Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Hex ’em in Wrexham! Interview with Marc from the Phantasmagoria Film Festival

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

In a day and age when we’re being told that no one wants to go and watch films at the cinema anymore, it’s heartening that here in the UK – and of course, elsewhere in the world – independent film festivals persist in springing up and being (whisper it) a popular, fun way to spend a weekend, a means to support new, independent cinema, and an opportunity to watch tried-and-tested classics of the genre on the big screen. Whether you opt to spend your time with the big hitters like FrightFest, or smaller, grassroots projects (or indeed all of the above), there’s nothing quite like watching films with people who love them enough to send up a round of applause at the end credits. With that same vibe in mind, for the past five years Marc Brimfield has been running a film festival of his own. The Phantasmagoria Film Festival, which runs in North Wales. We got to chat with Marc about his experiences so far, the current state of play for film fans, festival organisers and festival attendees and that all-important ticketing info!

WP: Thanks for talking to us, Marc! Let’s start at the top: there are a few horror festivals, large and small, currently running in the UK: why establish one in Wrexham? And what has the experience of running a festival been like so far for you?

MB: The main reason for starting a festival was simply my experience at the Abertoir Festival. I had been to festivals before, but I suffer badly with anxiety and with my autism, I find it hard to connect with people. But then Abertoir was warm, friendly and had a relaxed vibe, while still having some of the best programming and guests on the UK festival circuit. I made friends and came a long way out of my shell and I thought if I could do this in my area, even if it was for one person, then I would have done something truly great, and I like to think I have. My audience attendants are low, but the people keep coming back every year and last year I was in tears when the father of a man with significant disabilities told me his son waits all year for it. Nothing had more value to me than those words. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard, it costs a lot of money, and even with funding, most of the time you are a lot of money out-of-pocket. But for me and my wife, it’s worth it.

WP: What have been your personal highlights from Phantasmagoria so far?

MB: Personal highlights for me, guest-wise – we have been very lucky on our budget – we welcomed 70s exploitation writer David McGillivray. As someone who loved films like House of Whipcord and Satan’s Slave, having him was a big highlight and he was very engaging with the audience. But we have also had more mainstream guests like Robin Ince and Jeremy Dyson, who not only went down well as guests, but wanted to hang out all weekend with everyone, which was fantastic. Some of our indie filmmakers who do so much PR for us like Kemal Yildirim, Michael Fausti and MJ Dixon have become staples, regularly submitting and always attending each year. Film-wise, for me it has to be the 40th anniversary screening of House of the Long Shadows with an introduction from Pete Walker and a Q&A with Julie Peasgood. It was one of the 1st VHS videos I ever bought as a kid and it has held a special place for me, so to not only talk with the director and one of the lead actors, but to also see the film with an audience – this screening may never be topped.

WP: You have opted for a slasher theme this year: talk us through that, and why/how you have chosen your titles...

MB: The theme came about because of an offer from MJ Dixon to show a film from his back catalogue free of charge! And since we were already planning on showing his 13th film, Bannister Doll Heist, we thought how great it would be to show his 1st film Slasher House too, and do a Q&A. It then made sense to do a slasher theme, but anyone can show Halloween or Scream so I had a think and after chasing two films to a dead end (Evil Dead Trap from Japan and Grave Robbers from Mexico) we realised we had to be a little less ambitious, but still interesting. So after seeing what we could and couldn’t get, we worked out that we need a 15 rated film, as our Friday is 15 plus, and decided that April Fools Day was the obvious fit. Not only does it tick that 15 box, but it also has the most original twist for an 80s slasher. Next, we needed something from the seedier side of horror, so Don’t Go In The Woods, the video nasty, was our next pick. Now I know it’s not a masterpiece, but it has the added bonus of almost never being shown on the big (or in our case medium-sized) screen, and that for me made it interesting: where else will you get to see it? We’ve followed this with Happy Birthday to Me, very 80s but with a big budget, a great director and inventive kills. Then some names people do know but are still not too obvious, as that’s our goal. We needed a Friday The 13th so which one; it can’t be 1, 2, 3 or 6 as these are all well-loved and get screened regularly, so – what’s left? I thought, out of all them, the only one I have never seen on the big screen is Jason Goes to Hell, so why not? it’s fun and silly and a perfect fit for the festival vibe. We still needed a staple, so Urban Legends was the only true choice.

WP: If people fancied coming along to the festival, what should first timers know about Wrexham itself?

MB: Wrexham has a rich history from being the burial site of Elihu Yale, and Wrexham Steeple is known for being one of the seven wonders of Wales. We also have Wrexham Lager, that’s one of the oldest breweries in the UK, and was actually served on the Titanic. Now of course the city is famous for its Ryan Reynolds connection. We are in one of Wrexham’s villages on the edge of the town. The venue itself is full of history, it was a theatre until the 1920s, where it became a cinema up to 1960. The upper floor balcony still has its original seats, so I love that I have brought a small part of its history back with the festival.

WP: As a festival with a balance of classic cinema and newer, independent titles, what have you noticed – if anything – about the newer horrors coming through? Are there any particular trends or ideas which you are seeing more and more of – any you particularly like? What would help a film get selected for Phantasmagoria?

MB: I think as a whole, new cinema does follow trends, but the beauty of independent film is that it’s very varied. From arthouse time travel pieces about revenge to werewolves in space, from dark themes like domestic abuse to out-and-out B movies and love letters to past films. As indie filmmakers mostly self-release, they don’t have the constraints of what will sell in the box office, or what the masses will like. It’s more like: this is my story, come experience it and if you don’t like it, it’s fine, but we are very proud of it, and I think that’s how film should be. Too often a good film comes along, and then you have three years of films that are ever-decreasing imitations. You will never get that with independent cinema. Even if a film shares its themes with another, it’s still its own entity, going its own way and it’s not apologetic about anything it does. Submissions for us are broken into three main things we look for: firstly, a good story, it does not matter if the budget is £1000 or £100000; if the story is good, it transcends its limitations of budget. Then it needs to have heart, maybe for me that’s the most important thing, and finally it needs to be original. We also put a high priority on films with cover letters: if they try and sell their vision to us with their own words, it goes a long way.

WP: Finally – if there’s anything we haven’t covered, please take the opportunity to talk about it here!

MB: I am a big believer in building a community. That’s why we have always said we don’t want to be the biggest or the best, we just want to show good films to good people, creating a safe space for all walks of life. Horror can be brutal, it can be disturbing, but it is supported by a community of gentle souls, and that’s what our festival’s about. It’s why we cap the amount of ticket sales, so we have space for people to not feel crammed in, and so that we have time to talk to people in a relaxed way. That will always be our ethos, as well as keeping things affordable. We charge just £25 for three days full of films, or £13 for a day ticket – as well as selling cheap but nutritious home-cooked stews and curries, all for under £3! We’re also good with letting people bring their own food in, so it can truly be accessible to any budget.

WP: Many thanks to Marc at Wrexham’s Phantasmagoria Film Festival, which runs from October 2nd – 4th 2026 at the George Edwards Hall in Wrexham. For more information, including tickets, please click here.

Night After Night (2026)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

A nightmarish (and as-yet mysterious) opening scene segues into what appears to be something like normal life, as we get started with Night After Night (2026): this is a false impression which persists as a motif throughout this alienating, unsettling film. We meet security guard Andy (Scott Poythress) and his buddy Willis (Johnny Sibilly). They work for an exclusive university – acres of space, polished concrete, you know the type of place – and the two men develop a grudging work friendship. However, Andy values the discreet, even secretive work environment he has found. He isn’t apparently too keen on building bonds. Alternating between a lonely motel room and his place of work, he has apparently quite deliberately moved to the periphery of the everyday.

Having already reviewed the fantastic Recluse (2026) this year, it’s already clear that director Josh Lobo is already a master at sculpting an uneasy, rising atmosphere. And as in Recluse, Night After Night doesn’t need to travel much distance in order to generate that feeling. It has that same sense of tense, febrile outsidership; although Andy speaks directly to the audience via a voiceover, the presence of the voiceover can’t quite offer the consoling hook which it might: it, too, is struggling with the film’s emerging world. Audio design, also fundamental in Recluse, cloaks Night After Night in a similar weirdness, despite not being a plot point in its own right here. By the time Andy gets temporarily moved to a solo night shift, we’re ready for the persistent sense of something nightmarish – aural and visual – to bloom.

This it does. Whilst exploring the building, Andy finds a hitherto-hidden room, which he feels inclined to investigate. When he shines his torchlight into the room, he sees a mysterious, naked figure, cowering from him.

He’s unsure what to do (and well he might be); unable to confront the figure, he contacts his mysterious boss (Alexis Louder) but her advice is only this: use your best judgement. Arguably, he’s already a long way beyond ‘best judgement’. Poythress looks authentically exhausted and nervy from the start of this film; his estrangement from his family is briefly treated, but it’s enough to ground his mental state in something tangible. He soon enough sees other, different, nude, voiceless people in the building. Is this a haunting? Are they really there? Beyond Willis, the only communication he really has is with Therese, a woman living out of the motel room next door to his own. A faceless woman, discussing voiceless figures. When the film shifts its attentions briefly back to Willis (via an intertitle, a device I hate but which actually works here), we can expand our understanding somewhat – even if via two alienated men with compartmentalised lives and a sense of ingrained ennui, although each man reacts to the situation differently. As the figures keep on appearing, it could be that they are linked, in some way, to the mysterious work and ethos of the university itself. Equally, it could be a much more singular ordeal, simply brought out by these unique surroundings.

Whilst Night After Night offers brief hints of other films – it’s hard not to make some comparisons with It Follows and even The Shining – it also deviates from those, as this emphatically is not a clear narrative with clear, agreed-upon supernatural aspects. Its more… evasive than that, and its symbolic, even solipsistic approach (contrasted with the later arrival of another security guard, who tries to overlay meaning on the mysterious place where they work) will alienate some viewers. However, its broader, more malleable approach really does reward the attention. Cinematographer Bryce Holden has done it again, and the film’s artistic shooting style (blending timelines, high colour, black and white, negative flash transitions, a range of edits) serves its approach and ethos very well.

It’s heavy on the mystery, it’s more periphery than plot, and Night After Night works best when you accept its dedication to quieter moments of creeping alarm, where you could, if you were so inclined, project some of your own anxieties (Lobo has stated the film is a means of channelling his own anxieties about the world). It’s slow-burn, but in the year which invited us into the liminal spaces of Backrooms (2026) it certainly seems as though the surreal, shifting world of the after-hours workplace has a lot of diverse horror to offer, and this gloomy, metaphoric mood piece deserves acclaim.

Night After Night (2026) releases on 28th August 2026.

Fantasia 2026: Bowels of Hell

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

São Paulo party planner Malu (Martha Nowill) has a lot to do, toilet breaks notwithstanding. She has a cake to worry about, there are last-minute arrangements to make, and her twins’ father hasn’t come to pick them up as arranged, which is unhelpful, so she optimises a spare moment by helping to yank out her son Luan’s loose milk tooth. He’s unfazed, so much so that he takes himself back into the toilets for another look and, by jumping up and down on one to see himself in the mirror, ends up impaled to death on shards of porcelain. It’s a lively start, but Bowels of Hell (aka Privadas de Suas Vidas) doesn’t quite turn out to be the horror film which this opening sequence suggests. It’s not quite a comedy, either, and suffers as a whole for its genre-hopping, oddly lax approach to pace and narrative. It’s a shame, though it does have some gloriously OTT scenes along the way – scenes you’d fairly expect from the title, premise and opener.

Years pass: we see Malu answering nature’s call again, but rather more unsuccessfully; after losing her son, it seems that her trauma has manifested itself in chronic constipation, to the point that she appears to be pregnant and suffers from a lot of the secondary symptoms: she’s often nauseous and faint. Her daughter Luana now identifies as non-binary and goes by a new name – Genesis – but there have been complaints at school about them dedicating more time to gender ideology than their other studies, and they risk expulsion as a result. Malu is worried by this, but she isn’t on board with Genesis’s pronouns or name change either, and the two are frequently at loggerheads about it. Genesis’s disdain for gender norms extends to an upcoming gender reveal party which Malu is planning for an obnoxious Momfluencer who lives in their apartment building; Genesis sees it as an emblem of everything which is wrong with society, but Malu is taking the job regardless: she needs the money. It’s when she gets to know ahead of time that the new mother (Chandelly Braz) is pregnant with twins that her own symptoms start to worsen; during a routine vomiting session, she is devastated when she loses her son’s milk tooth necklace down her toilet, and the combination of blood, vomit and tooth causes something malign and murderous to manifest in all of the toilets in the building.

Why? We don’t know really. There’s no lore here; there’s no ritual, acknowledged or otherwise; there’s no extra-terrestrial presence. We just accept there’s a new, angry and unseen entity which now manifests in the pipework of the building and hates the people using its, erm, facilities. But it bides its time…

We’re fairly familiar with scatological (mainstream, mainstream) cinema by this point, and usually encouraged to laugh, or feel disgusted; occasionally, we’re asked to feel grossed out to the point that it becomes a trial. From I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle to Butt Boy via Bad Milo, there’s plenty of gross-out laughter, although the latter manages to successfully pivot into a surprisingly touching story about mental health and wellbeing. Last year, Fantasia screened Flush, which placed a version of ordeal horror in a dilapidated toilet cubicle; the smallest room is a surprisingly versatile setting. Here, though you have to wait for it, there are some fantastic, bold practical FX, even if they are condensed in terms of the runtime allowed for them. It’s accepting the blend between the psychology of grief and repression and the unexplained toilet gore which is a harder sell.

A suspicion develops by around the twenty-minute mark, and extending for quite a spell beyond twenty minutes, that the film’s decision to pause – setting aside the horror elements which we are probably ready for by now – is so it can introduce a raft of different characters, and not just so that something awful and scatological can happen to them (though you also know that it will, eventually). A number of social justice topics are alluded to, and several characters are in here so that those topics can be explored. We get to see all of their various quirks – the inclusion of toilet roll theft is a strange choice, in a film where no one ever seems to wipe – but in many cases, the film is often mean-spirited in ways which feel unnecessary. Complete and balanced redemption for characters who are given cruel treatment isn’t mandatory, of course, but you note the decision itself. To allow itself so many of these grim little vignettes, the pace grinds to a halt; accepting that the film has undergone a title change for Anglophone markets (its original title means Deprived of Their Lives, which strikes a rather different note), ‘Bowels of Hell’ sounds like it should have a touch of urgency, doesn’t it? When you remember that the film runs to nearly two hours – well, 111 minutes – patience for what can be done with the not-quite horror, not-quite comedy and not-quite camp arthouse stylings begins to wane.

Still, the actors’ wholehearted dedication to what they’re doing, the energetic summing-up and the best of the film’s practical work will win enough audiences over, and Bowels of Hell is certainly a bizarre enough skit to get people talking. It is proudly grubby, rather self-indulgent and in the sheer amount of squabbling and big topics it includes, not really on anyone’s side in a meaningful way, but it certainly has ambition, and if you can forgive a lot in exchange for a seismic shit-spraying finale, then your patience just might get rewarded.

Bowels of Hell (2026) received its North American premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival. For more details, please click here.

Fantasia 2026: A Safe Distance

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

We start with a shock in the opening moments of A Safe Distance (2026), as a tranquil forest setting erupts with a gunshot – and the film then obliquely reveals a body. Two women silently depart the scene, clean themselves up and then hitch their way out of there, finding their way to the nearest bus station. Finally, they talk – at least a little. They’re heading to Winnipeg; they’ve done it; they’re free. The substance of this victorious moment, and how we get to this point, is the subject of the rest of the film.

We then seem to move back in time, meeting thirtysomething couple Joey (Chris McNally and Alex (Bethany Brown), the latter of whom we have already briefly met. As they drive, they discuss a spate of recent bank robberies in the area, the freedom it would bring and so on – all pipe dreams of course, a mere distraction as they make their way to the start of an anniversary hike and camping trip in the woods.

This isn’t really Alex’s thing, but that’s seemingly of little note to Joey. It probably isn’t really his thing, either, though he does have some limited camping experience and a bit of macho bluster to carry him through. As such, he convinces Alex to accompany him on a hike up a nearby mountain, to enjoy the beautiful view it affords. She’s reluctant, but dutifully follows along. It turns out that this is all part of Joey’s plans to propose to her, but at the big moment, Alex hesitates, long enough to make it clear that the answer isn’t an unqualified ‘yes’, and Joey’s feelings are hurt. By the following morning, he has made the decision (and apparently this is a thing) to abandon her out there. She wakes up alone, with no means of navigating and no food and drink. Happy anniversary!

Lost and soon injured, too, Alex is fortunate enough to encounter two other campers, Kianna (Tandia Mercedes) and Matt (Cody Kearsley), who assist her – though there are some significant looks being exchanged between them, and a sense that Alex may have stumbled onto something. Still, she sticks with them. As time ticks on, however, Alex finds herself becoming way too inveigled in Kianna and Matt’s business, and then – as she becomes more intimate with Kianna – implicated in it.

I have commented on this in a number of reviews of films which use the same sort of ‘90% along then loop back’ framework, as it’s a popular device amongst filmmakers, particularly in thrillers and horrors. It allows for a punchy cold open, as here, but it’s still arguably both a temptation and a risk. Having revealed something very significant, the film is then under pressure to link back up with this in a meaningful way, though at least some of its tension and surprise has usually been sacrificed to do it. That pressure is increased here by various clues, readily offered up by the film from the very beginning (and used several times throughout). It leaves a tough sell for director Gloria Mercer – who has previously directed a short film by the same title, containing similar plot points.

However, she chooses to concentrate her efforts on key aspects of the relationship-building here, and even with the inclusion of a couple of slightly clunkier plot points, it works: both Brown and Mercedes are great in their roles. Some of the gender politics in the script feel overwritten, though perhaps there’s a kind of rough justice in rendering the male characters into stereotypes as a means of progressing the plot, but A Safe Distance by and large looks great, with a good balance between remote wilderness and intimate spaces, with just the right amount of impetus and interest to keep things going.

You always know that more is coming here, and the sense of two women finding far more solace in one another than in their partners works well. There’s a spark there. All told, A Safe Distance is doing a lot of things well, and if the element of surprise is (mostly) in short supply, then what we do have is a decent sense of isolation, characterisation and redemption in a neat crime thriller.

A Safe Distance received its Canadian premiere on 30th July at the Fantasia International Film Festival. For more information, please click here.

Fantasia 2026: The Last Footage

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Myanmar is better-known to Westerners for its political situation than for its cinema scene – much less its genre cinema scene – but low budget horror has developed a decent foothold in the country, with The Last Footage (2026) director Arkar Soe Oo already a well-known name domestically. The Last Footage is the country’s first ever found footage title; that’s interesting timing, given that the subgenre has been in decline in the West for some time. But the film is also an opportunity to see a side of life in Myanmar which would otherwise remain hidden, and the film obliges, starting with a few snippets of everyday life for a group of young, affluent Burmese – each first displayed with a user ID. We first see them variously playing music, out for a run, riding a motorbike – and ghost-hunting, apparently for an online audience (and doing some early blurring of the lines, as this actually has nothing directly to do with the film which follows). Then, we get the standard found footage introduction: it’s the template established for modern viewers by The Blair Witch Project, which tells the audience, ‘only this footage was ever recovered’.

However, time has moved on since BWP, which was made – at the time of writing – twenty-seven years ago, so probably before some of our cast members here were born. Nowadays, the template can be cleaned up to an extent by the presence of new technology, like smart glasses, which helpfully makes the inclusion of people using mobile phones feel much more plausible, because you can easily do both at once (and it rids us of the perennial question: ‘why are you filming?’). There’s a small but effective range of media in play here. We meet the group again: if the film is a little over-the-top in identifying people by their names and perceived social roles (the hot one, the geek, etc) then let’s put that down to a little bit of naivety about how much of this is strictly necessary. The group has come together for dinner, and one of their number – Thu Ya (Charlie Nyein) – is pleased to announce that he has recently inherited part of the Wingabar Forest, specifically a rubber plantation which had belonged to his late grandfather. He wants to take his friends to the area (which has accommodation), and everyone agrees to accompany him.

They get there by bus, and the sudden appearance of a local driver who loves Bob Marley so much that he dresses as him is our first solid clue that things may not be about to pan out entirely seriously here. That could either appeal to audiences, or put them off: it depends on the tone you want from films like these. Interestingly, from a cultural perspective, one of the girls, Wa Na (Thiha Tin Aung Soe), has to unexpectedly bring along her little brother, but no one reacts with the kind of horror which the sudden addition of a child would likely cause if an adults-only excursion had been planned anywhere in the West. More pertinently, the bus is stopped before it gets to its destination by Thu Ya’s estranged uncle, who wants to warn them off, but – ends up going with them. His is a harsh warning, apparently there to be ignored, but helpfully, we now have someone on board who understands the apparent dangers. They reach their destination, warnings about respecting the forest be damned, and they do what outsiders inevitably do: they awaken some kind of malign presence.

Here, for this reviewer at least, the film starts to burn through the goodwill which it may or may not have generated up to this point. Firstly, it rattles through an array of rather generic and grating plot points in short order, first by having the little boy mysteriously disappear, then by the sudden presence of a rather caricatured witch, who has been squatting in Thu Ya’s forest accommodation for an unspecified amount of time, filling the place with candles and ritual objects (one thing you notice about this film which is, remember, ostensibly taking place in the middle of nowhere: the amount of actual darkness is incredulously low). There’s more to come. Ritual, and the understanding of ritual, movies into place as a key consideration, but we see surprisingly little of it; it’s suggested that some of the party have previously held rituals or mishandled rituals, and then the witch has a few rituals up her sleeve, but we as an audience are held apart from the finer details of these. It’s enough to know that they’ve gone wrong, and that the witch is up to no good, using the ignorance of these outsiders to endanger them.

True found footage – if we can really accept the conceit – has to be a little loose, because we have to believe no unseen hand has come along and edited whatever it is we are watching into a neater, tidier shape. The Last Footage does, to do it credit, play out in what feels like real time. However, the film also underlines the careful balancing act required of this genre; much of the film devolves into back-and-forth talking and arguing, which again feels understandable if this is pure ‘found footage’, but it’s overwhelming for the viewer, and feels like it prevents the film from generating any suspense, or a sense of place. A little more eeriness would be lovely here, whatever the tone finally chosen.

By the end, there are some entertaining, if well-worn folk horror ideas here, and no doubt some of the issues around plot explication and pace are down to a certain amount of inexperience with handling all of this, but The Last Footage does suffer for its often jumbled, sometimes busy, occasionally baffling inclusions or omissions. Whilst it’s always intriguing when hitherto-unknown (to the West) filmmaking nations join the horror canon, that in itself isn’t enough to supersede a film’s issues. Keen found footage fans can probably find enough here to love, but for those of us who may have had our sympathies eroded by countless examples from the genre which haven’t hit the mark over the years, The Last Footage unfortunately can’t do enough to refresh or rejuvenate the framework.

The Last Footage (2026) received its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival. For more details, please click here.

Nightborn (2026)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Nightborn (2026) is a film hectic with female and feminine anxieties. In common with director Hanna Bergholm’s last feature film, Hatching (2022), it explores childrearing and infant care through a supernatural lens, and whilst the supernaturalism itself flows parallel to the very real human issues in the story, the supernatural elements themselves are beautifully handled and well put together throughout.

Husband and wife Saga (Seidi Haarla) and Jon (Rupert Grint) have decided to set up home in the Finnish forest where Saga spent her childhood summers. The house, which previously belonged to Saga’s grandmother, is a fixer-upper for sure; the forest itself seems to have staked a claim on the place. But Jon and Saga seem blissfully happy and determined to make a go of it. They have also decided that they want children; Saga, with all the confidence of a non-parent, declares that she would like three babies in the next five years. Jon, with all the naivety of a non-parent, nods the idea through.

That shimmering, verdant Finnish (actually: Lithuanian) forest doesn’t stay beautiful and idyllic for long, however. As the couple explores the woods near the house, the place falls oddly silent; it’s a haven for pareidolia, too, and funnily enough, Londoner Jon notices it first – though that doesn’t stop him getting it on with his wife and then, the next thing we know, Saga is giving birth, bloodily and traumatically. Jon, bless him, goes and gets her a bunch of long-stemmed roses to mark the occasion, thus neatly signifying to the audience that he is well-meaning, but a little daft. Nothing could be less use in the circumstances; he may as well have brought in a traffic cone.

More pressingly, the baby himself is gearing up to be a challenge, even by newborn standards. He hates being touched, he hates sunlight and he was born covered in hair. Saga, still running on the fumes of societal expectations and oxytocin, wants to believe that everything will be fine, even though she is exhausted, has significant birth injuries to heal from and is already suffering from acute anxiety.

Yes, Nightborn is a dark fairy story, and there’s a reasonable school of thought which could interpret the whole film as an allegory for the feelings of panic and destabilisation which first babies can bring; it’s mentioned in the film a few times that children can feel like little aliens, impossible to understand or deal with. But at the heart of this film is a woman in (mostly) realistic circumstances, becoming lonelier and lonelier. Saga is trying so hard to inhabit a role she’s been prepared for all her life; as she struggles and becomes submerged in doubt, people around her deal with it by babying her or ignoring her concerns by turns. Of course, the deep dark woods played a role in this child’s conception – Kuuru (a name with various nature-based meanings in Finnish) responds to his environment differently to most babies, but Saga’s plight as a new mother is what really carries the film.

However, underpinning this are elements of Finnish faery lore; the forests, which cover most of the country, were thought to harbour potentially malign elemental spirits, akin to the faery folklore found in different variants throughout Europe. It’s clear to see some links with the folklore about changelings in the film (and equally clear to see how changeling lore itself derived from exhausted, alienated parents who blended their doubts and anxieties about childrearing with supernatural ideas as a means to externalise and to explore them). Kuuru (who is nearly always carefully hidden, remaining in shadow or being filmed from the back) bites, maims and grunts his way through his first few months, to the soporific smiles of everyone – except Saga. It’s maddening, for us and for her, and some of the film’s more extreme sequences approach awkward comedy on several occasions.

Fair play to any film which refuses to flinch away from the grisly realities of childbirth and nursing like this, even if it’s employed for some degree of shock factor. Horror cinema has generally proven itself least likely to flinch, but even so, a small run of films over the past twenty years or so have dared to show us details which would have been impossible previously. The birth scene here, which follows directly on from the sex scene in the film in a startlingly quick edit, with a shot of the baby’s head tearing its way into the world (and I am not exaggerating here) does exactly what it sets out to do: make us look. That popping perineum is not the only source of blood in the film. There is lots of it. Lots and lots, running from nipples, filling sanitary pads and even sometimes drenching the floors.

Then there’s the crying. Kuuru cries constantly, and that squalling baby sound is hardwired to get under one’s skin: it does so very successfully here, running through the biggest share of the film’s dialogue. Pertinent to all this is the lack of connections between women in Saga’s life; no one listened to grandma’s (useful) tales; Saga’s mother, bless her, has hard and fast boundaries and no desire to play granny; Saga’s sister tries, but has a long list of ‘recollections which vary’ when it comes to their childhoods. It all leaves Saga – who isn’t perfect by any means – wide open to the events which overtake her.

The more isolated Saga becomes, the more the fantastical elements of the story come into play, offering a visually accomplished and often artistic breakdown of reality. There’s no neat exposition checklist, and the film even hangs onto some ambiguity as it rolls to a close, despite the tragic and unsettling events at its core. Don’t let the gore fool you: there’s more at play here, despite – if we’re being picky – a couple of oddball physical scenes which don’t quite fit with the tone used elsewhere.

Nightborn (2026) comes to Shudder from July 31st.

Fantasia 2026: Corpus

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Corpus (2026) is a brooding and subtle horror film which reveals its key ideas very slowly and carefully; arguably, it never allows us to understand everything, preferring to focus on its sensual, uneasy world-building and those who finds themselves there.

We start in 1997: there’s an as-yet unseen photographer doing a shoot with a young model described as ‘green’ – in other words new, inexperienced. The girl, Wren (Nuha Jes Izman), is excited to be working with Billie (Lily Cowles), whose work has received a lot of recent acclaim. Billie uses this to immediately inflict trauma on the girl, by calling in another model – a nude male, wearing a strange, fetish-looking get-up that we don’t get to see too closely, but we see what it does to Wren, who is panic-stricken and reduced to tears by his arrival. Billie justifies it by saying this kind of work is necessary in an industry where having ‘the edge’ is everything. This fraught and uncomfortable rush-through sets us up to consider the power play inherent whenever someone is being observed, seen, recorded – and photography is a component of this, even if it only forms part of what is later offered to audiences.

Moving forward in time by a year, we meet New York City photographer and petty coke dealer Sayo (Jeff Wahlberg), just as he’s about to arrive at a trendy nightclub to fulfil both roles. He’s a local, he knows everyone and he seems to be in his element here. However, his evening is destabilised somewhat by the arrival of local boy made good, actor and Celluloid cover star Vincent (Brodie Townsend) who has been off building his career (and not staying in touch). There’s some history here, to say the least, and it’s enough for a slightly ambiguous and super-charged reunion between these two, first at the club and later, back at Sayo’s place. But we learn one thing: the photographer responsible for Victor’s recent magazine cover is the same photographer we met previously, and she is throwing a special party at her house out in the country. Vinnie has been invited, and he wants Sam to come along: he says it’ll be great for networking.

Eventually Sayo, who is trying very hard not to just succumb to his barely-repressed feelings for Vinnie, as he still feels very angry with him, agrees. Accompanied by mutual friend, party animal and designated driver Ross (Michael Vlamis), the three men head out into the boonies early the following day, ostensibly for the party of a lifetime. However, when they arrive, it’s not quite what they were expecting.

At the sprawling country house, they are greeted by three women: Billie, Wren – who seems to be over her initial photoshoot – and Cata (Ching Valdes-Aran) who seem to be in a kind of open relationship with one another, none of which they are particularly shy about sharing with their guests. The reason for the occasion is an unusual one, too: it’s St John’s Day, one of those rarest of saints’ days where the birth of a saint, rather than their inevitably horrible death, is celebrated. Regardless, given that the three men are still recovering from the night before, the candlelight meal and the feeding-by-hand which begins to go on feels like a lot; they’re relieved when more of a conventional party finally follows on from dinner, with coke, booze and sexual tension back on the cards. Despite this, the strangeness of the set-up and the by-turns voracious, and then guarded behaviour of the three women makes it difficult to relax. Intoxication brings the problems between Vinnie and Sayo back to the surface, but it’s hazily clear that, brewing in the background, is something far stranger. The film takes on an increasingly uneasy atmosphere, but there’s a subcurrent: you know instinctively it hasn’t quite got where it’s going yet.

Corpus is a meticulously designed and realised piece of cinema with heady, absorbing aesthetics: it’s quite the experience. Its use of colour and light – especially at night, which is when this film comes alive – is consistently beautiful, but at a deeper level than this, the film’s tactile qualities really stand out. It’s a very intimate film. Skin – often seen up-close – looks dewy, or sweaty, or even sickly here. The film often centres around cinema and celluloid, photography and the clicks, whirrs and processes which analogue photography necessitated, back when this was the only means of capturing likenesses and images. There is lots of handheld camerawork, giving the film a malleable, immediate feel, especially in how it tracks faces and responses. Sayo is at the heart of this; the majority of his performance goes unspoken, and he is often doubly distanced from events around him – we see him listening or observing from afar, and you feel for him, and for the sense of isolation this engenders. He’s a sympathetic character, and you share his increasingly fraught mindset as he begins to glean that something, at least, is not what it seems. The sensual focus on male bodies from the perspective of women – or, subtly differently, from a woman’s perspective, is also an unusual addition here as the triangle of Billie, Wren and Cata never come out and explain anything about their lives, how they live or what they want – other than their determination to celebrate a saint’s day in their own inimitable, quaintly hedonistic way, with their own motivations.

Of course all of this is a gamble, this reticent approach which may challenge audiences expecting certain kinds of explication, but in common with a few other prolific horror/sci-fi titles which have also kept their secrets, it’s the more engaging for those denials. We learn enough, and having bonded with the characters we’ve accompanied from New York City, we can still see Corpus on its own terms: as a languid, unsettling piece of high weirdness, a sensual nightmare simmering with unspoken subtext. Give it the time and space that it deserves.

Corpus (2026) received its world premiere at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival. For more information, please click here.

Mockbuster (2025)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

When do you first remember seeing an Asylum studio title? Established in the late 90s, they may have been knocking around for a while before they ended up on your radar. So at a guess, your first Asylum title might have been Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009) or if you’re a little younger, perhaps Sharknado (2013), or else you may have forgotten exact titles, but definitely remember witnessing a fight between 80s pop sensations Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. (It was in Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.) In any case, it was (and still is) a wild time, with a slew of low-budget titles designed to be derivative and lowbrow, pivoting around old, dependable exploitation cinema tropes like giant sea creatures, mad robots, aliens, zombies and of course, the mockbusters designed to ride the coattails of whatever Hollywood is doing at that particular time. But how do these films get made – and who makes them?

Mockbuster (2025) is one answer to that question, giving us a rare behind-the-scenes perspective from a first-time feature director, Anthony Frith, tasked with directing a spin on The Land That Time Forgot (and providing a voiceover for this film). Frith starts by acknowledging the quandary of getting involved with such a studio: you have to start somewhere, but you might never get past it. He got the gig, incredibly, after sending The Asylum a tentative email asking if they were looking for directors. Be careful what you wish for. Turns out, they were, provided said director can work to a six-day shoot, perhaps sub as an actor when needed, and of course abandon themself to the process, even when it’s not fully clear what that process is.

Frith, not only as a newbie but as a newbie getting his first experience of directing under, shall we say, unusual circumstances, is perennially humble and surprised during Mockbuster; he’s open about not feeling very comfortable in front of the camera, but he’s at his most organic when he seems to almost forget about the documentary, abandoning himself to a kind of harassed laughter when for example, he finally receives the script – late, with a vast array of locations, characters and developments. He’s less amused when they then cut his already miniscule budget and expect the same content, but hats off to Asylum producer Brendan, who arrives to cut corners like a pro and saves the day.

Yes, you will need more than a passing interest in this kind of behind-the-scenes detail, but on the whole, the whole thing is rather endearing. it shows that you do need to give any film your all to get it made, regardless of whether it’s going to be rammed full of CGI dinosaurs in post-production (great work if you can get it) and everyone who works on this film seems to come round to it, really wanting to give their best. It provides a new, or at least an expanded perspective on the filmmaking process, and a reminder as a reviewer to be constructive wherever possible (though lambasting a film is always acceptable if someone is just phoning it in). Asylum, to do them credit, sort of are ‘phoning it in’, but there’s an earnestness there to counterbalance their cynicism which means they just about get away with it. Perhaps they’re the reason we should start grading cynicism, sort of like a Beaufort Scale. By the way, the Head of Production at The Asylum looks comfortingly and exactly like you’d hope he looked, and actually, all of the people employed at the LA head studio are utterly disarming, Whisper it, but they even make some solid points about the Hollywood machine. Their ethos is: always make a film for less than you think that film is going to make as a profit. It’s not art and it’s not Tarkovsky, but it has its place and in the spirit of honesty, some of his could really use some dinosaurs.

Mockbuster shows the filmmaking process for what many of us may know, or at least expect it to be: fun, but frustrating and filled with snags. And the film gets made! Will The Land That Time Forgot ever make it onto anyone’s favourite film list? It’s highly unlikely – though not completely impossible – but seeing it come together is entertaining, the preview screening at the end looked like an absolute blast and despite the Asylum Wiki coming in quite hard on the studio as a team of slavedrivers (see second paragraph), they were willing to take a chance on a first-time filmmaker when most wouldn’t, and that has to count for something. There’s a lot to be said for that kind of shrug of optimism.

Mockbuster (2025) is available on digital from 27th July.

Fantasia 2026: Unholy Night

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Zombies and Christmas: why haven’t we had more of this combination before? The overlaps kind of write themselves: gluttony, conspicuous consumption, a strong tradition of being trapped in the house. Unholy Night (2026) begins well, and clearly has a sense of how these two things could work well, but after a bold opening sequence which seems to suggest the kind of fun overkill you might expect from the schmaltziest time of the year (and the potentially bloodiest genre), it unfortunately loses that impetus. In trying to do too much it does too little, and there are some questionable decisions in here at the filmmaking level (this review is based on an early cut of the film, so there’s still a hope that the AI/CGI-generated exterior shots may yet get replaced).

We start with a picture-perfect Christmas gathering, but there’s a knock at the door: all hell breaks loose, as an undead man lurches into the home, killing everyone in his way (save for a little girl, who is helped to escape by her father). This is a hopeful taster of what’s to come, but we’re then taken elsewhere with a different family. It’s not as picture-perfect, but this Canadian-Italian extended family certainly has its standards, with even a mild break in tradition being met with sheer dismay (adult son Gino’s Hawaiian shirt has to go; you slice, never cube a melon). Finally, everyone is sat at the table to eat. Being a Catholic family, the dead are mentioned almost as much as the living, as if they’re still around; well, funnily enough, it seems they are.

There has been an arrival. Upon hearing a commotion in the kitchen, Gino (Marc Bendavid) and the rest of the clan peer around the doorframe to see Nonna (Jacqueline Robbins) standing at the hob. The issue here – as we might guess from hints in that opening scene – is that Nonna is, or was, deceased. She seems fairly tranquil at first, but after a little family bickering, we soon have a temporarily outraged, undead Italian matriarch, disturbed whilst cooking, and ready to commit ultraviolence (see image above)…

We’re still operating within the film’s quicker-paced early segment at this point, so it may seem that the family members are being offed so quickly that we’re going to run out of them, but this doesn’t continue for too long. It becomes more imperative to work out why, exactly, members of this particular family are finding their way back (we soon encounter other extended family members too, returning to their old homes). It turns out that the picture-perfect gathering we already saw going badly wrong actually happened to mama Lucia (Toni Ellwand) during her own childhood; it wasn’t a different family at all. Lucia cites ‘disrespect for one’s ancestors’ as a potential cause for all this. An alternative Italian tradition, perhaps? Even more importantly, the family needs to find a way to reverse it, and to send the dead back to wherever they came from, which is also currently unclear. But perhaps it isn’t just this one family? Keen to offer help to old flame Rene (Shailene Garnett), who is back in the area and getting swept up in the same unfolding panic, Gino makes it his business to get to the bottom of the situation.

There are some great ideas here, with a strong, engaging start and a film which seems to be confident in its tone and direction of travel. That initial threat ebbs and flows, however, and that undead rage is absent from some of the zombies, occasional in others and permanent in just one, which affects the film’s impetus. Of course, this isn’t a straightforward zombie film and much is made of the mystique of what’s happening and why, but it does mean a varying level of risk, with moments where it feels like the living are putting themselves in harm’s way simply so that we can add a zombie sequence where there are, at that point, none. The appearance of some of the zombies themselves vary, too, in line with how their demeanour shifts around. There’s a blend of CGI effects (not great) and some practical ones (better), but despite some fun – more than truly formidable – zombie scenes, the film endeavours to shift more towards the family dynamic, but in so doing, spreads itself rather thin.

There are different ways to adapt the zombie theme, but it seems to work better with consistency; either it’s all-out carnage (name any one of a number of titles), or else it treats the undead as a puzzle rather than an immediate threat (such as in Handling the Undead), but it feels necessary to pick an approach and stick with it. However, Unholy Night wants to ponder the situation, as well as having the undead operating as some kind of classic zombie threat.

But there’s one thing which unites the rest of the film, and that’s finding an answer to that question: why are the undead coming to Christmas dinner (or wandering around more generally)? One idea has a lot of potential here: something gets mooted early on which suggests that domestic and familial roles are so pressing, perhaps particularly in a traditional, conservative family set-up such as this, that they can potentially be enough to raise the dead. Are things not being done properly? Sauces not made? Shoes being worn indoors? Time to come back to sort it all out; Nonna’s first move, remember, is to start cooking. That has promise, because it could allow a whole lot of discussion around gender, class and all of those big social topics which often come up in zombie cinema – being a genre which often lends itself to such, whether a horror, a horror comedy or anything in-between. Sadly, this turns out to be a bit of a red herring, left behind in favour for a far more bland proposal, which itself dissipates.

It feels like we run out of justifications, but having gone down the track of offering a number of different justifications, the steady, if occasional array of zombies and deaths feel less interesting. Characterisation and relationship building can’t quite get off the ground against this shifting backdrop, either. Unholy Night has some charming and inventive aspects, though it drifts wide of the mark after its initially very promising opener, becoming a much more diffuse and variable proposition as it goes. It remains surprising that zombies turn up at Christmas so comparatively seldom, but despite some engaging content here, that door remains open.

Unholy Night (2026) received its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival 2026.

Fantasia 2026: Sour Minnows

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

“The whole point was you’re not supposed to space out.”

We find ourselves following two pleasant but aimless young men during the opening scenes of Sour Minnows (2026), as Ricky (David Brown) and Tepper (Chase Williamson) talk contentedly about this and that, though often circling obliquely back to their favourite topics: filmmaking and film. They’re stopped in their tracks when they come across a rather strange event: there’s a group of men, all laying down on the pavement, excitedly licking it. To be fair, it would stop you talking; it surprises Ricky and Tepper so much that they drop their groceries and flee.

At least, that’s what Tepper remembers happening. Ricky’s not so sure. The experience has had an immediate impact on his sense of time and place, affecting his perception. But he tries to carry on with things, which includes a date with fellow cineaste Aura (Suzanna Son) – it’s just a shame that their connection is also being affected by the erosion of any helpful baseline of ‘normal’.

Whilst it’s difficult for Ricky to make sense of what is happening to him, he’s not alone. Something is going on in this town. I mean, you could glean that from the pavement-lickers, but that wasn’t just a one off. That was an odd thing, but this is an Odd Thing, identified with a strange, seemingly sentient yellow hue which comes creeping through all the reveries, time slips and other kinds of sensual dissociation which are now occurring.

However, most of these – or at least in terms of what we, the audience, gets to experience – seem to affect Ricky in particular, even though Tepper and Aura have some rogue experiences of their own. We often stick with Ricky, and he is a sympathetic character, a guy with dreams of doing something more meaningful than the AI testing which he can barely describe out loud, other than bemoaning his ‘day job’ undertaken only to pay his bills. Lots of the experiences we see him going through are fairly nightmarish, too, wresting him ever further from the everyday without providing easy answers (though he does, eventually, find some means to address his questions).

Whilst Sour Minnows plays coy a lot of the time, it’s seemingly happiest when poking gentle fun at film fans, or considering the craft of filmmaking more broadly. With its meta-links to cinema, celebrity and even a spot of analysis of these, it disrupts the comfortable divide between film, filmmaker and viewer. There are, free-floating around here, bigger ideas about purpose, creative and finding meaning in chaos which perhaps resonates all the more these days, after the Odd Thing which was the pandemic and how that seemingly changed everything – not just filmmaking, of course, but certainly impacting upon filmmaking (and the kinds of films which have been possible, or seemed possible since that time). And perhaps Ricky begins to serve as a kind of Gen Z everyman after a while; he’s likeable, and you want him to prevail. You willingly stick with him, even when you’re lost alongside him.

But how to describe Sour Minnows overall? What’s my strapline? How about ‘hypno-mumblecore with a dash of Brecht and some trippy existentialism’? That could do it – perhaps. Truth be told, trying to impose a regular review structure on these kinds of experimental films is always a challenge, but then the viewing experience is a challenge, too. Sure, this is a film which could be classed as studiously inane on first pass – Brechtian mumblecore is a love/hate thing I suspect – but there’s a lot of work and technique, not to mention skill, behind this film. The issue, insofar as films need appreciative audiences, is that it’s always a little difficult to really envision who these films are for, beyond a suspicion that they’re more to analyse and unpack, than to enjoy. But director and writer Harrison Atkins knows this full well, having worked through similar with Lace Crater (2015) – the ‘strange-but-self-aware’ seems to be where his creative interests chiefly lie.

Sour Minnows (2026) received its World Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival 2026 on July 24th, screening again on July 29th. For more details, click here.

Fantasia 2026: Home Bodies

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

We first see ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ (twins Emma and Ian Ho) as babies; these two children, now in their early teens or thereabouts, seem to have spent their entire lives in a spacious, but rather dark and dated-looking home, with only each other for company. However, this isn’t Megalomaniac (2022); the kids seem contented, they are clean, comfortably dressed, verbal (so someone has been teaching them), with access to food and drink. Minus the apparently-absent caregivers, things are – by most parameters – pretty normal.

When we look closer, though, things begin to look a little different. Firstly, these two get engrossed in games and activities which feel far too young for them. There is some kind of presence which watches over them – known to Red and Blue as ‘Papa’ – but it’s an unseen presence, offering only brief answers and messages in response to their as-yet very simple requests. But when the children accidentally break a window during one of their interminable games of catch, Red notices a beam of light and what we know as a keyhole, though she doesn’t know anything about keys. Still, it’s enough to prompt the girl to feel a little curious, for the first time, about the world outside – whatever that may be.

Perhaps as a distraction, or even as a punishment, the children soon find themselves waking up on what Papa refers to as their ‘forty-second’ Noel, a classic Christmas morning with tree and gifts. Here’s our first clue that time and space may not be running to the expected parameters here, or that perhaps Red and Blue are living to a curtailed clock, so that the excitement of Christmas comes around more than yearly. But there’s something else: an unexpected present. There’s a person under the tree, and at first Red and Blue, who are used to complete isolation, are barely able to recognise it as such. They’re petrified, but Papa assures them that all will be well. They have a new responsibility: to look after their new pal. No further details are given to them.

It’s a big ask; this young person, whom they decide to name ‘Pal’ (Ess Hödlmoser) is mute, passive and yet, surprisingly sinister with those traits, operating – whether they are aware of it, or mean to do it – as a disruptive force, especially for the more childlike and accepting Blue, whose scarred hand speaks to an unnamed past transgression and a real fear of change as a result. Red is more accommodating, desperate to fulfil Papa’s edict to look after their new friend, but via the wordless Pal, this soon means exposure to evidence of a far more disturbing world out there somewhere. The twins begin to grow apart, but Blue does find a way to reassert himself in his own way, soon enough – with all the repercussions this brings.

Whilst not a film which tasks itself with much in the way of on-screen violence, and even when nothing outwardly alarming is taking place, Home Bodies feels like a film with sinister bones. Its framework – real, but unreal – is communicated to audiences via its superb production and sound design, together with excellent performances from all of the lead actors (and we can’t overlook Ess Hödlmoser in this, as their presence on-screen is impressive, even though they remain silent). It all unfolds in a well-realised immersive environment, and it’s an interesting experience as a viewer, because we experience the film through concurrent shots and exposure to more of the setting than either child can experience in quite the same way in that moment, but we are trapped on their level, too, subject to the same, hovering, unsettling questions as them. This description of a closed environment with a seemingly indifferent overseer does have precedents, both on-screen and in literature. There’s a little of Vivarium (2019) in here: ostensible comfort; a home-like set-up; an observer or system which excludes the unwitting objects of focus from what the hell is going on (see also: Silo), something which feels even crueller when it involves two people as young and as vulnerable as Red and Blue. But perhaps most of all, director Casey Walker (In a Violent Nature, The Void) and his writing team (Adrian Murray and Marcus Sullivan) seem to have created a film which has significant overlap with the fantastic 1995 novel, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, a supremely compelling story about a similar kind of prison – yes, we can call it that – operating under a similar array of large-scale questions.

All of these potential inspirations or precedents, whether incidental or acknowledged, suggest bigger-picture ideas about ethics and self determination, and Home Bodies makes compelling use of these throughout. It’s visually rich and smart enough to work well as a metaphor, of two children being tasked with the formidable, barely-understood responsibility of growing up, gaining independence. But it works on its own terms too as a subtle and enthralling piece of science fiction, brave enough to hint, not tell. Home Bodies is an unsettling, but mesmerising piece of world-building.

Home Bodies (2026) received its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival. For more details, please click here.