Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

The Dreadful Place (2025)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Independent cinema needs to do a lot with a little, and this has to be one of the reasons it now so often dodges linear narratives, preferring imagined spaces or fractured timelines in order to explore its key themes, particularly if they are large or significant themes. Horror is primed for this by its nature: give us a dreamscape, say; make the monsters symbolic rather than literal, and a lot of the work is done.

This is the basic premise of The Dreadful Place (2025) in a nutshell: Willow (Keaton McLachlan) is about to mark the anniversary of her father’s traumatic death and this triggers a series of unpleasant nightmares. She has to negotiate her way through these nightmares in order to resume real life again. In terms of a plotline – that’s it. We see her first zoning out of an admittedly slightly tedious, but functional everyday life, then going far further, pitching headlong into a world of dreams peopled variously by her deceased father, her creepy neighbour and her ex, so it’s clear that all of these men, to some extent, have been troubling her unconscious mind. There are some other key players too – mostly friends and co-workers, transformed into challenging or disagreeable versions of themselves as a means of drawing key truths from Willow so she can ultimately wake up and get back to her regular life, free at last of the unspoken, unexplored emotional baggage she’s been carrying around for these past six years.

It’s never made abundantly clear to the audience where the dividing line between waking world and dreamscape falls, though there is actually very little beyond the opening credits which isn’t at least partly a dream. For viewers, having gleaned the basic premise of residual trauma, a lot of the experience of watching this film is sorting ‘real’ idea from nightmare, picking out the bare bones of the background story. This is certainly experimental in its way, and given that director and writer Cole Daniel Hills, as a new and a young filmmaker, has chosen this potentially contentious approach, there’s has to be some credit due for making his film his own way.

However, it’ll likely be divisive when it gets out into the wider arena. For this reviewer, it’s not quite my bag, for reasons I’ll explain. For me, the sheer number of films whose stories operate in some never-never, ungoverned by anything coherent or complex feel – on the whole – like something of a cop-out. Rendering most of a feature-length film down to a long run of uncertain, obfuscating dreams divests the film of any narrative weight, clarity or cogency, meaning that the film feels meandering and unsteady, even across a relatively economical ninety-minute runtime. Ninety minutes of dreams, there to reveal a fairly self-evident array of truths? It feels repetitive, and it also requires an amount of patience which has ebbed over the past few years. There’s a similar feel here to a lot of the ‘quantum horror’, if we can call it that, which has popped up post-Covid, when everyone lost track of time, place and reality and made films about that: characters operate in maze-like, unreal scenarios, deliberating about themselves to get the kinds of answers you might seek in therapy. The Dreadful Place feels, in many respects, like another film doing this, and unfortunately it suffers, for me, by the comparison.

However, to give it its dues: it does pitch itself at an interesting point in Willow’s life, coming as it does not immediately after her loss, but six years later: she has, in that time, been keeping her head above water perhaps, but not dealing openly with the ideas troubling her and this has left her vulnerable to this kind of temporary breakdown. The Dreadful Place does capture something of the escalating unpleasantness of nightmares, and of how they co-opt people and places, quickly moving from normal to uneasy to frightening; there are some nicely set up scenes and there are inclusions here which are genuinely eerie. All of this is underpinned by Keaton McLachlan’s strong performance as Willow; Willow is played with sympathy throughout and given that McLachlan is on screen for nearly every moment of the film’s runtime, it’s so important that she’s able to do so much with this role. Essentially, there are lots of good elements here and every reason to suppose that future projects will go from strength to strength, even if the central premise of The Dreadful Place isn’t to my particular tastes.

The Dreadful Place (2025) will be released digitally later this year.

Future Date (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Bear with me, but here’s a question: how do you connect to other humans when you live in a harsh dystopian future where everyone shelters from the outside world in isolated pods with only apps for company? Phew. It gets answered in a light-touch, quirky kind of way in Future Date (2024), a film which is perfectly well aware of what it can do well and what it can’t, or won’t, do in its runtime and budget.

We start with a check-box rundown of the dystopia future we’re in: there’s some on-screen text describing the various reasons people can’t go outside anymore. We then meet a man called Ry (also director and co-writer Stanley Wong) who devotes a lot of time to a dating app called CNKTR, and it says a lot about our timeline that I’m sure you all just read that as it’s intended to be read. Ry wants to meet ‘the one’, but his eagerness for connection leads him to interface with the dating app like it’s a job in its own right. If you want to improve your chances of meeting ‘the one’, the of course, statistically, the best thing to do is to match with everyone. He’s less clear on the reasons why this isn’t necessarily the best approach. Next up, we meet a young woman called Ria (Shuang Hu) and she couldn’t be more different. She isn’t interested in dating, or connections; she wants a promotion, and she wants to earn enough to buy a house. Isolated shelter pod, no more. But she just can’t catch a break, and it seems like she’s going to be stuck misting her plants for all eternity, fielding critical emails from her parents as she does.

Things look up when CNKTR, under the guidance of the boss’s son Dallas (Johnny Pemberton), runs a competition: meet a person and share a connection, and CNKTR just might award the lucky couple – a house! They have to live in it together, but it’s a house, and a house is a hell of a prize. Real estate turns out to be quite an important consideration in this film; it’s important enough that Ria is willing to shelve her aversion to dating in order to be in with a chance to win; no matter that she has only just signed up for the app in order to enter the contest. Ry is no less keen on the whole soulmate thing as he too takes part in the process, but a house would be great. They get selected, which means a crash course in how to behave towards other people in person, but – it’s not a disaster. They actually get along fairly well. This is great for their personal connection score, which could help them to win that house, but what about each other? Is there more to this than just a score?

This is a film about a hundred times tonally lighter than most of the projects which find a home on this site, but Future Date is charming, engaging and nicely written, to the extent that it could carry just about anyone along with it. The filmmaker knows what we know – that nothing being presented here is ground-breaking in terms of its ideas or themes, but it’s all confidently handled with neat characterisation, a good script and a deft pace which works perfectly. There’s a sprinkling of ideas rather than a deluge, but little additions, like the morning wake-up announcement which blandly intones, ‘Here’s what can kill you today’, add something appealing and humorous. It’s a visually appealing film, too, surprisingly colourful despite the claustrophobia of a world without real windows, with some fun ‘it is what it is’ SFX. The use of split-screen is good, too, creating the illusion of more space when it might all feel a little oppressive.

As non-moralising as Future Date remains, there are some take-home messages here, all put across with characteristic calm charm. In a world where personal interaction is almost completely bound up in the virtual, it’s hard to distinguish what’s real and unreal; everything is perfunctory because it’s all about algorithms, points and feedback, and for Ria and Ry, this makes their character arcs occasionally quite tricky for them to navigate. People can be at cross-purposes, for instance, but are still being evaluated as data. All the tech in the world can’t fix this disconnect, mainly because people build apps – cutting-edge technology is hardwired to emulate (then consolidate) human awkwardness, because we make apps in our image. This is captured nicely by the character of Dallas, always at hand to generate some more comic relief.

Future Date is the previously unthinkable: a vibrant, dystopian meet cute which has heart and humour. It pokes fun at us – gently – by using a futuristic perspective to do it, and although there have to be some bleaker moments woven into the whole, given the setting and timeframe, the film gets the balance of light and dark just right. It also eschews a straightforward ‘happily ever after’ structure, giving us a little more than the expected, too. As a first feature by short movie maven Stanley Wong, there’s a lot to love here.

Restless (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Restless (2024) is a domestic drama which, in places, edges close to the horror genre – with a few scenes and ideas which even suggest some ambitious horror genre-splicing. However, for the most part, it retreats into domestic drama, layering this with a psychological case study of a woman (described in the synopsis as an ’empty nester’) already on the edge, and pushed further and further by a sudden change in circumstances. There are some issues with Restless, but its lead actress is never in doubt, and one of its key strengths lies in showing just how quickly a lack of sleep can erode your sanity.

We begin at what seems clearly signposted as ‘four fifths of the way along’, a fairly popular structural feature in independent film of late which then leaves itself the rather tough job of linking up with the high tension moments of the opening scenes. We meet Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal), driving to the middle of nowhere in her PJs to dig a hole in the woods…then things move back by a week.

Just a week? Well, a week’s a long time in these situations. At this point, we find out more about Nicky: she’s a geriatric nurse; she has a lovely tabby cat (oh God, no); her son has recently headed off to university; and, as she watches a van arrive one morning, she’s a little perturbed to see new neighbours moving in next door, to the house recently owned by her parents. After her shift, she’s reminded of these new people by their blaring music and a party which goes on into the night. So she goes to speak to them.

There are some shades of Eden Lake here, in that the rather stereotypical neck tattoo, pitbull and love for all things hard techno might all combine in neighbour Deano (Aston McAuley), but he does seem amenable – at first. Obviously, these films would be rather short if one reasonable conversation sorted things out. The nightly noise continues, and Nicky gets less and less rational. Clues amass that, nightmare neighbours or not, she’s extra reactive just lately, and that we could be seeing someone losing their grasp. It’s so hard not to shout advice about earplugs (though she does get some headphones a bit later, and for reasons I’m not super clear on, takes them back off again, better to engage with the din.)

The week progresses. Nicky grows steadily more unhinged, and something’s gotta give…

Well, to a point. We’ve discussed how the film edges close to horror but doesn’t fully commit itself to horror; as such, there’s no sudden escalation into ultraviolence or some massive, culminating plot point, despite lots of signposting that things could well get there – which could feel somewhat deflating. In its determination to grant Nicky some peace, quiet and closure, the script steers clear of anything too damning. Perhaps it’s more keen to grant harassed neighbours some kind of wish fulfilment situation where things get resolved much more easily than they typically do, though the denouement feels rather bolted on – and could just as easily be the start of a new wave of escalation, frankly. This is one of the film’s issues, and another case where the 4/5 start point causes director/writer Jed Hart some difficulty.

The other issue is the film’s use of humour, particularly in the first half, which makes Restless feel like a tough call tonally. Having invested in the escalation of tension, the rather sudden-seeming diversion into moments of comedy is both surprising, and something which works against the atmosphere developed up to that point. It happens later, too, though it’s usually confined to the script by then, but the effect’s comparable. That said, Restless lands a few points about modern British life which will feel relatable: the whole ‘making ends meet’ thing, the issue of workplace understaffing, bureaucracy and buck-passing and of course, the paper-thin walls in a lot of terraced housing. It’s a familiar-feeling world.

Lyndsey Marshal is on screen for almost all of the film’s (modest and appropriate) ninety-minute runtime, and she does a very good job of carrying audience interest, particularly given that, for a lot of this time, she’s not actually speaking to anyone. Given that her mental state is already fraught at the beginning of the film, the tendency to film her sitting in almost total darkness also encourages a strong, often physical performance from her to convey that anguish laced with irritation which is so necessary to the part. There’s a certain amount of stereotyping along the way – of course an ’empty nester’ (coded as female, naturally) would have little to do except cleaning and frenetic cake-baking in her son’s absence – which does suggest a somewhat limited notion of what women do, think and feel. There are some aspects of characterisation which never quite feel fully-formed in this film, and this goes for Deano too, whom we properly need to believe is a dangerous wanker, but comes across mostly as a jovial wanker, right up until he turns out to be worse – although, we don’t get to know him in much depth, and the script has to be held responsible for that.

Despite these issues, though, it’s clear that Jed Hart has directorial nous for moving the action through a range of settings – domestic and exterior – and for allowing the space and time for a good cast to show just how well they can perform. It’s also appreciated that he’s told his story in a sensible, reasonable timeframe: were this film diluted down to two hours, the review would be a lot harsher. Restless shows us a recognisable and unpalatable slice of modern British life with plenty of visual flair, and whilst it loses its way in some aspects, for a first feature, it has key strengths to recommend it.

Quiver Distribution’s psychological thriller Restless was released digitally on Friday, May 23rd.

Birdeater (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Don’t take medication which isn’t intended for you. Think twice about taking medication which is intended for you. These are the takeaway lessons of Birdeater (2023) – a film which relies heavily on altered states for both its linear and experimental plot points. This is as much of a moral standpoint as anything you get on its feted themes of gender and power, and unfortunately this is just one of the film’s many issues.

Sickly, soon-to-be-married couple Irene (Shabana Azeez) and Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) do everything together, and yet Irene has not accepted that her fiancé may just be a malignant misogynist. This may be the intended point of Birdeater – and many films of its ilk which present this kind of thing in varying degrees of clarity (usually attended by varying degrees of menace, subtext and violence). Here, things are given the oblique treatment right up until they aren’t. For now, we learn that – to make up for a minor spat over wedding planning – Louie has invited Irene to accompany him on his stag do (bucks party, bachelor party – delete as applicable). Frankly, this seems a strange decision: the girl is so fragile, it immediately feels that she will be a hard sell as a vindicated woman, let alone a final girl (hey, the film blurb promises a ‘feral nightmare’; that sounds like horror to me, so a final girl element isn’t out of the question at the start). We see her variously asleep, weeping, or taking pills – drinking glasses of water she hasn’t fetched for herself. Already, the odds of her having a good time feel slender.

The party is taking place – where else would it take place? – at a cabin in the middle of nowhere. The partygoers assemble, and it turns out actually that Irene isn’t the only woman present after all, making this feel a little less like a bucks party and more like a weekend away. People get settled in – there’s lots of bottles of beer opening, a few scenes of people chasing one another/throwing bits of wood, and plenty of time afforded to showing us various pills and substances which are quite, quite clearly going to get consumed shortly. This includes Irene, whose own pills are also presented as a likely later plot point. Essentially the stage is set for the party to get very messy. But how? And why?

And – for a while – if? The protracted feel to the film, in terms of how long we hang around at the shoulders of these people as they do precisely nothing, provides a sense that we may never get anywhere, and honestly, that is exactly what comes to pass. There are long interludes, a very jagged, unsustained sense of growing tension and a burgeoning sense that this isn’t going to be anywhere close to a horror, but more of an experimental wander around the vaunted topics. There are some tighter moments – who doesn’t love an awkward dinner speech about someone else? – but the film as a whole feels clunky. Ideas about the weaponisation of anxiety, about aspects of control – these are given far less development time than plenty of aimless, trippy filler, meaning less interesting or engaging content generally.

All of these issues are compounded by the film’s self-indulgent runtime. It’s nearly two hours long, meaning poor pacing, odd decisions and – most gallingly of all – a failure to really establish engaging characters and dynamics, despite more than ample opportunities to do so. All of the usual markers of meaning cede to long, rambling experimental sequences which bring nothing to the film. Then things peter out, unresolved and unchallenged. Given that this film purports to be about toxic masculinity, it largely ignores women themselves. Oh, it finds time for a random naked female dancer in a merkin – we never find out why, or who she is – but do we get under the skin of the female characters in Birdeater? A charitable reading would be to accept a meta-analysis, positing that the absence of female characterisation is intentional and points to socially-accepted norms, etc. But I can’t. It just feels like more evidence of clumsy oversight and muddled intentions. This may well be the film which directors and writers Jack Clark and Jim Weir intended to make; the press release may do it something of a disservice by placing it in a horror context, but then IMDb does that too. But even if horror is furthest from your mind, this film’s tangential, eccentric decision-making will prove a hard, hard sell for many audiences.

Birdeater is in UK cinemas 9 May and digital platforms 26 May from Blue Finch Film Releasing.

Vulcanizadora (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

There’s a scene in Vulcanizadora where, in the darkness of the woods, one of the main characters unpacks a Discman and some analogue speakers he’s brought along to entertain his friend on their camping trip. Nothing works; the cable isn’t connected to the speakers at first, but they hiss anyway; the Discman skips and stutters, as they had a habit of doing. He finally gets it going, but ‘the show’ feels like a let-down by this point – just part of the toxic nostalgia which threads through the film and ensnares its characters. It’s a little funny and a little farcical, but it speaks to something deeper and more significant going on, a weird compulsion to cram as many disappointing but familiar experiences into this brief trip into the woods as possible.

We begin with the two men earlier that day, hiking deep into the Michigan woods. They chat affably enough, though it’s Derek (director/writer Joel Potrykus) who holds the floor, talking about the petty details of his life as they walk. Something feels immediately off about this. At first, it’s in the way that Derek’s good buddy Martin (Joshua Burge) seems troubled, and has little to say. But then, as Derek regales him with a tale of how he’s lost his keys, he finally asks – why do you need them? Why would you need them now?

This, then, isn’t a regular catch-up, and there’s something more at play. So they walk deeper into the known-unknown woods towards an agreed destination (with a couple of pauses as Derek stops to seek out something hidden since boyhood (hardly a Pulp Fiction briefcase moment, but it serves to underline his sad attachment to an unremarkable past). Things…even things which once held some sort of meaning, some brief excitement, are disappointing. Life has been disappointing. People have passed these guys over. Even when they get to their end point, the feeling is much the same.

But it’s at this point in the film that things take a much darker turn. Should we be laughing? Yes? No? In any case, the consequences of this fateful pact begin to branch out in unexpected ways from this point, prodding at the decisions which have been made and impacting upon the lives of others.

Whilst this kind of mumblecore/slacker/Temple of the Dog fan dialogue won’t be for everyone, it’s hard to imagine Vulcanizadora working so well without it. The unplanned feel of the lines and the unpolished delivery creates a compelling and plausible impression of men for whom the passing of time has proved to be a numbing experience. They’re both still stuck at an adolescent level – when things were, even if not promising, at least possible. The unrehearsed feel of their story gradually reveals uncomfortable truths about these people, who probably always wanted to be noticed and appreciated, but were never resilient nor erudite enough to be heard.

There are differences between them, though: Derek is more openly childlike. For him, the whole trip seems childish, in the sense of shrugging off the routine inanity of adult life – which only occasionally is described in enough detail to reveal it as pretty traumatic. Marty has other demons, more specific and pressing concerns, but he is determined to keep a hold on these. He wants to stick to the plan. These characters have appeared before in a Potrykus film; here, they’re no different and no better, but increasingly jaded and lost. The pain of letting go of the past, even when the past sucked, can be a burden – and the plan, The Plan, goes characteristically awry.

As the film progresses, the occasional guilty laughter dies away and we’re left with a rather weighty, existential piece about the distance which opens up between old friends. Okay, here it’s illuminated by an absurd and brutal situation, but the fact remains. Ultimately, this film is a tragedy about being overlooked – how it feels to never get the hang of living in a world which judges you, using criteria you never agreed. Vulcanizadora builds pathos for these men without simplistically siding with them – and certainly never by overwriting them.

It’s fitting that key moments of the film feature digging around in the sand or the dirt, looking for what you think you left there; the whole film is a search for lost things, and where it does make you laugh, it comes with a side-order of something close to dread. It’s an interesting, uncomfortable watch.

Vulcanizadora (2024) is in select cinemas now.

“Who’s going to help you?” Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

To mark the recent Shameless Films release of Four Flies on Grey Velvet, we’re running a special feature on the film – which contains spoilers. Please watch before you read!

Roberto (Michael Brandon) is a young musician; things should be good, but he’s… nervous. As he has been moving around in the city lately, he has noticed someone who seems to be following him, and one evening – frustrated and paranoid – he gives chase to the man. When he confronts him, a fight takes place and the man is fatally injured as a result. Roberto is therefore implicated in his death; if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out someone was indeed following him – someone with a camera, who snaps an incriminating reel of photos before making their getaway. Roberto is understandably troubled, and when the photos start to mysteriously appear around his apartment, he feels sure he is being set up for a blackmail attempt, or some kind of life-changing character assassination, the nature of which he can’t quite yet guess. His home is no longer his own, and seems to be quite easily frequented by the person or persons who wish him harm, promising him that further ordeals are coming. Too terrified to tell the police, and deeply reluctant to pour his heart out to his somewhat distant wife, Nina (Mimsy Farmer), Roberto has to use unorthodox methods to try to defend himself, opting for a run of comic-foil private detectives and itinerant friends of his. This has limited success: murder and subterfuge are closing in on Roberto, leaving him essentially alone to face down whatever and whoever is targeting him.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet, the last in Dario Argento’s rather accidental ‘beast trilogy’, is redolent of many of the most desirable traits of Italian genre cinema of the early Seventies. The giallo – named for the lurid yellow-cover pulp crime novels of the mid-20th Century – was rather rapidly developing and reshaping itself as a wealth of ideas, fixations and possibilities emerged in the minds of the genre’s most pre-eminent directors. Dario Argento has described Four Flies as ‘party biographical’, a Freudian nightmare which, like many of Argento’s titles (and certainly his beast trilogy) centres around a male protagonist, rather than a perhaps stereotypically highly-strung female (though that motif certainly comes into play here). It is a film about suggestion as much as it is about meticulously planned murder set pieces; violence is far more often implied than seen. In other respects, it is a dizzying dream world, with dream sequences which function as scene changes, pace shifts and psychological assessments. As much as psychologists are mentioned in the film, psychiatric care happens off-camera, or is relegated to the past – where it has proved rather ineffectual, to say the least. The only help which comes in the film is from people who are outside polite society, themselves abandoned by society’s great institutions. The killer is correct to be so sure that no one is coming: essentially, they aren’t.

Interestingly, the only time the police are really present in the film is to raise the possibility of an experimental procedure which – like most other things in Four Flies – would sit just as happily in an Edgar Allan Poe tale, but for the fact that the daguerrotypes of his day weren’t quite as handy as modern cameras – certainly not for surreptitious snaps. After the murder of Nina’s very accommodating cousin Dalia (Francine Racette), the investigating officer suggests attempting a practice known as (but not named as such in the film) optography, a debunked theory which first arose in the 19th Century, but persisted into the next century too – clearly for long enough to entrench itself in folklore, and to resurface as a fantastical plot point in Four Flies. Optography was the ideas that whatever a person saw in their dying moments would be somehow imprinted on their retinas: find a way to access this image, and you solve the mystery of whatever happened to that person. It’s a kind of charmingly simple, even hopeful idea, nonsense of course, but a bridging point between modern scientific practice and long-held folkloric beliefs about the ingenious behaviour of corpses. It was long maintained that a murder victim’s body would react in the presence of its murderer, a process known as ‘cruentation’; from the other perspective, the ‘hand of glory’ folk tale attributed mystical powers to the severed hands of hanged individuals (see, ahem, my book for more on these). Optography is the perfect addition to Four Flies, then, not only granting it a backstory for that tantalising title, but also adding a layer of myth and perhaps magic to an already heady blend of modernising Italy and forces which seek to infiltrate it, wreaking havoc on its younger generation.

You can easily argue that giallo – on the whole – is inherently reactionary, a horror fantasy of what happens when old forces and values bloodily reassert themselves against those who err. The Late Sixties and early Seventies were particularly fruitful years, a time when Italy itself seemed to grapple quite hard with issues pertaining to its new generation gap. The world of Four Flies seems immediately fraught, a film full of Seventies references from prog rock to space hoppers, but also a world impinged upon by other, older, more knowledgeable others hellbent on exploiting a talented, if nervy young man. From the earliest reels, the presence of the would-be (or could-be) assassin reveals to us an older man, suited and booted and clearly from an earlier era. A party anecdote (!) about the ultra-conservative Saudi justice system has a haunting effect on Roberto, positioning itself as the ultimate terror of powerlessness in the face of deep-rooted institutional power. The reach of the state, and its general disinterest in the individuals it affects, is present elsewhere in the film too: the great vulnerability attached to mental illness and the lifelong impacts of institutionalised care echo through Four Flies, reaching an alarming crescendo during the film’s final big reveal. However, if anything, the message here is that this care has failed. Remote or absent older generations also provide chaos for the young. The sins of the father are visited very literally upon them, even whilst ‘sin’ (and the Church) are conspicuous by their absence. Perhaps in Four Flies (and beyond), the asylum serves a similar purpose. The only ‘God’ here is a drifter, though he does at least come to people’s aid.

Cast adrift in this perplexing, discomfiting modern world, we have Roberto: Four Flies is, above all else, a very lonely film. Even before the film’s denouement, other characters seem to be queuing up to exploit him, and he is a man largely unable, it seems, to defend himself. As the audience, we are positioned in such a way that we’re invited to suspect various people in his life, usually women, but then again we are also made privy to the masked plotter assembling the photographs which incriminate Roberto: it looks for all the world as though we are looking at the film’s villain, but eventually we are disabused of this idea, too. As much as we we get to see Roberto’s trauma dreams, we are not omnipotent spectators in the film and we have to remain on his level, for the most part, as events unfold. We’re as vulnerable as him, and we’re also made to wonder at whoever is picking off other people close to Roberto.

As uncomfortable as it is visually dazzling, Four Flies is an intense viewing experience, hanging onto its secrets until the runtime is very nearly up. That much of this takes place against a rather privileged, easeful background is all the more interesting. The older generation are impoverished; however, Nina is an heiress, Roberto basks in her reflected wealth (well, to a point), and they chide (or ignore) the older, poorer people who work on their behalf, with a big share of the film’s black comedy moments coming at the expense of the working classes; that poor postman deserved more. And yet, for all that money, Nina is psychotically unhappy and Roberto is being targeted by a psychopath. He needs someone with nothing to come and assist him. Money certainly doesn’t buy happiness here, and it takes a rather balletic accident to truly end his ordeal – meaning, again, that chance, not the benevolent reach of old certainties, roll things to a close. Four Flies paints a distinctive, intoxicating version of its place and time, and a delightfully cynical spin on the world in which Dario Argento – then a young man himself – was both making his way and his films.

The Killgrin (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Misery becomes a literal monster in The Killgrin – a film which nods to a number of established horror ideas and other projects, but benefits from the ambition of director Joanna Tsanis in terms of pulling those ideas together.

Airport worker Miranda (Konstantina Mantelos) is just getting off her shift at the beginning of the film: we don’t witness her lengthy journey home, but we see her interacting, a little carefully, with her partner, Noah (Fuad Ahmed), who seems to have been ill. However, he assures her he’s feeling much better. Miranda seems a little incredulous, and it seems she’s right to feel that way. Noah disappears from the apartment; he leaves his phone behind, which is never a good sign in modern life. Miranda looks further, and quickly finds out what happened…

Three weeks pass. Miranda, recently bereaved, is now in a group session – her first time. Whilst there, she is besieged by another attendee, a man called Brian (Adam Tsekhman). He blends a rare kind of social awkwardness with – god help us – a kind of attempt to hit on Miranda. She, however, has bigger concerns. Since losing Noah, she believes she has been tracked down by a controlling ex-partner, now leaving her roses at her apartment. The police have little to go on, but Miranda is scared enough to head to a friend’s place for a while. She still can’t be swayed from her conviction that someone – her ex, in fact – is coming for her. She’s nervy, seeking answers, and finally throws herself on the mercy of a psychic for a tarot reading. The psychic tells her something: that there’s a ‘darkness’ following her, which she refers to as a Killgrin – a kind of infection in her aura, wishing her harm. Miranda is not convinced, but then, as her personal situation gets more desperate and terrifying, affecting her loved ones too, she’s ready to believe anything.

Old ideas about mental illness tended to externalise it, seeing it as proof, amongst other things, of supernatural forces and The Killgrin uses this idea as a source for its own horror. Of course this necessitates playing with sensitive topics in a way which will not be for everyone, but Tsanis has experience of this kind of fable-making, and it works well here, walking a careful line between whether there is some supernatural force or a very earthly one; it’s a while before you can say with any certainty. It’s in many ways a very lonely film, focusing on a woman who has come through an immense amount of personal trauma, and you believe in Miranda’s growing sense of panic. Many of the most effective scenes here are very subtle (although there is some striking, if minimal, use of gore FX, too).

Miranda also exists in a fully plausible world of medication, counselling, group sessions, complementary therapies, routines…all recognisable points om the map for those undergoing mental health difficulties. This includes covering some unpalatable truths about suicidal ideation and self harm; the attention to detail that, despite the decision he makes, Noah has shaved and looks ‘smart’, has been sadly borne out by lots of real stories and situations. There’s a lot of careful observation here, accompanying the central conceit – the horror of a harbinger of personal doom following people, and moving from person to person. There’s some affinity to It Follows in this idea, only perhaps – worse? The people afflicted in this film have even less to go on, even less rhyme and reason for what is happening.

There are some issues with The Killgrin: there’s something of a lag in pace just before the hour mark, allowing for some character development, but dissipating some of the tension (Brian’s character changes quite a lot during the course of the film, by the by, and he can feel a little difficult to appraise). The monster itself in its different forms may be divisive; in other respects, the film may feel like a development of ideas in Smile (2022) and Tsanis’s own, earlier short film Smile (2021), and perhaps in some respects Carved (2007), if we were to turn that frown upside down. But all in all, there’s plenty here to enjoy on its own terms, with some innovative scenes, good callbacks and confident writing, and a welcome and ambitious attempt to launch new horror lore – whether or not some aspects feel familiar, that is commendable.

The Killgrin (2024) will receive a theatrical/VOD release on 24th April 2025.

Interview: directors of Redux Redux, the McManus Brothers

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

After reviewing their latest feature, Redux Redux, it was great to get to catch up with directors The McManus brothers – Kevin and Matthew. I’ve been very interested to see where they would go next after their first horror feature, The Block Island Sound, hit Fantasia Fest a few years ago. Since then, there’s been some TV series work, but it’s been back to writing and directing a genre feature with Redux Redux – and it’s good to have them back. The brothers were kind enough to agree to answer a few of my questions – many thanks to both!

WP: Okay! The Block Island Sound (2020) was your first horror feature – accepting there are other genre features in there, too. What first drew you to this story, and to this genre? Similarly, although there are also elements of other genres in your most recent film Redux Redux (2025), there’s undoubtedly horror throughout – so what has made you stick with the scares and the darker aspects of fantasy?

MB: I think there are two kinds of kids: Christmas kids and Halloween kids. We were firmly in the Halloween camp growing up. When we first picked up a camera when we were eleven, the first movies we shot were scary movies, and even before that we’d organize sprawling haunted houses for all the neighborhood kids. So I think the horror genre has always been a part of who we are. It’s what we watch, it’s what we dream up, and it’s what we love.

WP: You’ve made two features which could, respectively, be classed as eco-horror, and multiverse horror – which are both indisputably hot subgenres right now with a number of recent titles. What drew you more specifically to these?

MB: We just like to wait for a genre to be completely over saturated before we go in and beat a dead horse! With Redux Redux, we wanted to make a multiverse movie where the story was small, and the multiverse was very familiar. If there are an infinite amount of universes out there, then the differences between so many of them would be infinitely small. It was a real desire to ground a multiverse story as much as possible, and see what kind of story could come out of that approach.

WP: You both write and direct as The McManus Brothers and your sister, Michaela, has also appeared in both The Block Island Sound and Redux Redux. Two questions about this: do you ever think you’d be tempted to act in one of your films? And secondly – are you keen to keep on working together as a team? What works well in this creative relationship?

MB: We’ve been making movies together since we were all kids. Michaela was in our first movie when we were maybe 11 and she would have been 15. It was called “A Blood Thirsty Killer” and it probably got more laughs than jump scares, but we never looked back. We used to act a bunch, but haven’t in a while. We both make cameos in Redux Redux and sometimes flirt with the idea of acting again, but it’d have to make sense. Maybe something about twins… or clones… or doppelgangers?

WP: Do you feel your writing and directing has been influenced by other directors – or titles? Or do your own ideas come from somewhere else entirely?

MB: Oh for sure. We’re all just trying to do our best impressions of other better writers and directors– Carpenter, Cameron, the Coen Brothers. The Terminator has been at the top of our minds lately and been sort of a north star. It’s such a blast with great character moments and exciting sci-fi lore that doesn’t get too lost in the weeds.

WP: Redux Redux, your new film, recently appeared at the prestigious SXSW Film Festival. What was that experience like? And how mindful are you of things like critical reception?

MB: SXSW is such a special place for us. It’s where our first movie premiered and it jumpstarted our whole careers. We owe SX and Peter Hall everything for discovering us and giving us a platform. This past festival was the first time we’ve been back with a film since our first back in 2012, so it felt like a real full circle moment, and we couldn’t have been happier being back in Austin.

WP: Last question for the moment: now that some of the dust has settled, what are you personally proudest of in Redux Redux?


MB: Seeing Michaela absolutely crush this role. She’s the best actress I’ve ever met, and seeing her on the big screen and just grab the audience was a thrill. There are moments where she’s just as badass as Sarah Connor and others where she’d have the audience in tears. She’s such a special talent and we feel so lucky to have gotten to make this film with her.

Watch this space for further information regarding a Redux Redux release!

A Desert (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

There’s a moment during the first act of A Desert when one character asks another character, an outsider, ‘You like being a tourist?’ It’s this divided America which forms the unstable foundations of the film, looking at what happens to people choosing to be tourists in their own country, spectators in a version of America which normally excludes them. It’s harsh and it’s mesmerising, slow and menacing – and a fantastic first feature from director Joshua Arkman.

We start in a disused cinema with Alex (Kai Lennox) at work on his old professional pursuit, photographing abandoned places. He seems happy alone and the film lingers carefully over his activities, though incidentally revealing that he is vulnerable alone in this place where he has deliberately got himself lost. Real life keeps up its intrusions, too: phone conversations with his wife Sam (Sarah Lind) soon turn to unpaid bills; the neighbours in the motel room next door break out into a fight, and he feels duty-bound to call for help. He can’t quite just be one with his inspiration, as much as making money and getting a fresh break are clearly vital to him.

After the fight next door, one of the occupants, Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) comes round to apologise. Seeing Alex’s photographic equipment in the room behind him, he asks if he’d photograph his sister Susie and him; bang on cue, we’ve just heard Alex say that he wants to do more portraits than just landscapes. So the pair come in, they get talking – and drinking – and things get messy, with big chunks of missing time for Alex, who wakes up the next morning alone, anxious and hangover, and makes a getaway. But Renny isn’t done with Alex yet and intercepts him again at a nearby gas station, just as Alex is about to hit the road. He seems friendly, though keen to tell Alex all about some of the missing time from the night before, and he tells Alex he has a rare opportunity for him to take some great pictures, if he’ll just drive with him somewhere.

The story you think you’re watching shifts rapidly and brutally here, with a new cast of characters and a mystery which draws others to this strange and, I’m going to say it with apologies, liminal place. Initially, there are some Kalifornia (1993) vibes here in the presentation of a magnetic, but dysfunctional young couple, but A Desert soon detaches itself from any closer comparisons, feeling both more sober (ironically) and in places more abstract; its use of soundscape is something else, and it’s as much an aural experience as a visual one in many key respects. Maybe the stellar presence of The Jesus Lizard vocalist David Yow as an actor here lends the film some kind of special musical flair by proxy, but we shouldn’t take anything away from composer Ty Segall, whose work here is second to none.

Key to everything here is not only the film’s use of a certain kind of Americana, but how we (via Alex, initially) react to it. Sure, the railroad tracks, the motel, the pet cemetery, the abandoned military base – these all conjure a recognisable kind of vision of America largely witnessed from outside: Alex’s photography collection titled ‘The Death of the New West’ carves up the ephemera and detritus of real lives and repackages them, turning them into something for polite consumption – even if he’s not technically getting rich and famous from it, in the simplest sense. Renny is scathing about Alex’s artistic vision: he questions an interest in photographing these ‘beat up places’, and dismisses Alex’s artworld blather about nature ‘reclaiming its topography’. No, Renny insists: they’re just old buildings. Poverty and privilege hover over the film, never written squarely into the script in a way which invites one reading, but they’re there, and they impact on all of the characters. This is a hostile world, province of the ‘demons’ and ‘jackals’ from a passage circled in a motel Bible, but we see just enough of Renny and Susie (Ashley Smith) to find them magnetic and captivating. I wish we’d got to see their portraits, but it was not to be. Despite presenting as powerless and disenfranchised, they govern events – but are rarely present on-screen.

Instead, via a whole lot of analogue technology (actually a good visual symbol here for a world almost left behind but still cherished for its own visual qualities) we get a meticulously constructed piece of world-building, with film and photography both significant framing devices, as well as plot points.

A Desert is a sun-drenched, visually appealing but brutal spin on modern neo-noir, drawing on elements of urban myth, fears of the unknown and fading optimism, and weaving these into a sickly, secretive story which more than rewards the interest. It’s incredibly effective and engaging.

A Desert (2024) will get a limited theatrical run from May 2nd 2025.

The Vatican Versus Horror Movies by Matt Rogerson

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Horror cinema writing is a broad and broadening church, despite (or perhaps because) of the increasingly ephemeral, online nature of much modern film criticism. Print media continues to be written, printed, read, collected and enjoyed, from the self-published to the most lavish tomes. It’s in a good place right now, and in The Vatican Versus Horror Movies, we have a deeply worthwhile project, as well as a knowledgeable and quietly passionate addition to the fold. It is focused squarely on a topic which has certainly served as context for other projects, but never as the topic in its own right.

After a personal introduction to his love of horror cinema, Rogerson organises his book into chapters which start with a linear look at the birth of popular cinema in Italy and the Vatican’s rapid self-positioning as arbiter of on-screen decency. This kind of value judgement wasn’t just taking place in Italy of course (and nor did the long arm of Catholicism stop at the borders) but the circumstances within Italy were unique. To understand what unfolded, it’s necessary to understand the Vatican’s chief means of disseminating its views on cinema, which came via print media, and a regular publication titled the Segnalazioni cinematografiche. Founded in the 1930s, it kept pace with the rapidly shifting and diversifying cinema of the day, with its own classification system on what was acceptable and what wasn’t, and – even during later decades of religious doubt and even apostasy in Italy – it retained significant influence.

Nonetheless, the Segnalazioni cinematografiche was, to an extent, blindsided by the sheer range and number of new releases which started to appear during the 50s and 60s, particularly the rise of horror – now, often homegrown horror. The author notes the vital importance of Italian filmmakers like Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava, and how their early work marked a shift away from merely ‘spooky’ cinema towards something much more challenging, provocative and Gothic. Bava wasn’t done here, either. Noting his influence on a range of genres and styles, the book moves onto different, specific horror and exploitation cinema subgenres, examining their emergence, notable titles (often influenced by films and filmmakers around the world) and of course, their reception by Segnalazioni cinematografiche critics. Included are: the early Gothic; the giallo; the slasher; the rape/revenge genre; the cannibal genre; the zombie genre; nunsploitation (well it’d be remiss to miss that one out); Nazisploitation and last – but not least – Satanic horror (ditto).

Whilst it would be intriguing to know more about the individual critics at work for the Segnalazioni cinematografiche (and indeed how they worked), it would likely be next to impossible at this stage, as well as going outside the remit of this particular text: what we do get is a wealth of primary source material, with ample coverage of the Vatican critics at work. This is often cross-compared with data on how individual film titles actually did (allowing you to decide how effective Vatican-approved moral warnings actually were) and also how successful or especially notorious films influenced other films – creating a thorough, engaging picture of the state of play of horror and exploitation cinema in the decades covered. In short, this is an exhaustively-researched book, but as it’s written by a diehard fan, it never feels like a purely academic exercise – as much as it is carefully referenced and studied. It retains an engaging flow and tone throughout.

For each of the films discussed, Rogerson takes a practical, measured approach, seeing as much in what the Vatican critics ignore (or even defend) as what they openly detest. For example, with regards to zombie horror, they reacted much more harshly to Ossorio’s fantastic Tombs of the Blind Dead (corrupted Knights Templar? No thank you!) than they ever did to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (social commentary is admirable – when it’s happening ‘over there’). Some of their attitudes to rape/revenge films are positively mind-boggling, being far more put out by the sin of wrath (the revenge bit) than rape, which they often avoid discussing much at all. These are just a couple of examples, but they provide some idea of the fascinating intersection between religious belief and self-image propagated by Vatican film criticism. However, this isn’t a polemic: Rogerson often acknowledges the sympathetic receptions enjoyed by certain horror titles, and discusses these fairly. Granted, the Vatican is much more censorious of Italian films and filmmakers than they are of foreign ones, but nonetheless, there are plenty of examples of the Segnalazioni cinematografiche writers developing a style and voice of their own, as well as showing plenty of understanding of the filmmakers’ craft. Their reviews are not just one-note, and the book assesses them on a case-by-case basis, noting their more tolerant moments as well as their perhaps more usual, scandalised line. There’s plenty to be exasperated by, but there’s much more to it as well.

The Vatican Versus Horror Movies is a well-written, well-structured and very readable work, and the inclusion of black and white artwork by the author adds a nice personal touch. It’s clearly a labour of love, and whilst it could offer a great deal as a reference book, there’s really more of a sense of voice and enthusiasm here than you’d associate with just that. As such, it does just what it sets out to do, offering an engaging and ever-timely read on the relationship between cinema and religion.

You can grab your copy of The Vatican Versus Horror Movies here or straight from McFarland here.

The Caller (2025)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

In amongst recent press emails, The Caller (2025) stood out for one key reason: it’s a film made by one person (Andy Blithe). What that means here is: one person acts, and the same person makes up all of the crew, too. An interesting fact and no doubt an important project personally, then, but fortunately this is no gimmick and nor does it overshadow the value of the film itself, being a brief but skilfully-made, surprisingly complex treatment of trauma, isolation and the individual.

It all starts with an injured man, crawling from what we can assume is a road accident (fire and sirens frame and soundtrack the shot). He reaches for a child’s toy, and then – we’re somewhere else, in what looks like humdrum normality. But we know the opening scene will be coming back to haunt us, too.

This currently nameless man lives alone, eats alone, and spends a lot of time mulling over the passing of time in a way which you can only do when often alone. Via a voiceover – the actor himself is nearly mute throughout – we glean that this man ‘fills his days with pain and destruction’, though we don’t currently know how. The situation shifts when he receives a strange call: the man on the phone seems to know him, knows what makes him tick. And he has a strange request: fill a glass of water and place it on the window-sill. Okay. Without questioning it, our man does as asked. So far, so harmless, if odd. However, the man on the phone promises that they’ll speak again soon. Could this have something to do with the ‘pain and destruction’ mentioned?

Yes…no…maybe. The man does call back, and when he does, his requests get increasingly more extreme and invasive, soon involving – or actively harming – other people. Why is this happening? Or, if you can scent an existential crisis waiting in the wings, you may question what, exactly, is happening. What is certain is that the narrative does not unfold in a linear way exactly; it’s more episodic, chunked into events which may be completely banal or may be shocking (even if the film itself treads very lightly with the display of actual violence). The audience is held apart, not permitted to simply pick up a thread and follow it. The film feels like a series of mini-ordeals or fragments of routines, and as such it feels very lonely: it feels like something significant is lurking on the periphery before the film slowly reveals a little more: trauma, loss, even addiction feel like possible overarching themes. All of this hinges on the portrayal of the as-yet nameless man. At times he’s lost and afraid, sometimes assured and cruel, and most often of all, unsure what is happening to him. To add to the distancing effect, the film uses some visual puzzles to which we are not immediately privy: what is written on that note? Why is he re-reading it? Will we get to see it?

The Caller is a very stylish piece of film. It’s crisp, well-lit and framed, well edited and sound tracked with a surprising range of shots woven together. It uses intertitles – not my favourite motif, and although they add another visual layer here, they’re a little platitudinal (‘The longest journey is the one within’, etc). But its chief calling card is its close, sympathetic focus on the protagonist, who achieves so much with this role. If anything works against this film – aside from the difficulties of getting independent films seen and appreciated more generally – then it’s its unconventional runtime (forty minutes) and perhaps its genre-straddling approach, but this is a film which does deserve to break through all of that. It’s a skilled take on the theme of modern alienation, with a solid and significant ending which further elevates it.