankly. And the gore is top-notch, in ways we haven’t seen in a lot of films in a long time. Blood spatters everywhere, body parts get removed, the chomping and slurping and slicing of flesh pouring out of the speakers is enough to put your hair on end. You can tell that Director Fede Alvarez loves horror movies, and set out to make the best one that he could. And goddamn, is it quality.

It was stated at the beginning of this review that Evil Dead was a great modern horror movie. And it is, no doubt. It just lacks a psychological edge, that push that makes you afraid when you’re alone in your room after a viewing. But as far as horror remakes go, Evil Dead kicks the shit out of them. Nightmare, Friday, Texas Chainsaw, they all missed the time and care and strive for excellence that Evil Dead had crammed into it. And I look at shit like Insidious and The Apparition, The Unwanted, how it’s all just generic crap still riding off of the coattails of The Ring, and Evil Dead kicks the shit out of all of them too. And maybe, then, it’s not that Evil Dead is amazing so much as that no one else is doing anything worth a shit in the horror genre with all of the tools at their disposal. With all of the long history of horror to draw from, and the limitless FX potential we can achieve, the make-up, the CG clean-up, the access to the digital technology of sound, and video, and the willingness of young talent to break in via a good horror flick. You take all of those awesome components, and what are people making with it? More knock-offs of The Ring, and some shitty video game adaptations. Not that we can claim another 80’s remake to be original, but at least it tries to put something scary and coherent on display. At least it looks and sounds professional, and at the same time, doesn’t pull away from the spectacle of the pain and misery and blood on-screen. And at least it can make an audience cheer to the rev of a chainsaw.

Evil Dead, at the very least, takes all of those elements, and takes a loud, slick, no-holds barred approach to horror. It wants to take all of the things we can do with film, and it wants to push the envelope as far as it can go. It makes a statement, and that statement is, “I’m going to shove this chainsaw down someone’s throat. Literally down their throat. And you’re going to watch it. and cheer. Fuck you.”

And for that alone, I’m going to tell you to go and give these guys your money this weekend. I may not have shat my pants, but I think it lives up to the name of Evil Dead, for at least having some balls.

Evil Dead opens in US cinemas this Friday, and pretty much everywhere else worldwide in the month ahead.

Review by Ben Bussey

As The Offspring once told us, you gotta keep ’em separated – and indeed we must, when it comes to horror remakes. We have to sort the likes of Franck Khalfoun’s Maniac from the likes of John Moore’s The Omen; the ones that actually have a new and interesting take on the source material (or at the very least made a genuine effort to do so) from the painfully uninventive retreads which constitute nothing more than a quick cashgrab. Now, in the brand name recognition stakes, Who Can Kill A Child obviously can’t hold a candle to The Omen, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and so forth, which might explain why the makers of this remake decided to rechristen the film Come Out and Play (having apparently been first entitled Child’s Play, an astonishingly dim-witted choice which would have prompted tremendous confusion). Are the people behind this film expecting the general public to be aware of the original film? Or, as I cannot help suspecting, are they counting on them to be ignorant of it…?

Well, I can’t abide the latter, so: ladies and gentlemen, if you have never seen or heard of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s 1976 film Who Can Kill A Child, please allow me to alert you of its existence. It’s the story of a thirtysomething couple who visit a remote Mediterranean island only to find it populated by evil children who have murdered all the adults, and it was released to DVD by Eureka almost two years ago. While it’s hardly a masterpiece, it’s an efficient shocker – and in form, content and aesthetic, Come Out and Play is almost an exact facsimile. I suppose there’s a certain inherent laziness to almost all remakes; the bulk of them will directly recreate at least a few key moments from the original, in a manner which usually prompts a groan and a mutter of “why do they even bother?” But Come Out and Play takes it to another level. It’s practically Gus Van Sant’s Psycho all over again, replaying the original beat for beat, and at some points almost shot for shot, yet somehow failing to carry over even the slightest hint of the original’s soul. (For a frame of reference, watch the trailers for the films back to back here.)

Actually, I may be doing a disservice to Van Sant’s Psycho there: that film was an entirely self-conscious exercise in duplication, and the audience was never expected to be unaware of the similarity. A better frame of reference might be Halloween; like Rob Zombie’s rehash, Come Out and Play contains almost identical action to its source material with almost identical shot composition, and almost identical-looking actors in almost-identical costumes wandering around almost identical sets, but all the while harbouring some delusion of being… wait for it… ‘darker’ and ‘edgier’ than the original. (Facepalm.) Yet where Zombie’s rehash may have at least stood apart a little given how heavily it upped the brutality, Come Out and Play does not stray from the parameters set by Serrador’s film in any way whatsoever. This being the case, it only serves to make the director Makinov and his/her/its attempts to craft an image as an enigmatic, anarchic visionary – wearing a mask, using a code name – seem all the more laughable. I’m not going to link to any of Makinov’s self-aggrandising bollocks here (you’ve got Google for that), but I can only hope this person is concealing their true identity to avoid the shame of being responsible for such a lifeless turd of a film, and/or is just taking the piss. If not – dear me, someone is seriously deluded.

However, Come Out and Play doesn’t fall flat simply by comparison with Who Can Kill A Child. I doubt even those unfamiliar with the original will find much to admire here. Again in common with Rob Zombie, Makinov seems to think that shooting in a pseudo-naturalistic style will excuse your script for every risible line of dialogue and fumbled attempt at characterisation. Needless to say, it doesn’t work at all. As the pregnant wife plunged into a nightmare, Vinessa Shaw is on over-familiar ground, having played a very similar role in Alexandre Aja’s version of The Hills Have Eyes; somehow her presence here only boosts the feeling of remake exhaustion. (Plus, she’ll always be the girl from Hocus Pocus to me.) Meanwhile, I’m left feeling a bit sad for Ebon Moss-Bachrach; he’s clearly trying his best as the shell-shocked husband forced to consider the unthinkable, and to be fair he doesn’t do a bad job, but it was never going to be enough to save this film from mediocrity.

Perhaps worst of all, Come Out and Play is utterly in denial about the sort of film it really is. Who Can Kill A Child never made any mistake about its exploitation status, hurling good taste out of the window from the word go by opening on an utterly irrelevant montage of genuine historical footage, featuring numerous real images of dead children. A bit much, obviously – but by contrast, Come Out and Play is positively neutered, coming off almost wilfully determined to neither show children inflicting nor receiving harm. It takes a great deal to shock in this post Serbian Film climate (on which note, hope everyone’s forgiven my silly April Fool’s prank), and Come Out and Play never comes close to being disturbing. Perhaps the intention, instead, was simply to create a tense atmosphere, based not on nastiness but suspense. I should think you won’t be surprised to learn it’s a fail in that department too.

In so many respects, Come Out and Play is the worst kind of exploitation. It shamelessly apes an existing film, hoping the audience will be unfamiliar with the source material; it sells itself on shock value, but stops short of showing anything remotely shocking; and all the while, it harbours delusions that it is in some way an ‘important’ film. Guess what: it isn’t. At all. Don’t waste your time on it.

Come Out and Play is in select UK cinemas on 3rd May, then Region 2 DVD on 6th May, via Metrodome.

Review by Oliver Longden

About halfway through Creepozoids I was asking myself a single question: is this just a cynical attempt to rip off Alien with the budget almost entirely removed and replaced by the lurking promise of seeing Linnea Quigley’s breasts? By the end of the film I had the answer: no, you can’t just accuse it of ripping off Alien because it’s just as happy to rip off Child’s Play, The Evil Dead and even The Princess Bride at the same time. I was right about Linnea Quigley’s breasts though. There’s something very comforting about Linnea Quigley’s breasts if you’ve watched a lot of low budget movies. They’re like a pneumatic pair of old friends that have done almost as much time in front of the camera as Quigley herself.

Linnea Quigley is an immensely likeable screen presence even if her acting skills were still somewhat rudimentary in 1987. It’s a good job she’s a likeable screen presence because the 5’2″ inch actress is excruciatingly miscast as a soldier gone AWOL from World War 3 in the amazingly futuristic 1998. The other female lead, Ashlyn Gere, is similarly miscast. Gere is another B-movie stalwart and sometime porn actress who has appeared in many films (including the brilliantly named Evil Laugh from 1987) but also appeared in more high profile movies as a body double for Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct and Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal. Like Quigley she is a little too slender to really sell the idea that she’s an infantry grunt in a harrowing future war.

The men fare a little better, the body type of a professional killer being closer to our society’s ideal of masculine beauty than feminine beauty, something that tells you everything you need to know why we as a civilisation are doomed. Ken Abraham, an anonymous jobbing actor, brings a sense of daytime television to the male lead, while the role of the younger and more obnoxious supporting male lead falls to Michael Aranda, a man who obviously felt that Bill Paxton’s work in Aliens was a little too nuanced to really play to the direct to video crowd. The plot of Creepozoids has the characters hide out from a storm of deadly acid rain in a complex that looks suspiciously like a cheap warehouse set. The complex turns out to have been a research facility which was working on creating some kind of genetic superhuman. Predictably someone involved in the basic calculations mixed up a six and a nine and instead of creating a superhuman they created a deadly murder bastard. Hi-jinks promptly ensue.

What surprises me most about Creepozoids is how much I enjoyed it. There’s an ebullience to the film that suggests everyone involved was having fun. While the action sequences are all directly referencing other films, director David DeCoteau (a Full Moon staple who got his start working for Roger Corman) has a lot of fun putting a different slant on things. If you thought that the main thing missing from the infamous dinner scene in Alien was that no one’s head sort of exploded then you’re in for a treat. If you’ve ever wanted to see the Rodents of Unusual Size sequence from The Princess Bride re-imagined as a horror vignette, then look no further. This is a film that’s happy to plunder from the best and then ignore everything that made them work.

The cast are giving it their all (which sadly isn’t as much of a compliment as it ought to be) and the special effects team manage to accomplish quite a lot on a budget that ought not to stretch much further than an episode of Blue Peter about creating a murder bastard out of an old bottle of fairy liquid and some double side sellotape. People who like their films well made and original ought probably to look elsewhere, but connoisseurs of micro-budget B movies may well find, like I did, that Creepozoids packs just enough charm into its slender 72 minutes to make it worthy of your time.

Creepozoids is available on Region 2 DVD now from 88 Films.

Review by Nia Edwards-Behi

Warning – Spoilers. All the spoilers. (But that shouldn’t matter as you really shouldn’t bother watching this film.)

Were it not for the fact that I was reviewing The Inside, I would not have watched it to the end. Quite where to start with this offensive joke of a film is almost beyond me: maybe a plot summary? I could regurgitate the plot blurb provided by the distributor, but then I’d feel somewhat complicit in their false advertising that this film has something important to say. I could launch straight into the various rants I intend on having in relation to this monstrosity. I could save us all a lot of hassle and just leave this entire review at one paragraph: the word NO written in a large font and underlined.

No such luck. I’ll start with an actual summary of the film. A man in Ireland swaps a ring for €50 and a camcorder at a pawn shop. He sits in a café and watches the footage on the camera. On it five girls are going out for one’s 21st birthday (they’re not ‘teenagers’, as the official blurb would have you think). As a gift, the friends have bought the birthday girl (no, I can’t remember her name) the camera, with which they’re going to record the evening’s events. The girls break into some sort of abandoned warehouse, as you do, where they meet up with the birthday girl’s boyfriend for some drinking and debauchery. Turns out they’re all horrible people, when suddenly some even more horrible people show up and assault them all. Just as you start to think, ‘I might switch this off,’ some demonic nonsense happens. Then some running around happens, and occasionally a bloody, naked man – sorry, a demon – kills someone. Then, 20 minutes before the film ends, the plot actually starts, with the man who bought the camera finding his way to this warehouse to inexplicably go have a look for himself. The same demonic nonsense happens, then the film ends, with everyone dead, and I was left wondering whether I could possibly please have the last 90 minutes of my life back. Ladies and gentleman, this film neatly packages almost everything that’s wrong with modern horror filmmaking. It’s lazy, nonsensical, misogynistic, classist and a monumental waste of time.

The film’s laziness is perhaps best demonstrated in its style, or lack thereof. For a film that is mostly ‘found footage’ (audible groan) filmed on a cheap-looking camcorder, no effort has been made to make said footage look like it’s been filmed on an older camera, the sound design doesn’t correspond, and the inconsistent use of non-diegetic music is particularly jarring. The actors aren’t given much to do other than run around, scream, and breathe heavily, so it almost seems unfair to try to judge their performances; the promising talents of the likes of Tereza Srbova utterly wasted. (As an aside, I’m wary of any publicity that lists Srbova as a ‘Czech starlet’ before listing the rest of the cast as ‘acting talent’. Have some damn respect.)

Perhaps the greatest indicator of the film’s laziness comes in the form of some on-screen statistics about missing persons at the start of the film… only one of which is an Irish statistic, the others being statistics for the USA and Canada. It might just be me that finds this lazy and impertinent, but surely foregoing the statistics entirely would make more sense than just using whatever statistics most easily came to hand. In laziness comes a lack of any, well, sense in the film’s narrative and characterisation. Not one of the characters in this film is afforded any indication of motivation, which combined with the utterly nonsensical framing device – which turns out to be the actual narrative – ensures zero possibility for engagement with the film. Why on earth is this man watching the horrible events that unfold in a café? Why does he go to the warehouse himself? The ending seems to want to be some sort of ‘shock’, with a quick one-two of deaths, but having made no attempt at making us care for these characters the only thing I cared about at the film’s close was that it was finally over.

All that said, the worst thing about this film is the wilful misogyny of its earliest sequences, shoehorned into what is already an appalling attempt at supernatural horror. The justification seems to be, according to the blurb, in the apparent desire to contrast human evil with supernatural evil, or something, but this is not remotely evident in the film itself. Instead, we’re presented with a lengthy sequence of sexual assault that’s almost unwatchable. For fifteen minutes these unlikeable girls are knocked around and assaulted by their even more unpleasant assailants.

The film has gone to great lengths, by the point this sequence begins, to establish this group of friends as thoroughly unlikeable. The girls have stabbed each other’s backs, bitched about each other, ruined a birthday celebration and generally screeched and whined their way through the start of the film (twenty minutes worth of bitching and back-stabbing, I might add). If that’s not bad enough, an entirely narratively superfluous sequence of one of the girls having sex with the birthday girl’s boyfriend is provided, for good measure, just before the group is attacked. The film then seems to mistake ‘waiting for girls to get raped’ for genuine narrative tension. The men who attack them have no motivation, no charm, no wit, no metaphorical meaning, no cypherable function, NOTHING. If anything, they might be dealt a worse representation than the poor girls they assault. As though the misogyny on display wasn’t enough, the film throws at us the thoroughly classist example of impoverished men who have nothing better to do than be unpleasant to each other and rape women. How do we know they’re poor? Well, gosh, don’t expect any back story or attempts at characterisation; instead, look to their dirty, ripped clothing, and the fact that they apparently live or lurk in an abandoned warehouse.

But hey, this is me, so let’s get right back to the misogyny. Not only is the 15-odd minute sequence nothing but a cycle of ‘shout-manhandle-cry-threaten-shout-manhandle-cry-threaten’ with no variation, imagination or motivation in its execution, when the final assault takes place, guess which girl is placed literally front and centre as she is raped? That’s right! The one who earlier had sex with her friend’s boyfriend! In that scene that has no narrative function! And then we get to see her raped right up close! Are the filmmakers suggesting that this is appropriate punishment for her apparent transgression? I certainly can’t think of any other way of reading the scene, which to me demonstrates the worst sort of slut-shaming, that was at least handled with some subtlety and humour in 80s slashers, and should’ve been long-left in that decade.

This is the film’s worst transgression, really, overlooking the fact that this group of six make no effort to remotely defend themselves against their three squabbling attackers, and ignoring the fact that random-camcorder-man briefly *rescues* one of the girls just before the film’s close. Random, no-motivation man rescues hasn’t-tried-to-defend-herself-previously girl. Luckily, the bad taste left in my mouth by that is soon overtaken by the hilarity of the film’s end – hasn’t-tried-to-defend-herself-previously girl finally decides to defend herself, and knocks no-motivation man over the head with a stone, and leaves him to the naked demon. In a final ‘shock’ (oh, please), the girl escapes and then gets hit by a car. How I laughed. I have no shame in revealing the ending of this film, given as there is zero tension up to this point, and knowing how the ending plays out won’t spoil a single damn thing.

The Inside does nothing more than establish some horrible characters to be killed by some standard boogeyman, with no imagination, flair or talent in its repetitive execution. It doesn’t really feel like I needed to have bothered to watch the film, after all, as I could have made up a review out of non-specific diatribes about things that suck about modern horror films and it would’ve served exactly the same damn purpose. There is quite literally nothing, not one tiny iota of a thing that makes me want to recommend this film. It’s unpleasant and boring, the worst of the worst, and you’d have a better time watching a brick wall for 90 minutes.

Now you’re all gagging to see it, The Inside is available on Region 2 DVD now from Monster Pictures.

Review by Tristan Bishop

As a horror fan I like Rob Zombie. He’s a man who loves horror, and has respect and passion for the genre. He makes the films he wants to make, and fills them with casts full of genre legends and lesser-known cult actors. Zombie is truly one of us; he makes horror films for the love and not the money (in an age where far too many film-makers use the genre as a stepping stone into more ‘serious’ work), and he wears his influences on his sleeve, both in his casting and also in the visual homages to earlier eras which litter his work.

Unfortunately so far Zombie has proven himself to be rather less than, say, a horror-orientated Tarantino, as he failed to match his enthusiasm with a decent script or story. Instead, with the likes of House Of 1000 Corpses or The Devil’s Rejects, he has opted to allow a great cast to wander around being ghoulish for a bit, or, with Halloween 2 (which I count among the worst films I have ever seen) he threw so many stupid ideas into the mix that you end up asking if what you just watched was real (and if so, who the hell gave it the green light).

This aside, I was looking forward to The Lords Of Salem. Zombie had complete control on this picture, and I was hoping that maybe this would be the key to him finding his voice and finally making that fresh and original horror film that I have always hoped he would make. Also as the film centres around music, perhaps Zombie’s rock band past would give him enough grounding to make this an interesting aspect.

We are introduced to the main character, Heidi, played (of course) by the director’s wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, who is one third of a radio show team who host the rock show on the local Salem station. Heidi is also a recovering drug addict and may or may not be having a relationship with Whitey, another of the team on her show (played by a massive beard in human form, aka Jeff Daniel Phillips). One day she receives a package at work, which is an arcane wooden box containing a vinyl record, with only the words ‘a gift from The Lords’. Upon playing the record an eerie repetitive tune seems to hypnotise Heidi and give her visions of 17th century witches and their naked rituals. The team end up playing the record on their show, which causes the women of Salem to act all hypnotised. Heidi starts having stranger and more disturbing visions. Is she relapsing with the drugs? Do her landlady (played by the great Judy Geeson) and her two sisters have more sinister plans than they are letting on about? And just who are the Lords?

Well, leave it to Zombie to not only answer these questions, but do so in the style of someone attempting to make great art by throwing their paintbrushes at the wall. Zombie does at least signal his intentions a couple of minutes in, as we are introduced to the lead character via a naked arse shot – something of a directorial stamp this by now (a friend of mine, when I mentioned I was off to see this, actually asked how many Sheri Moon arse shots were going to be in it). To be fair, Sheri Moon Zombie acquits herself rather well in this film, portraying a cool but vulnerable character adequately, and looking great in a role (and outfits) that would normally be played by a woman half her age, which is no doubt the upside of such nepotism. Unfortunately Zombie seems to have instructed the rest of his actors to camp it up to 11, which not only spoils any creepy atmosphere that many of the set-ups suggest he was going for, but also serves to highlight the appalling nature of much of the dialogue. In addition to this the film jumps around madly, occasionally jettisoning or suddenly bringing in elements; having done some research it appears quite a lot ended up on the cutting-room floor here, which is as I suspected, as I spent most of the film wondering when the wonderful Sid Haig and Michael Berryman were going to appear as promised in the credits. I can only assume their scenes might have helped the story to make sense.

After a confusing build-up the film eventually moves into a climax whereby, for want of tension or action, Zombie goes for what can only be described as the end of Kubrick’s 2001 re-imagined as the fever dream of a 14-year-old metal fan. During the screening I attended, when the director’s name appeared on the screen following this the reaction was one of hysterical laughter. Generally not a good sign.

There are, as with most films with a little money behind them, things to enjoy here – the cinematography by Brandon Trost is pleasing on the eye, and makes good use of colour, often subtly muted rather than going for the clichéd grainy look beloved of so much current horror. The soundtrack is rather good too (as you might imagine), with original music by Griffin Boice and Marilyn Manson’s guitarist John 5, although there is an over-reliance on loud rumbling drones at times, and Zombie will upset many music lovers with his use of The Velvet Underground during the climactic scenes (as I overheard one chap say to another on the way out, “I can’t believe he desecrated The Velvets!”)

So, there we have it, yet another disappointing effort from Zombie. I think perhaps I will now finally have learnt my lesson and will stop expecting the man to ever pull his finger out and deliver that classic, although I am now starting to suspect that in 30 years time we may well be considering him the Ed Wood of our generation.

The Lords of Salem is released to US and UK cinemas on 19th April, from Momentum in the UK and Anchor Bay in the US.

Review by Tristan Bishop

Simon Killer is not the film I thought it would be. The UK poster, with eye imagery recalling Argento’s Four Flies On Grey Velvet and the heyday of Italian giallo cinema, had me expecting some kind of retro head trip along the lines of Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s stunning Amer (2009). The title Simon Killer also seems on first inspection to promise something a little tongue-in-cheek perhaps, hence I was all geared up for some savage, stylish and maybe slightly campy fun. As it happens I was wrong footed entirely – Simon Killer is not a particularly violent film (although it is sometimes not that easy a watch), nor is it a barrel of laughs. What it does have is style though, and excels in telling a simple story in a way that engages and makes you ask questions.

Simon (Brady Corbet, star of such art house hits as Melancholia, Funny Games and er, Thunderbirds) is a young American in Paris, staying at the house of the son of a family friend. He has recently graduated and has been through a presumably messy and unpleasant break-up. At first he wanders lonely through the city, composing letters to his ex-girlfriend in his mind, embellishing the stories to make out that he is meeting lots of people and having a great time. Eventually his loneliness drives him to a brothel where he strikes up a relationship with Victoria (Mati Diop), one of the girls working there. However it soon becomes clear that Simon is both very needy and a compulsive liar. After an evening doing coke they hatch a plan to extort money from Victoria’s clients, but will they live a happier life or will Simon’s personality disorders derail their plans?

I will admit to not having seen director Antonio Campo’s first film, Afterschool (2008) – which sounds like an even more bleak affair than Simon Killer – but on the strength of this I am going to have to track it down, as Campo very much impresses with his sophomore effort. The film is generally fairly low-key and the story unfolds slowly, but the viewer is dragged in and involved by the events – Campo displays a lot of verve in his direction, with jarring edits, strobing effects and filming choices (such as an important scene being filmed from across a busy road) being used sparingly but effectively. The score is always very impressive; original music by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans mixed with snippets of (occasionally repeated) quirky indie pop, and serves to add real texture and tension to the proceedings. The aces in the pack, however, are the stunning and believable performances from Corbet and Diop, both of whom are convincing as damaged people. Corbet’s portrayal of mental illness is especially disturbing, and when his slippery constructs of lies start to fall apart we see occasional glimpses of rage and pain that make us fear for the fate of whoever has the bad fortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Watching Simon Killer I was reminded of two other films I have seen in recent months – Berberian Sound Studio and Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video. Here we have a mixture of the fish-out-of-water dislocation of Berberian (like that film, only half the dialogue is in English, although here the rest is always subtitled) mixed with Haneke’s very uneasy close-up look at the day to day life of an extremely disturbed young man. Simon Killer is not quite as extreme in its effect as either of these films, but it manages to be very effective at making us identify with a main character who is volatile (and who is very obviously an unreliable narrator) by placing him in a ‘stranger in a strange land’ kind of situation. The film also does very subtle work in constructing a background for Simon which makes us warm to him somewhat (even if we are never entirely sure if it is the truth), which only adds to the sense of creeping dread that Simon’s gradual unravelling (and, let’s face it, the title of the film itself) lead us to.

Having digested and reflected on the film it turns out that the poster art is actually pretty accurate – Simon tells people he studied eyes at college – and in particular the relationship between the eye and the brain, which is a subtle theme throughout the film, not only hinting at Simon’s own talents for manipulation and emotional sleight-of-hand, but also a comment on the nature of film-making itself. As for the title? Well, you’ll just have to see for yourself.

Simon Killer is released to UK cinemas on 12th April, before coming to DVD and Blu-ray on 24th June, from Eureka.

Review by Oliver Longden

The Day Time Ended is a tantalising name for a movie, but when you spend a lot of time watching old science fiction and horror movies you quickly learn not to get sucked in by a snappy title. As Troma have amply demonstrated over the years, taking a really awful film and calling it something like Surf Nazis Must Die or A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is all part of the dark art of film marketing. If your film sucks, then a good title may be the difference between failing miserably and picking up a bunch of rentals from people in the video store who just can’t resist the appeal of the name. The Day Time Ended had been previously titled Earth’s Final Fury and Vortex, and that should set further alarm bells ringing.

The Day Time Ended is a re-release of a 1979 independent family sci-fi movie made for a very modest budget in the middle of the desert. The print quality is perfectly acceptable but the bonus features (some trailers for other Full Moon releases) aren’t going to set the world on fire. It tells the story of the Williams family, who have moved into a futuristic house powered entirely by solar panels. The family consists a pair of grandparents, their daughter-in-law and their two grandchildren. A separate plot follows their son as he tries to make his way to meet the family in their isolated residence. As the film begins we are told that an unprecedented trinary supernova has been detected and as the film progresses strange events unfold and time itself ceases to function in a linear fashion. The family witness marvels from other worlds and the distant past before finally being reunited in the future.

That all sounds quite exciting, and on paper The Day Time Ended is a great idea for a movie. A family set adrift in time and space coming into contact with all manner of wonders should make for a thrilling and exciting movie. UFOs zoom overhead engaged in an acrobatic dog fight. A childlike alien dances gracefully through the house, floating through the air and pirouetting across tables. Two giant alien beasts fight to the death like ancient dinosaurs. All of these things are great visual spectacles, even though the special effects are pretty basic. There’s a lot of old-school stop motion work in the film and it reminds me how much I prefer it to CGI for creature effects. There’s a ton of swishing, zapping light effects and it’s easy to overlook the fact that they’ve only got a handful of sets and a tiny patch of desert with which to work.

What really doesn’t work, however, is the human element. The Day Time Ended breaks one of the core rules of drama, that you should have conflict in every scene. It doesn’t have to be characters at each other’s throats, it doesn’t need to be literal violence, but without conflict there is no tension and without tension you might as well be watching a video explaining how to make an origami figure of someone bored out of their mind. Even the most saccharine Disney movies include a few anarchic characters who will hover at the periphery of the action and threaten to derail the musical numbers with their antics. The Williams family by comparison act like they’re in some sort of cult with the craggy faced family patriarch giving orders which are then instantly obeyed by the rest of the family. The only other adult male who might be expected to challenge his authority (this being 1979) is banished to a sub plot about trying to find some gas for his car.

The Williams family are (probably thanks to a brutal regimen of psychoactive drugs) numb observers of the strange events that befall them. When mighty starships flit across the sky they stare mutely up as if paying silent tribute to the really primo shit they have ingested. That a young child greets a dancing sprite with delight and interest is perhaps understandable; children are after all too stupid to fear the unknown or to try and kill it with sticks. That the grandmother also reacts with calmness suggests the handiwork of pharmacology. When I saw the titanic battle between the two alien monsters I was surprised to find myself rooting for the herbivorous looking creature over the vicious looking predator. I was surprised because it was the first time in the entire film I had experienced any kind of emotion whatsoever and crucially it was the first time any serious conflict had been introduced. The Williams family are too homogeneous, they are too passive to evoke any sort of emotion at all.

What The Day Time Ended is crying out for is some kind of Charlton Heston figure, someone who is angry about all the strange things that are happening, someone who wants to find the aliens responsible and punch them in the face. That character could be contrasted against someone who finds the whole experience quite marvellous and wants to explore the strange new vistas further. That would generate conflict and hence tension. As it is we are treated to a moderately imaginative low budget light show and a lot of surreal experiences that we are expected to swallow with the same bovine insouciance as the Williams family. It’s hard to escape the feeling that you’re watching the world’s most tedious psychotic episode. What the film really needs is for the men in white coats to appear at the end and start tasering the family indiscriminately before forcing them into the back of a van. I’d buy that for a dollar.

The Day Time Ended is out now on Region 2 DVD from 88 Films.