Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

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.

Super Happy Fun Clown (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Super Happy Fun Clown (2024) opens with a woman – dressed as a clown – who has a hostage, engaged in a confrontation with the police. So, if nothing else, the title can be taken literally; there are no (or not only) metaphorical clowns here. Adapted from a short film of the same title (and with the same cast) made just a year earlier, the feature struggles in some respects with issues which often beset films expanded from a few minutes to ninety or so (and funnily enough, I remember saying similar things about a clown-themed short film-to-feature a decade ago). However, despite these issues, there is an interesting thread here which it shares with a number of recent indies, all equally concerned with the perils of modern ideas of fame, success and ‘being somebody’.

Having started with the shoot-out, the film next skips back twenty years to 2004: so it’s a loop, and we’ll be back to the shoot-out in due course. This is Jen – the clown-loving woman – as a ten year old child. Jen is precocious, but she has a hard-nosed mother, a mean big sister and jealous classmates: as a result she prefers to keep herself to herself – but she loves clowns, whether watching them, collecting clown-based artwork or drawing terrifying versions of them. This expands into Jen’s adulthood, tracking more and more with a much-needed escapism from the ubiquitous dreadful husband and dire day job. Jen is a clown in her spare time, but to be fair hers is a dreadful business model: roadside clowning in a sparsely-populated area is never going to make ends meet.

Despite a few, odd moments of levity, Jen knows she’s blown it. She could have gone places, which in modern society (with her mom as a mouthpiece) means a white collar job, selected from a certain list. Jen is, to some extent, signed up to this too: she mumbles the excuse for her cartoonishly deadbeat husband that ‘he was a lawyer’ when they first met (before he was laid off for soliciting a minor). Still, Jen is aware that it’s time for a change. If she is to ‘be somebody’, then life as she knows it must come to an end. Sadly, this doesn’t mean manageable, expected changes, like a career change or a divorce…

It’s not quite made explicit and nor, really, is Jen’s sudden obsession with notoriety-as-fame made clear; aside from some hints at her love of horror cinema and serial killers, she seems almost entirely divorced from media consumption, whether social or otherwise, and doesn’t seem to have surrounded herself with the kinds of people who are in the loop either. Nonetheless, when she comes to take stock, it seems that notoriety is the kind of success she now craves. We’ve certainly seen enough to clock the death of her optimism, as well as the fact that only whilst dressed up as a clown can she ‘perform’ joy, though that doesn’t last, either. Given the importance of clowning to Jen’s progression in the narrative, lots of the key plot points are painted in broad strokes to match the imagery and ethos of clowning itself – pratfalls, primary colours, gurning and exaggeration.

However, as the film moves on, it can be tonally quite hard to place. The exaggerated artifice of ‘Jenn-O’ can be comic or tragic; the shift from brittle but bright child to flailing adult relies heavily on the trope of the bad mother for its pivot, but oddly, doesn’t fill in the backstory of the obsession with the clown – as much as we can glean that greasepaint serves as a suitable disguise for an unhappy kid, and as a habit for an unhappy adult. So it’s an unhappy clown – a tragic figure – rather than a pure psychopath which we follow into the middle act of the film; Terrifier, this ain’t. But then again, the film soon ramps up the horror content, both by paying horror lip service in its script and by showcasing an increasing number of homages and murder set pieces as Jen finally unravels. The Halloween setting is a key horror trope, too.

Is it meant to be funny in places? It certainly seems that way: little visual touches (like the Richard Ramirez wall calendar) invite us to laugh; the Three Stooges blare out of the TV set in Jen’s house; the gore is OTT enough to void empathy with the victims. By the by, if director Patrick Rea and writer Eric Winkler want to continue to embed cover versions of Type O Negative into their films, then I am here for it. But then, the film feels more philosophical in places, which is fitting, given this was the focus of Jen’s (‘useless’) degree. However, when push comes to shove, it’s ‘bad fame’ Jen opts for, which eventually brings up back to where we started – a shoot-out, and a kind of reckoning.

At its best, and despite some tonal issues, Super Happy Fun Clown is another independent film which examines the disconnect between personal fulfilment and a version of ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ which is both so possible and so out of reach in today’s cultural climate. Working hard to enact the shift from person to persona, Jennifer Seward turns in a good performance here, and certainly the pressures of ‘making it’ from the perspective of indie filmmakers in a tough business adds an additional layer of interest to this project.

The Ego Death of Queen Cecilia (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Whilst the title is some indication of what we are going to experience, it’s fair to say that The Ego Death of Queen Cecilia can’t easily be summed up via its title alone, much less guessed at. This is a superb piece of indie cinema storytelling, a deeply personal character study, but one which draws on a wealth of modern obsessions, affordances and dilemmas to weave a highly effective story.

We start with a sunny day in suburban Texas: Cecilia (Jo Schaeffer), currently without her crown, works as a delivery driver. She’s also a delivery driver pulling a scam: she decides to place a Louis Vuitton package on the front doorstep, photograph it as if to prove it’s been left safely, then picks it up again, taking it with her. This kind of appearance vs. reality motif continues throughout the film. Later, in a parking lot with her spoils, she notices someone she remembers from high school. Clearly, she takes more than a passing interest in this guy, filming him as he transfers a heavy bag from one vehicle to another. Okay; that done, she resumes interest in the very expensive Vuitton shoes she’s just stolen. A gift for a hardworking, broke delivery driver?

Not quite. The shoes next appear as a giveaway on Cecilia’s ailing online channel; it’s other people’s validation she wants. The shoes don’t even fit her. Eager for likes and comments, she also has something else in mind: a big overhaul for the Queen Cecilia brand, a brand which, on first pass, couldn’t look more different to Cecilia’s daily reality. The shoes are all part of a snare to secure a new agent, one promising super-stardom once more. Ten years previously, Queen Cecilia was hot stuff, but as with many of these online brands, her star has fallen; it’s fallen so far, she has had to resort to stealing on the job. Doing such stupid things does, at least, rid her of that marked contrast between online appearance and lived reality; it turns out that the delivery company might have noticed the very shoes recently reported as undelivered have turned up on her channel, alongside a few other stolen packages, too.

Being called out on her behaviour, as well as getting fired, precipitates a change in Cecilia. That passing interest she showed in the guy from the parking lot resurfaces one more; it seems they have some low-level bad blood between them from years past, and somehow, his freshness in her mind perhaps, he becomes the new focus for her frustration – as well as part of her new scheme to get rich quickly – and illegally.

This turns out to be a bad idea, but not for the straightforward reasons you might anticipate.

Wow, this film feels very timely. People have been struggling to make ends meet for forever, but only recently has the proverbial fifteen minutes of fame been so inveigled in all of this by the new possibilities of the internet. Whilst our new, negotiated relationships with online selves have been forming the bedrock of horror and sci-fi films for several years now, The Ego Death of Queen Cecilia is neither a horror film nor a sci-fi, so its own exploration of this theme is much more low key and plausible. Artifice – real, recognisable kinds of artifice – run through and through the film, underpinning every crazy decision and bad call which occur. Cecilia is in love with the version of herself which once allowed her to make her living as an influencer, and she cannot accept the change. In pursuit of what she wants, she scripts and plans phonecalls; she lies about her age; she covers up her (perfectly fine) hair with a glossy wig for the camera. Everything about her has an undercurrent of untruth, talking authenticity but now, in the pursuit of that version of authenticity, totally full of it. You cannot always like the protagonist, and at times you may feel incensed by her behaviour, but it all feels very real indeed. Cecilia is flawed but human, often clearly holding back her anger to continue to present her hard-won persona, and it’s a clever, sensitive performance from Schaeffer in her first ever acting role, carrying the bulk of the screen time with only modest amounts of lines to speak. She’s a petite actor, too, and this further emphasises her fragility when she’s shown up against some imposing, and dangerous figures – men who don’t much care for her aspirations.

The story unfolds not via the rather hackneyed use of numbered chapters (yay) but through a moving timeline, shifting back in five or ten year intervals at first before closing the gap between past and present, trusting the audience to get what’s going on (yay). It’s very creatively shot and snappily edited too, showing skill. Aerial shots make the characters look like chess pieces in play, and so it often feels during the film – with Cecilia’s old game plan unable to adapt, even as she cruises towards a loss. It’s hard, isn’t it? Changing the game?

This is a really gritty, involving film: The Ego Death of Queen Cecilia is all about desperation, framed in age-old and in relatively new ways. Sharp and economical, it’s also one of those rare birds where one person (Chris Beier) wrote, filmed, scored, edited and produced it, but it hasn’t led to flaws in the finished film as a result, something which can and often does happen where one person cannot bear to lose beloved footage for example, or to recast certain ideas for the benefit of the film as a whole. Here, Beier’s work has resulted in an emphatic positive, with a clearly realised and handled piece of cinema.

Art for Everybody (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

If you don’t immediately recognise the name of Thomas Kinkade, then chances are you’ll recognise his work. He’s famous for painting a kind of pre-industrial utopia, all cobblestones, pristine cottage gardens and picturesque landscapes which in truth feel as far away from ordinary life for most people – if not further away – than many of his bleakest dystopian contemporaries. It’s Kinkade himself who opens Art for Everybody (2023), first narrating proceedings as a teenager living in hopes of making it as an artist, but one who “doesn’t want to end up like Van Gogh”. On first examination, it certainly looks as though he would be safe from that fate, but given some of the later inclusions in the film, it also rings a prescient note. Roll on twenty-seven years, and Kinkade has the market in the palm of his hand: at the peak of his success, his paintings hung in around one in every twenty American homes. What could possibly go wrong?

Kinkade features heavily in this film about his life and career: although his most successful decades of commercial work came just prior to the internet age, he nonetheless lived through the era of home cinema, multi-channel TV – and shopping channels, which is really significant in his history. As an example: Kinkade’s wedding was filmed; later, still at his wedding, he was being interviewed. It’s the kind of possibility for scrutiny which no doubt allowed him to present what other commentators refer to as his ‘performance art’, but also adds tremendous personal pressure; even Van Gogh was spared the constant scrutiny of the camera and the newsreel. Early on in the film, we’re made aware that there was always another side to Kinkade, the self-styled ‘painter of light’ – but it was locked away, ;literally locked away, in a vault. Locked away in a vault: there’s even something slightly twee about the otherwise dark symbolism of a locked room in a light and airy family home. It seems that Kinkade’s career, and his art, was always pulling against the kitsch and the prettified.

However, before we get to that side of him, there’s a detailed history of his career – from his limited edition print runs to the establishment of his brand (the ‘painter of light’ became the Painter of Light™); from the collectible plates – which is where I had a slightly uncanny moment of recognition – to the people’s galleries he opened in America’s malls; finally, we look at the intensely lucrative relationship which Kinkade had with the-then brand-new QVC. His was a hugely lucrative empire, with a reach way beyond any other jobbing artists of the Nineties. Whether or not this style of art is for you personally is swept aside, to a degree, by the film’s inclusion of other Kinkade works, kept from public sight until after his death. He was actually incredibly experimental, taking on everything from Impressionism to what looks almost like Symbolism. Thomas Kinkade could paint. But he had a brand to consider, and not only did he keep his other work hidden, but he used a variety of other brush names, too. At this point in the film, it really feels like his phenomenal rise was going to be accompanied by an equally tremendous crash – and so it is.

In trying to pinpoint where things went wrong, the film spends some time on the shifting art movements of the Eighties and early Nineties; Kinkade was selling his prints (mugs, plates, toys and soft furnishings) at around the same time that Tracey Emin’s ‘My Bed’ was basking in notoriety – and adulation from the art world. The critics who speak during Art for Everybody are not, broadly, on side with the purchasing public; several of them admit that, even at his height, they weren’t aware of Kinkade’s work. But Kinkade was willing to engage with the art world, calling them out for their own predilections, which now feels like an Icarus-like decision which opened him up to new levels of pressure and scrutiny. It also speaks to his pride, and perhaps he underestimated the heft and power of the art establishment, which means underestimating cultural capital in its most literal sense. For all that, one if his daughters says, “I still don’t know what happened”. Kinkade’s star started to fall. The market shifted. Tastes began to change. Anxiety and stress led him to drink (gallingly, he had never been a drinker before middle age) and, via his addiction, the anecdotes and memories – from people close to him otherwise providing a sense of a warm, hopeful man – become exasperating and upsetting, as anyone who has lived with a drinker or drank themselves will appreciate. Probably given the fact that his siblings, wife and children are so involved here, the film doesn’t linger on the unedifying. Nonetheless, it’s a sad fall from grace.

Given all of this, and based on the progression of the film as a whole, you get the sense of a yearned-for fantasy world in Kinkade’s chocolate box art: we’re led to consider that he painted this way so extensively because it represented some kind of wish fulfilment. But it was lucrative, too, and once art, self and cash form a relationship, then the situation becomes complex. Aspects of Kinkade’s persona – the one we see the most, that is – is remote, rehearsed; often, it’s the captured video footage around takes which reveals how pernicious ‘the brand’ had become for family life. Given this, it’s positive that director Miranda Yousef ends on a more consolidatory note, and that we see enough of Kinkade’s incredibly varied talents to see past the Painter of Light tragic arc.

Art for Everyone has equally interesting things to say about Kinkade’s audience, and beyond that, the popularity of his art. The critics point out that his art, from one perspective, is a reactionary, unrealistic and even whitewashed vision of America. People. however, loved it – so do these people have a duty to only love what critics declare is ‘good’? Why shouldn’t people feel safe and even cossetted by the art they hang in their own homes?

This question isn’t decisively answered and nor does it need to be. If the documentary has one flaw, it’s in the sheer number of threads which it could have followed at length; there are so many ideas in here to consider and to unpack. As it stands, this is a sensitive, well-rounded film which looks not just at art, but at the precarious nature of business and its relationship with that art. Thomas Kinkade, in many respects, encapsulates that connection.

Art for Everybody (2023) will be on theatrical release from March 24th 2025.