It’s time to look at my favourite short films of the year – and also time to feel sorry, as usual, that so few of these films are, currently, available for wider viewing. But who knows? Maybe in future, cinemas and online channels will diversify further; the beginnings of this are already in motion, with the likes of Arrow Video now picking up and screening a few shorts. And perhaps even the likes of Netflix could reflect on the success of a series like Love, Death & Robots and consider that there is an audience-in-waiting out there.
It’s no coincidence however, for now, that I got to see all but one of these short films at a specific film festival (Celluloid Screams in Sheffield, UK). Festivals still seem to be the most reliable way of interacting with shorts, and there are film festivals (such as Aesthetica) entirely dedicated to the medium, but I can’t help but think that mainstream cinema screenings are missing a trick here. The way that it’s done at Celluloid Screams is to screen one or two short films ahead of a feature, so that you get a little extra before the full-length film runs, and you also get to see films you would in all likelihood not otherwise see. Why couldn’t the likes of Picturehouse do something similar – surely, as a cinema chain which purports to screen the more lesser-known titles, this would fit in quite well with that remit? I’m sure there are similar cinema franchises in other parts of the world, too, and it would be great to know that talented filmmakers working on short films (sometimes for a long time before ever making a feature, for many reasons) could find an audience in addition to the often rather niche world of film festival screenings. For a long time, I’ve also toyed with the idea of setting up a short film channel to boost viewer numbers and exposure to short films, but given that filmmakers understandably want to retain control over their finished products – rather than handing things over to some optimistic but otherwise clueless bozo on the internet – it’s never happened. At least, yet.
In the meantime, and I heartily hope this year, as every year, that more people are able to see these films at some point – here is my pick of the bunch in 2025. Many thanks to all of the filmmakers who brought these stories to the screen.
The Occupant of the Room
Well, here’s at least one it’ll definitely be possible to see more widely, given that it forms part of a series titled The Haunted Season which is now available on Shudder, resurrecting the ‘ghost story for Christmas’ tradition. At around thirty minutes, it’s one of the longer short films on this list, but it utilises that runtime perfectly, striking a good balance between narrative detail and atmospherics, economy and pace. Based on a short story by Algernon Blackwood, it centres its tale on a remote hotel in the wintry Alps and a traveller at first barred from the safety of this environment; when gaining entrance, our traveller, Minturn (Don McKellar) is forced to take on an already-occupied room, albeit that the resident left for a hike the day previously and has not yet returned…
The stage is set for a disquieting, introspective experience as Minturn gets plagued by eerie phenomena; he picks over clues, objects which belonged – or belong to the room’s tenant, and he suffers through anguished dreams and visions which seem to belong equally to both occupants, present and present-absent. The result is a strange and existentialist piece of film in which director Kier-La Janisse uses interesting poetic license to bring to the fore ideas which, in the story, are more minimalist. The Occupant of the Room balances its period setting and literary basis with something which feels much more up-to-date, and the overall impact is very impressive. You can read my more detailed review of this film here.
The Fairy Moon
The Fairy Moon is another film which blends something modern with something folkloric, bringing its elements together in a subtle and never-quite-explained way, but making clear to the audience – via the intertitles and other clues – that here we have an occult force, and a very recognisable one at that, pushing its way into the everyday and taking advantage of one man’s ignorance of these forces. In this, it works in a similar way to many folk horror tales, where a visitor or an outsider fails to heed rules or avoid pitfalls because they lack the prior knowledge; it’s just that here, we have an ordinary bloke who simply gets swept up in something bizarre and tragicomic through no real fault of his own.
As he goes about his day, a man called Roger (a plausibly-harassed Johnny Vivash) encounters an oddball and dapper stranger who seems to take an interest in him, popping up in different places to present him with different possible scenarios or behaviours which all seem to point to trauma and risk. Being British, Roger has little defence beyond a sharp word and a futile call to the police, but what does this man (James Swanton) actually want? The film points to ideas about fate and sacrifice, but it does it all in an understated manner, making us want to laugh as much as to understand. You can have a look at my full Fantasia review here.
Skin
The only film which I saw via a requested review rather than at a festival, Skin is a short but impactful story about the toxicity of beauty norms, particularly as interpreted where ‘pale’ equals ‘beautiful’. Great, but what if you’re not white? In Skin, our protagonist, Kanika, decides to undergo a revolutionary new skin lightening treatment (riffing on real-life treatments which do this) despite her sister Ria’s protestations: there’s something off, something too good to be true, about this whole thing. The clinic itself looks modern and stylish, but it has a sense of the uncanny about it, and indeed as it turns out, they want more from their clients than just a little of their time. Clearly influenced by The Substance in terms of its visuals, Skin turns it around so that we’re not looking at hang-ups about ageing, but about white skin-centred values. I reviewed the film as part of the HollyShorts package and you can read about it here.
Obey!
On first pass there’s nothing serious about Obey! but actually, on consideration, it uses humour and exaggeration to point to the great hypocrisies of influencer-driven animal training programmes. Very popular today, button training can be used to train cats and dogs to ‘speak’ to their owners; it can be a very sweet and charming thing to witness, but as with any complex training model, it takes time, patience and humility – traits which many influencers may lack. The film introduces us to a pet influencer and her dog, Max: Max’s tragic death leaves his owner bereft, but weirder still, it seems like his vengeful spirit is back to communicate his feelings about what happened to him and how he was treated…
Skulk
Skulk is so, so simple and yet it does just enough to spin an effective yarn, making a brief but devastating suggestion and then seeing it through. Less is more here. The film starts by suggesting that foxes bark at night to raise the alarm that some sinister entity is near; that’s it, but that idea alone is a disconcerting enough titbit to generate an effective few minutes of horror when a woman awakes, hearing the barking of foxes outside, and realises something wants to be inside her home with her. What follows is a short but sweet masterclass in economical horror, pivoting around aural scares in particular (at least for this viewer) but doing more too. Bravo to director Max Ward, who has been building a solid career in the short film artform over the past eight years or so, and clearly understands the strengths and affordances of the genre.
Grandma is Thirsty
Feeling in some respects like a Seventies-era, Scarfolk-adjacent piece of world-building, Grandma is Thirsty forges something funny, bizarre and charming out of some familiar elements. Poor little George (Harris Kiiza) is getting picked on my bigger boys, and this timid kid doesn’t know what’s best to do: he just wishes he was bigger and could defend himself. Step forward, twins Benny and Bronte (Harrison Little and Jessie Johnson) who offer a solution: come with them to their place and meet Grandma. Grandma, they tell him, can help him to grow up big and strong. So, desperate, George goes off with his new friends to their house, where he is promptly locked in, because Grandma ‘only comes down at midnight’. Oh.
By turns sweet and sinister, Grandma is Thirsty has time enough to create a range of characters from plausible to peculiar, and it’s the interplay between them which drives a successful, nicely-paced story. George is a little champ, and you will find yourself sympathising with his predicament – and rooting for him as his bad day gets worse (and then a bit better, perhaps).
I didn’t intend to start this rundown of my favourite independent films of the year with a rant, but it feels like the most honest way to start my preamble.
Of course, I could start by saying what a diverse year it has been for a wide array of titles, genres and shooting styles, many of which ordinarily extend beyond the remit of this little site, but deserve love and attention from appreciative viewers – the right audience. This is true; 2025 has been a gift for all sorts of reasons, offering up some brilliant, inventive films across the course of the year. I could also semi-apologise for the fact that I know very well that, just like last year and for years before that, I’ve missed out on lots of titles which may have charmed and entertained me; time is always a factor, and the day job prevents me from doing a fraction of the reviews and articles I’d love to do. If you are a filmmaker and/or a promoter and you had hoped for a review here without receiving one, I can only apologise. So far, so familiar.
But the fact remains that, at this point in the year, we are being confronted by the ever-broadening remit of streaming giants, run by people who refer to film audiences as ‘consumers’ and believe that cinema – that is, the whole experience – is an outmoded artform. How people like this wheedle their way into positions of power and authority over the very mediums they apparently despise – or at least, fundamentally misunderstand – will be a question for the historians of the future. You can, certainly, be good at sums and not very good at lots of other things. But speaking as someone who, day job or not, devotes hundreds of hours to watching indie cinema every year, and always in the cinema if I can, this kind of dismissive wave of the hand is a real concern. This isn’t only true because handing over access to your entire film library to companies which can remove it based on their own, occasionally mystifying criteria seems like a colossal gamble; it’s also because a world in which only Netflix (et al) money is real is a very narrow kind of place, shaped by boardroom decisions and shot through with algorithmic criteria which more than occasionally get it wildly wrong.
Already, and for some years now, it’s become harder and harder to support film and filmmakers on their own terms, in a world run by and for the magnificently, shamefully wealthy people who’d prefer it if you just engaged with their products in your own homes, often paying for the privilege of access and then paying again, for a bit more access. And don’t get me wrong – there are lots of times that vast, moneyed corporations get it absolutely right, making the most of their money to bring alive worlds which require the kinds of SFX denied to even the most innovative independent directors. Disney did superb work on Alien: Earth; Netflix facilitated Guillermo del Toro building an entire ship to feature in a few minutes of screentime in Frankenstein. A stopped clock is right twice a day. But do we want to leave ourselves in a situation where we are entirely at the mercy of the heft of the mainstream? I’d caution against it. Keep your physical media movie libraries; go and see films; support independent film, new and old, by supporting some of the excellent film labels out there (such as 88 Films, 101 Films, Second Sight, Umbrella Entertainment, Mondo Macabro, Arrow Video); keep an eye on the likes of Alter; talk to one another, find out what’s good and spread the word; support film festivals, in person if you possibly can; take a chance on the ones you’ve never heard of. I’d never pretend to love every independent project that I see and I’ll never flatter a film I don’t like, but my god, I’d rather live in a world where people are making and writing and creating their own films than a world curated for me by people who don’t even understand what the cinema is for.
As such, I’m not mixing my favourite independent films in with the bigger budget titles this year. All of the films on this list are independently made; many of them were put together for next to nothing, but all of them hold their own against the big hitters of 2025. Keep an eye out for them: wherever possible, I’ll add viewing details below.
VULCANIZODORA
This film has a sense of crisis hanging over it throughout, as much as the conversation between main characters Derek and Martin seems affable enough, if a little fixated on a past now lost to them as they hike out into the woods for a special occasion, shall we say, in their friendship. But there’s more than nostalgia afflicting these two men in Joel Potrykus’s existentialist, occasionally hand-over-mouth funny, but more often unbearably moving tribute to a fucked-up friendship. One of the greatest tributes you can pay a no-budget film like this is to say that you keep returning to it, mulling it over and feeling that same investment in the characters that you felt at the time of viewing: that’s where I am with Vulcanizadora (2024). You can check out my full review here (with some viewing details here and details on purchasing a physical copy here).
HEAD LIKE A HOLE
It’s the simplest, even the most reductivist idea, but yet the beginning of Head Like a Hole (2025) feels oh-so familiar to anyone who’s ever had to swallow down their misgivings because they need to take the job, a job, any job. It’s only somewhat later that levels of weirdness overtake the general levels of weirdness inherent in any situation where you have to pretend to be as excited about some kind of corporate goal as the guy getting paid more than you seems to be. Asher (Steve Kasan) is down on his luck, reduced to applying for the kind of job which would advertise with those tear-off strips affixed to a ‘help wanted’ poster. He gets the job, but the job consists of watching a hole – sorry, an ‘anomaly’, in the wall of a residential basement, noting down its dimensions in exact detail and never letting his concentration drift. But why? What could possibly happen to a hole in a wall? Gradually, we glean that there may be something strange going on in the world outside, details of which were clearly lost on Asher at the start of this situation (sleeping in your car will do that to you) but which likely influence events inside the house – eventually.
Head Like a Hole is a low-key, clever and absorbing piece of…sci-fi? In some respects it’s a sci-fi, but in other respects it refuses to rest comfortably in any genre, focusing instead on Asher and his responses to the world he finds himself in. My full review is here. The film is not currently available for streaming or physical media purchase, but Warped Perspective will say so when it is.
SEW TORN
Seamstresses don’t figure hugely in independent cinema, or really cinema at all, much less in strange fusions of crime drama and horror-ish fantasy, but step forward Sew Torn (2024), an intricately-constructive tale of a girl who gets caught up in a situation far, far beyond her expectations. The very shy and wouldn’t-say-boo protagonist Barbara (Eve Connolly) is struggling to both live alone and maintain her late mother’s family seamstressing business, and a bad day turns into something far more threatening when, as she returns home from visiting a client, she stumbles upon a road accident, two injured (and armed) men and a mysterious briefcase. In a panic, Barbara picks it up and takes it, prompting a strange course of events which unfold in various, fourth-wall teasing ways. Sew Torn is economical, knows exactly how to get the best out of its plot, actors and runtime, and offers something ingenious: it’s all in the writing.
You can take a look at my review of the film here – and if you’d like to take a look at the film itself, there are some virtual viewing options here. I can’t find any legitimate physical media purchase options currently.
PEACOCK (AKA PFAU – BIN ICH ECHT?)
Peacock is definitely an outlier on this list, but in its tale of personal identity gone awry, modern alienation and the search for what matters in life, it belongs, even as a comedy of manners, because it deals with its plot points so very adroitly. Matthias (the intimidatingly handsome Albrecht Schuch) works for a company called My Companion, where he enacts whatever his clients want from him – dutiful son, doting dad, charming date. Yes folks, why wait for humanoid robots, when the real thing will do the same things and elevate your personal status just as well? There’s never anything sexual here (or in his own, real-life relationship for that matter) but it’s clear that Matthias is starting to struggle with the divide between real life and his wage-paying, fantasy world. It’s sober, smart and provocative without spilling a drop of blood, or even so much as really raising its charming protagonist’s eyebrow; Matthias unfolds events differently to that, as the film questions our love of keeping up appearances in its own, quaint style. I reviewed the film when it featured at this year’s WatchAUT festival, and whilst it doesn’t seem to be available in the UK at the moment, there are some viewing options.
MERMAID
Appearing at this year’s SXSW, Mermaid (2025) is a “love letter to Florida”, and yeah, even having never visited Florida, that feels like it fits. The likes of Disney have sanitised the mermaid in the same way as it’s Tinkerbelled the fairy; these supernatural beings actually have a long, provocative history of far more sinister folklore and that’s explored – obliquely, but it is – in Butt Boy director Tyler Cornack’s singular vision: boy (Doug) gets fired, boy enjoys smashing down handfuls of prescription medication, boy seeks failed vengeance on the heavies who are poised to ruin his life and boy finds…a real-life mermaid, and decides he’s going to put all of his kind, nurturing energies into looking after her – a bit like trying to look after a rare tropical plant as your own house and all your possessions burn around you. As I said in my original review, this isn’t Splash and the mermaid in question is in fact a fearsome creature, but that’s also not really the point. This is Doug’s story, and this is his bizarre, touching, Florida-weird redemption arc. This, to my mind, is indie cinema in all its bizarre, chance-taking glory. Sadly, at the time of writing I can’t find any viewing details: over to you, distributors.
A DESERT
It’s time for some Americana-tinged gloom and loss in the visually arresting film A Desert, with its magnetic, mysterious characters and its burgeoning sense of a hidden world out there in the back of beyond, waiting to swallow up the unwitting. Or not quite unwitting, perhaps; photographer Alex (Kai Lennox) has deliberately got himself lost in the boonies, relishing the chance to forget all about bills, family and obligations for a while as he photographs old, moribund buildings and remote spaces – his modus operandi, and once key to a successful project he called the ‘Death of the New West’. However, a chain of events draws him into the orbit of some hedonistic, rootless locals who initially ask him to take their portraits; a night together ensues, in which Alex feels like he’s amongst new friends. But as his memory and certainty begins to fragment, Alex finds himself lost and alone in a world he has only ever really experienced from the other side of the lens, and he’s in danger – never control – here. This is great work from first time director Joshua Erkman, with a screenplay which blends discourse around poverty and privilege into its heady world-building. Please check out my original review, and happily there are some opportunities to stream the film.
TERRESTRIAL
Another film on the list which belies its more-than-modest budget with clever writing, inventive edits and abundant ideas, Terrestrial (2025) was one of this year’s standout Fantasia titles, a story about a man, Allen (the fabulous Jermaine Fowler) who is doing rather well for himself. His old friends are astonished when they see what his writing career has bought: a stunning home in the Hollywood hills, a vintage car, all the obvious trappings of new wealth. So why is Allen acting so…off? Isn’t he happy? This was what he always wanted…
They find out the answers to these questions in a film which doesn’t miss a single beat. As I mentioned in my original review, the title Terrestrial suggests a sci-fi film, but although science fiction is contextually very significant here, this is far more a film about a young man whose aspirations – as a sci-fi author – launch him into an increasingly discomfiting and complex situation, one which he dare not share with his friends because that would shatter his hard won sense of self. It really is a brilliant piece of work, which deserves to be seen spoiler-free (which my review, promise, is). Sadly, at the moment I can’t see any viewing options but I hope that changes.
F*CKTOYS
A glorious, whole-hearted love letter to John Waters and all things camp, crazy and bold, director (and writer, and star) Annapurna Sriram has achieved something pretty wonderful here: it’s the story of a young woman who has been told she’s the victim of a curse, so off she goes, on her moped, into the strange underbelly of the city and the Deep South to raise cash (and guess how!) for a psychic to get rid of that pesky hex. It’s a candy-coloured, but never candy-coated bildungsroman where every moment is a revelation: sweet visual touches, believable character relationships and a barrage of ideas keep things just the right balance of tough and charming. It really is something else. Will that impertinent title get in its way? I certainly hope not, though it certainly does interesting things to an internet search and, for now, as I’ve just gleaned, it doesn’t look to be available to watch online. If there’s any justice, it should get a floral-print box set release.
THE EGO DEATH OF QUEEN CECILIA
You know what? The more I think about this modest, no-budget independent crime drama, the more I think it’s tantamount to a tragic play. Though the real tragedy would have been if I hadn’t have requested to review it; it landed in the site inbox when I happened to have more than usual spare time, and had I not, I may well have passed on a film which didn’t immediately suggest a great fit for Warped Perspective. It just makes you think of what you miss, if you get offered a film at the wrong time or have other reasons for declining to view.
But back to the tragic play reference: in The Ego Death of Queen Cecilia, we follow the fortunes of a woman one at the top of her game as an influencer with a successful YouTube channel and a devout following. There’s the hubris. But when we meet her, she’s a delivery driver, reduced to stealing parcels so she can give away their contents as prizes on her now-ailing channel – keeping up the appearance of fame and success. The Ego Death is already underway, then, but circumstances overtake Cecilia much more rapidly when she spots an old acquaintance of hers, now seemingly up to no good of his own and potentially – given her clear animosity towards this man – a means for her to regain her status and admiration, if she can only arrange things the right way. This spiralling, but always plausible and suitably humane story teases out lots of our modern predilections for online fame and fortune: what would an influencer do to regain old glories? Here’s a link to my review, and there’s an official website for the film, plus what looks like a streaming option, although from a platform I don’t know, so exercise caution.
THE SEVERED SUN
I’m not here to claim that British folk horror The Severed Sun (2024) sets out to utterly reinvent the genre to which it clearly belongs, but it does great work with its selection of plot points, visuals, performances and elements, toying with age-old ideas of religious mania, persecution, closed communities, sexuality and sin. Nor would it typically be for me to question the viewpoints of other reviewers, but where some critics have happened upon the inclusion of modern-day features (such as visible road markings) and made the assumption that this is some kind of mistake, for me this is one of the film’s best elements, and I don’t feel for a minute like director and writer Dean Puckett messed up by leaving them in. Instead, this provides a kind of rootless, timeless quality, detaching the film from a concrete timeline, but hinting that this may be some kind of dark, coming future, some unspecified point where what we would see as progress has been undone. Its story of the rebellious Magpie (Emma Appleton), recently-widowed daughter of a small community’s rod-of-iron pastor (Toby Stephens) allows a heady, close examination of a fracturing community, where visions of some dark Beast of the soil (James Swanton) begins to undermine an already-fraught existence. Filmed during a heatwave, The Severed Sun’s glorious sunlight belies its dark, unspoken nights. It’s a visual and atmosphere-laden treat and I really loved it: you can read more here and hallelujah, there are lots of online viewing options.
THE UNDERTONE
As a lifelong horror fan, I am always chasing the high of skin-crawling terror, and The Undertone certainly delivers that. Again, as above, this film doesn’t obviously seem to reinvent a genre, but it executes its storyline with such confidence and care that it works incredibly well. It feels modern, even a tad overfamiliar – a podcaster investigates a strange series of recordings – but it brings immense skill to how it unfolds its story, with director Ian Tuason knowing exactly how to elevate this aural nightmare into a scream-into-the-back-of-your-hand ordeal for audiences.
In the film, podcaster Evy (Nina Kiri) undertakes to investigate a series of recordings now belonging to her fellow podcaster Justin (whom we never see; this is a lonely ordeal of a film, centring upon a traumatised, isolated Evy). As they piece together a timeline of events for the subjects of the recordings, a young married couple called Jessa and Mike, phenomena begin to spill out of headphones and screens into Evy’s home. Why, and what does Evy have in common with Mike and Jessa? Answers come slowly, ratcheting up the sensory horrors and relying on the very human tendency to find faces in the darkness, words in the static and stories in chaos. My full review of this fantastic horror film is here and all being well, the film will receive a release in 2026.
Fantasy advertisement for celibacy Together (2025) starts with a search team in the woods, looking for two people – two names are being called, but two people go undiscovered. Almost immediately, we see what the search team does not, as the camera pans down below ground level, where some search dogs seem to have found something. Oddly, they don’t signal – but they drink some standing water while they’re down there, before returning to their handlers (somehow – good climbers?) with something newly odd about them. Later, from their enclosure, their terrified cries reveal that something worse than odd has happened, in a brief but punchy nod to a very well-known body horror from the Eighties which, were I to name it, would give a lot away, but the fact that I haven’t named it almost achieves exactly the same thing, because you’re very likely thinking about the right film, right now.
Let’s say just that there’s something weird out there in the woods, and we know this before we meet our protagonists, Nice but Mismatched Couple Millie (Alison Brie) and Tim (Dave Franco), who are about to set aside their misgivings to move to…the woods. More specifically, they are about to move to the country as Millie has a new teaching job. Tim is a struggling musician, something he can do anywhere and, as a struggling musician, he has hubris and self-reproach in good balance, all ready to transport to his new abode. We meet the couple at their leaving party, allowing time and scope for us to see some of their relationship issues and to know full well that they will be taking these issues with them, alongside all of their earthly goods.
Once settled in, Tim and Millie begin to familiarise themselves with the new area, heading off on a hike and in record time stumbling upon – or really, falling into – the same underground structure we’ve already seen, which is far bigger and even more ominous than we may have first gleaned. After spending the night there, heading off dehydration during their stay (uh-oh), they manage to clamber out and return to the house. But by now there’s something severely off between them, manifesting chiefly in terms of their bodily autonomy, now that its external boundary is getting mysteriously disrupted. This starts small; upon waking up underground, their skin seems strangely stuck together, but they separate without major issues. However, the new permeable layer between them extends to a new, symbiotic psychological bond which both would rather was not there, and it’s soon clear that the quick separation they managed the first time will not happen so easily again.
Whilst Together runs us through large chunks of its key plot points very quickly, it doesn’t feel like this detracts from the development of a similar thing taking place between its key players because we still take a reasonable, practical amount of time getting to know Tim and Millie – nice, mismatched, fallible, with a troubled relationship offering enough pre-existing complications to match the clearly signposted, incoming ones. Furthermore, the film has a number of interesting, compellingly unpleasant possibilities to offer – all conveyed via an easy-going, increasingly humorous and knowing script, which makes all the difference. It also shows a good sense of what’s behind modern relationship breakdown vs relationship expectations, turning the lexical field of relationships to bleakly funny effect – we get to think all about ideas like ‘splitting’, ‘completing each other’ and of course, how ‘two become one’. Sure, there are some less plausible decisions along the way, but we’re ready for things to get disgustingly literal. If this necessitates a couple of Chekov’s guns, then so be it: it’s more than forgivable. As an audience, it feels like being in on an awful incoming punchline, even before the joke has been fully unfolded. Nice incidental use of a rat king, by the way.
There are undoubtedly shades of other body horror films in Together, and writer/director Michael Shanks no doubt knows just what he’s doing with a few nods here and there, though some other, perhaps less-known titles spring to mind here too: there’s a dash of Honeymoon in the whole mental/physical relationship breakdown aspect, and a bit of Jug Face in the (largely unspoken) pseudo-religion plot point, which, by the way, holds onto a lot of its secrets, though at no great detriment to the character-focused whole. It isn’t as obviously serious as any of the titles already mentioned, however, and in fact becomes funnier and funnier as it goes along – which may or may not work for all viewers, as it feels to an extent like a tonal shift. If things feel gallingly defeatist in key aspects – the ultimate sunk cost fallacy – then regardless, Together‘s detail-heavy body horror does its best work when it focuses on the minutiae, moving deftly into a final act which, to put it bluntly, kicks up a gear. The film works well on symbolic as well as more outré terms, and it still feels like grimly good fun, too.
Osgood Perkins – to judge by the slew of promo emails which have continued to arrive at Warped Perspective this year – is a very busy bee. He’s put out three features in two years; no sooner had Longlegs (2024) garnered perhaps more than its fair share of gushing critical attention, than gleeful emails concerning The Monkey – a reimagining of the Stephen King short story – started to arrive. There’s a lot to be said for making use of any momentum you can gather in indie film, but whether Perkins’s prolific output stems from luck or judgement, slowing down a little wouldn’t have hurt. Like Longlegs, there are issues around coherence, only exacerbated here by a kind of additional, clumsy self-regard. The Monkey is far more pleased with itself than it has any business being.
We start at a pawnbrokers: one of the film’s odd peccadilloes, to mention one of them early, seems to be filling its shots with tat. Pawnshops, cluttered closets, yard sales – The Monkey is rammed full of knick-knacks, with a knick-knack at its very centre, as if Perkins is one-upping all of the other indie directors with a similar regard for old bits and pieces, though usually in their cases for reams of defunct analogue tech. Into the pawn shop walks a guy hoping to offload a creepy drumming monkey whose drumming signals ‘bad things’ are about to happen, which is a sizeable understatement, though understandable at this point. The guy, Petey (a cameo from Severance‘s Adam Scott) then offers us a framing device, as a flashback takes us to his own father’s childhood and the origins of a strange family curse.
The monkey has been in the family for a long time. Petey’s father Hal and his twin brother Bill (Christian Convery) had no father in their lives; all that was left of dad was a closet full of – you’ve guessed it – tat, though it takes the family a while to explore and find the drumming monkey, an item which is, to give it its dues, a pretty cool-looking object. All seems okay, briefly, but one evening as mom (Tatiana Maslany) heads off on a blind date as if dating were some kind of weird penance, the boys head to a restaurant with their babysitter – and the toy monkey. This commences a long line of what seem to be freak occurrences, though often focused on blameless women, it seems. Once they realise its power, the brothers try to get rid of the monkey, making sure by dismembering it and hurling it down a well, and it seems as though they’ve solved their problem. But twenty-five years later…
The story here is simple enough – cursed item plagues family – and there’s really not enough in the short story alone to pad out a feature-length film, so Perkins has made a series of decisions on how to get things over the feature-length line. It seems like a few things held sway during this process: make it gory; make it funny; extend the backstory of the monkey, so that it has a more complex presence in the story overall. Perhaps the feeling of satisfaction with these changes overshadowed the actual success at delivering them. It certainly feels that way. It’s not outré enough to be a genuine horror comedy; it’s more of a slacker comedy if it’s a comedy at all, but its theme of absent or awful parents is an odd fit and too high in the mix to really allow audiences to laugh. The script is garbled too, coining words (‘willish’?) or throwing in the odd, needless Stephen King reference, but it’s glib for too long to really land any emotional impact when it maybe wants to do that later in its runtime. Similarly, once it decides to turn into a version of The Ring, the impact is still negligible. It hasn’t convinced up until this point.
But to judge by the wealth of promotional materials inviting us to pore over the film’s goriest sequences, the gore was always intended to be this film’s biggest calling card. What a shame, then, that it’s so dreadfully handled. Sandwiched in amongst the film’s thin family plot elements, there’s a smattering – and only a smattering, really – of flimsy, obvious CGI which is so cheap-looking that it takes you out of the family plot with all of its additional characters altogether. The film seems determined to build up to set pieces which are utterly disappointing in execution, even if there’s some novel thinking behind them somewhere. The whole thing feels murky and inconsistent, ambitious without due diligence, which at best is down to the quick turnover necessary to get this film out this year, and at worst, is simply the after-effects of hype. Perkins clearly has love and regard for genre film, but the sincere hope is that when his next film appears – in 2026 – there’s more evident care and attention for the basics in the end product, and a lot more depth overall.
It’s one of the most seminal bad science horror movies of all time, it has some of the best lines of all time…and thanks to Second Sight, there’s a brand new version of Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator on its way.
Releasing on 15th December (perfect for dispersing the family at Christmas) this new version will be a presented in a rigid slipcase with new artwork by Krishna Shenoi and a fascinating essay filled 120-page book. It includes a dual format three-disc edition including one UHD and two Blu-rays, with main feature and bonus features on both discs. Special features include The Integral Version in HD, a new audio commentary and a slew of archive commentaries, interviews and features.
Sound good? We have one copy of the boxset to give away, so if you’d like to be in with a chance (UK readers only, sorry) then please drop the site an email with Re-Animator as your subject title. The competition will be drawn on Sunday evening (7pm GST) on the 14th December, and the winner will be informed shortly after that. As ever, contact details will be securely stored for the duration of the competition and then deleted. Get cracking!
Here we are again, then. The year is 1480: Wallachian marital bliss (which seems to involve assaulting lots of cushions) gets rudely interrupted by the prospect of holy war. So off goes Prince Dracula (who keeps referring to himself as ‘Dracul’), campaigning against the invading Turks. However all his thoughts remain with his beloved Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu), whom he plans to send off to a different castle for safety. Bad idea: there are Muslim soldiers waiting in the woods, and she’s pursued. Dracula (Caleb Landry-Jones) does his best to wing it there in time, but actually ends up bringing about his beloved wife’s death anyway.
You know full well where this is going if you’ve seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1992), and this film is, strangely, more of an homage to that film than a fresh retelling of Bram Stoker’s story. The whole ‘I renounce God’ thing isn’t present in the novel, but it’s a key element in the ’92 film and it is here too; arguably, providing a reason for Dracula’s malign eternal life has always been a good call. So Dracula the undead nobleman is born, and we move on, the film tells us, 400 years, to Paris. Well, 400 years-ish: the Eiffel Tower is already up. Doctors at a local sanitorium have a quandary, so having reached the limits of their professional expertise, they’ve reached out to a priest (Christoph Waltz) who knows a thing or two about these mysterious cases.
Their issue? They have a deranged society bride on their hands, a woman who, as they work out, is rather youthful-looking for her actual age: she is also lascivious, hates holy men, and caused a bit of a scene at her wedding breakfast, which seems to be the worst crime of all. The woman, Maria (Matilda De Angelis) presents an intriguing possibility for the priest, who has spent most of his life trying to track down the original source for all of the vampires running about in fin-de-siecle Europe, of which Maria is now one. The priest, who more accurately calls Dracul ‘Dracula’ throughout, is tantalisingly close to his goal.
Meanwhile, there’s the usual irresistible name-shuffling, plot-tinkering behaviour from director and writer Luc Besson, who here joins the ranks of filmmakers who want to do Dracula, but want to change the key characters and so forth. If you want a crack at Dracula and you haven’t changed things around, have you even written a Dracula screenplay? So here we have a Maria rather than a Lucy; we have a French estate rather than Carfax Abbey; we do have a Jonathan Harker though (Ewens Abid), though he seems to rock up in Wallachia on his own errand to get Dracula to part ways with some of his French property. Eventually, when pressed, we segue into the expected Mina/Elisabeta story arc, though it never feels like part of a cogent piece of storytelling. That’s the thing. The film is over two hours long, but it all feels strangely thin.
The past is a foreign country, and filmmakers always leave themselves open to comment whenever they try to blend imagination with verisimilitude: as such, the film’s own attempt to align its Prince Dracul with Vlad Dracula, dates permitting, impressive armour and all, feels a little clunky and budget-stretching with limited impact. Where the film settles more into its own mode of high camp, it actually feels more comfortable – there are moments where you feel welcome to laugh – but unfortunately, the brilliant Caleb Landry-Jones never really settles into his role here. Camp doesn’t come very easily to him – or at least, this particular variety of camp does not. Whilst he attacks the part with his usual relish, and looks rather dapper in select scenes, he’s hamstrung by all the limits to script, costume and development. The sense that so much of this film is a do-over doesn’t help matters. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but there are better ways. There are scenes which look to be verbatim copies from Coppola’s film, meaning they provide a sense of déjà vu, rather than an impression of their own. Even the portraits on the castle walls look more like Gary Oldman than Caleb Landry Jones. And, when Besson does add his own touches, they’re just too ludicrous, even for camp: a cute gargoyle army? Perhaps Besson likes a bit of What We Do in the Shadows. Oh, and then there’s the girlbait perfume motif…
This film has its visual charms; unmistakeably, there are some beautiful visuals, and equally unmistakeably, there are some interesting ideas. It’s just such a shame that despite the film’s unnecessarily bloated runtime and determination to head off on its own tantalising side quests, none of this really benefits the film as a whole. At its worst, this Dracula feels like a school play version of Coppola’s film: it just can’t match the older movie’s innovation or grandiloquence. Or budget; consider the wigs as proof of that. It was, to be fair, originally titled Dracula: a Love Tale, and that’s all it really is, or at least aims to be: the vampirism feels tangential overall, and as such, key players and plot points feel tacked on, secondary considerations and little more. It’s all watchable enough, it has its diverting moments, but this isn’t a great entrant into the vampire genre and on the whole it’s far more Argento than Coppola, which in this case is not intended as a compliment.
Dracula (2025) is available on Digital HD on December 1st and on DVD & Blu-ray from December 22nd.
Haunters of the Silence (2025) is avowedly experimental; this is not a narrative piece of filmmaking in any recognisable way, so this review opens with a proviso: it will not be for everyone, and in fact it will probably appeal to a very select band of film fans. If you are interested in the experimental filmmaking process, then there is plenty here to admire, given how it’s geared towards being a sensory experience as much as anything else. It has themes but no plot, people but no characters (in a conventional sense at least). This makes it rather challenging to review, though its strong visual ideas and auditory overload provide an interesting atmosphere.
So what’s it about? If it can be summed up, then I guess Haunters of the Silence is all about searching – for lost loved ones, or family members, or a sense of personal peace. We start with a man scattering ashes at a lake; back at home, grief seems to shape the time he spends, as he strives to fill the space and the hours with light, voices and other distractions. When he tries to sleep that night he is repeatedly woken by his video doorbell; restless wildlife, perhaps, or is that something else on the periphery of the shot? Under normal circumstances, the man would probably just have switched off his phone, but something prompts him to go outside and take a look. This seems to prompt a raft of phenomena which now begin to afflict him when inside his home too, culminating in the appearance of a strange entity which seems to drain and oppress him, sending him fleeing.
The rest of the film follows the man through various dreamlike states, interspliced with external references to objects and ideas; there are some panels from what seems to be a comic-book version of the Du Maurier novel Trilby, the book which gifted the term ‘Svengali’ to the English language, and the ways these begin to utilise stopmotion animation is very skilfully done. There are also books, including a covetable edition of Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan, with one in particular on the role of drumming in ritual magic recurring several times until it seems to be a motif of sorts. Really, this is a film which doesn’t need (or really reward) rapt attention; you can just as easily get something from it by half watching it, sort of letting it wash over you; it could oh-so easily be played as a video accompaniment for an avant-garde black metal set, by the by, and feel for all the world like it was designed for that purpose.
The film is at its weakest when it seems to threaten a bit of Skinamarinkemulation, but thankfully, this is very brief – and could relate more to this reviewer’s post-Skinamarink terror of cinematic grain than any deliberate decision on the part of filmmakers/writers Tatu Heikkinen and Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen. Elsewhere, in its blurring, segueing but often very attractively framed and lit camerawork, it occasionally resembles work by Alex Bakshaev and Grant McPhee, though each of these directors, despite their arthouse leanings, tend to start off with a narrative framework before moving more towards impressions and ideas. Haunters of the Silence never consciously offers this, and keeps up the same, exploratory approach from the very opening scenes. A slightly clunkily-worded intertitle aside, it’s a film which does what it sets out to do very smoothly and with some undeniable ingenuity. It’s more immersive than informative, and will be best admired by viewers who are okay with that.
Haunters of the Silence (2025) was awarded ‘Best Experimental Film’ at the Paris Film Awards in October.
Is it me, or do even the most improbable dystopian situations feel a whisker away these days? Perhaps The Running Man (2025) feels oh-so close at hand because the novel on which it’s based, with its novel-contemporary analogue tech and big budget gameshow format blends so nicely with our world, billionaire media conglomerates with their snazzy, surveilling screens included. Whatever it is, The Running Man – a new adaptation, rather than strictly a remake – feels very discomfiting in many places. Since Stephen King wrote the book in ’82 (and faster still since the 1987 movie version was made), the world of reality TV has kicked into top gear; you feel uneasily sure that if Netflix could only perfect the world’s most watertight waiver, they’d think about making a show like this. Oh, they would. They’d almost certainly make Speed the Wheel, one of the other shows we glimpse during The Running Man, except for the fact that we’ve already had The Biggest Loser and it would be a bit passé now. One of director Edgar Wright’s biggest successes here is understanding you don’t need to embellish 2025 all that much to create an engaging backdrop for your own big event. The film’s frequent refrain of, “Stop filming me!” could be spoken almost anywhere in our brave new world.
It does take a little while to feel like an Edgar Wright film, though: perhaps he was conscious of wanting or needing to do a lot with this project, given how long he’d wanted to make it. In places, the film can feel uncomfortably stretched between sci-fi, action and moments of slightly tonally odd humour, even though humour has often been an integral ingredient in his films. Or, and it would be ironic if so, perhaps he was constrained by financiers who wanted a say in some of the film’s inclusions and changes, if there are more influences at play here than Wright himself.
But anyway: Ben Richards (Glen Powell) lives in a world of stacked decks. Whilst he’s been fortunate enough to father a daughter with his wife despite the radioactive dust allowed to settle, consequence free, on the working poor, he’s been unfortunate in terms of his career: he’s been essentially blacklisted from gainful employment due to once ‘damaging a company harness’ (actually saving a colleague). His daughter is sickly and needs medical care; little wonder, then, that Ben is a very angry man – in fact, he’s pissed off enough for us to believe he’d take the desperate step of auditioning to take part in the new season of The Running Man, a show which relies on a steady stream of shuffling desperados to entertain the masses. By the by, that part of his screen test where he responds to trigger words in his own inimitable way? One of an already (to this reviewer’s mind) strong script’s most successful moments.
The show itself is very different here to the gameshow version dreamed up for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Eighties, in a film which has now cemented itself as ‘one of those classics’ from the decade (although praise wasn’t immediate, or unequivocal for that one). Here, as in the book, it’s survival out in the community which is key. Run, hide, avoid, prove you’re still alive by mailing video diaries to the network, and keep going for the duration: thirty days. This is a tough call, given that every flat surface in this version of the modern world has a screen displaying Richards’ face, phoning him in carries a cash incentive, and there’s a crack team of trained hunters on his tail.
The Running Man has an illustrious history: it’s long been a huge success for the Network (hmm, that’s a prominent ‘N’ they use – where have we seen that before?). In this universe, the Network has a stake in everything, operating as a de facto system of government, policing and surveillance. Key to the show’s success is the Network’s shadowy executive, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) – a smooth, omniscient character, 100% confident of his format and his reach. Brolin is good in this role; it always feels like a plus when he turns up in anything, so having something decently engaging for him to do here is a boon. He can and does offer Richards everything he needs; there are cash bonuses peppered throughout the game – more than enough to set the Richards family up for life – if Richards will only play the crowd-pleasing role Killian expects.
The Running Man initially comes out fighting in a way which belies its two hours plus runtime, offering up a really punchy opening act, establishing its own rigged system with plentiful, neat plot additions to suggest it. The balance between the dull, grey-washed drudgery of the downtrodden and the high-colour, high-end schmaltz of the Network itself works well, with enough characterisation along the way, and the first throes of the chase are compelling. Although in some paces the cat and mouse pursuit can feel a little repetitive, the film’s biggest slabs of action reliably come along to rev things up (if in doubt, add an explosion. It worked in the Eighties and it works now.) But perhaps The Running Man‘s best quality is its zeal for presenting TV as the final frontier of corruption, making this point by presenting only-just sharper versions of AI and surveillance technology, employed by the Network to ‘control the narrative’, another very real concept which has filtered down to us.
The film cycles through pursuit, paranoia and violence in turns, leading into a finale which feels like a good payoff even if – and this is a key criticism – it can’t quite trust itself to just tell the original tale, without some needless fourth-wall hijinks and a surprise dip in faith. It’s also odd that a film of this length still feels a little rushed at the end, with the slightly clunky addition of a new character at a point where it can’t quite bed in. But The Running Man is an exuberant and arresting spin on the source material nonetheless, made with enough lavish love and care to pull through in the end: it’s disappointing that it’s only recouped a fraction of its budget so far, but give it some time. Thirty days would be nice and neat, but realistically it may take longer than that, and some viewers will find that they halt for good at some of the film’s more challenging tonal and timing shifts. For this reviewer, though, there’s a lot to enjoy and incidentally, it’s also great to see the steps to Wembley Stadium being given new life as a setting here. This is a solid film which deserves a lot of praise.
Ah, here we go then. An older man who seems to be living and bill-dodging at a hotel on the French Riviera (Fabio Testi) becomes fixated by a young woman on the beach; the diamond jewellery in her nipple (!) prompts him on a fractured and somewhat looping trip down Memory Lane, as he recollects his heyday as a secret agent. An array of improbable James Bond-style gadgets and suave villains shift Reflection in a Dead Diamond somewhat away from giallo homage, the usual visual style favoured by directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, but arguably not all the way elsewhere; there’s still some Argento and still some Bava in here, alongside the newer spy thriller and eurocrime references. Anyway, what at first seems to be the memory of the investigation of a crime kingpin gradually turns into an array of double dealings and investigations united by the hunt for a leather-clad murderess known as Serpentik. That is, this is all in the past: it takes a while to realise it, but the other suave guy we encounter in the early part of the film is the same man we meet at the hotel in his older years – one John Diman.
I think that’s what’s going on, but I’m already reaching here: the hardest part of writing any review of these directors’ work is identifying the smattering of plot which they usually decide to provide, sifting it from the visuals and the mood pieces, which are and have always been their priority. There’s perhaps more dialogue in this film than in previous titles, echoing its cinematic influences perhaps, but also to an extent misrepresenting the film as having more meaningful narrative elements than it does. You naturally spend longer pondering what is being said if it’s in there, before you’re made to acknowledge that there’s still little meaningful to guide you. The layering of timelines in this film makes it near impossible to follow, too, which altogether feels more challenging than having no discernible plot elements at all. You feel that, if the filmmakers have put it in, then it must mean something, so you endeavour to follow it – but you wind up following it nowhere. Reflection in a Dead Diamond is another sumptuous but tedious melee of femmes fatales, funky macros and might-be symbolism. Surely not yet another metafilm made for critics to decode, rather than for audiences? Another issue: is it meant to be comedic? A table football massacre? Who’s laughing at who here, and should they be?
Look, I get it: Cattet and Forzani have spent years developing an unusually painterly cinematic style which offers tribute to their formative cinema favourites in an unorthodox way, endeavouring to blend retro genres with a very singular arthouse vibe. And as usual, Reflection in a Dead Diamond is a visual wonder, every shot seemingly composed by an artist (and here, given the film’s links to comic books, in a way which could – and does – fit specifically into comic book panels). The film has stacks of the requisite otherworldly charm, with an array of close-ups, landscapes and shots which spin, solarise, shimmer and blur. There are brilliant ideas everywhere, things like explorations of ideas about crime, duplicity and artifice through silhouettes, blasting wounds into one another which erupt into cascades of diamonds. It’s pretty. The film’s tableaux are, in their own way, totally absorbing. The multilingual approach, the ways the film largely resists being grounded in a specific time and place, the occasional (and surprising) breaking of the fourth wall and the gradual segue into film-as-comic all reveal a creative and ambitious zeal for the art of cinematography. It’s possible to acknowledge all of that, and still feel disappointed.
Despite their passionate advocacy of an impressive line-up of genre titles, Cattet and Forzani persist in emptying their favourite titles of any meaning, paying a compliment by disposing of even the fractured coherence of, say, a Schivazappa title, which feels like no compliment at all. And it has happened over and over; that continuation, in a world where people struggle to get films made, feels as engaging as anything actually contained in the films. What is it about these wholly visual paeans that keep them coming? Perhaps we can forgive the presence of an idiot at the party if they’re really, really, really good looking? The directors are clearly having fun, true, and having more fun here than they’ve had in their previous titles, arguably – but by making it so difficult for their audiences to feel the same unless they, too, give up on understanding any of it, ultimately it doesn’t feel very clever or respectful at all.
Reflection in a Dead Diamond receives a limited theatrical release on 21st November 2025.
As Dangerous Animals gets going, we first observe tourists and sightseers Greg (Liam Greinke) and Heather (Ella Newton) popping up on a Queensland quayside, hoping for a ‘marine experience’ with a local: they’ve just missed their organised tour doing something similar. The gaffer, Tucker (Jai Courtney) is straightaway signposted as a bit of a wildcard, but Greg and Heather are keen enough for said experience to ignore this; by the way, what they propose to do is go swimming with sharks. Tucker’s specialism – and business – stem from personal experience, as he survived a shark encounter (and a hell of a bite) as a kid. This hasn’t put him off; if anything, it’s triggered a strange, spiritual deference for the predators, which can only add to the red bunting which could already be flying from his boat.
Anyway, the boat heads out, Greg and Heather get in the shark cage, and down they go: to be fair, the underwater scenes in this film are very beautiful and tranquil. Sharks, of course, have two modes: serene giants of the sea, and eyes rolling, thrashing about in viscera, fearsome death machines. Come to think of it, Tucker is not too dissimilar, even if there’s a self-described method in his madness. he has a plan for his guests; he has a plan for all his guests, of which Greg and Heather only number two.
Next up, we meet a free spirit chick-with-a-van, Zephyr (Hassie Harrison). She begrudgingly agrees to give a lift to a guy whose own vehicle has broken down; after a guarded start with Moses (Josh Heuston), they do in fact hit it off. Yep, they’re quite clearly framed as a) cute enough to care about and b) Next, which is potentially a snag for the film to get past. You know full well that Tucker is about to hove into view, and that Zephyr is going to be the feisty riposte to whatever mad shit he has in store. So, it’d better be good.
Well, it is, mainly because Dangerous Animals has one killer idea at its core. This notion of shark-as-murder-weapon for a psychopath obsessed with his own brush with a shark-related death is a solid one, referencing other, older horrors and genres without feeling like a simple rehash, and do you know what else is great? The sharks here are…just sharks. They’re not genetically-modified sharks, surprise megalodons or inexplicably smart, vengeful sharks. Instead, the sharks here just do what sharks oh-so occasionally do (to humans, at least), and only then with some heavy encouragement from shark fanboy Tucker. Similarly, the character of Tucker doesn’t get (or need) an overly busy backstory. We learn a little, but he’s still kind of a closed book, a man tinged with de rigueur misogyny, but otherwise a seemingly affable, music loving, down to earth bloke. It’s hard not to see him in similar terms to Mick Taylor from 2005’s Wolf Creek: these two share the same instinct for picking off vulnerable, itinerant tourists by seeming like the salt of the earth, even if Tucker feels more like some sort of Discovery Channel-spawned monster, and Mick’s more SBS.
Once all the key pieces are in play though, Dangerous Animals essentially becomes a tense survival thriller – one with enough about it to make you shout advice at the screen, and one which feels in some respects like a Noughties horror film, back when all people seemed to do for a few years was survive (or not) various torturous situations. All in all, it works very well, although the rise and fall of adrenaline-inducing beats and subsequent lulls can feel a rather bedraggling experience for the viewer. However, this is a well shot, soundtracked and acted film, in equal parts clear on its influences and keen to do its own thing. And, although in its title and basic premise it may sound like it shares a lot of ground with the heyday of ‘animals gone rogue’ exploitation flicks, the proponent of all the horror here is very much human. As the poster suggests, you’re safer – kinda – in the water.
Director Sean Byrne earned his forever chops with his debut feature The Loved Ones, though he’s not been particularly prolific since that time, with only one interim feature-length before this newest one. Dangerous Animals does feel more akin to The Loved Ones – a realist film with some arguably fantasy touches – than The Devil’s Candy, a fantasy conceit with some aspects of realism, like its family dynamic. But is it helpful to force a comparison? Perhaps not, given that Byrne has, so far, opted for something quite different in each feature he’s made; he’s skilled and he’s confident, showing more and more knowledge each time, as well as showing willingness to play with ideas from the horror genre in a nicely self-referential way. He also knows a thing or two about how to dole out those killer scenes, and Dangerous Animals has a few beauties. All in all, even if the Australian Tourist Board might be tearing out their hair (again) over this film, the Australian Film Board ought to be throwing money and opportunities at Mr. Byrne; three features in sixteen years feels like far too few.
Dangerous Animals (2025) is available to stream now.
A dog lies sleeping the sleep of the righteous before being awoken by …something. It could be the mobile phone buzzing away on the arm of the chair – or it could be something far more ominous. Todd, the human at Indy’s side, is unconscious and unresponsive. The room seems odd, too – there’s weird interference with the TV, the lights flicker. Thankfully, the caller, Vera (Todd’s sister) comes in just in time to revive Todd, but as we gradually gather what’s been going on here, we discover that Todd has been, and is, seriously ill.
Next, we see man and dog travelling out in the boonies (much to Vera’s horror, given Todd’s condition), where Todd plans to take up residence in his grandfather’s old house, which has been bequeathed to him. Talk about pathetic fallacy: the gloomy skies and torrential rain don’t exactly scream good tidings, and the dismal, cluttered space they arrive into doesn’t, either. Todd has a lot going on, but all he notices about the new place is that it’s unkempt; Indy, however, whom we’ve already seen is quite a sensitive dog, is soon responding to things unperceived by his best friend. Indy wouldn’t know this, but Vera agrees with him; on the phone, we hear her declare to Todd that the house is “haunted”. So we have a familiar horror film idea – a haunted house, a potentially hexed family line (Todd walks Indy through a nearby burial ground which is choc-full of his gone-too-soon relatives) – only, here, it’s unfolding through Indy’s perspective. It’s Indy who is faced with the biggest share of supernatural phenomena, and this seems to worsen in line with Todd’s rapidly worsening condition. Can Indy protect his beloved best friend from the sinister forces encroaching on this place?
One of the biggest heart-wrenchers in Good Boy is being made to believe that this beautiful dog is afraid and at risk; coming in a close second is understanding that Todd has run out of road, and is reduced to begging to be a medical test subject, or trying folk medicine cures, things which are clearly not going to be up to the (nameless, but dreadfully guessable) condition he has. Pain and desperation makes Todd mean at times, too, which combines both of the film’s most heart-wrenching elements into one; all Indy wants to do is to protect Todd, but he’s just a dog – he can’t interpret what’s going on here, and god knows he can’t face down Todd’s diagnosis. Indy is actually director Ben Leonberg’s own dog, so he’s able to bring in his old video footage of Indy as a puppy – adorable, and genuinely moving, given the film’s storyline. It’s also probably worth saying that if you hate any kind of animal peril, even suggested animal peril, then go careful with this film. I had to watch all the way to the end of the credits to be sure I knew what had happened and could cope with it.
Good Boy‘s choice of ‘dog’s eye view’ for many of its scenes is an engaging one, though we’re never quite kept on Indy’s wavelength, given that we can read text messages, understand the dialogue and infer other elements of the plot, although some of the dialogue is slightly muffled because we always stay with the dog, who often wanders off or goes to investigate something, meaning it’s occasionally a stretch to hear what’s being said. But, steadily, the film pieces together enough of its backstory to lend weight to the ongoing action and substance to the threat at the house, through making good use of VHS video diaries (of course, it’s an indie horror) where grandpa is briefly played by Larry Fessenden (ditto). The set and location are both solid, full of impenetrable darkness which often tricks the eye, or shots cluttered with the detritus of a life passed, which also often threaten to take on human faces and forms. This effect is possibly exaggerated in Good Boy, given that this is a film almost devoid of human faces; this, again, stems from the dog’s eye view motif, so we spend most of the film at not far off ground level, seeing more of people’s feet than faces. Perhaps this brings on a touch of pareidolia. It also almost certainly calls to mind some other things. from cartoons to Skinamarink (2022), though unlike Skinamarink, Leonberg knows when to call time: Good Boy comes in at an economical seventy minutes, which works.
That this film took years to make is testament to how hard Leonberg worked to get it right, and of course to treat his canine star and buddy fairly. He does this so well that it’s hard not to commend the film for being well acted; of course what we mean is well directed. Good Boy is a quietly creepy tale with a genuinely involving and emotionally affecting central premise, and it’s that which really sets it apart from similar films, particularly by the end. Its moments of vulnerability and mystery are very well-handled indeed.
