Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

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.

Sew Torn (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

I asked to review Sew Torn for a few reasons, but the biggest reason was curiosity. How, exactly, could a film be so closely themed around, of all things, seamstressing? Well, it is. It really, really is. It’s also a varied, funny crime drama which manages to incorporate elements of existential fantasy along the way, and it’s highly likely to rank as one of my favourite films of the year for its defiantly zingy, creative approach.

We get two visual symbols at the film’s start: there’s a reel of thread, and a briefcase – a briefcase which, until recently, was handcuffed to someone: there are handcuffs still attached to the handle. Keep those symbols in mind. A brief voiceover from our protagonist, seamstress Barbara (Eve Connolly) invites us to mull over what could have brought her to the chaotic point where we first meet her. It wasn’t always like this, of course. In calmer times, though not exactly happier times, i.e. before the briefcase was a thing, Barbara had been living an isolated life since her mother’s passing, trying (and failing) to keep their family seamstress business running. It seems there just isn’t enough trade for their ‘talking portraits’ speciality which bedeck both the shop and the living quarters beyond it. A tapestry image gets connected to a recording of the loved one; pull a length of thread, and you get to hear their voices again. Needless to say, Barbara has become unhealthily reliant on talking portraits of her and her mother, even though some of the voice recordings reveal the darker times which overtook them both.

Already struggling, then, Barbara is soon running late to the world’s worst seamstress job: altering a wedding dress which is already being worn by a deeply unpleasant bride-to-be who wastes no opportunity to berate Barbara as she works. A mishap with a button sends Barbara racing back to the shop for a replacement, though – all considered – the ways things turn out, and given the business is on its knees already, a sharper jab with the needle, or even just abandoning the dreadful woman to a buttonless fate would have been completely reasonable. However, Barbara is diligent enough and still considerate enough of her mother’s pride in her work, to do the decent thing. And, as it stands, she may still have run into an unexpected situation, out on a mountainous back road…

There’s been an accident. There are two injured men lying in the road, there are guns and – oh, hey, it’s the briefcase, and it turns out it was recently handcuffed to one of these men. What best to do?

Like Barbara says on her initial voiceover: choices, choices. The grand rule here, if there is one, is that people make decisions and those decisions initiate a chain of events. Then, these events draw in others, as they do here, because the chances of a mysterious briefcase not mattering to someone important are slim to none. In many respects, Sew Torn tackles an age-old narrative idea – the ‘wrong place, wrong time’ motif – but it does so much with it that it never feels anything but quirky, clever and bold. There’s so much to praise. Its tragicomic elements are assured. It has a strangely unsettling setting which seems to be small-town America transported to…Switzerland, full of pretty contrasts and crisp, colourful locations, making the events of the film feel like a weird blip against an almost fantasy landscape. Oh, and the script is wonderfully economical, with Connolly often enacting Barbara’s great woes without words at all. She’s great, by the way, managing to be both sympathetic and magnetic, and bouncing off a great supporting cast, with particular praise for the brilliant John Lynch and the equally effective Calum Worthy. I don’t recall a film ever quite so taken with sewing as a theme – May Canady sews, sure, but it feels more incidental than fundamental to her own journey. In Sew Torn – based on a short film, but never struggling to work as a feature – every element of the plot is linked to sewing in a way which is, let’s be honest, barking mad, but oh-so clever and compelling. It’s a film which almost makes you feel bad for owning three sewing kits and having not the faintest clue what to do with any of them.

As it moves towards its conclusion, playing with a range of outcomes and possibilities as it goes, Sew Torn does slow somewhat to allow characters to develop; this is the only slight lull in the film’s pace, but getting to know the characters works, too. It’s almost as if it’s all been meticulously sounded out and planned. Look: a film with this level of commitment to its central theme must be confident in what it’s doing, and so it turns out. Director Freddy Macdonald, born in the year 2000 (!) is clearly a young talent to watch and it will be very interesting to see where he goes next. This is quite the first feature: it promises great things, it delivers great things, but most importantly, it works incredibly well on its own terms, presenting audiences with something hugely entertaining and innovative. Curiosity satisfied, and then some.

Sew Torn is on UK and Ireland digital platforms 31 March from Vertigo Releasing.

SXSW 2025: Mermaid (2025)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Mermaid (2025) opens, perhaps deceivingly, on someone living the high life. It certainly looks like the high life at least: here’s a guy, on a yacht, sipping a chilled cocktail and listening to music. It’s textbook high life. The fact that this is a post-divorce celebration mars things slightly, but mainly that happens when a strange noise on board prompts him to investigate, armed. Armed? Expecting pirates? It’s weirder than that: what he quite literally uncovers in one of his lifeboats is a living, breathing mermaid.

We have to wait awhile to see and think about this more clearly as we get more fully into this ‘love letter to Florida’, as the film’s credits declare it. We meet our protagonist, who is emphatically not the rich guy on the boat. Doug (Johnny Pemberton) is an aquarium cleaner at a pole dancing club, or at least he is for a few minutes of screen time before he gets fired. He’s ‘weird’. People often use that adjective to describe Doug. He is, however, a gentle, pliant sort of weird, the kind of weird which enjoys necking prescription medication more than most other things; the kind of weird with no career arc and an increasingly troubled relationship with his young daughter Layla (the excellent Devyn McDowell). Oh, and he owes money to some ne’er-do-wells, who knew his equally ne’er-do-well dad. This builds and builds to what must surely be a crescendo: Doug getting tough; Doug getting out; Doug finding some kind of way forward. Well, his first plan fails – of course it fails – but he encounters the (now injured) mermaid, and decides to take her home.

Daryl Hannah, this is not (and by the way, there’s some great SFX work here by Trudie Storck and Monique McLoughlin). There are no beguiling smiles, no sense of gratitude, and thinking about mermaid tropes, there’s certainly no shell brassiere or coral jewellery (though we do see that referenced elsewhere – the film is very assured at adding little visual clues throughout its runtime). If we’re talking precedents, this mermaid much more closely resembles Medusa as imagined by Ray Harryhausen, right down to the way she drags herself forward on her hands, and she drags herself forward on her hands because she is not very friendly – not very friendly at all. This doesn’t stop Doug, who prefers all things from the sea anyway, taking her under his wing. Helping her recuperate could well be the making of him.

At a deeper level, we begin to glean that Doug’s behaviour stems from sadness and grief that he, in his willing fugue state, has never really dealt with. In this, we see that Doug’s a mess, but a modern, relatable mess, struggling to make sense of his life path whilst getting pummelled by circumstance. His choice to dose himself with Percocet is frustrating but understandable, allowing him to swan along in a state of well-meaning perplexity as life threatens from the sidelines. Pemberton does a great job with the role, looking authentically young and naïve throughout. Just as Doug uses drugs to take the edges off, so the film, too, feels like it has had its edges taken off, sanded down to a surprisingly gentle pace, edited to skip past any high action and violence for the most part and concerned more with the human aftermath. It’s a languid story which goes from the ridiculous to the sublime; it does contain moments of splattery gore and has some nastier connotations, but these are few. As much as the strange cryptid moves the story along, really this is Doug’s odyssey.

Made by Tyler Cornack, director of the perhaps even more idiosyncratic Butt Boy (2019), Mermaid is a strange love letter to the sunshine state but given that state’s reputation for, shall we say, eccentricity – it works. In the seemingly perpetual sunshine, we follow a fragile, sympathetic lead faced with a bizarre situation. It’s a charming and compelling story, more bittersweet than overtly funny (though it has its moments) but at its heart, it’s a film all about finding meaning and purpose in a mean maze of a world.

Mermaid (2025) received its world premiere at SXSW.

Final Girls Berlin Fest: You’re Not Me (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Can horror teach us things? As it turns out, yes – plenty: You’re Not Me (2023) tells us, in no uncertain terms, never to turn up anywhere uninvited, even (or especially) if it’s to see your own family.

It’s Christmas Eve: the film starts at a Spanish airport, where Aitana (Roser Tapias), her partner Gabi (Yapoena Silva) and their newly-adopted son João have just arrived from Brazil to surprise Aitana’s family. Aitana is sure it’ll be a pleasant surprise; this gives them both the strange ability to ignore worrying portents like missing luggage (and escapee pig fatalities – yes, you heard that right). She rings from outside the house and has a pleasant chat with her mother, before ringing the doorbell. This is it. Surprise!

Indeed. A friend of the family comes to the door, and when the young family finally gains admission – it’s a little awkward, having to explain to a stranger that you’re the daughter of the family – there’s a strangely cold reception from everybody except Aitana’s brother Saúl (Jorge Motos). It’s quite perplexing. In fact, her father openly remonstrates with her for not checking ahead. Aitana is obviously a little nonplussed by this, but tries to mask her disappointment, still hoping for the loving reunion she’d both imagined and told Gabi all about: this is the first time Aitana’s family have either met her partner, or the baby. However, things get odder when it transpires that someone’s sleeping in Aitana’s old bed.

This young woman, Nadia (Anna Kurikka) is wearing her old nightclothes, too. Who is she? Reluctantly, Aitana’s parents explain that she is a refugee – no further details – who has recently been living at the house whilst helping to take care of Saúl. They’re strangely defensive of her, and Nadia is strangely truculent for a grateful outsider: in short, Nadia gets to keep Aitana’s bedroom, whilst Aitana, Gabi and João are dispatched to the ‘turret’, like madwomen in the attic. Gabi is a good deal more grounded than her partner, assuring her that everything is probably fine and that she’s no doubt tired, emotional and stressed, leading her to overreact. However, when Aitana sneaks down the stairs, she sees the family, her replacement and all, exchanging Christmas gifts without them. It’s bound to sting a bit, and kickstarts a desire to solve what now feels like a mystery. Why has this relatively conservative Spanish family suddenly opened its doors to a stranger? Why aren’t they more interested in Nadia’s identity? And most importantly of all, why the sullen, avoidant reception for their own flesh and blood? Keen to rebalance her relationship with her family, Aitana decides her best bet is to uncover what she can about this Nadia. But there’s more, much more to contend with – especially as a number of Christmas guests start to arrive at the house ready for a special gathering which – you’ve guessed it – wasn’t meant to include Aitana at all.

This is a film which successfully moves you around emotionally. Perhaps Aitana is on the petulant side at first, but this is a weird situation for sure, and you’re soon right on her side. The camera stays primarily with her, and we’re privy to her fretful dreams, too: surely, directors/writers Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera intend the audience to share Aitana’s perspective. Well, yeah: however, the screenplay then introduces some other backstory elements, casting doubt on Aitana’s mindset as it fills in some important blanks. It’s carefully done, and works well. Saúl is an important character, too, and his worsening health (we understand that now uses a wheelchair all of the time) is a realistic added strain, with a good performance from Motos. You’re Not Me is also great at capturing that strange feeling of being an outsider in your old family home: your clothes have been given away, your sentimental treasures are MIA and your loved ones are showing open preference to someone else. Much of Aitana’s family’s behaviour is openly hurtful; it just happens to be focused around a cuckoo in the nest. However, there is more to come, with a different kind of storytelling waiting to move to the fore.

You’re Not Me is somewhat reminiscent of Get Out (2017) in its first act. There’s a similar sense of the vibe being off, as well as a strange gathering, an eerie feeling of displacement – and a few slivers of thinly-veiled, or unveiled racism to boot. The film also carries with it an interesting subtext around poverty, homelessness and the kind of ‘help’ people give to those who are in need, as well as exploring Aitana’s homosexuality and her parents’ sometimes passive-aggressive, sometimes aggressive-aggressive responses to her coming out of the closet (though, ironically, the closet might be the safest place to be in this household).

When the film moves into its second phase, it may feel more predictable to hardened horror fans but – because it’s built on decent foundations – you are happy to follow it wherever it’s going next. Whilst its initial eeriness gives way to something more tried-and-tested, it has the pace and self-awareness to spin things into a – dare I say it? – fun horror film, with clear generic precedents. You get the sense that a big finale is on its way, and that when it arrives, it’s going to be quite something: the film deftly takes things in this direction, and doesn’t disappoint. You’re Not Me might cover a lot of ground, but it’s an energetic, strangely enjoyable tale which successfully shifts from one genre to elements of several others (which must remain nameless, so as not to give the game away). It could even join the hallowed ranks of Christmas horror film choices, so add it to the playlist: you can watch it at the end of the year, if your Christmas visit gets off to a bad start…

You’re Not Me (2023) features at this year’s Final Girls Berlin Film Festival – now in its tenth year!

SXSW 2025: Redux Redux (2025)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Although you could easily argue that it’s been around for a very long time, multiverse horror – if we can now call it that – is immensely popular right now. As I have said elsewhere, it seems to be of especial interest to indie horror and fantasy filmmakers, for whom it affords tantalising possibilities, divesting old narrative certainties of their power whilst lining up new ideas. It may also be a deep-seated desire to skip out of this particular timeline, come to think of it. particularly during and since Covid. The McManus brothers – directors of 2020’s The Block Island Sound – have recently completed on Redux Redux (2025), making their own second horror feature a multiverse horror. In doing so, they have blended the more philosophical approach (of, say, Synchronic, or Infinitum) with the more visceral – using the chance to hop in and out of different timelines to inflict grisly violence, over and over again. It’s an ambitious project, albeit that some of its plot elements take considerable strain across its 107 minute runtime. However, by virtue of its strong production values, aesthetic values, performances and script, it avoids the kind of prevaricating which, at worst, indie cinema of this kind does.

We start with some of the strong aesthetics mentioned above, as well as the grisly violence: a woman looks on as a man – tied to a chair – burns to death in agony at her feet. One quick edit later, and the same woman is fighting for her life at the hands of the same man, at least momentarily, before she gains the upper hand. She dispatches him in a different way this time, but with the same, merciless brutality. The woman in question is called Irene (Michaela McManus), and the film pauses to catch its breath for a moment, offering up a few visual symbols as she explains to the man that she is ‘searching for Anna’ – her daughter. The numbered locks of hair in his possession suggest a serial killer; Irene is a grieving mother, then, using the affordances of multiverse travel to murder her daughter’s killer, again and again, as she searches for a timeline in which Anna is still alive.

There is a certain amount of anxiety as the film loops, and loops, and loops during its first twenty minutes or so – some disorientation. As these sequences unfold, different coloured mugs are used to spell out for us that Irene is stopping off at the same diner, chatting to the same waitress, but in different realities. Her daughter’s killer happens to work in this diner, so she can reliably stop off for a coffee before – well, her approach varies, but he dies every time. Sometimes she shoots him then and there. Sometimes she follows him home. Sometimes – actually, quite a lot of the time – her zeal for murdering Neville (Jeremy Holm) gets her into dangerous situations, such as the pursuit which we see in one particular timeline as she unloads on Neville just as a police officer walks into the diner. But in this case, she makes it back to a residential address, where she clambers into some kind of pod and – she’s gone. Then she’s back – sort of.

On reflection, it’s probably for the best that Redux Redux doesn’t spend an undue amount of time and effort on explaining the precise mechanisms of its multiverse travel, as much as it very carefully and steadily expands some aspects of this as the film progresses. The pod itself looks pure sci-fi – almost Giger-ish – but the film as a whole could easily have got bogged down in science fiction, a potentially hazardous place to be for any scriptwriting team, so despite the fact that a few questions (for me) linger over the narrative come the end, these wouldn’t necessarily be rectified or improved by more jargon (and nor is quantum theory particularly easy to grasp at the best of times). It’s enough to know that Irene has been driven close to madness by her rage, and has happened upon a novel way of working through this – or, perhaps not. She comes from a timeline where this kind of travel is possible, and that’s more or less that.

Things change, however, when – during another visit to another Neville – she interrupts him with a still-living victim in his bathroom. It’s not Anna. This young woman, Mia (Stella Marcus), is a feisty, streetwise kid who has a lot of baggage of her own and, when Irene releases her, she wants in on the murder plot against the guy who kidnapped her, a guy who, in this particular timeline, has just dodged Irene’s bullets and escaped.

The film switches perspective for a while here, picking up more of Mia’s story before looking at the at-first unwitting relationship which springs up between her and Irene. A kind of folie-a-deux even kicks in for a while, with each character bouncing off the other in terms of their unreasonable decision-making and risk-taking. But these are strong characters, well written and acted, with a script which is just the right amount of self-reflective. There are inevitably some puzzling additions: Redux Redux‘s seemingly endless vengeance loops – though pleasingly bloody and messy – sometimes border on inexplicable (surely you’d pick your battles carefully and wait, or jump, rather than potentially killing innocent people, or getting yourself killed in a particular timeline?). However, the interaction between Irene and Mia grows more engaging, turning the film into something else and fleshing out the film’s final act – which is particularly important, given the pure horror which comes to dominate there, and what it could signify.

Redux Redux is certainly ambitious and manages to weave together a compelling tale of grief, family and redemption with only a few rogue moments. There is indisputably tension, drama and world-building. Along the way, the film looks great: rich, crisp colouration, good use of light and dark, with a blend of moody interiors and modern Americana. It’s interesting, by the by, that the diner also plays such an important part in another recent multiverse indie, Things Will Be Different (2024) – it’s obviously the liminal space of choice, familiar but alien. I retain nagging doubts overall about the multiverse thing, but there’s certainly enough skill and nous here to hold things together, and the McManus brothers are without doubt skilled filmmakers, whose horror output so far has been eminently worthwhile.

Redux Redux received its premiere at SXSW on March 8th 2025.

Final Girls Berlin Fest: Grafted (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Somewhere in a cramped apartment block in urban China, a little girl plays as her father works. She’s carefully drawing a corpse flower; she then feeds a live mouse to their pet snake; it’s all wholesome stuff. Her father, it seems, is a scientist who has tasked himself with ‘fixing’ the presumably hereditary skin condition suffered by himself and his daughter (which really doesn’t look significant enough to merit the treatment – applying a suspiciously squelchy skin graft to his face – but he’s his own man). It is, shall we say, in the experimental stages, and after a few seconds of hope, the skin graft runs wild, covering his nose and mouth.

We next meet Wei (Joyena Sun) in young adulthood. It seems her father’s head healing over didn’t dent her scientific zeal – but she’s also on the cusp of great things, more conventional things, such as a scholarship place at a New Zealand university. To attend, she’ll be relocating and staying with her Aunt Ling (Xiao Hu), a cosmetician, and Ling’s daughter – Wei’s rather glamorous cousin – Angela (Jess Hong). Wei is a clever, but sensitive young woman whose key priority is to honour her father’s memory by perfecting his skin-healing process. In the meantime, she’s very shy of her appearance, and compares herself nervously to her fully Kiwi cousin: Angela has always dodged learning Chinese and takes no interest in Chinese culture. She’d rather hang with her friends – serious Heathers/the Veronicas vibes – Eve (Eden Hart) and the slightly less awful Jasmine (Sepi To’a). Wei is something of an embarrassment to them, even when she tries really hard to fit in. Nonetheless, she’s off to a strong start academically, and volunteers for lab work to both boost her knowledge and to work alongside her lecturer, Professor Featherstone. Working alongside a power-hungry moral vacuum in human form, desperate to break through in the competitive world of experimental cosmetics? No problems anticipated here.

It feels very much like Grafted is electively setting itself up to be rather chaotic. It’s a very sensory film, particularly aurally, oozing and suppurating with the best of ’em. Alongside this, there’s the quick edits, the petri dishes, the macros, the flashbacks, the discordant soundtrack – it has a cumulatively quite overwhelming effect, but then it isn’t all glutinous grue, either. In places this is a very prettified film – a candy-coloured nightmare, with the pastel-shades of mean girl Eve and the hot pink of the chicken feet-averse Angela clashing interestingly with gloopy blood and rotten meat. As Wei’s great work (and her battles with Professor Featherstone) intensify the desperate measures she’s willing to take, and as the film gets progressively more gruesome and macabre, it never quite stops feeling candy-coloured, which works.

Final Girls Berlin are running Grafted as part of a double bill with its big cousin The Substance; it’s a decent choice, as the lineage is clear, and some of the processes (and repercussions) hit a similar note. Perhaps Grafted is The Substance from the other side of the age bracket, because this desperate, demented wish to fit in and be adored spans a very long period of time in a woman’s life. However, other films perhaps suggest themselves as even closer relatives. There’s something of May in here, at least at the start of the film, with a similarly isolated young woman desperate enough to body-snatch to break the spell of her own isolation. Then there feels like a direct line of descent between Grafted and lesser-known Japanese body horror Naked Blood: a scientist mother and father, a bizarre experimental programme and a desperation to honour one’s family by hammering on with a clearly disastrous body-melting experimental programme. The practical FX is similar, too, and it’s worth adding that the CGI effects in Grafted are less successful than the practical ones on the whole, though they’re probably a necessity.

It feels rather insulting to call a film ‘superficial’, but it fits the bill here on the grounds that Grafted sticks (heh) to surface impressions and notions, moving along too quickly to wallow in the moral ramifications, opting for pace and an often lighter touch rather than pausing or lingering on some sage philosophical point. Whilst there are some bigger picture ideas to consider (Chinese/Western culture clashes, things lost/found in translation and the briefly-dandled idea of ancestral curses), this film dashes through its ideas on identity, consent and ambition to get us to its pretty astonishing finale, and as a result of being neither truly bloodthirsty nor truly messagey, it may struggle to satisfy some audiences. However, there’s lots to like here, and even if Grafted runs out of road to an extent, this is still an entertaining entrant to the new wave of body horror cinema, with great work from its young cast, who literally chop and change between roles as they go.

Grafted (2024) featured at this year’s Final Girls Berlin Festival. You can find out more about the festival here.

WatchAUT: Moon (Mond) (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Moon (2024) starts in a cage fighting arena: old favourite Sarah Reisinger (Florentina Holzinger) seems to have unexpectedly lost her spark. Losing the fight seems to mean losing her career, too. The whole faded fighter idea might be a recurring motif in film, but the way it’s handled in Moon is altogether more existential, using moments of terrific stillness and quiet being used to underpin the issues: where can Sarah go from here? What can she do next?

We share in the first of these moments just after the losing fight. Sarah continues training – the film often uses physical activity to represent the desire for control – but the young women she is now working with are uncomfortable with Sarah’s intrusions into their personal space. This is a problem, when you need to punch someone to do your job. She says nothing much, but you can feel Sarah begin to exude disbelief. Her sister is little help in all of this, having a young baby to look after. Sarah is clearly presented as an ill fit in this world.

Things begin to look up when she secures an online interview with a wealthy Jordanian man who’s looking for a martial arts trainer for his three sisters. Abdul (Omar AlMajali) explains that she’d be taking the role for a few months in the first instance, but all expenses would be paid, and the work sounds ideal. Sarah accepts the position, and soon afterwards arrives in Jordan. Her main residence is a luxurious hotel, but the job takes place at the family home, which is a long way outside central Amman. The house is a facsimile of wealth. It looks opulent, but frequent power cuts punctate day-to-day life and most of the house is off-limits to Sarah. This is policed by a bodyguard who clearly distrusts her, but then he seems not to trust the sisters, either. Oh, and Sarah has to sign an NDA. There’s always someone observing, always a protocol to observe.

The three girls, Shaima (Nagham Abu Baker), Nour (Andria Fateh) and Fatima (Celina Sarhan) are initially all for the new routine, but their enthusiasm soon wanes. On the first day of training, they don’t even get through the warm-up. Cue more incredulity from Sarah, for whom this kind of routine is everything; it’s clear to see that the girls live a strange, isolated existence. They are apparently home-schooled, though you’d struggle to find evidence of any tutors visiting the property. Their parents live abroad; there’s no internet and no mobile phones allowed. They like going to the mall – accompanied, of course – but there’s ultimately little for them to do. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that these young women aren’t instantly into their new hobby, but Sarah has to wonder if her presence there doesn’t have some other, as-yet undiscernible purpose. Or, if it’s not just some new sop to throw to three bright but bored teenagers. Perhaps it’s more the latter, on balance, but slowly the girls get closer to Sarah. They allow her to see some of the more unsettling details of their gilded-cage existence (something which I note has angered certain critics, who feel that it’s an unduly negative representation of Arab culture. But within the bounds of possibility, no?)

To return to other criticisms of Moon, the film’s tendency towards more oblique content which eschews conventional narrative has locked out some viewers, leading to suggestions that the film could have given us more closure – answered a few more questions. Yes, this is true, but on reflection, the gaps in the narrative really are the narrative. Its approach might not be for everyone, but the film speaks loudest when it says the least. Sure, some of the quite sudden developments towards the film’s close feel quite jarring, but they don’t ultimately shift the reality for the sisters, or for Sarah herself. Sarah is in many ways as cautious and closed-off as the sisters, especially Nour, who shows more initiative than the other girls but seems worldly enough to have more to fear. Sarah is plausibly physically fit, but in a strange culture she still comes across as vulnerable. She’s an odd figure, being shepherded through a superficially wealthy Islamic nation in her tracksuits and training gear, hair usually screwed back like it’s some sort of armour. It’s a lonely, perplexing new life, and Sarah is always strangely sympathetic as she navigates it in near silence. No one calls her; her attempts to phone home are beset by technical difficulties, or are just plain unwelcome. You could predict all sorts of likely comeuppances for her which do not come to pass, but the tension is still there on the horizon – again, much as it is for the girls themselves.

Ultimately, Moon is about the illusion of power. Its illusory nature allows director and writer Kurdwin Ayub to skirt around the idea of the ‘white saviour’ who arrives in a foreign place and makes waves; really, no one here is as empowered as they like to believe: not Sarah, not even Abdul, who at least initially seems to be cool, calm and in control. Sarah seems to hold fast to her ability to make a difference, however, even when bitter experience should have given her pause for thought, but the film wisely leaves that idea with us, not showing us how it plays out. All in all, this is a subtle, often uncomfortable piece of storytelling. It’s a film about secrecy, silence and image management, and it doesn’t need to wrap things up to point out that stories and journeys are often as imprecise as they are profound.

Moon (2024) will feature as part of this year’s WatchAUT Film Festival in London.