Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant 2026)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

What starts out looking like a trippy, swirling nebula before the opening credits run for Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant (2026) turns out to be Mary (Hannah Lynch) dipping potato chips into ice-cream. This quickly sets up the bond between real and unreal in ways you might already be expecting, given the film’s title. This is a comic body horror with a kind of slacker sensibility, interweaving a few dashes of deeper meaning into a nicely thought-out world of ick.

Back to Mary (Hannah Lynch): she’s about thirty, has an overbearing mother called Cynthia (Yvette Parsons), little taste for adult responsibilities, no realistic future prospects and a liking for pervy anime – like, a real liking for it. As Mary navigates a world where mum can just barge in on any intimate moment she might have going, attention turns to their new neighbours: prim single mum Ann (Jackie van Beek) and her own shut-in of an adult son, Boo (Arlo Green). Perhaps seeing the shared (lack of) interests, Cynthia wastes no time in trying to set the pair of them up, but that’s without knowing the extent of Boo’s unusual anatomy (unsurprisingly, given what we find out, Ann has a strange conception story of her very own). It doesn’t make much difference anyway, as Mary and Boo meet under their own steam in the shared laundry facilities. They hit it off enough that he is soon explaining exactly how he’s ‘differently bodied’ to most boys; in fact, he decides to show her. One thing leads to another and no sooner is the ice well and truly broken, than Mary finds she is expecting.

It’s not a normal pregnancy – since when did genre film concern itself with normal pregnancy? – but Cynthia is soon over the initial shock and into prospective grandma mode, despite the fact that Mary is doing her best to express her extreme dislike of this new scenario. Mary wants an abortion, leading to a hilarious sequence of events where it transpires that the baby is good where it is, thanks, but when it’s clear that this is the new reality she has to face, the people closest to her do indeed have to step up.

Hybrid humans, alien encounters and shock conceptions: all of this gets the daftest possible treatment, though the film sneakily adds a little bit of context which goes a long way, and gives the film a bit more substance than it might have had. There are a lot of conflicting and sometimes nebulous attitudes to motherhood floating around here, and it’s hard not to acknowledge that the alien pregnancy isn’t so different to a regular pregnancy, timeline excepted. Vomit? Rashes? Swelling? All perfectly normal. The film’s cheeky edit straight to a conventional ultrasound which also looks bloody weird is more evidence that director Sean Wallace and co-director/writer Jordan Mark Windsor know exactly what they’re doing. The film also points knowingly at all the obstacles to bodily autonomy thrown Mary’s way as soon as the foetus is in situ, whether that’s via bureaucracy or family pressures, exerting different kinds of pressure. Still, Boo winds up getting a bit if it, too, though you won’t miss the fact that his genitalia look a bit, well, female, hence perhaps the permission-free medical interest in him – and this isn’t the only way the tables are turned on Boo, either, which is good, because it leads to a different conclusion than audiences may be expecting.

The film is peppered with absolutely ridiculous one-liners throughout, all delivered totally deadpan by a small but well-selected cast, whose faces will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a bit of cult Kiwi cinema and TV over the years (The Rule of Jenny Pen; What We Do in the Shadows; Wellington Paranormal; there’s even some Bad Taste on the telly during the film, as well as a few moments of homage to Jackson’s own, ridiculous, vomity aliens). A weird but enjoyable mix of laidback comedy and pregnancy body horror, Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant offers a few non-obtrusive glimmers of real-world problems along the way, but it’s always offset by a tide of vomit, and getting that vomit/realism balance just right is an important skill in this kind of genre title.

Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant is on digital platforms from 2nd November.

Celluloid Screams 2026: The Fox

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Kori (Emily Browning) and Nick (Jai Courtney) have just got engaged: nothing says ‘You’re my world’ quite like pushing an engagement ring into view whilst someone is eating a pub lasagne. Kori says yes, but you you get the impression that’s because she can’t quite fathom how to say ‘no’; this is one of those sunk cost fallacy relationships, where the only way forward is through. Life goes on much as it has been doing: that is, Kori continues her affair with boss Derek (Damon Herriman) only now whilst wearing an engagement ring, and their respective partners remain surprisingly clueless. It’s only when Derek and wife Diana’s dog vomits a used condom onto their bed that people finally start catching on.

You know, it’s funny: the cuckolded partners seem more irritated than anything else, like this is just an unnecessary issue to factor into their otherwise safe, predictable existence. There’s no screaming recriminations or suitcases being packed; well, Diana gets a little more towards that eventually, but not straight away. It’s just a bloody inconvenience, quite honestly. Nonetheless, Nick feels like he wants to do something; he’d like his fiancée to be a bit more…well, a lot more ideal, somehow, not bored and looking elsewhere. Support comes from an unexpected place when he accompanies his dad on a fox hunt: some little brute has been eating his mother’s beloved chickens, so they track down the animal and Nick takes the lead, running ahead to find the fox trapped on a fence. He levels his gun at it: it begs him, please, don’t do that.

It is surprising that Nick responds to this in a fairly unsurprised way, but then he’s a bloke who apparently doesn’t surprise very easily in general. The fox (voiced by Olivia Colman!) wants to do a deal with him: she knows what’s been bothering him, and she has a solution, which she trades for her life: simply toss Kori into a magic hole in the woods, she explains, and voila, she’ll come back to you as your dream woman: this would be cheery, compliant – and horny. The fox even shows him the hole in question; Nick finds himself pretty open-minded on the premise (for reasons already discussed) and even shares what he’s discovered with Diana (Claudia Doumit). In fact, Diana comes in on the whole thing as an accomplice; it’s during one of her regular jogs with Kori that she suggests a spot of trail running and then, before you know it, Nick’s there to help throw Kori into this very, very deep hole in the woods.

Of course, there are some issues; a talking magpie, the film’s End Boss gossip (the late, great Sam Neill!) tries to explain to Nick that the fox is a bloody liar, and what’s more, he’s a silly prick for listening to her. It’s frankly the best guidance anyone gets in the entire film, but there’s not all that much time to worry about it, much less to listen. Just when Nick is getting concerned that what he’s actually done is killed his missus, Kori does come back: naked, smiling, and rather odd. Due to the fact that Kori is in fact naked and smiling, it takes Nick a little while to really address the third characteristic, but as her behaviour gets weirder, it can’t be ignored forever. His life, as he knew it, begins to unravel. What, exactly, has he done? And are things any better now?

There are so many ways that this sort of magic realism could play out and in other hands, it could have been very dark indeed – even a bit folk horror – but The Fox is achingly funny from the very start. We start the film knowing this is how it’s going to be, with a framing voiceover by Colman which also ably sets our pace and tone, outlining the key traits of species we encounter on a regular or semi-regular basis: for instance, dogs are degenerates, cats are torturers and humans? A bit pathetic, all told, ready to brush off any deeper truths or any existential problems with glib platitudes like ‘It is what it is!’ It’s that daft, passive attitude to life which gets our characters into the absurd situations we have here. Our characters almost-know that, and could have worked on things like adults, but why work on things when there’s a magic hole in the woods?

This supernatural plot comes with a zingy script which keeps drawing attention to the great ridiculousness at the heart of the film, though never dispensing with character. These normal people are our absolute bedrock, after all. People talk in a very plausible way about implausible things in this film, with special mention to Jai Courtney, who turns out to be an immensely talented comic actor, whose laidback Aussie demeanour works perfectly against what unfolds during The Fox. As much as you could slap him, you feel for him, even though his ludicrous demands on his partner are what got him into this mess. But Kori, too, goes on a journey during the film, and gets the gift of seeing things more from an outside perspective. Well, to a point. If there’s a deeper message here – and honestly, you can get through the entire film simply enjoying Sam Neill swearing at people in magpie form – then it’s a kind of modern, relationship-centric riff on the whole ‘be careful what you wish for’ motif so beloved of fairytales (often fairytales with their own host of talking, tricksy animals). Unusually in The Fox, the animals themselves have a few regrets, too: perhaps human beings, even with their comfortable shelters and adequate provision of chickens, aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be, either. But what can you do? It is what it is, you just have to make the best of it, and so on.

It’s really great to see director Dario Russo bringing some of the deadpan, absurd comedy of his series Danger 5 to the screen accompanied by some of the visually slick, creative elements he’s recently developed as part of his highly successful horror oeuvre; the special effects are great, the film itself is laugh-out-loud funny, and it made for a perfect closing film at this year’s Celluloid Screams.

The Fox (2025) was the final film of this year’s Celluloid Screams Horror Film Festival.

Celluloid Screams 2026: Never After Dark

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Perhaps ‘enjoyable’ isn’t a perfect word for this, but it’ll have to do – because it’s genuinely enjoyable to find a piece of unsettling supernatural horror like Never After Dark (2026), even if the film pulls away somewhat from pure supernatural horror in its final act. Nonetheless, it clearly knows how to scare, and director Dave Boyle (who has an interesting pedigree as an American primarily making Japanese-medium films) has created something very effective here. It does enough, and does enough differently, to distinguish itself from its peers.

Airi (Moeka Hoshi) is a kind of travelling medium, moving from place to place so that she can help trapped spirits to move on (something she does with a small array of ritual gear, never explained, but apparently highly effective). Airi’s technique is to transmit a version of herself ‘beyond the veil’, so that she can directly address the spirit in question, helping them to detach from whatever place they are haunting. Tellingly, every crossing she makes costs her a lock of hair; it’s clear from her appearance that she does this kind of thing fairly often, as she has a jagged hairline (and clearly no real system of where to take the hair from, but we shouldn’t get distracted by that).

Her latest job is at a rather dated country hotel in the back of beyond, now owned by a mother and her adult son. Mother Teiko (Tae Kimura), who hired Airi, is shyly intrigued by her and her line of work; in fact, Airi’s sole edict that she be allowed to work undisturbed is ignored very hard by both Teiko and Gunji (Kento Kaku), who keep breaking their curfew and coming back to the hotel during the period of time Airi has requested to have to herself. But Airi does what she knows best anyway, helped to some extent by sister Miku (Kurumi Inagaki), who is able to offer her own pearls of wisdom about the spirit world, because she is part of it. It’s a poignant addition to the screenplay that Miku had been Airi’s big sister, but since time on Earth goes on whilst time on the other side of the veil is frozen still, Airi is now the elder, though the two girls bicker just like sisters would.

The haunting at the hotel – which features a mutilated male spectre who has an obsession with one of the rooms in particular – can’t help but be a little reminiscent of The Shining, despite this haunting being limited to one manifestation rather than several. It’s similarly horrifying, however: Boyle uses shadows and darkness incredibly well, and the barest glimpse of this man hurrying to a room in order to pry away at one of the walls for…something, is very effective. The ghost has been regularly appearing to Teiko, terrifying her too, and can be clearly seen by Airi without any of her usual paraphernalia – but, in this form, ghosts are simply re-runs, unable to interact with anyone. They simply repeat old actions, or appear to do so.

To solve the problem, Airi will have to cross over and talk to him, something which Miku warns her against; this is not, Miku pleads, a regular spirit. Airi, who is young enough to ignore advice and yet skilled enough to feel she knows just what to do, begins to engage the spirit of the man – if that is indeed what it is. Her actions lock her into a highly dangerous struggle; on the other side, this is no Stone Tape-type haunting, an action imprinted on a geographical space by some kind of trauma. It’s something else entirely, although trauma is still key.

A mystery to unpick; a mysterious process with which to attempt it; a carefully-constructed, threatening presence which could do real harm; Never After Dark offers an immersive supernatural experience, and is perhaps strongest of all in its initial set-up: when we’re wondering as much as the inmates of the hotel, then we are as vulnerable, and alarmed, as they are.

However, as Miku suggests, this is a different kind of spirit, and the film moves on to fill in some of those blanks regarding the hows and the whys: it’s a gamble, including a different horror genre altogether in this way, but making that kind of a link to another genre is likewise bold. Yes, it dissipates something of the supernatural fright – though by no means all of it, not ever – but it also constructs something else which contains its own sense of peril. Again, this is carefully paced and illustrated. The film continues to be frightening, though it’s a somewhat different source of fear in places. The film also demonstrates that it has left behind any real sense of J-horror tropes, as aesthetically and atmospherically pleasing as many of those were; Never After Dark feels bang up to date (despite having a very mysterious timeline of its own; it could be set at any point over the last forty years, given that it’s lacking in modern tech and trappings).

Beautifully uneasy and meticulously constructed, Never After Dark strives to combine different strands of horror and it’s largely successful in this aim. Its likeable, unflappable protagonist, its appealing setting and its evocative scares do more than enough to reward the audience’s attention across its suitable, economical runtime.

Never After Dark (2026) appeared at this year’s Celluloid Screams Horror Film Festival.

Celluloid Screams 2026: Pathetic Fallacy

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Pathetic Fallacy (2026) – the new feature from Daniel Isn’t Real director Adam Egypt Mortimer – is a designedly oddball proposition. It establishes an achingly real bedrock of love and loss, before using that verisimilitude to launch unreservedly into something completely different – trippy, oblique and meandering. However, given the myriad ways in which it heads off into psychedelic, experimental terrain, it’s unusual that the film ends up really excelling when it sticks to the real, or at least the realistic. And, the stranger it gets, the more recognisable it feels. Allow me to explain.

We begin the film with a gently looping look at the loving marriage between Asher (Kid Cudy) and Iris (Jessica Rothe): we see them moving through all of the relationship landmarks: first love, engagement, moving in together and finally, marriage. But having established all of this, the film reveals the devastation which ensues when Iris discovers she is terminally ill. Asher is bereft; he has no answers, and there are no treatment options. He has no choice but to watch, passively, as she slips away. Before her death, Iris requests that her husband reads a special meditation prayer over her body when it’s clear that she has passed: its aim is to usher her soul onto the next plane of existence. Asher obliges, but it’s clear by the time we reach Iris’s funeral that he is not willing to let her go: he’s angry. This anger is about to drive him into some very strange places.

Perhaps it’s his own search for answers which begins to present him with images which remind him of Iris, or perhaps there’s really a bigger picture, just on the fringes of what he can so far understand, but after picking up on what seem to be hints from the universe that he needs to travel to a place called Mount Samdi, he finds himself heading there. This is his only chance, he believes, to reconnect with the love of his life. 

What the audience understands, long before Asher does, is that there’s something sinister and otherworldly already taking place at Mount Samdi. In an edit which shifted us from Iris and Asher’s love to the potentially-fracturing relationship of two other characters who are/were camping in the same area, there’s a killer on the loose. Once Asher arrives at his destination, he meets the killer (Travis Fimmel, doing well in the role, despite it only cementing his ‘wild-eyed geezer’ credentials). He seems strangely drawn to the new guy, inviting him to stay with him out at his camp – an offer Asher, clearly still not in his right mind, accepts. So they head through a mysterious tunnel, and depart a world of rules and rationality, after which point Asher gets offered what he wants: a deal.

Well, sort of. Despite the colourful, creative experiences which have thus far guided Asher to this predestined spiritual landscape, it actually starts to feel much more familiar once we’re through to the other side of the tunnel. The deranged killer motif, acting on instructions coming from outside himself – well, that’s pretty recognisable. Ah, but the talking, singing animals and the mind control spider? Once these settle on you, it’s all strongly reminiscent of the writing of David Wong (John Dies At The End, This Book Is Full of Spiders) and the involvement of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson – voicing some of the critters – draws the film even more compellingly into the fold of recent, recognisable high weirdness. 

That is not to discredit the ideas being used here: they’re still interesting, they help the film to switch between moods and genres and they showcase the visual skill which underpins the whole project. It’s just that, frankly, whilst all of this might add some flavour to the film, its real triumph is in the establishment of the relationship at its heart, and the ways in which love and grief are created and enacted. That’s what keeps the film engaging, and once we’re into Lost Highway territory, there’s a risk of losing sight of that. All of the psychedelia being painstakingly created and used here potentially becomes a series of diminishing returns.

So, there are some issues with some aspects of the film’s approach, and some of its wackiest elements aren’t after all that wacky, but its formidable performances and its slick, celluloid presentation (no digital cameras here) still make for a rewarding cinematic experience overall. By the time the credits roll, Pathetic Fallacy’s merits are clear; it’s just that many of those merits were in place long before its more experimental material swung into view. And what it does do incredibly well is reveal the gamut of emotions which threaten to overwhelm a person when they are grieving, offering this grief a series of violent outlets prior to the film’s more fantastical resolution. Oh, and placing a veto on AI in the film? Absolute respect.

Pathetic Fallacy (2026) appeared at this year’s Celluloid Screams Horror Film Festival.

Celluloid Screams 2026: Crawlers

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Crawlers (2026) is an all-too-tempting proposition for a review. You know you needn’t dwell too long on a synopsis: it’s pretty clear what the film is about. But filmmaker Ángel Gómez Hernández understands that we understand what the film is all about, so we can quickly get beyond any distracting complexities and ponder how entertaining or otherwise the end result is. The director knows and we know, and that is fine – it’s like an in-joke between him and us. Quick verdict: if you are happy to park your brain at the door and just get entertained, this is a perfectly enjoyable piece of film with some great little set-ups and imaginative scenes. It’s appropriately gruesome, willing to send itself up and honest about its objectives, and sometimes that’s all you want. 

Here’s a possibly unexpected feature, however: Crawlers spends not a small amount of time on class, and how perceptions of class affect what goes down here. We could be bolder and suggest that class somehow extends to the spiders which you already know are about to infiltrate this rundown apartment block: we definitely get boss spiders and worker spiders, but then we also get spiders who seem to have a pretty clear idea of cause and effect, so it’s fair to say this might not be wholly accurate on the whole spider thing. Again, that’s all fine.

But this a digression: back to the rundown apartment block, replete with crooked moustachioed landlord (William Miller) who has a long list of jobs for his janitor Serena (Matilda Lutz, looking like a somewhat steelier Emilia Clarke). He’s off to Aspen (if Serena hears that correctly) so with a certain amount of exasperation, she gets going on what has been set for her, receiving nothing but casual abuse from the other tenants in the block (her own residence in the block is a perk of the janitor job) whilst, we may note, introducing us to a number of potential hazards which may factor in the unfolding story. There are things, apparently, which duct tape cannot fix, including ducts.

The spiders are here, by the way, because one of the residents has just come back from a research trip abroad with an infected bite, which both takes him out and infests the block with a massive amount of creepy crawlies which seem to have a liking for human flesh – starting with his, but quickly moving on to all of the decrepit, groaning vents which connect all of the apartments together, moving into each room and waiting for a feature-length amount of time. By the time word gets out that the block has this issue, the powers that be decide to quarantine it, leaving the residents to their fates, though not reckoning on a plucky janitor who wants to get the hell out of there, even if no one will bloody listen, because she’s a blue collar worker…

Apartment blocks of this kind are often a tempting proposition for a horror film, offering a closed environment which is always horribly inescapable when things start to go down: go on, you can think of several. The space and the premise is used nicely here, with a lot of spiders’ eyes’ views of the feckless humans beneath them, and a lot of near-miss type scenes where people innocently reach their hands into dark spaces.. Once it all starts to kick off, it veers between World War Z-type, mass numbers scenarios and something akin to a Western showdown, but hey – it’s all decently linked together by an appropriate pace and a script which works pretty precisely for what’s asked of it. 

Oh, and to come back briefly to the class thing: you know the way you inwardly chafe when people are needlessly rude to service personnel, e.g. the people in society who keep the water and the power on? Yeah, it’s good when that kind of rudeness is rewarded by some horrifying spider action, as well as some glorious set pieces which must have been a lot of fun to storyboard, much less to execute. Crawlers is a decent and enjoyable Saturday night movie which – even if it is under no illusions as to its life-changing qualities or otherwise – does exactly what it sets out to do, and it talks to horror fans on their own level, neither talking down to them/us nor trying needlessly to elevate itself into something else. 

Crawlers (2026) appeared at this year’s Celluloid Screams Horror Film Festival.

Celluloid Screams 2026: Fifteen

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Ligia (Greta Marti) and Mayte (Macarena Oz) are both best friends and outcasts in the ever-brutal world of teenage friendships and rivalries. As they each prepare to celebrate their Quinceañera – the traditional Latin American celebration of a girl’s fifteenth birthday – they on one hand get closer, but on the other, begin to grow apart. Ligia has a boyfriend, Joel, and begins to cede to the pressure – both from him and from others – to lose her virginity, stop being a child. Mayte, who definitely gets the sharp end of her classmates’ jibes about her background and appearance, clings to Ligia, but when Ligia’s life takes a sudden turn, their friendship gets more and more difficult to sustain.

What we have seen, which neither girl knows, is that one night, just prior to their first sexual encounter, Joel (Andre Fajardo) ditched his bike to investigate a strange sound: he heard what seemed to be a baby crying in the open sewer nearby. In a country like Mexico which stigmatises unmarried births, it’s not the most outlandish possibility. He goes to look, and as he stares down into the sewer he is attacked by some strange, cryptid creature which evidently lured him there. Joel gets away, and he tells no one, but when the strange encounter begins to impact upon his health – changing him somehow – he doesn’t think to tell Ligia who, who finally succumbs to peer pressure and throws herself rather miserably at Joel, initiating their first time.

The fact that Ligia has now lost her virginity and Mayte has not is one thing, but there was no protection used, so not only does Ligia become pregnant, but the early pregnancy does not unfold normally. Ligia is different now; she begins to reject Mayte’s desperate, kind overtures, and after a few explosive clashes with the class rich kid Genoveva (Aminta Ireta) she actually becomes friends with her (there’s a certain element of Ligia becoming the pregnant pet of her new group, but she either doesn’’t mind or doesn’t care). She also begins to revel in her body’s new possibilities, as much as they scare her at first. But Mayte – kind, generous and loving – won’t give up on her best friend, and seeks help on her behalf, showing that she is prepared to do anything to save Ligia from herself.

Whilst it’s wonderful to see these kinds of female-led casts, particularly where they explore issues surrounding the female body in this way, it isn’t much time at all until the immense influence of Ginger Snaps starts to make itself felt here. The girls’ initial fantasy dreamscape of their perfect party shares some of the same fantasy elements as the Fitzgerald sisters and their grisly photography projects; Ligia and Mayte fantasising about a grand public death feels and to an extent looks very similar. Likewise, the cryptozoological changes to Ligia’s body – which appal and ostracise her best friend in the world – leading to a sudden understanding of her new sexuality, well; right down to the hair streaks, it looks for all the world like the same, as does the film’s end point, the big Quinceañera bash. Whilst this isn’t a criticism of Fifteen per se – more a compliment to Ginger Snaps – it does beg the question: what makes the newer film stand out? 

Firstly: the writing and the acting which brings these girls and their friendship to the screen is very good indeed. Without being overwritten, we get the point that these two are poorer than their peers; Ligia’s mother is a cleaner at her school, which draws down all kinds of unkind comments. Mayte is being raised by her aunt and uncle; she’s motherless, and as much as she’s looking forward to turning fifteen, she knows damn well she won’t be getting the kind of party which she dreams of. Mayte’s poring over magazines and websites is a simple and touching inclusion; she knows she’s different, and she knows she lacks for a lot of the material comforts enjoyed by others, but she focuses her love and concern on her best friend. Ligia lashes out verbally and sometimes physically when she is mistreated, but the closeness of these two girls is a precious thing to observe. As such, when things begin to splinter, it’s horrible. You feel for both of them, even when Ligia allows her latent mean tendencies to come to the fore in defence of her autonomy and pregnancy.

The film also takes place in a deeply religious community: there are Virgin Marys on every corner; girls bear the brunt of the inevitable shame of early pregnancy, and abortion is impossible past a relatively early point, which as we know all too well, does not mean no abortions – it means illegal abortions, something else which is addressed in the film in a squirm-inducing/rage-inducing sequence, albeit one which comes with a strangely affirming conclusion. Performances here are great throughout, even if Ligia’s ‘predicament’ sees her become more and more closed off as the film progresses: it goes with the territory here. 

If the film’s rather sudden, more cartoonish levels of concluding violence feel like a bit of a jolt, then nonetheless the film understands the importance of a proper spectacle at the end, and delivers this with a stylish pay-off even if – from this reviewer’s perspective a least – the final note being sounded here is, in its own ways, a tad reactionary, given all that has happened to get us here (and there must have  been a discussion about whether or not to show the audience something altogether different at this point). Perhaps there was just one place Fifteen wasn’t willing to go. Nonetheless, this is a well-made film with some great writing and the guts to throw some lesser-seen mythology into the mix. These kinds of stories – with a fantastical note, or not – make for a welcome addition to the growing canon of young women’s horror, and there’s a lot to admire here.

Fifteen (2026) appeared at this year’s Celluloid Screams Horror Film Festival.

Celluloid Screams 2026: The Glorious Dead

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

What if the end of the world came not with a bang, but a whimper? We’re primed for bombs, or zombies, or plagues – or maybe all three – but maybe, just maybe, it won’t be like that. That’s the opening premise of the Adams Family’s most recent feature film, The Glorious Dead: in many ways it feels like a departure from their previous titles, given a suddenly much larger cast, a series of locations (albeit in one geographical area) and a new focus on action, rather than (purely) mood. But in other respects, this is the epitome of an Adams Family movie. There’s the same overarching sense of atmosphere; there are the carefully drawn characters, and there’s the focus on family connections which can, or could, surpass any array of incursions from the hard-to-know outside world.

Town sheriff Deb (Toby Poser) takes a kindly and personal approach to her work; perhaps it’s that fact which gets her up and out of bed on her day off, when her Deputy, Mikey (Zelda Adams) arrives at her door with an out-of-the-ordinary job they need to do. One of the locals seems to have gone incommunicado; they have been tasked with a welfare check, so – braving a cold which seems to jump right off the screen and into your bones – the two women head off. There’s no sign of the gentleman in question, but his neighbour informs Deb that he’d taken to selling all of his stuff, right down to his furniture, in the past few days. That’s weird – but still potentially explicable – and so the women head off, a little perturbed. But the strange, if currently low-key array of phenomena keeps on growing. People keep flagging Deb down to draw her attention to something odd. It varies, but it’s all certainly concerning. A whole herd of cattle has gone. Domestic pets have gone. And people have gone, too. Did they all know something the rest of town didn’t know?

Things are soon far worse even that this when, in a vague echo of the world’s slowest zombie movie, Handling the Undead (2024), some of the town’s ex-residents start to resurrect. They’re not ‘zombies’ in any recognisable sense of the word, but by the same token, they’re most certainly dead. The preacher who calls in one of these cases was there at the funeral in question; these resurrected townsfolk are mute, probably very confused, and as such can’t provide any information as to what brought them to this state. Oh, and then there’s the sudden eruption of gaping bloody holes around town which seem to act as portals for…things. Hungry things. Think Elder Scrolls: Oblivion only a lot more gory. And described by the people who find them with memorably different similes.

Confused? Deb and Mikey certainly are, and so are the remaining locals, some of whom quickly pin the whole thing on Covid 2.0 and begin operating roadblocks to stop the ‘plague’ encroaching any further. As much as the events in the film are bizarre and fantastical, people’s reactions are depressingly plausible, but that’s the point – when faced with the unknown, everything people go on to do is depressingly known, long-documented and predictable. But there is no simple moralising here; clearly, and from the film’s earliest moments, it’s clear that Deb is an unequivocally good person. Mikey is a good person, too. As their day collapses into a maelstrom of violence and nonsense, they keep trying to do their work; they listen to people; they try to console them. They’re never off the clock, even on a day off. I have never in my life wished someone could get the hot cup of coffee they keep saying they want. The fantastical universe of the film is operating on rules, but those rules seem agonisingly unfair, and at its heart, the film is pointing that out: one of its last monologues makes it crystal clear that yeah, this is all agonisingly unfair, but it was all set down as such. Things are happening just as expected. That’s the kicker.

But beyond this more philosophical reading of The Glorious Dead and this version of hell on Earth which is cold, confusing and inescapable – this is the first Adams Family film which balances both high action, with well-handled scenes which work really well, and – humour. It’s funny. Perhaps it would be harder to push back on the ludicrous events which unfold and trying to prevent them from making the audience laugh, but instead it’s embraced, with a lot of very funny lines from people whose reactions feel entirely organic. The contrast between real people, talking like real people, in real homes in a real place, faced with the absurd and the grotesque works well – but dialogue never starts to overwhelm the film, either. Its weirdness is allowed to settle on you, like snow.

Speaking of which, the wintry backdrop for the film works fantastically and looks great on camera; the filmmaking team have grown and grown in terms of what they can do on their tiny budgets, and making the best of whatever environment they have available to work with is one of their real strengths. Whilst, appreciably, not every film fan is going to go for this slow-burn, sometimes dreamlike take on the end of the world as we know it, it will delight audiences who like a balance of the profound and the acerbic, not to mention the hilarious, in their indie horror. It’s an immersive and thought-provoking piece of film.

The Glorious Dead (2026) featured at this year’s Celluloid Screams Horror Film Festival.

Celluloid Screams 2026: The Restoration at Grayson Manor

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Boyd Grayson (Chris Colfer) is the sole heir of the ancient ancestral pile of Grayson Manor: it’s a splendid, if largely deserted old house which (unfortunately for him) comes pre-installed with a domineering matriarch (Alice Krige) who is by this time more than ready for her son to beget a grandson, securing the family line. This doesn’t really seem to be Boyd’s priority. A talented pianist, he divides his time between music and casual encounters with the young men he finds in his audiences. He’s openly gay, and has clearly built up some years of resentment based on his mother’s own resentment of that fact – a double whammy of recriminations and petty quarrels. And this, you get the distinct impression, would just have carried on and on unhindered, save for a chance turn of events.

One morning, after bringing a man home for what’s likely to be some pretty standard levels of debauchery (and God bless Matthew McMahon for agreeing to that, erm, memorable tableau), there’s an early squabble with mother Jacqueline about this kind of thing, when she arrives and finds them. John, the evening’s beau, is probably most surprised of all because Boyd had told him his mother was dead – but she’s very much alive, and midway through the heated debate, there’s a horrific accident which grants John a second or two or even greater surprise before – no more. Startled by events downstairs, the workmen carrying a large and no doubt antique mirror drop it over the bannister. It banjaxes John and severs Boyd’s hands at the wrist.

Boyd regains consciousness some time later; he’s bandaged up, but alive. However, events seem to have escalated rather quickly while he was out cold: his mother, frankly encouraged by this sudden cessation of his autonomy, has taken it upon herself to hire Boyd a team of private medical experts who will apparently perform wonders on her errant son’s behalf. These are: mad scientist, sorry, experimental surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Tannock (Daniel Adegboyega); nurse Claudia, whose bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired (Gabriela Garcia Vargas), and finally – Lee (Declan Reynolds), who wears scrubs, but to be completely honest, doesn’t (yet) seem to have a fixed role in these proceedings. Dr. Tannock, as it turns out, has been disgraced and ejected from the medical establishment, but when has that ever stopped a conniving aristocrat from coming along, presenting a lucrative offer and insisting that the work goes on?

Jacqueline has hired Tannock to design a set of prosthetic hands for her son; this technology is, no apologies for the pun, cutting edge.They are designed to work via an experimental neural connection: this takes an agonising amount of time to properly harness, and takes a number of training sessions with an uncooperative Boyd, but the doctor assures Mrs. Grayson that, once in place, the new hands will be better than the real thing. The problem – that is to say, the most significant problem – seems to be that the hands begin to pick up on Boyd’s subconscious impulses. They begin to take off under their own impetus, to do the things which Boyd wishes he could do, but either cannot, or dare not.

If that synopsis doesn’t immediately call to mind any number of beloved horror films from the era of ‘finding great stuff on terrestrial TV’, then I don’t know what to say to you: indeed, director Glenn McQuaid mentioned as much during the Q&A after the film screened, alluding to a number of titles, but naming The Beast with Five Fingers (1946). This film is very much a love letter to those classic ‘rogue body part’ movies (I suspect the special effects of the time period made crawling, disembodied hands particularly available and impressive, because it seemed to happen a lot for a while there). However, more broadly, it’s a love letter to a whole host of other horror films and movements, and you could have a good time just picking them out. For me, there’s a dash of The House of Usher (1960) and a firm nod to The Invisible Man (1933) in one particular scene. There’s even a little Boxing Helena, if you narrow your eyes a bit.

So it wears its heart on its sleeve in terms of influences – that is fine, and engaging on its own terms, but The Restoration at Grayson Manor is still its own beast. Whilst it never stops being a solid, entertaining ‘mad scientist’ movie, there’s more at play. It has an undercurrent of hostility with regards to the kinds of homophobia which underpin the film, though it often chooses to tackle this through dialogue, reaching for and regurgitating particularly unpleasant terms and phrases in order that Boyd can expel these attitudes. But you can still see, through all the madness which unfolds during this film, that his mother’s violent antipathy towards him has harmed Boyd: he often behaves in a snarling, petulant way, determined to repel anyone who gets too close (and later events could be seen to justify this approach). In a lot of ways the film covers Boyd’s progression back towards being his own person, uncovering a lot of the events which have been unfolding behind his back, then allowing him to get back to being who he was. That all being said, the film has a few comments to make on the burden of family, and just how far you can really go to get away from family responsibilities. It’s fun, it’s inventive, its often gory, but it also has some far more solid sensibilities at its core.

The Restoration at Grayson Manor appeared at this year’s Celluloid Screams Horror Film Festival.

Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2026: Kick On

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

We meet a group of friends at a (genuinely loud, messy and confusing) nightclub where the time-honoured consumption of lines of coke followed by shots is cut short by a fistfight: ah, the holy triumvirate of a night out. The group retreats to a nearby takeaway to plan their next move: Zack (Nikita Chronis), who was the prime mover in the fight, is keen to make amends. His offer? To kick on, or in other words, to secure more coke and go to a different club. It’s not imaginative, but it’s accepted. It’s the group’s last night out together before Zack’s little sister Lee (Kaitlyn Boyé) heads off abroad, and although it’s less overtly addressed by the group, it’s also a good distraction for Edie (Markella Kavenagh), whose sister is terminally ill, and could only possibly be saved by an expensive experimental treatment, i.e. palliative care might be their only option. The amount of drugs Eden is getting through could be taken as an indicator of how well she’s coping with all of this.

After a few phonecalls, Zack makes good on his offer to source some more drugs, so the group just has to make one stop on their way to the next club. Great – but things soon take a turn. Firstly, the state of the decrepit high-rise where they’re making their pitstop gives them some alarm; secondly, the apartment they visit is completely out of keeping with the rest of the building. It is distinctly moneyed, if a little trashy; it also runs a no phones policy, so – regretfully – the four friends hand in their devices at the door. Then they meet their new dealer, Ray (Nikolai Nikolaeff), who is a flighty man to say the least, and soon seems likely to have a very short fuse concealed somewhere about his person.

Son of a much-feared Russian mobster, Ray is your classic loveless son – set up and financed by daddy, but very much tucked away by daddy where he can do the least damage. Challenge accepted, Ray seems to feel, as he begins smoking copious amounts of crack and erupting into various emotional states – and that’s just for starters. A tad overexcited by having new company, he proposes an experiment: his new, unwitting guinea pigs can try some of a brand new narcotic concoction he’s put together, to see if it’s going to be good for sale. Participation is as good as mandatory, but once everyone’s in on this, they begin to have a fine old time; the need to move on to a nightclub becomes pointless. They have everything they need right where they are. Possibly…

This is very clearly a brittle situation, ready to escalate into outright violence, and things are made more complicated when Edie takes a risky decision – though this doesn’t outright initiate the sudden sea change, even if you know it’ll pop up later to make everything a bit worse. Events begin to take turn after bloody turn, and the prospect of ‘just leaving’ becomes an impossibility. Ray is an imposing figure here, fascinating (if highly stressful) to watch, and a magnetic, plausibly dangerous individual from the very first moments. Hints of warmth always come with a chaser of potential psychosis; as Hunter S. Thompson said, “You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug—especially when it’s waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye.” That’s Ray – a narcotic nightmare, the likes of which we may all have met at some point (and felt that, if we got away unharmed, we’d won some sort of improbable cosmic victory). Ray may differ from your usual drug-addled individual, as his masculine bluster is shaped around his scant knowledge of historical and literary precedents: his full name, Roman, finds echoes in his occasional ruminations on the betrayal of Caesar, and his statuette of Michelangelo’s David takes on a symbolic turn later, too. But he’s still a terrifying liability, whether he can discuss the Senate or not, and he’s also a pampered manbaby, ill-equipped to handle his own fuck-ups – as we see in glorious terms here. There are other key players here too, though not as loud as Ray, sticking to the shadows and primed to enter the fray in their own, unexpected ways later on.

Whilst a few of Kick On‘s plot points feel familiar, there’s no arguing with the impressive way they come together here – it’s tense, it’s fun and there’s a new move on almost every beat. Even the presentation of the film’s occasional subtitles form a pleasing part of the film’s overall colourful, bold aesthetic, all underpinned with some fantastic special effects (or quick-fire CGI for the most outlandish sequences, which I feel unusually very obliging towards). Impressively and consistently tense, Kick On is a layered adventure through drugs logic and ultraviolence, jagged and deft with dashes of humour providing occasional relief. However, it’s brutal through and through, which lands all the more successfully once the film gets you to genuinely like its characters – normal young people up against such corrupt, seemingly unwinnable odds. This is the most fun I’ve had with a film in a while, and it makes perfect sense that BHHF chose this punchy, zingy and very bloody title to close the festival for this year.

Kick On (2026) closed this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2026: Mountain King

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

We begin Mountain King (2025) somewhere in the snowy Swedish countryside: the unequivocally wholesome activity of pressing flowers may seem like an unorthodox start for a horror film, but it soon starts to make more sense, especially from the perspective of what this seems to be – a folk horror. We have, as already mentioned, the setting of the remote woods; we have a botany student (code: rational) and, oh god, oh Jesus Christ, it’s apparently the (winter) solstice. Before too long, student Rachel (Sarah Eungsung Kim) begins to have presentiments of what she describes as ‘cosmic pain’ – a tingling, she suggests, of real pain to come. That’s alarming, but perhaps more immediately alarming is that Rachel’s brother Wyatt has gone missing out of his tent, leaving his jacket in the woods, despite the freezing conditions. Finding him is key; the two remaining members of the party head off to look for him.

Paranoia begins to hold sway, and if this all feels unusually brisk, or even appears to be in medias res, then that may be because this isn’t – yet – our main story arc. As our three strangers grapple with something weird in the woods, we may first feel a thrill of surprise at the snazzy title screen and accompanying music which takes us away from them, right before we shift our focus to a young woman called Hannah (Hannah Deale). It’s not quite that the cold open is deadly serious, but Mountain King seems to be having a certain amount of fun with this new character: Hannah, an American, gets out of her rental car, slips around in the snow in her $2,000 Louboutin boots and then turns up somewhere where, it seems, she isn’t wanted.

She has travelled to Sweden to surprise her boyfriend, Gregor (Carter Sirianni). Surprised? He certainly is. In fact, he moves from shock to mild panic, keen to get rid of her before his parents turn up. Too late – here’s mother Ingrid (Irina Malygina), but rather than being angry that Gregor has apparently brought an unexpected guest, she seems delighted, asking Hannah to stay for Jul. Hannah – who has come here to declare her love and to say yes, she will marry Gregor – is delighted, seeing this as an opportunity to prove herself and her commitment. Gregor has no choice but to acquiesce, and soon he, Hannah, Ingrid and father Wilhelm (Keoki Trask) are sitting down for a traditional Swedish Jul meal together.

A large swathe of this film feels like a blend of any number of awkward-comedic ‘meet the parents’ comedies, and Midsommar (2019), albeit at the other side of the seasonal cycle (the impression I have, possibly unfairly, is that a lot of recent folk horror has favoured the warmer months, but the winter solstice makes for a great backdrop too). The mention of comedy is key here, because the film manages to play for laughs, but not necessarily by laughing at the folklore itself, or the setting, but rather at people and their foibles – albeit with a very specific lens. But then, just when you think you are settling into an engagingly awkward, if potentially escalating situation, Mountain King successfully manages a complete and unexpected pivot towards something else entirely in terms of its plot. It takes a risk, but in this last-act about-face, blending different ideas and motifs, it achieves a big payoff. Somehow it hangs onto its lighter-touch tone and its nods to fairy tales, despite getting grisly in places, and despite occasionally touching on the very biggest human issues: belonging, family, love. In short, this film – with a small cast and a ridiculously small budget – does improbably great things. Shot in Pennsylvania rather than Sweden, it’s still plausibly Scandinavian, and everything is well shot and lit throughout.

Not at all what I expected, Mountain King starts by quite cheerfully sending its characters up, with a sharp script and some charming performances (with a very special mention to Hannah Deale who, successfully steers this film into its surprise final act). The film has plenty of ideas, but ideas which it weaves together effectively. Finally to its credit, it never scrimps on the elements which will endear it to its genre film audience, and it might just be a new entrant in the beloved Christmas (or Jul) horror canon.

Mountain King (2025) appeared at this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2026.

Sitges 2026: Heat of Madness

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

For many film fans, director Karim Ouelhaj probably established his style and vision with the staggering, stark Megalomaniac (2022) – and Heat of Madness (2026) is his first feature since that break-out title, which perhaps invites a certain level of comparison. The first thing to note is – despite some similarities in aesthetics and a similar unflinching approach to violence – these two films are very different beasts. Megalomaniac, despite the comforting rarity of its narrative elements, felt undeniably grounded in something real; Heat of Madness does not follow this same arc, preferring instead to unfold a bizarre, if very dark fantasy. It starts with recognisable roots, but elects to go somewhere very different indeed. The effectiveness of this choice is in the eye of the beholder, but its singular sense of ambition is beyond question.

We start with a taster of the film’s very deliberate placement of images and ideas and the camera’s slo-mo approach to these, with a series of as-yet mysterious images: a man visits a huge, deserted industrial structure; a man digs; a man passes what we may assume is a grave marker; something else looks like an assemblage of characters from a far earlier point in time, wearing medieval armour. What this means is not yet for us to understand – but we have a recognisable face, now appearing in what’s clearly a modern timeline – at an airport in Belgium. Scola (Olivier Picard) seems to be carrying only one piece of luggage, a briefcase, and whatever’s inside gets past customs with no real issues, so he’s permitted to go on his way. The briefcase is clearly valuable, so little wonder that people seem desperate to get their hands on it. A group of masked men (are they accomplices?) intercept Scola and his new companion; we can infer that the whereabouts of the briefcase will hereafter be an issue, and so it turns out to be.

We change pace here, picking up with Scola in a decidedly different, domestic setting (with time spare for a bit of the almost-casual observational misogyny which Ouelhaj elects to thread through this feature for our consideration, though less fixedly than in Megalomaniac). His wife is pregnant and wants to plan a proper future with him; this means no more criminal enterprises, but it turns out that the lost item is actually a number of valuable diamonds and what’s more, he has his doubts about his old partner Pedro (Claudio Dos Santos), who has his own domestic issues, and a similarly aggrieved wife. With items as costly as missing diamonds, however, it’s just not that easy to decide to detach oneself from that world. Scola feels he must go and attempt to fix this now dangerous situation – the diamonds were intended for sale to another criminal group, who very much still want them – and to find the stones, before the threats of the murder of his wife and other threats of retribution come true.

However, it’s at around this point that the film detaches its moorings from this symbolism-laden, but ostensibly ‘real’ narrative frame, heading into altogether more experimental terrain. Scola sets off to look for his diamonds, but begins to travel through peculiarly-remote places, a kind of Dante’s Inferno for a diamond crook, where the places he visits and the people he meets take on a supernatural significance. Ouelhaj’s recognisable, washed-out colour palette and its sharp, sharp contrasts accompany us once more through a long and at-times perplexing series of locations; Scola also picks up with a mysterious female companion (Julie Carroll) who declares her interest in ‘helping’ him, and as such, she becomes more and more necessary to him – this man who occasionally still seems to dip in and out of his old life, sometimes via flashbacks or black and white dreamlike interludes and sometimes by finding his way back to the places or people who matter most. Ouelhaj also intersperses all of this with some somewhat jarring moments of ‘should I laugh?’ or ‘do I really want to laugh?’ comedy, though maybe hanging onto some symbolic content all the same. Yes, I’m talking about the apples, that most symbolic of fruits, entering the frame here in a unique way, to say the least.

So what are we to make of all this? Heat of Madness is a metaphysical thriller, not a horror – albeit still punctuated by moments of intense violence, moments which immediately bleed into the film’s supporting world of flashback and dream. It’s bizarre, to put it mildly, to the point of potentially alienating fans of more conventional horror, many of whom were likely won over by Megalomaniac. Heat of Madness also potentially tests its audience by the way in which it dispenses with some of the initial forward impetus established by the opening scenes and set-up. It’s a risky business, and it lost this reviewer in places, despite Olivier Picard’s intense and consistent watchability throughout the film.

However, there is much to commend: the cinematography is superb, with a common sense of people being utterly dwarfed by their surroundings, as if to say that we are so much smaller than the world, and its great manmade edifices will be here long after our brief dramas are over. A kind of death knell for the Anthropocene, maybe, if we can extrapolate that far. There are some intriguing Jungian ideas here too, even if these are really allowed to percolate without explanation. But then, arguably, the film does wind up offering a more familiar-feeling explanation for its events: does this bring us back gratefully to our lead character/s and plot, or does it invalidate some of the strangeness which eventually gets us there? Again, it’s likely to be a divisive one, and overall it’s not really a film which lends itself well to a conventional review, either. Nonetheless, Ouelhaj has crafted something singular and – in the truest sense of the word – debatable here, even if it lacks the singular gut-punch he landed with Megalomaniac.

Heat of Madness (2026) received its world premiere at the Sitges Film Festival.