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Review by Tristan Bishop

Ghost stories are big business right now. Whilst horror fans are generally happy to consume low-budget exercises in search of thrills (and sometimes a little innovation), mainstream audiences are lapping up the most archaic of spooky stories, as evidenced by the massive success of Hammer’s version of The Woman In Black, and the likes of Insidious – roller-coaster box office juggernauts designed to make you propel your popcorn skywards (presumably so you will then buy more). Sinister is firmly in this category – It’s commercial and free of depth or anything really new, but what it is is a precision engineered scare machine, and boy is it impressive.

Ethan Hawke takes the lead as a writer of true crime novels (I swear that every other main character in horror films is a writer. I’m demanding more authenticity from now on – we need more accountants in lead roles. Maybe some call-centre operators?) who is struggling to follow up his hit book of ten years past. He’s had a setback or two with his last couple of books, we are led to believe, including possibly letting a killer go free. Whoops. Anyway, in order to keep wife Juliet Rylance and their two kids fed, he decides to move into a house, that, unknown to his family but known to Mr Hawke, was the scene of precisely the gruesome family slaying he is writing about! Naughty Ethan! As luck would have it, he discovers an old box of Super 8 film and a projector in his loft and scans through it, discovering to his horror that the cans all contain a different Super 8 film in which a family is slain. Investigating further he discovers a horrific demonic presence lurking in some of the frames on the films, and then things start to happen around the house…

Sinister starts off with a very arresting image – A ‘found footage’ (wait! Don’t run away!) shot of a family of four being hung from a tree, hoisted by an unseen hangman. It’s an undeniably disturbing image, and sets a tone of unease from the off. This, it transpires, is one of the homemade snuff films found by the main character, and I must say that after the glut of godawful glorified home movies churned out recently under the found footage genre umbrella, it’s rather refreshing to see it used as a device so effectively (although I can just imagine a big shot producer demanding that some video footage be stuck in the film, because Paranormal Activity makes money). The film achieves a real intensity by using this footage, along with a combination of spooky occurances, mental disintegration of the main character and some very naughty jump scares (with very loud bangs on the soundtrack, so I would advise a trip to a cinema with a good soundsystem for this one) to do its work – and work it does. The screening I attended saw more than a few of the hardened film reviewers jumping out of their seats (and at least a couple of genuine shrieks of terror!)

Ethan Hawke plays his role very well, believable as a man obsessed by his work, conflicted on his reasons for being drawn to these mysteries, and the children in the film are also excellent in their parts. I wasn’t entirely convinced by Juliet Rylance however – she and her supposed husband lack any chemistry and she delivers their big argument scene in a very unconvincing manner. The other slight problem I have with Sinister is that, much like The Woman In Black, when the spooky things actually appear onscreen it loses some power for me. This reviewer is still insistent that the scariest film ever committed to celluloid is Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) – a film in which nothing is shown, and as such, all the scary-faced ghosts, ghouls and demons in the world won’t have me cowering behind a cushion to the extent that the fear of the lurking unknown will. I am aware that this is a personal viewpoint however – I have been disappointed when, showing the Haunting to people, they have enjoyed it but not found it remotely scary. Also, Sinister is very long for a horror film – 110 mins to be precise, and whilst the tension is well maintained for the most part, the ending does seem to go on a little longer than it needs to (which was, again, my major problem with The Woman In Black).

All in all then, if what you want from a horror film is for it to work very hard at making you jump out of your skin, then Sinister comes highly recommended – again with the caveat that you see it on a big screen with a thunderous sound system. I will put 10 pence on Sinister being a sizeable hit, which will no doubt inspire yet more big budget ghostly tales which will in turn became as toxic to the horror faithful as sparkly vampires and found footage flicks. But for now? Enjoy the ride.

Sinister is out in UK cinemas on 5th October 2012, from Momentum.

Review by Tristan Bishop

I’ll admit it. I had not heard any advance word on Attack Of The Werewolves and I was still incredibly excited about it. Any sane readers out there (are there any? Let’s pretend for the moment there are) will no doubt be asking themselves ‘why?’ right now. Well, let’s just say that firstly, it has werewolves in it, and I’m a big fan of werewolves, and, secondly, it’s Spanish. The Spaniards have possibly the greatest legacy of any country when it comes to werewolf films, and this is entirely down to the work and obsession of one man, the late Paul Naschy, who took his boyhood obsession with the Universal monsters of the 30s and 40s and played several of them in a series of lurid, colourful, comic-book style films made mostly in the 1970s. The wolfman was Naschy’s personal favourite, and he went on to star as Waldemar Daninsky, a man cursed with lycanthropy, in a dozen movies. Attack Of The Werewolves, therefore, by dint of title and country of origin, immediately brought Naschy to mind. The second thing I found out about Attack Of The Werewolves is that it’s a comedy, and then my heart sank a little, as I have seen a few too many lacklustre comedy horrors of late. Ah well, writing film reviews can be a tricky business, filled with letdowns and nasty surprises, so I resigned myself to more of the same and stuck the film on… thankfully I was surprised in a much more pleasant way than expected.

The film starts with a great (and somewhat saucy) graphic novel-esque title sequence explaining the historical background to the tale, and then quickly brings us into the modern day with struggling writer Tomas (Gorka Otxoa), who, along with his little dog, has been summoned back from Madrid to the place of his birth in rural Spain in order to be honoured with ‘the freedom of the village’. Things, unsurprisingly enough, are not quite what they seem however, and it transpires that Tomas has actually been brought back so that the locals can rid themselves of a century-old werewolf curse which can only be ended by spilling the blood of a direct descendant of the line which Tomas happens to a part of.

Now, that may well sound like a slightly spoilerific synopsis, but it isn’t – There are a couple of good twists waiting for you past those revelations, and Attack Of The Werewolves is a surprising kind of film in general, the biggest surprise being that it’s actually rather good. For the first half the film is slow, but not without a great deal of charm, most of which comes from the interplay between Tomas, Mario and Calisto (his highly annoying literary agent and the odd friend from his childhood who happens to have a rather worrying obsession with sheep), who all play their roles perfectly. However, when the curse and Tomas’ part in attempting to lift it become clear, the film kicks into another gear, and the laughs come thick and fast – One particular scene involving a finger had me laughing out loud, and whilst (like any comedy) some of the jokes don’t work quite so well as others, the aforementioned charm carries it through. As for the werewolves themselves, well, extra kudos has to be given for the old-school physical effects used for the transformations, and the beasts look all the better for it, although their movements and jumping have obviously been CGI-assisted. There is some good gore too, and refreshingly free (as far as I could tell) of the computer blood splatters that plague so much modern low budget material. All this is topped off by a cool soundtrack featuring some great Spanish indie rock and surf tunes that this reviewer is now going to have to track down.

I’ll be honest with you, the film is not going to make anyone’s top ten of the year (unless you’re really REALLY into lycanthropes), but it is a small, affectionate, fun and funny tribute to the Spanish gothic of Naschy et al, and works very well on its own level. If you’re a fan of old school Eurohorror or just fancy a giggle or two, Attack Of The Werewolves is well worth a watch.

Attack of the Werewolves is available on Region 2 DVD on 8th October, from Kaliedoscope.

Review by Ben Bussey

Ever seen or heard of a movie called Ninjas Vs. Zombies? Well, that’s this film. Quite why they bothered to rename it for its UK release is beyond me, particularly given what a painfully bland and prosaic replacement title they opted to go with. Were they trying to avoid association with writer-director Justin Timpane’s follow-up feature Ninjas Vs. Vampires, which was released on Region 2 with little fanfare a while back, original title intact (which has a third installment, Ninjas Vs Monsters, currently in the works)? Were they trying to encourage association with Steven Soderbergh’s recent killer virus movie, which I haven’t yet seen but feel quite secure in assuming has very, very little in common with this…? Who knows. Who cares. The pointless retitling of low-budget horror films for overseas markets is a time-honoured practice that isn’t about to stop. I mean, how many alternate titles does Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood/Twitch of the Death Nerve/Carnage/Bloodbath have? You know how the saying goes: don’t judge a book by its cover, and don’t judge a B-horror on its first/second/third/fourth title.

So – now to consider Zombie Contagion/Ninjas Vs Zombies/Not Another Microbudget Zombie Flick on its artistic merits… oh dear, what kind of a hole am I digging myself into here…

Here’s the basic set-up in a nutshell: our heroes are a group of old friends, frustrated artists/filmmakers/musicians one and all, struggling to do what they’d hoped to do with their lives. One of them, Randall (Dan Guy), is in a particularly dark place since the death of his brother Eric (PJ Megaw). But what none of his friends know is that the force is strong in Randall’s family. Secretly, they’re master magicians, and it was Eric’s dabbling in the dark side that brought him to his untimely demise. But when the grief-stricken Randall manages to bring his brother back, he unwittingly unleashes a terrible curse on the town: Eric comes back evil, slurping up souls and turning folks into zombies every which way. Working some magic mojo to counteract this, Randall turns himself and his buddies into superpowered ninjas in order to fight back. As you do.

I think the best way to approach this film is to imagine what Kevin Smith would do if he made a zombie movie. Yes, he’d tour it like a carnival sideshow, add on a four hour post-screening Q&A in which he would talk incessantly about what a great innovator he is and how the entire film industry and all film critics are scum because anyone who dares suggest his films are less than exemplary is obviously jealous, and then he would bend over backwards until his gaping anus literally swallowed his own head like some particularly horrific deleted scene from Brian Yuzna’s Society… hang on, I think I may be getting away from the point here. Okay, imagine instead that Kevin Smith made a zombie movie when he was still good; say, he opted to do it as a follow-up to Clerks. There’d be Halloween zombie make-up jobs and bargain basement special effects aplenty, scenes in comic book shops for no good reason, a vast overabundance of supremely unsubtle film references, and a hearty dollop of twentysomething what-am-I-doing-with-my-life angst on the side. That’s just what Justin Timpane has put together, and perhaps unsurprisingly Kevin Smith’s films are amongst those referenced (including but not limited to the character name Randall). This is a film that seeks to tick all the boxes for fanboys, self-conscious of its own absurdity and doing its utmost to radiate enthusiasm for horror, comedy and action. And it kind of works, to a certain extent.

I’ve rabbited on enough recently on the subject of microbudget horror, so I won’t restate my whole case here: suffice to say, Timpane doesn’t do too badly with the clearly limited resources at his disposal. Yes, the film looks and sounds pretty poor, but the performances really aren’t bad, and neither is the script. Sadly, they’re not that great either. It’s nice that Timpane is not content to coast by on film geek humour alone, playing much of the action surprisingly straight, but as a result of this the film toes an awkward line between taking itself a little too seriously and deliberately sending itself up, and it never really finds a comfortable balance. Add in some fairly major pacing problems, and it’s really fighting a losing battle. Unusually for a film of this nature, it’s actually at its most assured when the focal point is a bunch of friends talking, and in some respects its hard not to think Timpane and his cast would have been better served by a more down-to-earth indie comedy (again, like good Kevin Smith), rather than the horror/comedy/action mix-up they’ve attempted here. Still, while I’ve seen better I’ve certainly seen a whole lot worse.

Zombie Contagion (if we must call it that) is available now on Region 2 DVD, download and on-demand from Revolver Entertainment.

Review by Annie Riordan

I know it may sound strange to many of you, but not only was I looking forward to watching a movie about a tree, I was also expecting it to be rivetingly entertaining. You see, I automatically expect non-American films to be way better than those made here in the same way that I expect items purchased at Harrods to be superior to the cheap shit they sell at Wal-Mart.

But yeah. The Hollow is a movie about a haunted tree. A big, spooky looking hollow tree sitting all by itself in an open field. For hundreds of years, the locals have shunned the tree, believing its hollow interior to be haunted by Something Evil. Over the last four hundred years or so, many a young couple in love have been found swinging from the tree’s sturdy branches for no apparent reason. The history of the old hollow tree contains many gruesome myths and legends but no solid facts, save one: an exorcism was performed on the tree by the local Vicar, who soon after died from an “accidental” overdose of his own medication. One year after his unfortunate demise, his granddaughter Emma comes to close up the old house, bringing along her fiance Scott, her best friend James and James’ slutty blonde girlfriend Lynne.

And here’s where anything even remotely promising about the plot – as atmospheric up to this point as any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s many perilous and fog-haunted moors – comes crashing down with a sound like a million douchebags herp-derping in terror, and not being silenced as soon as they should have been.

Emma, the prim, proper brunette of the bunch, may be forgiven for being a tad uptight – she’s the granddaughter of an English Vicar, after all. However, her choice in men roundly sucks as fiance Scott quickly establishes himself as a typical popped-collar frat boy fucksock who fancies himself quite a bit more than anyone else does. He belittles James, he makes misogynistic statements directed at Emma, he brings a bulging baggie of coke to the party and is quick to suggest a round of strip Monopoly. He’s also keen on Lynn’s skanky ass, and being the one-dimensional vacuous cokewhore that she is, she really doesn’t mind. Apart from it all sits James, filming everything and just waiting for Emma to wise up and dump Scott so he can move in and pick up the pieces.

Unfortunately, it takes forever to happen and every last minute of that endless forever is captured on film and guess who gets to watch it? Seriously, this was the longest 4 hours of my life, and I was only 35 minutes in.

Finally, they all get coke-blasted and shitfaced and remember that there’s a haunted tree nearby! And hey, lets run out into the dark and investigate! Great idea! Drama ensues, spooky noises happen and slowly – VERY slowly, over the course of a very dusty and leaden 24 hours – the gang decides they need to leave. Except they can’t because James goes missing. So they have to go looking for him in the dark, all alone. And their cell phones won’t work. And the car won’t start. And the nearest call box has been vandalized. And there’s a dead fox. And Scott no longer loves Emma. And Lynn is still a whore. And the battery on the video camera is getting low, so lets keep shutting it off and then turning it back on every five minutes so we can film NOTHING AT ALL. Great, keep doing that for the last half hour of film time. “Did you hear that? I’m going out there! No, don’t! Okay, I won’t! We have to get out of here! SSSHHH! Did you hear that?” It’s a mobius strip of a movie, coming from nowhere and going nowhere. You already know what’s going to happen as the end was revealed in the films pre-credit sequence, so can we just FFW to the end already please?

This could have been a good film. Maybe even great. It had a nice spooky atmosphere to work with and some genuinely good ideas. Unfortunately, it didn’t utilize either, and comes off looking like one of the many, many, MANY ripoffs of the Blair Witch Project that all of us were sick to death of ten years ago.

I have a friend who lives in Suffolk, not far from Dunwich, where this movie was set and filmed. According to him: “(the area is) right next to the sea, and hundreds of years ago the village used to be a lot bigger but half of the cliff it was on just sunk below sea level. Apparently at low tide you can sometimes see the old church spire. Could conceivably believe it to be the home of some Cthulhu-like eldritch monstrosity.”

Now THAT would have been an awesome film! And the tree still could have been incorporated somehow. It’s a cool looking tree, no sense in letting it go to waste. But no. Instead we get over an hour of drama queens and douchebag kings, filming each other naked and acting like…well, like Americans. I could have spliced some footage from The Evil Dead into an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians and been more entertained.

Please, England – don’t be like that, baby. I know you can do better.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

The original VHS sleeve of Puppetmaster is seared into my brain. It was one of those garish and enticing horror sleeves guaranteed to lure you in, and as an 8 year-old it was one I particularly remember desperately wanting to see. So, flash-forward 20 odd years and last night I finally got to see Puppetmaster for the first time, and unfortunately with over 20 years worth of expectations pilled on top of this DTV B-movie I was guaranteed disappointment, which is exactly what I got.

Puppetmaster was the first film released through Charles Band’s newly formed Full Moon Features in 1989 and remains its most well known property, perhaps due on part to the 9, yes 9, sequels that it inspired. Although Full Moon is also responsible for such gems as Gingerdead Man (Evil Never Tasted So Good!) and Killjoy (He’s Not Clowning Around!) and other such memorable DTV classics that has kept eager viewers in schlock ever since.

Puppetmaster starts in 1939 at the Bodega Bay Inn, California where we’re introduced to an elderly puppet maker named Toulon (William Hickey) who painstakingly handcrafts all of his work giving it a great deal of love and attention; but that’s not all, because an ancient Egyptian manuscript has come into his possession enabling him the power to give life to his creations, and live he gives them, murderous, psychotic life that is. Something that those pesky Nazis have cottoned on to, and soon they are knocking down Toulon’s door in a bid to get their filthy mitts on the manuscript, no doubt to use for some sort of evil doings. To stop this from happening Toulon packs away and hides his beloved puppets before blowing his brains out.

Fast forward to the “Present Day” (although quite obviously the late 80s) and we’re introduced to a gang of professional psychics, including Alex (Paul Le Mat) and Dana (Irene Miracle) who all suffer from terrible visions that they believe to have been sent to them by a former colleague, Neil. They travel to the Bodega Bay Inn only to find that Neil has killed himself leaving behind his mysterious wife Megan. It soon transpires that Neil had uncovered Toulon’s secret and his murderous puppets have come to life once again, only to wreak havoc upon our bewildered psychics.

The puppets of course are perhaps the only reason to watch this film and they are still fantastic even today. As a fan of in camera special effects and stop motion I absolutely loved these creepy little creations, particularly Leech Woman who spits blood sucking leeches onto her victims, and Blade, a trench coat wearing puppet with a hook for one hand and a knife for the other. If this film had consisted entirely of the puppets alone then perhaps it would have been considerably more watchable that the final result that is bogged down by an atrocious script delivered by even worse actors and a plot that I found to be pretty incoherent at times. Perhaps I needed to have seen Puppetmaster as a wide-eyed child wooed by the garish VHS cover and be wearing the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia to fully appreciate this film but as a newcomer to the franchise I found it pretty unremarkable and whenever the puppets weren’t on screen just plan dull. Judging by the number of sequels and spin-offs though there is undoubtedly an audience out there somewhere for these films and this decent DVD transfer with a host of special features will definitely appeal.

The DVD comes with a number of special features including audio commentary by Charles Band, making of featurette, and a selection of Full Moon trailers.

Puppetmaster is available now on both DVD and Blu-ray from 88 Films.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

I was slightly apprehensive going into The Aggression Scale, a straight-to-video production directed by Steven C. Miller whose earlier film Scream of the Banshee was, to be blunt, crap. However I was pleasantly surprised by this low budget thriller that is, as many others have noted, like an R-rated Home Alone.

Bellavance (Ray Wise) is a local mob boss out on bail for murder who plans to flee the country with $500,000 that he has stashed away. Lo and behold however, the money is gone and Bellavance gets together his toughest men, led by Lloyd (Dana Ashbrook) and Chissolm (Derek Mears, on fine form) to hunt down the thief and retrieve his money via any means necessary. As is often the case when a straight-to-DVD screener comes through the mail, you sigh and hope for something that is at the very least watchable (which is often not the case) and to my surprise The Aggression Scale hooked me in from the very opening scene which is, to be fair, pretty much just 10 minutes of unrelenting violence as Bellavance’s men take out those who could be responsible for the robbery.

Then we are introduced to the Rutledges, a newly married couple each with disgruntled, misfit teenager in tow, as they move into their palatial new home. Now, do you think it could it possibly be the stolen money responsible for their move up in the world? Lloyd and his guys certainly think so. What they didn’t take into consideration though was Owen (Ryan Hartwig) and Lauren (Fabianne Therese), the unusual children of our suspected thieves, who give these guys a serious run for their money in a deadly game of cat and mouse. For a 15 certificate there is still a decent amount of gore and some particularly inventive injuries and death scenes, highlighting some decent make-up and effects work in what is clearly a low budget feature.

The Aggression Scale isn’t going to win any awards anytime soon and I doubt that it warrants repeat viewings, but it looks great and for what it is I found it highly watchable and at moments actually quite tense. I have a feeling that it will definitely find its audience on DVD through word of mouth and quite rightly so. Hartwig in particular is very good as the mute, sociopathic, mini-MacGyver and Ashbrook gives an intense performance as the calm and collected hit man Lloyd; and yes he’s Bobby from Twin Peaks, before you spend 20 minutes thinking you know him from somewhere, as I did.

Yes there are flaws, including some dumbass character decisions and a few plot holes that it’s best not to think about too closely, but overall you could do a lot worse than The Aggression Scale, which is a more than competent thriller/home invasion movie. I’m now very intrigued to see what Miller will do with his upcoming remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night.

The Aggression Scale is available on Blu-ray and DVD now, from Momentum.

Review by Ben Bussey

I know what you’re thinking, and sadly the answer is no: at no point does anyone in this film say “Ni.” Nor does anyone demand a shrubbery.

Okay, on the off-chance that wasn’t what you were thinking, you might be pondering what a new vampire film from Germany has to offer that we haven’t seen countless times already, particularly given the vast influx of vampire-based media in recent years. Marc contemplated this question last May, when We Are The Night was released in the US, and he found the film to be “far too close to the “pop” side of vampirism” and “highly derivative of too many other films.” I completely agree: We Are The Night really isn’t anything new, charting the misadventures of a newly initiated vampire in much the same manner as The Lost Boys and Near Dark (not that it was even a new story then), whilst giving the action a glossy metropolitan sheen reminiscent of the Blade and Underworld films (again, not that those films necessarily invented it), and of course not neglecting the obligatory post-True Blood charge of eroticism (again…). As Marc also rightly pointed out, it’s so low on scares and suspense that it barely even qualifies as horror.

But is any of this necessarily a bad thing? Alright, so We Are The Night really isn’t scary, nor is it particularly innovative, but provided you don’t take those as cast-iron prerequisites for enjoying movies (and if you do, then you must be used to regular disappointment), you may find it revisits familiar territory with just enough gusto, style and freshness to make for a perfectly enjoyable 100 minutes. It was one of the films I enjoyed most at FrightFest 2012, for the simple reason that, unlike many other films screened at the festival, it sets out simply to entertain, rather than shock and appal. I’ve long since been sick to my back teeth of dick-swinging pseudo-edgy torture films and their desperation to impress everyone with how big and nasty they are. Me, I want horror to be fun again, like the kind of films that got me into the genre in the first place – which includes the likes of The Lost Boys. And the real trick is, being fun does not mean having nothing to say. We Are The Night understands this, and provides some nice introspection on what it might mean to be a vampire in this day and age; or more specifically, to be a female vampire, in a world with no male vampires left.

When we first meet our heroine Lena (Karoline Herfurth), you’ll be forgiven for thinking her name is Lisbeth. Well, if she has a dragon tattoo we never get to see it, but otherwise it’s much the same MO: tough, smart, emo tomboy loner from the wrong side of the tracks. Picking pockets to get by, she narrowly escapes getting busted by a young stud of a policeman named Tom (Max Riemelt) thanks to her quick wits and quick feet. Later that night, anxious to escape the lonely tedium of her mother’s apartment, she hits the streets and soon finds herself at an underground rave thrown by Louise (Nina Hoss), six-odd feet of platinum blonde femme fatale. And wouldn’t you know it: she’s the local vampire queen, along with her equally vivacious protégés Charlotte (Jennifer Ulrich) and Nora (Anna Fischer). Louise has spent centuries in search of the reincarnation of her one true love, and thinks she may have found it in Nina. A few nibbles later and Nina is transformed into a whole new woman, with the promise of eternal wonders ahead. But is immortality all it’s cracked up to be, and do the ends justify the means?

Yes, there’s some pretty classic vampire lore at play here, where vamps cast no reflection and sunlight hits them like napalm. This certainly isn’t a PG-13 take on the undead, given Nora’s ecstatic declaration that they can eat, drink, snort coke and fuck as much as they want without any repercussions. Even so, while the film hints at the decadent excesses that might come with such a way of life, these are not shown in detail. While the leads are plenty sexy, sex itself is notable by its absence; and for once, the only gratuitous nudity is of the male variety. Violence is more common, but still comparatively mild, as the 15 certificate might suggest. Again, this may be my torture movie exhaustion speaking, but I actually found this de-emphasis on the visceral excesses to be fairly refreshing. It means that the focus instead is on the characters and their interplay, which is a good thing, given that this is a pretty well acted and well written film.

Above all the film emphasises the lifestyle clashes of Lena and the vampires. One particularly unique and interesting moment shows Lena literally transform as her vampirism takes hold; submerging herself in a bath, her hair grows and regains its natural colour, and all her piercings, tattoos, scars and blemishes wash away like mud. Immediately thereafter she’s swept away in the designer dresses and luxury cars that the vamps don’t leave home without. Yes, it’s a definite Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club moment, but to the credit of writer-director Dennis Gansel and co-writer Jan Berger, the artifice of Lena’s new look/new life is apparent immediately. She hasn’t changed on her own terms; she’s being moulded into what Louise wants her to be. In the meantime, that handsome, charming young copper Tom hasn’t lost interest in Lena, but he’s not so keen to take her downtown anymore; well, not unless we’re using that phrase as some sort of vulgar euphemism. But which, if any of these is offering Lena the life she really wants? Louise champions vampirism as some kind of anarcho-feminist ideal, freed from the tyrannical rule of men, but in coming under her wing has Lena not simply traded one oppression for another?

But hey, if you don’t care to engage with all that fancy thinking, remember what I said earlier: We Are The Night is first and foremost designed to be fun, and in this it is certainly successful. It has a likeable cast, a fast pace, great cinematography, some witty gags (look out for a literary nod to rival Evil Dead 2’s use of A Farewell To Arms), and some really nice visual tricks up its sleeve for showing the world from a vampiric perspective: the dark is rich and detailed, whilst the light is overwhelming. Our vampire ladies walk on walls and ceilings, their bodies jerk violently at the taste of blood, and their undead eyes sparkle (just the eyes, mind). The accompanying featurette states that Gansel had been working on the project for over a decade, and this is easy to believe, as none of the characters come off half-baked, and there are clear hints of a broader mythology which could easily be explored further should they care to make a sequel; the ambiguous climax certainly leaves things open for them to do so.

We Are The Night is released to Region 2 DVD on 15th October 2012, from Momentum.

Review by Ben Bussey

Pulau Hantu: a small jungle island in the south of Singapore. Quiet. Peaceful. Serene. That is until a small military unit shows up, on a mission to track down some of their fellow soldiers who have gone AWOL and are believed to be on the island. Quite why they would go AWOL none of the unit can fathom, given it’s peace time, and the whole thing seems at first to be a wild goose chase. But then – as tends to be the case – strange things start happening, people start dying, and panic sets in.

On the one hand, it might be easy to go into Cursed with relatively high hopes. After all, the Far East has long been a happy home for horror cinema, with Japan, South Korea and Thailand in particular giving us many great genre entries this past decade or so. I can’t say to the best of my recollection that I’ve seen a horror film from Singapore before now, and as such I’d heard nothing of writer/director Esan Sivalingam. However, once you learn that Curse is actually a 2008 TV movie originally broadcast as Pulau Hantu (which apparently translates as Ghost Island), your hopes might sink just a little. And once you actually sit down to watch it, initial curiosity will quickly dissipate with every tedious minute that passes.

It’s yet another of those painfully middle-of-the-road horror movies, which whilst not so bad as to warrant outright contempt has very little to recommend it either. Its TV movie origins are betrayed by its dullness, both in sound and picture quality, and in content. Initially it seems like it’s going to explore some fairly dark and serious territory, delving into the origins of the trouble on the island with a history including black magic, rape and murder. This tone shifts wildly once the soldiers are introduced, each getting their own pre-mission intro, most of which boast a bit of good old fashioned crude humour (whilst one soldier enjoys a comedy love scene reminscent of Robin Askwith, I couldn’t help but note what appears to be a large crusty tissue in the foreground). However, these intros do very little to distinguish the characters, all of whom fall into stock roles in no short order: two committed serious soldiers, one hypersensitive nervous soldier, and all the others being lazy, arrogant arseholes with big mouths. Some efforts are made to establish tensions between the unit, generally when it comes to the one female officer played by Pamelyn Chee. Despite her high rank within the unit she is subjected to sexist namecalling, with one particularly stand-out line coming from a soldier who disagrees with her orders: “Woman, is your bra too tight?” On which note, it’s also interesting to see the film is performed almost entirely in English, which all of the cast are fluent in. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by that, but then I’m from England, and most of us here can’t even be bothered to learn our own language, never mind being multi-lingual.

Nevertheless, any themes or devices which momentarily promise to lead to something interesting are thrown to the wind very quickly. The story doesn’t really go anywhere, the characters are almost impossible to give a damn about, and when it’s all over it’s hard to reflect on as anything more than 90 minutes of your life that you won’t get back. Call it Curse, Ghost Island or Pulau Hantu; it’s a bland and boring waste of time under any title. I knew nothing of the Singapore film industry before, and I still feel I know nothing of it now; I trust there’s far more to it than this. In addition, I hope we can expect better things in the future from new DVD label Grayson Pictures, for whom this marks their debut release.

Curse is out on Region 2 DVD on 17th September from Grayson Pictures.

Review by Ben Bussey

How their grizzled, square jaws must have dropped in the Dredd offices when word broke of The Raid. Another downbeat, hard-edged action flick set almost entirely in a tower block full of criminals, following some cops as they fight their way up to the big boss? Oh shit. And the similarities between the two films do not end at the conceptual, as the aesthetics are also remarkably similar: grungy set design, low lighting, tight and claustrophobic camerawork, throbbing electonically-charged soundtrack. Take into account the fact (yes, fact) that The Raid is easily the best piece of action filmmaking in the last decade at least – and don’t just take my word for it, Keri dug it too – and the makers of Dredd may well have cause to feel some dread of their own. Da-dum tss.

I’m bringing this up straight away just to get it over with. Yes, Dredd has a lot in common with Gareth Evans’s gamechanging beat-’em-up, but given the films were in production at the same time there is no question in my mind that those similarities are nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence. Indeed, I’ve been informed by a disgruntled commenter on an earlier post that the whole concept is close to an existing Judge Dredd story entitled Escape From Kurt Russell Block. I can’t comment on how close the film is to this, as I haven’t read the comic in question. Indeed, while I’ve always been aware of the Judge Dredd character and 2000AD comics, I’ve never read much of either, nor did I ever pay much attention to the largely maligned Stallone film, so – The Raid-related issues aside – I was able to approach Dredd as a relatively blank slate, much as the bulk of the audience is likely to.

Casting preconceptions aside, then, what kind of a film have director Pete Travis and screenwriter Alex Garland put together? Well, it’s a curious amalgamation of epic and intimate. It takes us into a dystopian future, but for the most part underplays the sci-fi elements; it introduces us to a vast playing field in the shape of Mega City One, then promptly restricts the action to a single building within that monumental metropolis. While this may make sense from a budgetary perspective (this is a British film after all), from a creative standpoint it’s some strange and risky decision-making for a film that’s intended to (re-) launch a long-standing comic book hero and his singular universe onto the big screen. So, next big question – does it pay off?

Well, all things considered… yes, actually. Dredd is a gripping, grimy gun-fest with a futuristic spin, a dash of trippiness and a liberal side order of pre-chair Eastwood, which might not attempt to rewrite the comic book action rulebook, but is certainly less than dreddful. (Thank you, thank you, I’m here all week.)

So, it starts out like any other day in Mega City One, as Judge Dredd (Karl Urban, above) takes out some scumbags in a high speed chase; as his job title decrees, he not only apprehends the criminals but passes sentence then and there (hint: they don’t get community service). Soon thereafter he’s introduced to a rookie named Anderson (Olivia Thrilby, below), once a street-trash orphan who is deemed to have potential in the Hall of Justice as she has unprecedented psychic ability. Dredd is assigned to take her as a partner for the day and assess her suitability for Judge status (maybe we can add Training Day to the list of films owed a debt…) However, a call-out to investigate a multiple homicide at the innocuously-named Peach Trees – a single tower block that is home to over 75,000 civilians – winds up getting Dredd and Anderson more than they bargained for. Turns out Peach Trees is all but owned by Ma-Ma (Lena Heady), a ruthless drug baroness responsible for the manufacture and distribution of Slo-Mo, a new designer narcotic that slows down the user’s perception of time. When Dredd and Anderson arrest one of her right-hand men, she locks the whole building down and sets her thugs loose. From that point, you just know there’s gonna be a whole lotta judgement going down.

If this all sounds a bit Paul WS Anderson – well, that’s because it is. I mean that in a good way, believe it or not. Dredd plays a lot like how your average PWSA film might, if only he had the common sense to let someone else write his scripts (as was the case on his best film, the recently 15-year old Event Horizon). I must admit to having seen nothing beforehand from director Travis (Vantage Point, Endgame), but he handles the slightly spaced-out, comic book and video game-flavoured action pretty well. I found myself reminded of first seeing Blade; that too accentuated its copious action with a somewhat dreamlike/off-your-tits quality, which I found particularly potent as the first six-or-so times I saw Blade I was at least moderately out of it after getting back from a night out. I get the feeling these would also be ideal circumstances under which to enjoy Dredd, the Slo-Mo sequences sure to be in-tune with an intoxicated state of mind. And I must admit, for once the 3D actually is kind of beneficial, serving to make matters that bit more out-there. Shame the cinematography doesn’t seem to have taken into account how the glasses dim the image, which can impede things somewhat given the aforementioned dark and dingy aesthetic.

Again, given I’ve largely forgotten the earlier Judge Dredd film I didn’t find myself comparing Karl Urban’s performance to that of Sylvester Stallone, and nor should anyone else. As long promised, this film wisely never shows Dredd sans helmet, and with his strong build, permanent grimace and five o’clock shadow Urban suits the physicality of the role with no problem. A pity, then, that his voice feels a smidgen too thin and light to be truly menacing, but at least he’s not desperately forcing the gravel as Christian Bale does as Batman. Lena Headey’s arch villainess Ma-Ma doesn’t have too much in the way of backstory either, but she too does just fine with her scowl and scarface make-up. Olivia Thrilby has to cover a wee bit more ground, as her emotionally uncertain rookie Anderson is called upon to give the film its heart. Thankfully, though the potential is there, her scenes never lapse into sentimentality.

It’s been said this could potentially kickstart a trilogy, and I for one would be happy to see it. Dredd is some great Friday night entertainment, offering plenty of bang for buck, and a hard edge the likes of which we haven’t seen in comic book movies for a while. If you’ve grown tired with how family friendly most comic adaptations tend to be these days, well, now you know just what to go see next.

Dredd 3D is out now in UK cinemas from Entertainment Film, and US cinemas from September 21st.