We aren’t privy to whatever horrors are taking place right at the start of Hellcat (2025) – though we hear enough, and then we follow a beaten-up but homely trailer – with a woman locked inside – which now seems to be travelling with some urgency along a long, deserted road. The young woman (Dakota Gorman) has an injury; however, something else we quickly glean is that her memory is faulty, so she can’t account for her current condition. She starts to explore her current environs with a view to escape, but before she’s able to get out, she suddenly hears a voice.
Through the trailer’s speakers, a man explains to her that he’s the one who’s locked her back there, but only because he wants to help her. He tells her, without any further details, that she has been ‘infected’, leaving her with only an hour or less to get medical help, or else nothing can be done to save her. The woman attempts to verify what he’s saying – there is, in fact, some evidence for his claims – but the power imbalance here is such that she remains paranoid, mistrustful. This is not helped by the fact that the man – who gives his name as Clive (Todd Terry) – can hear and see her, and everything he goes on to reveal complicates things: can his version of events be trusted? At this point, Lena is dealing only with a voice; like Lena, we too must decide whether, and what to accept. It’s vital for her that she is able to piece together what brought her to this point.
Hellcat doles out its truths, half-truths and lies very carefully, sustaining its initial gut-punch of tension whilst steadily creating more. It adds in more horror elements as it unfolds, though for a while it feels as if the film could go in a number of different horror directions – and it’s in this phase that Hellcat is really at its strongest. At this early point, all you can really feel sure is that things are going to get worse. The perpetual forwards motion of the trailer adds to this somehow – this sense of a literally unstoppable journey – but the film is equally (and quite surprisingly) colourful and rich, with clever, blended flashback sequences which bring old memories into the trailer, doing a great deal with the limited space in which most of the film plays out. Minor surreal touches and knowing nods to other ideas work well, too. What the film opts to include and what it opts to omit also displays careful understanding of how to work within the restrictions of a low-budget film, without sacrificing its strengths.
Dakota Gorman, as Lena, has to sustain the bulk of the film as the only actor on screen, and she does so very effectively. She’s no feckless, screaming victim; she works hard to orientate herself in this hostile new environment, and it’s also made clear that she is reckoning with a raft of traumatic prior experiences, and that these have shaped her. She is defiant and resourceful. Equally, Todd Terry has to foster this fear and defiance whilst being off-camera for the most part; it’s an immense ask for any actor, but he does a great job. There’s an element of a battle of wills between a young woman and an older, unknown man here, and if the film particularly resembles another then it’s 10 Cloverfield Lane: there’s a similar power struggle, a similar, possibly pseudo-paternal relationship and talk of some dark force outside, threatening harm. However, in Hellcat, the locus of the threat is the girl’s own body, which changes the dynamics significantly. There’s still a mystery here to unpick, but no sense that Lena can escape whatever is going on in any simple sense.
Whilst the first half of the film is the most assured, and some questions occur around the hour mark as to how things are going to resolve themselves, then the let-up is only brief and any missteps here are rare. Hellcat both fosters a sense of continuity with its horror roots, and also creates a fresh-feeling story. With its shifting sympathies and its nightmarish repurposing of liminal Americana, this is a carefully-plotted, economical and gripping tale.
Hellcat (2025) received its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival on Friday, July 25th.
What do we expect from a film emblazoned with a title like Fucktoys (2025)? – Something quite specific? Something more abstract? Extreme? Funny? Brutal? Actually, all of those descriptors could fit the bill, either in turn or in a more layered sense; this is such a rich and engaging, if always irreverent and often challenging piece of film.
We start with a girl, a nameless girl but for the initials AP (also director/writer Annapurna Sriram). As she’s revealing to a local psychic and tarot reader, she’s not had an easy life so far, but things feel ever more oppressive of late, right down to her losing a tooth recently: this feels symbolic. What is going on? Hopefully a reading can reveal all. As the cards appear, it becomes clearer, sort of: someone has “cursed the shit” out of our protagonist. It can be ritually lifted, but the tarot reader warns her, kindly but in no uncertain terms, that it’ll cost a thousand dollars to get it done.
That sort of money will take some raising, so AP heads out of the bayou (the film was shot in and around Louisiana) and into the big city (actually a place lovingly called Trashtown, variously a landscape pockmarked with damage and ruin, or the outskirts of a down-at-heel urban space). She plans to raise the money through sex work; we first see her with a submissive client, locked in the bathroom of what looks like a punk squat. In pursuit of anyone who might need to actually ‘use’ the bathroom – her client is still in there, so I’ll leave it your imagination why she might need someone with a full bladder – she runs into an old flame, otherwise referred to as her ‘twin flame’, Danni (Sadie Scott), fresh from a bare-knuckle fight (and not her last). Just prior to a highly unorthodox police raid, they flee the house on our girl’s moped. Clearly these are two people with a close and loving bond who then go on to divide their time between earning, spending, partying and struggling through various faux pas, with one biggie reserved for the very last.
Even though Fucktoys has an undeniably dark subtext, with its more overt darkness steadily starting to seep through as the runtime extends, much of the film feels almost impossibly warm and vibrant, despite all this. Clearly a paean to John Waters, the film is filled with gaudy, kitsch places, larger-than-life characters and a heady kind of anti-establishment charm. Trashtown itself is a bizarre fever-dream slice of Americana, gritty but delirious: it’s the perfect backdrop to our girl’s journey, and fits into the film almost as a character in its own right, so that it’s only when our characters leave Trashtown that the more abundant horrors of their situation can make themselves most felt.
Significant also is the limited sense of time in the film: bar one gaudy flip-phone, this could be anywhere between the late Seventies and now, but the film’s soft Super-16 grain and lush colour palette feels much more retro than contemporary. One of the film’s characters, commenting on the attitude necessary to thrive as a party girl-come-sex worker, describes a “spirit of abundance”: this could just as easily describe the style and ethos of the film as a whole, as it never feels anything short of lavish, even in its grimmest moments. Lots of this Fool’s Progress raises a smile, and it’s important to note that the characters smile a lot, too, though whether this is because they are genuinely happy or simply immured against the worst aspects of their lives is open to debate.
It’s also interesting that the film is punctuated by two, opposing sets of characters. One one hand we have a steady array of psychic mediums, regularly blurring the line between real and unreal, veritas and camp, and bound together by the spectre of this “big sexy curse” which our girl is desperate to end. On the other hand, we have the streetcleaners, kitted out in hazmat suits in this universe, deep-cleaning the film’s outermost edges against some unspecified, but potentially harmful filth which we never hear more about. These are two extremes, it seems, presented alongside one another, symbols of the vast differences at play in the world of the film. It’s a spiritual battle not to discuss ‘liminality’ at this juncture, but rarely has a film come along which calls for that term more.
Fucktoys sends itself up regularly, but it’s never vicious to its characters and, regardless of its explicit subject matter, it’s surprisingly gentle, with a female-focused perspective throughout. That allows us to see the undeniable brutality of an uncertain, perfunctory and transactional lifestyle without any proselytising, and the film is able to keep hold of its dreamy, oddball atmosphere, only exposing its sharpest edges at key moments, and letting things come to a worthily strange close under that blue bayou sky. Wherever writer, director and star Sriram goes next, it feels nicely inevitable that it’ll be someplace just as mesmeric and ambiguous as this. This really is a great piece of work.
Fucktoys (2025) appeared at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 22nd.
Rob Zombie’s very first foray into cinema is, and was, everything you’d expect a Rob Zombie feature to be. House of 1000 Corpses(2003) is somewhere between an homage to the weirdest low-budget horror of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties that Zombie clearly loves, and a Rob Zombie promo video – heavy on the aesthetics and the sense of retro sideshow spectacle. It remains divisive, but overall it’s an enjoyable horror spectacle which made its mark. But, in just a couple of years, Zombie’s approach and style was to change dramatically – as he addressed at the time, saying that he approached The Devil’s Rejectsas a brand new project with new characters and a new vibe, rather than thinking of it as a straightforward sequel. As The Devil’s Rejects opens, it’s clear indeed that the sideshow is closed. I quite like the idea that the same characters are just undergoing something very different here, though. Things are different; Halloween is over. In The Devil’s Rejects, when Baby’s eyes snap open, the dreamscape of House of 1000 Corpses disappears for good.
In the blistering Texas sun which opens the second film, there’s definitely a ‘morning after the night before’ feel, even though there’s still a sense that it’s been business as usual for the Firefly family who we last saw making corpse tableaux in the first film, however long exactly the interval has been. Again, we see signs of horrific violence which has taken place at the ranch, but this time, it feels past tense somehow. Otis may be cuddled up to some putrefying remains, but we’re looking at the aftermath here, not the deed – at least, so far. The ‘house of horrors’ motif isn’t central this time, as the family are going to need to flee this place under duress. The signs are clear: this film is going to be leaner, meaner and harsher – but there will be power struggles out there in the big bad world. We certainly start that way: The Devil’s Rejects starts and ends with a shootout, precipitated in each case by the Texas police. Guns didn’t figure quite so prominently in House of 1000 Corpses, but they do here, as described memorably by Mama Firefly: “there’s a million fucking cops” outside, and they are all armed. This development offers a kind of instantaneous rough justice, evidence of the powers that be reasserting themselves; later, we get vigilante justice, which blurs the line between legitimate and criminal all over again.
“I’m sorry sheriff, but you ain’t getting me…”
If we were ever intended to really sympathise with the unfortunate kids whose paths crossed first with Baby and then with the rest of her kin in House of 1000 Corpses, and that still feels like a maybe, then our loyalties perhaps much more easily come to rest with the besieged Firefly family in The Devil’s Rejects; like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, we know these people are appalling, but the powers-that-be are no better, even if it takes time, turmoil and trauma to turn Officer Wydell into a monster. As vile as they undoubtedly are, we feel for the family here. As in good Westerns – and arguably, if we’re talking genre, The Devil’s Rejects is a horror Western, and Zombie has said as much – neither protagonists or antagonists are clear-cut goodies or baddies, though we will likely feel some sympathy for the devil before we’re done. Reality is about to force its way in, and as the bullets spray, the version of the family we have come to know also fractures, though we are about to lose a mother and gain a father.
Forging the link between the garish Captain Spaulding clown show of the first film and the family is, by the way, neatly done here. Captain Spaulding is daddy, and Baby calls him for help as soon as it’s clear that the shit is hitting the fan: they always planned for this. As for Mama – ably played here by Leslie Easterbrook (ironically enough, probably best known for Police Academy) rather than by Karen Black (who declined to reprise her role for salary reasons), she’s fully prepared to end her life rather than submit to arrest, and it’s a moment in the film where want of bullets is as plot-relevant as copious gunfire. Mama gets taken, Rufus is dead and the kids (Otis and Baby, with Tiny MIA) have lost their mother, for what turns out to be for good.
As for Otis and Baby, who successfully link up with Spaulding at a local motel, this is the start of a journey through the darkest fringes of Americana, and arguably, a lot of newer, younger filmmakers picked up a lot of cues from The Devil’s Rejects on how to explore the same kinds of Americana – even if they don’t feel they have been specifically influenced by it, oh they have. The motels, the ranches, the ice-cream stands… The Devil’s Rejects, in turn, was of course itself influenced by a number of titles, and the fact that it nails its colours so squarely to the mast by giving a specific date for its start point (May 18th 1978, a year rife with serial killers) links it not only to horror films of the decade – as much as Zombie deliberately avoided even discussing horror with his crew – but also road movies and again, Westerns. The pitstops are vitally important, and they afford Zombie time and space to play with his favourite trashy aesthetics – as well as providing the film with the bulk of its horror content (which is in there, clear to see) but much of the film is devoted to the open road. There are hints of titles like Duel (1971) in here, alongside the more obvious nods to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and similar. The film has a feeling of a deranged odyssey, punctuated by moments of horrific, indifferent cruelty. The overall blend of journey and horror can feel exhilarating as much as it feels unsettling. It’s a combination which works, in this horror-not-horror film which is going places.
“Boy, the next word that comes out of your mouth better be some brilliant fuckin’ Mark Twain shit, ’cause it’s definitely getting chiselled on your tombstone.”
This brings us, perhaps most clearly, to Otis Driftwood – adopted son to the Fireflys. His transformation is probably clearest of all across the two films, as here he has taken on a more worldly, cynical incarnation : there are no costumes this time and certainly no greasepaint, or any kind of artifice. He is what he is. The new Otis is just a grimy, gritty, murderous drifter with loyalty to only a few; it’s interesting too that a kind of origins myth has sprung up around Otis, appointing him a traumatic childhood which resembles that of Charles Manson (and one of Otis’s many killer lines also echoes something said by Manson acolyte Tex Watson, just for good measure). Certainly, Otis’s cruelty is unparalleled in the film. Of course he’s cruel in House of 1000 Corpses, but here, there’s a kind of easy-going cruelty which feels even more devastating. His treatment of Tommy Banjo, one of the hapless musicians from the motel, is casually sadistic, establishing just what, exactly, we can expect from him. He doesn’t just kill Tommy; he tells him his whole life has been a waste, and he tells him that he’s about to die, despite following all Otis’s instructions: how’s that for cruel? But he’s a character that’s oddly impossible to hate; that takes some doing, presenting audiences with a necrophile and mass murderer but giving him enough killer lines and kudos to still have him be an audience favourite. People love Sid Haig’s Captain Spaulding too, and he has a few great lines of his own (full credit to Zombie for giving the coulrophobes something to cry-laugh about) but it’s Otis who probably comes out on top. This is one of those roles which you can’t now imagine being played by anyone other than Bill Moseley, and it’s almost certainly Moseley’s most memorable character since Chop Top in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre II, a film where perhaps Moseley finessed his blend of family loyalty and a dedication to ultraviolence.
Still, Otis isn’t an omnipotent character here, and both he and Baby get trapped and tortured by Sheriff Wydell (the fantastic William Forsythe). For Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), this development – where the family is eventually betrayed and caught by Wydell – gives her character new opportunities, allowing her for the first time to play the final girl – fleeing for her life, rather than simply reprising the cutesy-killer motif of the first film. The Devil’s Rejects gives Moon Zombie a great push as an actor, and prepped her for her first roles outside of the Firefly universe over the following years. The actor described being so wiped out by the torment scenes that she wasn’t able to just go on and shoot again the next day; that’s down to the emotional weight of the final girl scenes, but also, credit where credit’s due: Wydell the vigilante is a domineering, terrifying figure (and again, you can still sympathise with this newly-created monster).
This turnaround in the family’s fortune adds a huge amount of depth to the film, and makes the subsequent family reunion – as unorthodox as it is – feel valedictory. Throughout the film, the family’s cruelty is tempered not just by their memorable lines, but by the sense of the family as real people: bickering, impersonating one another, laughing, enjoying each other’s company. The ice-cream stop, as well as providing a moment of let-up after all the horrors which have come before, is a chance to see Baby and Otis genuinely behaving like siblings, with Spaulding as overseer (and of course the baby of the family gets her way). A raft of other great performers – such as Ken Foree, Danny Trejo and Brian Posehn, also add a great deal to the film, offering brutality and comedy by turns. Humour is incredibly important here, right down to the comic sobriquets used by the family, and all of the stop-offs and skits along the way. These wouldn’t work to the same extent in a straightforward slasher or similar, but in a road movie, there’s time and space for it. In fact, in the balance between skit and ultraviolence, there feels like a little Tarantino in places (or at least, similar vibes via both Zombie and Tarantino taking cues from similar Seventies titles).
Speaking of which: let’s talk about that soundtrack. A damn good soundtrack is something else beloved of Tarantino of course, and another example of overlap whereby with a great soundtrack, certain songs become associated with certain films forever. Think of Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel, get Michael Madsen (RIP) about to memorably lose his shit in Reservoir Dogs (1992). Hear Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and what tens of thousands of film fans now get is The Devil’s Rejects, all day. Who would ever have thought that a relatively benign rock track, perhaps better known as a tribute to the band who lost their lives, would end up wedded to a story of serial killers and police corruption? And yet, in its defiant phrase, ‘and this bird you will not change’, it fits the Firefly ethos perfectly: come what may, that’s exactly how they’ve lived, and now it’s how they’ll die (or at least, so it seemed at the time; surely another sequel was nowhere near Zombie’s mind at the point the credits rolled on The Devil’s Rejects). The at-first odd fit of some of these tracks (the film opens with an upbeat radio-friendly rock track by The Allman Brothers) is soon hammered into shape as the music’s newfound associations with events in the film shape up. Zombie is eminently capable of surprises in this field: later in his career, we have Lords of Salem soundtracked not by Satanic rock (the obvious choice) but by…The Velvet Underground, for one. But in The Devil’s Rejects OST, we also get honky-tonk and blues, so it’s not a one-fit project, but rather it has a late night radio vibe which takes us on a journey through a wider range of popular and lesser-known songs and genres. It’s the perfect accompaniment to the film we get, a turn of the radio dial as the road rolls on.
“I am the devil, and I am here to do the devil’s work…”
But perhaps the reason fans love The Devil’s Rejects so much is because we clearly get a filmmaker having a great time here, coming into his own in terms of his confidence and skills (which, for many, have never been surpassed) and uniting a knockout cast of genre film darlings. Sadly, since filming, many of those great characters are no longer with us: Matthew McGrory, playing Tiny, passed away shortly after the film’s initial release – making his defiant walk back into the ranch all the more poignant. Whilst not appearing in The Devil’s Rejects, it’s important to remember the late Karen Black did such sterling work creating the original character of Mama, and Sid Haig – whose health was failing by the time 3 From Hell was being filmed – could only partly reprise his amazing turn as Spaulding, after a long list of compelling genre film roles during his lifetime. But, for many, Haig is Captain Spaulding, and he clearly loved both the role and the armies of new fans whichg the role gave him. A cinematic universe and characters created by a ‘B’ movie cineaste, and played by people who clearly loved and respected what had been given to them – it’s rare you feel that so abundantly as you do here, and the energy and dynamism behind the shoot can be felt everywhere in the finished product.
It’s worth remembering that The Devil’s Rejects appeared during the high water mark of a number of New French Extremity titles which would finally peak and roll back with the quasi-philosophical Martyrs just a few years later; this was also the decade of Saw sequels, American-grown torture titles which upped the ante by devising ever more ingenious, twisted torments for its hapless participants. That’s not to diminish the storylines of either the French or the homespun horrors of the decade, but arguably their emphasis was very different, and for a while the road movie – and certainly anything approximating a Western – was not in the ascendant. This was the decade of The Grudge, not vigilante justice – which, at the time, made The Devil’s Rejects feel so fresh, a retro setting and retro influences but a very different-feeling narrative, one which stood out against its peers (and did relatively well financially as a result). Sure, there are some people tied to chairs – is it even a Noughties horror or anything close to horror without someone tied to a chair? – but here, it’s part of a steadily-intensifying vigilante justice story arc which repositions its characters and threatens a very different outcome for the story, shifting our loyalties, sympathies and opinions along the way. It belongs to its era, but yet it feels quite separate from it, which is another reason this title has aged so well. The Devil’s Rejects still feels bold and defiant.
Is The Devil’s Rejects for everyone? Of course not; good! It’s too cruel, even too crude for some audiences – and to trim this film down for certification took a great deal of work, with lots of the film’s worst excesses needing to hit the cutting room floor. But it’s whip-smart, strongly and confidently written, well acted and perhaps even surprisingly thoughtful, for a film in which someone runs around wearing a human skin for fun. It’s incredibly hard to believe twenty years has passed by since queuing up to see this on a summer’s day, and being absolutely blown away by it. The film remains a hugely significant part of Noughties horror, but it easily surpasses that and now feels timeless, which is a real testament to Rob Zombie at his absolute best as a director and writer. Genre-splicing, even genre-defining, cannily irreligious, drenched in brutality and shot through with easeful black humour, it’s a hell of a piece of work and it deserves the reputation which it enjoys amongst the fans for whom it was made.
It never feels like a negative to find there’s a new David Cronenberg film, and with a title and premise like The Shrouds (2024), hopes were bound to be high. Indeed, the main idea here is fascinating, blending Cronenberg’s love for body horror/bodily trauma with a potential source of existential debate, here about life and death itself. There’s no bigger idea to take on. However fascinating it is, though, it doesn’t quite go anywhere. This is a deeply frustrating film. A charitable take on this would be that it’s all deliberate, because grief itself is unending, but I’m not too sure. Every review seems to mention the director’s own bereavement (his wife died in 2017) and clearly, he has brought much of that experience to bear on his most recent project, but the final impression is of a narrative which didn’t quite know how to reconcile the central premise with something more significant. It’s more bosom-y than I’d expect for a film all about grief and loss, too, but we’ll get to that.
In the film, a somewhat bewildered Vincent Cassel plays Karsh Relikh, an entrepreneur who has revolutionised the relationship with the cemetery. Remember that the cemetery itself was a kind of revolution in how people – from the 19th Century onwards – related to death, offering a new kind of eternal rest beyond the cramped, unhealthy confines of the urban churchyard. The Shrouds – the cemetery itself is named that, because of course it is! – is owned by Karsh, whose big idea has been to integrate technology into the burial experience, so that people can now interface with their buried loved ones, using an app to watch them decay in real time. This has been made possible through a new form of shroud, which connects the body to outside world, scanning it and relaying the images either to phones or to a screen on the tombstone.
Here’s the first issue, as much as I am fully aware that this is a Cronenberg film and yes, this idea fits both with his creative means of seeing the world and his own reported wish when he lost his beloved wife that he, like Karsh, just wanted to lie down in the grave with her, such was the nature of his grief. He’s simply played out this wish here in a very Cronenbergian way, and he’s not the first either; medieval art through to John Keats through to any number of horror titles have pondered the decay process, just as, arguably, so have many of our best-known cinematic monsters. But wanting to patch into the grave in real time to see if grandma’s nose has fallen off or not? It’s a stretch, particularly against the otherwise very normal-seeming world against which the film at least begins to play out. Even the swish Shrouds restaurant doesn’t seem out of the question, as people will dine anywhere which gives them a good story to share, but the tech itself does.
However, given time and space, this could have moved from being an initially absurd, though intriguing, and obviously ghastly idea to being a more integrated one. It’s clear that there are moments meant to trigger an uncomfortable laugh (most of the script triggers the same response, but at first that’s fine, too). Beyond the engaging shock factor of Karsh taking a first date to look at his wife’s now skeletonised remains, however, the tech is used more as a means to justify other, semi-realised plot points. This is a shame, because there are some great scenes, reveals and ideas during the first part of the film. These make you remember that David Cronenberg is in his eighties; it’s a great thing that he’s still pulling projects together, even if they have been wildly variable in quality for quite a few years.
Little wonder we see so little of the shrouds technology working, though. Just as Karsh is on the verge of selling his idea to other countries, there’s an attack on his flagship cemetery: data is stolen, and the stones themselves are badly damaged. Fearing a run of bad publicity, Karsh has to work fast both to repair his cemetery, and to find out who could have done this; what do they want? Are they religious? Environmentalists? Are they grieving and angry? Is it a personal vendetta against him? He wonders if it can have something to do with the odd nodule-type structures he recently noticed on his wife’s bones, during an enjoyable few moments of really getting in there to peer at her skull. Those chilly spring evenings must just fly!
That’s another of the films odd sticking points, though: Karsh’s love for his wife relates to her again and again as a body; his memories of her give way to dreams in which she’s always naked (he doesn’t seem to own a photograph of the woman clothed, either) and a lot of his angst in the here-and-now is to do with his ailing libido. Just when it seems he’s condemned to only ever experience sex in dreams where bits of his wife’s body disappear (or – in the film’s only real shock – break) he manages to bag not one, but two lovers: his wife’s sister Terry (Diane Kruger), who gets hot over conspiracy theories (lucky woman then, these days) and a sight-impaired Korean woman, Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt) whose own techbro partner has no interest in her sexually, because he, too, is chronically ill. There’s a lot of oddly perfunctory sex in this film, and a surfeit of boobs, even though Cassel’s modesty is largely preserved, largely because he’s blocked by boobs.
This is all something of a distraction, this midlife sexual reawakening, as he still needs to find out what the hell has been going on at his cemetery. Luckily he has ex-brother in law and top programmer Maury (Guy Pearce) to help him get to the bottom of it. Maury has also helpfully programmed an AI personal assistant for Karsh too; it goes by the name of Hunny, and yes, the avatar gets nude. It’s that, or it turns into a koala. As Karsh thinks back over his relationship with his wife, he recalls that an old flame of hers actually turned out to be her oncologist when she fell ill. Clear conflict of interests? Nope – Karsh is simply jealous that the doctor in question ‘had her body’ before him. Devoid of any deeper resonances, this just feels reductive in the sense of not knowing where to go with it all. Sex and death can be linked, sure – but is this it?
If that all sounds garbled, then I’m afraid it’s because it is. Eroticised explorations of death (and by extension, mourning) are long established; the role of technology in modern society is often debated in film; any sense of a conspiracy offers the possibility of a mystery. The Shrouds is certainly ambitious and tries to bring all of those together, but not successfully. You can ask an audience to accept one absolutely batshit idea; the rest of the story has to have features and ideas we’d recognise in a world where people can’t gawp at their decomposing loved ones. Hunny (also voiced by Kruger) is a bit of an embarrassment; it makes me think of older relatives who are really pleased they know how to work WhatsApp; technology changes so rapidly, you really need to bring someone in on these kinds of inclusions who can advise whether it’s suitable or not.
Suggestions of bigger forces who want the shroud tech aren’t really delineated or seen through to any sort of a conclusion, but there’s enough said to make the audience wonder: why? Why would anyone want to hack static underground cameras? The technology already exists above ground. That’s not a spoiler, by the way, as it doesn’t really go further than wondering whether competing totalitarian regimes are behind the cemetery attack, and after two hours of rather thin plot development, The Shrouds doesn’t provide satisfying answers, opting instead for a rather glib and confusing ending. It’s a shame, because there are some slivers of promise along the way, and yeah, perhaps seminal filmmakers are held to a harsher account than many others, but sadly this film is just not able to pass muster, whoever made it – or why.
The Shrouds (2024) is on a limited UK cinematic release now.
Whilst it’s rare to start a review with as-yet unqualified praise, needs must in this case: Terrestrial (2025) is such an incredibly clever, ambitious project. This tale for our times is filled with surprises, and it’s a huge credit to director Steve Pink and to writers Connor Diedrich and – good name for a writer – Samuel Johnson, that those surprises keep on coming. Don’t be fooled by the title, or the opening scenes: science fiction is incredibly important to Terrestrial, but our film is steadfastly grounded in the real world, despite the fact that we start by seeing some clips from a retro sci-fi film called The Neptune Cycle, before panning back to see a roomful of Neptune Cycle memorabilia: the film is playing in what seems to be a room dedicated to the book and film. We’re obviously dealing with a fan, but something traumatic has clearly happened in this house: there’s blood and glass everywhere, and our protagonist Allen (Jermaine Fowler) is all alone amongst it: we can’t yet see if he’s hurt, or where, but there’s a fractured timeline coming: we step back in time, meeting three of Allen’s old friends, newly engaged couple Maddie (Pauline Chalamet) and Ryan (James Morosini) and Vic (Edy Modica), who are on their way to Allen’s new place.
It’s clearly been a while since they last got together, so the impromptu visit is about to turn into a celebration of Allen’s recent good fortune. He’s now a successful author, or at least he has a very lucrative book deal nailed down; he has a big house (which we’ve already seen), a vintage car, and everything is seemingly going his way. Yet, before the car pulls up, Allen’s friends are expressing some concerns about his wellbeing; the fact that he’s now wealthy hasn’t assuaged those worries, and to be fair, when we catch up with Allen, he does seem a little…off. This impression is extended by the clever audience positioned achieved by the camerawork in the film, which allows us to see a little more – but not much more – than Allen’s guests. We don’t follow him everywhere, but we see that something is on his mind, and he’s behaving nervously.
There’s plenty on the guests’ minds, too. Sure, the drink starts flowing and these people, who were once so close, get the chance to talk over what’s been going on in each of their lives, but with Ryan in particular there’s a level of cynicism about Allen’s new life. Yes, authors can do amazingly well, but Allen, already? Can he really have gone from zero to hero so quickly? Can he really be doing everything he claims? This seed of doubt soon extends to the house itself; Allen isn’t great at excusing where he’s going or what he’s doing, either, as he keeps absenting himself and making excuses. However, things are about to get a whole lot stranger…
Whilst Terrestrial does signpost – fairly clearly – that something isn’t right here, it doesn’t give the game away as to what this might be (and as a reviewer, it’s really enjoyable to be sent down the wrong path from time to time, as happened here). Rather, the film is clear that there’s a mystery, but unfolds the mystery in a sequence of smart, complex ways. This isn’t just a film which starts midway along, backfills and moves past the start point to a predictable ending – far from it. There are overlapping timelines, but it’s rare to see them brought together so skilfully. A lot of the credit for this must go to Jermaine Fowler in the lead role: what he isn’t saying is always as important as what he is saying, but whether explaining himself or otherwise, he’s an incredibly magnetic character. His hypervigilance is well counterbalanced by his friends’ interested, but somewhat detached reactions to his new crazy. The narrative then expands around this group of people, adding in other, sometimes shock complications and achieving some impressive world-building, too.
As such, the inclusion of science fiction is really interesting here. Once again, Terrestrial is not a science fiction film, but sci-fi provides context for everything that happens, particularly with regards to the act of writing itself. Writing can be aspirational, and for a select few people, it’s immensely lucrative. In other ways, though, any writing – even sci-fi – can be simply a means to an end, but it just so happens that sci-fi, with its utopias and its escapism, offers the ultimate contrast to the very worldly concerns of modern creators, fighting either to survive or to thrive right here and right now, in a very real world which is growing less and less inclined to reward creatives. This alone makes the title Terrestrial such a suitable one. But sci-fi is a big part of Allen’s personal story, too: The Neptune Cycle, with its ultimate fantasy of being ‘chosen’ by a higher power, informs so much about him. Self-perception is a key idea in the film, and this is the case throughout Ryan’s invasive questions, or the old friend group’s somewhat competitive attitude towards Allen: after all, everyone wants to be getting on, getting ahead.
An exhilarating, tangled web of deception, double-crossing and questioning, it wouldn’t do to say too much more about this title. This makes it slightly tricky to review, but if a review is at least partly there to help people decide whether to see a film or not, then I hope this one has said enough to make people want to watch. Go in with as few preconceptions as possible, and just allow this creative, humane, modern moral tale to do its thing.
Terrestrial (2025) received its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 20th.
Zombies are a lot harder to come by these days than they used to be. What gives? Despite big hitters like Army of the Dead a few years ago, we just see fewer zombies than we used to. Once upon a time, indie filmmakers went for the zombie genre almost by default. Sometimes, I yearn for the good old days, when low budget directors enrolled all their friends as extras, ensuring they dressed in white to show off all the fake blood to its best. Perhaps things are changing, though. For one, Tina Romero – yes, daughter of George A. – has just entered the fray with a zombie film of her own, and at some point, we might be clear of the Covid projects which, due to other restrictions, attempted to conjure philosophical quandaries, not brain-eaters.
ZombieCON Vol. 1 is, funnily enough, a little bit of both of these. It is a zombie film, but the origins of its zombie outbreak are unusual, and this element is quite probably the film’s best idea. (A little confusingly, by the way, the title appears on IMDb twice, but unless director Kyle Valle has painstakingly remade his film frame by frame, Michael Haneke style, I think we can assume they’re one and the same.)
Here’s the general idea: via a brief voiceover from one of the film’s lead characters, Rocky (Manny Luke), he explains something very important to him and his friends: cosplay. His team – called Rockets Rockets – like nothing better than planning costumes, dressing up and attending conventions, and there’s no bigger or better con than AnimeCon West, the highlight of their year.
It’s not all plain sailing, though, and there’s plenty of rivalry between the different cosplay teams, particularly over who performs best at various choreographed routines performed on stage. (Is this a thing? I’ve never been.) Outside of the con venue, normies are very clearly presented as intolerant, spiteful dicks who see no value in the pursuits enjoyed by these ‘weirdos’: this possibly plays on the fears, and/or the experiences of kooky kids the world over, and there’s a touch of the teen drama about this early part of the film, as well as clear links to comic culture – which feels a little overextensive, but fits in with the central premise, as well as the title.
So where do the zombies come in? That is an interesting one: in this universe, becoming a mindless, gut-ripping monster is dependent on that person’s behaviour. Not quite the indiscriminate outbreak of lore, the people who ‘turn’ in this universe (after a slightly bizarre initiatory event) are the ones we’ve already established are pretty bloody dreadful anyway: anyone who behaves like an arsehole could become a zombie. That doesn’t necessarily mean, by the way, that all of the cosplayers are inherently more tolerant, positive or trustworthy; some people within fandom have negative traits, too. Hatching a plan to cross LA to rescue Rocky’s mom (have you ever noticed that people’s mothers are usually a lot better off without the help?) Rocket Rocket arm up with the as-yet decorative collectible katanas which of course they have around the place, and off they go.
This is clearly a passion project and this is clear through the way the cast gives it their all, enjoying what they’re doing. It doesn’t laugh at cosplayers but laughs with them, perhaps, as it doesn’t take its initial set-up hugely seriously, having fun with it instead, and the film keeps our eye squarely on Rocky and the gang as our de facto heroes. There are issues with any project so constrained by budget, however: there are a lot of sound issues in the early part of the film, and a good boom mike could have sorted out that echoing. This is small fry, however, compared to the fact that the film lingers a little unnecessarily over its character- and world-building, particularly in the first third or so of the film, leading to an extended runtime overall which doesn’t contribute much to the film overall. Still, once the zombie idea comes into play, there’s a decent amount of SFX effects, even if the team couldn’t go as far with the zombie makeup as they probably wanted. You can see that in how they bookend the zombie ‘section’ of the screenplay, with a big gory effect at the beginning, and then a lot put by for the big finale.
In a nutshell, then: there are noticeable constraints and a few issues with ZombieCON Vol. 1, many of them budgetary, some of them more to do with plot and pace. However, there’s a lot of positivity too, and you can give credit for the ideas and the ambition shown here. Whilst this film isn’t quite the big zombie comeback the world wants and needs, it is a likeable and aspiring indie film and it’s highly likely that its cosplayer subject matter will make it particularly interesting to that element of the demographic, whose fantasy fandoms often ask them to ponder the ‘what ifs?’.
ZombieCON Vol. 1 (2024) is now available on Fandango and Apple TV.
Welcome to Gruber Hills, a desirable suburban community established in the 1850s. Great – or is it? As we quickly catch sight of torn pages from a grimoire (I’m convinced grimoires have a style guide) and boxes of ammunition, it seems that the community – and this home in particular – are under a monstrous siege, and Mabel (Devney Nixon), for one, is getting sick of it. This isn’t the retirement she envisaged, even if her husband is dead set on retaining his property, come what may. Well, just in case, Mabel has some potential buyers lined up; they’ll be along in the morning, oh, and they’re offering more than a million dollars for the place. It turns out, for one reason and another, that they’re going to be ready to make that sale after all.
Enter Lucas (Chris Mayers) and wife Jenny (Haley Leary), two young urbanites who have finally made the leap from a city rental straight into an HOA (something I had to look up, as we don’t really have these in the UK: they can tell you how long to grow your lawns?!). Lucas is much more clearly tailor-made for this lifestyle, whereas Jenny isn’t so much, but when they receive an invitation to a residents’ equinox party, they can’t really say no. An equinox party, though? What is this, some kind of cult?
No – it’s worse. Backfilling what we might have gleaned from the opening scenes, it turns out there’s a nearby portal to hell which requires the community to band together once per year to fight off its unholy forces. They call it a ‘party’, but that’s just clever branding: really, the equinox is something to survive, and not just in the sense of simply avoiding HOA-baiting faux pas over the buffet. The other HOA members are pretty sure, by the by, that Lucas and Jenny will be dead by the morning, but there’s not much time to debate their odds. Things kick off early, with the first wave of monster attacks happening ahead of time and – let’s not dwell on the whys and wherefores – their tried-and-tested neighbourhood monster killer, McScruffy (Hamid-Reza Benjamin Thompson) in unexpectedly out of action. More or less.
This is clearly one of those films which would thrive in front of a festival audience: Hold the Fort (2025) has lots of potential to be a genuine crowd-pleaser, with a fun premise which feels quite similar to a video game in terms of its plot and key developments. Whilst it perhaps promises more of an onslaught than it can fully deliver (and the film relies quite heavily on the dark to hide some of its budgetary SFX constraints) you can forgive this, because by displaying a thorough understanding of the right pacing, the right way to edit and – wherever it can – the requisite amount of gore, it’s able to come out feeling like a win.
The film as a whole has a childlike energy which cedes into the straightforwardly childish in a few places, no scorn intended (there’s room for a fart joke and more than a few physical gags and one-liners here) but there’s plenty of space to send up the American ideal, just without getting overcomplex. Characters are developed with a very light touch, and it never feels like filler; it’s just enough added depth to keep the story ticking along. And, at less than 75 minutes, the film doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is a key contributor to its success. Two hours of this would feel onerous. One and a bit is just right.
If I had to designate the film by its influences, I’d probably say it takes some elements from The Burbs (1989) and The Cabin in the Woods (2011), with a smattering of Evil Dead II (1987) perhaps, given the second Evil Dead film’s more overt use of humour. Whilst it can’t compete with those titles in terms of effects, and yes, does feel like it wants to from time to time, it’s still a nicely entertaining piece of splatstick horror-comedy which the cast and crew must have loved making. In amongst the madness, it also finds time for a serious piece of life advice along the way: always read the contract.
Hold the Fort (2025) had its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival on Wednesday, July 16th.
Demián Rugna’s devastatingly terrifying Argentinian horror had everyone talking on its world premiere and has garnered awards galore, including Best Film at Sitges Film Festival, Best International Film at Fangoria Chainsaw Awards and a double win at Gérardmer Film Festival – the Audience Award and Critics Award.
When Evil Lurks certainly lurked in the minds of critics and audiences alike too, with Dumdums stating it’s ‘One of the most disturbing movies you’ll EVER see’ and The Geek Show declared it ‘A powerhouse of a possession film, cementing Demián Rugna further as an absolute master of horror in the making’ and praise continued from The Cosmic Circus who said it ‘Defiantly crosses several lines even the most twisted of films in the genre wouldn’t dare step over… has the makings of a new high-mark for horror, for those who can stomach it at least’.
The wicked When Evil Lurks Limited Edition is now set for release on 28 July 2025 and is presented in a stunning rigid slipcase with brand new artwork and is presented in dual format edition including both UHD and Blu-ray with main feature and bonus features on both discs and a slew of special features including brand-new interviews, a new commentary and a new video essay and more please see full listing on attached. Separate Standard Edition 4K/UHD and Blu-ray versions will also be available on the same date.
And…we’re delighted to be able to offer a competition copy for Warped Perspective readers!
To be in with a chance of winning, please email the site with WHEN EVIL LURKS as the subject header. In the body of your email, please include your full name and postal address (UK readers only, sorry!)
The competition will be drawn on the release date, so please make sure all entries are emailed in by midday on Monday 28th July (GMT). The winner will be contacted the same day: if you do not hear from us on the 28th, then please assume you have been unsuccessful on this occasion.
The site is GDPR compliant and addresses will only be stored up until the time the competition ends.
I think that’s it, so to be in with a chance at this great prize, get writing! Thanks and good luck…
The Fantasia International Film Festival – now in its 29th year – has long since established itself as a world-beating event, and it hardly needs saying that it’s one of the real highlights of the year for genre film fans, whether those lucky enough to be in attendance or those of us watching and reviewing remotely. As ever, when the press information lands, it’s somewhere between exciting and intimidating: an embarrassment of riches, you could say. It’s been quite a task to run through it and pick out some highlights ahead of the festival opening next week (it will run from Wednesday 16th to Tuesday 22nd July), but here they are – tailored for a Warped Perspective audience, but as such just a fragment of what’s on offer across the course of the week. At least a few of these titles should be available for press coverage, and if so, watch this space – but for now, take a look at some of the films coming to this year’s festival…
The Undertone
Ian Tuason is best known as an author, but in his first feature film The Undertone, look out for a blend of tech horror and folk horror as a podcaster, Evy, begins to investigate a number of mysterious audio files of a man and his wife – whose story begins to become enmeshed with Evy’s own, traumatic life experiences. With Nina Kiri (The Handmaid’s Tale) in the starring role, expect an intense performance and a phenomenal use of sound design to bring the film’s sensory horrors to life. This will be the film’s world premiere.
Find Your Friends
Party culture turns sour in Izabel Pazkad’s first-ever feature as a girls’ outing gets scuppered first by hostile locals who don’t want the girls there, and then by warped and increasingly nasty internal pressures as the friends’ dynamic fractures. Looking at the fragility both of party culture and of young women and their lives, Find Your Friends escalates into something profound, nasty and shocking. The film receives its world premiere at Fantasia.
Nesting
Horror cinema has never exactly shied away from the negatives of the parenting experience – vulnerability, isolation, exhaustion – but in more recent years, it’s felt confident to focus its whole energies on it, particularly around maternal mental health. This brings us to Nesting, which doesn’t flinch in its portrayal of Pénélope (Rose-Marie Perreault), a woman with postpartum depression enduring the disintegration of her old life as she battles to support the wellbeing of her child. This will be another world premiere for the festival.
Flush
I don’t know, maybe it says something poignant about Western society that ‘toilet stall horror’ could perhaps be considered a subgenre at this point, but while we mull it over, here’s the synopsis for Flush, which promises quite the ride. Luke, a middle-aged coke fiend heads to the workplace of his ex, a nightclub, to win her back. Long story short, he ends up in the bathroom with a heap of stolen drugs, and from that point on things get…hectic. The press synopsis suggests that Flush is “Evocative of Dupieux by way of Gaspar Noé and early Álex de la Iglesia”, which is probably all you need to know to decide if you’re interested, and I bet you are by now. This first feature by Grégory Morin will be receiving its world premiere at the festival.
The Book Of Sijjin And Illiyyin
Now this is one for Warped Perspective: a blend of Islamic folk horror, Fulci-worthy ocular torture and Evil Dead-style demons and gore as a woman sick of being belittled and mistreated by her bosses decides to invoke a few demonic forces to get her vengeance. Indonesia really has carved a name for itself in the last couple of decades, and it’s always a thrill to be exposed to new folklore and myth, so hopes are very high for this one – which is about to receive its North American premiere.
Straight Outta Space
In the neighbourhood of Schijndrecht, street coaches Amin and Mitchell have enough to contend with without the locals suddenly turning into slime-covered creatures thanks to an intergalactic intervention (think Night of the Creeps and Attack The Block). Up against all of this, it’s the local residents who need to band together to save their community in this ambitious Dutch sci-fi-comedy outing. Straight Outta Space will be getting its North American premiere at Fantasia.
…and if that isn’t enough, here are some one-line synopses for other interesting titles appearing at the festival!
Holy Night: Demon Hunters (South Korea) – a gang of exorcists track and fight a band of devil worshippers and the demons they conjure, blending dark humour with plenty of brawls and horror.
Sugar Rot (Canada) – ice-cream-flavoured body horror as a girl becomes pregnant with…something which begins to change both her body and mind, after she endures an assault at the ice-cream parlour where she works.
Touch Me (USA) – two co-dependent best friends become addicted to the heroin-like touch of an alien narcissist who may or may not be trying to take over the world.
Queens of the Dead (USA), directed by Tina Romero, whose name you might recognise, Queens of the Dead positions the zombie apocalypse outside the walls of a giant NYC warehouse party, leaving a diverse bunch of people to fight for survival.
The Virgin of the Quarry Lake (Argentina) – repeat everything I said above about Indonesia’s contribution to recent horror but with Argentina this time; here, a young woman turns to witchcraft as a means of navigating a changing and complex modern world, blending horror with sensitive coming-of-age stylings.
The festival will also be running its usual roster of retro features (including the brilliant House with the Laughing Windows and Paul Morrissey’s thus-far rare cult classic Mixed Blood(thanks to Arrow and Vinegar Syndrome for their new restorations of these titles), as well as in-person events, including panel discussions, talks and a book launch: That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film by Payton McCarty-Simas.
We start Pins and Needles (2024) in the same brisk, grisly manner which remains consistent throughout the film. The first quick lesson we learn is that blood is hard to shift, even when you’re scrubbing it away as hard as you can. We get this message before the title screen even appears, mind; this is not a film here to waste time, and it’s great to see.
However, this is just a brief shock before we move elsewhere, first getting a sense of scale – via shots of wide, open spaces – then zooming in on the strange minutiae of nature, its insects and invertebrates, squirming in jars. This is because our protagonist Max (Chelsea Clark) is an environmental science grad student doing field work, out collecting specimens. She’s heading off early though, getting a ride from her friend Harold (Daniel Gravelle) – a nice guy, if a little misguided, who has arranged to pick up a friend-of-a-friend on the way who’s pretty obviously a small time drug dealer. This bad call is partly responsible for a chain of events: a near-miss police stop, a hasty detour and an unplanned pitstop.
Fortunately – although the ominous soundtrack does anything but signpost this as ‘fortunate’ – their vehicle has gotten a flat right outside a surprisingly state-of-the-art house, right out there in the middle of nowhere: surely the people who live there can help? Max heads off to investigate – and so it begins, with Max, a Type 1 diabetic, at the mercy of her depleting insulin supplies, as well as everything else which begins to escalate once they’ve encountered the owners of the house. But as it soon turns out, only the house itself can offer any hope for finding the means to get the hell out of there and to safety, leading to a kind of double jeopardy for Max, who has to get inside to get outside. What she discovers inside is grotesque, alluding to the right amounts of rumour and urban myth about the super rich whilst turning it into a tense, gruesome game of survival.
Whilst later in the film director/writer James Villeneuve – who also directed the superb Vicious Fun – permits more and more slivers of dark humour to creep in, the set-up in Pins and Needles really isn’t comedic; from the outset, it has an artfully awry vibe, a feeling of something being ‘off’. It’s hard to pin it down. It could be because of the oppressive soundscape; maybe it’s the lush-looking, but disjointed early scenes; it could be the feeling of being in medias res right from the start, or even just the expert use of handheld cameras to keep us feeling like we’re stuck on Max’s level, enduring horrible surprise after horrible surprise alongside her. Whatever it is – probably all of this and more besides – it does its job, spinning a visually strong, atmospheric experience which is sustained.
Whilst our first up-close introduction to affluent homeowners Frank (Ryan McDonald) and Emily (Kate Corbett) feels like the film’s first big gear shift, with their casual cruelty being presented through some overblown dialogue, it does begin the process of adding in that dark humour whilst also resembling a lot of the most effusive claptrap spoken by the world’s very real super rich, whose words and performances are no kin together. This is a Canadian film, but the way Pins and Needles combines its wide open spaces, slick modern interiors, arrogant affluence and have-more cruelty feels very American. That could just be a personal perception thing. Hints given as to the source of all this wealth surpass land borders, anyway.
Whilst you may recognise some of the elements in this film, because there are a lot of familiar plot points from other, older horrors, there’s never a sense of Pins and Needles feeling simply derivative. It hasn’t set out to emulate anything, anyway: it just has a sense of what has come before it and ideas on how it can do its own thing with some of those central ideas. Furthermore, it retains a taut, crisp structure throughout, with an engrossing lead performance and a growing sense of confidence which serves it well. In some respects, despite the differences in plot, it reminds me of Apartment 1BR: it shares the earlier film’s dedication to getting the core elements right, understanding the importance of a strong lead role and avoiding the temptation to let things balloon to an overly-long runtime. It’s clearly been edited right down to the bone, and it absolutely works to the film’s credit. This isone sharp, economical horror, great at sustaining tension and a genuine pleasure (?) to watch.
Pins and Needles (2024) is available now from Filmhub.
In the opening scenes of Ba (2024), the presence of a strange, hooded figure making its way into a hospital ward is clearly, strongly reminiscent of Grim Reaper folklore. It’s a fair first impression, borne out by what follows – but in its own mythology-building and the careful ways it humanises its main characters, Ba is much more than a re-tread of tried-and-tested subject matter. It takes a trope, a well-established set of beliefs and does more than enough with these to make the film as a whole feel fresh and worthwhile.
We move back six months earlier: father Daniel (Lawrence Kao) and daughter Colette (Kai Cech) are driving and chatting, seemingly happily. But it’s not long until we see that this is bluster: they’re homeless, and they were hoping to stay with a friend, but that falls through, too. They have to change their plans: dad tries to keep things upbeat, but staying overnight in a parking lot with your child? It’s not ideal, to say the least.
The situation shifts. When Daniel finds an abandoned bag in the parking lot, he is curious enough to open it. Inside, he finds cash – lots of cash – and a note. It tells the reader that if they take the payment, then it’ll be considered a sign-up to the ‘eternal profession’. For now, that sounds scarier than it does tempting, but you know Daniel won’t be able to hold out for long. He loves his daughter, he’s a single parent and he wants to provide for her (the ‘Ba’ of the title is a version of ‘Pa’). The next day, Ba goes back to the bag – still there, still untouched – and this time, he takes the cash. The contract is now sealed.
As the film progresses, we get glimpses of all of the things which have brought father and daughter to this point, providing a picture of a family beset on all sides by recognisable, realistic problems. This is important, because to believe in the supernatural turn of events, you need characters with plausible backstories. It’s a lesson many indie filmmakers could stand to learn. We see just enough of the injuries (Daniel is, or was a pro dancer), the health conditions, the family schism, the eviction notice which have led to the parking lot: it isn’t overwritten, but it helps significantly to generate pathos for both of these people. The film’s spin on the idea of Death personified turns death itself into a shady, underground industry of sorts and it’s surprisingly effective: in this universe, and I can’t help but think of these ideas as a kind of horror shadow to some of Terry Pratchett’s best work, the Grim Reaper works as part of a conglomerate, not dead but not alive in the normal sense, with a job role and a contract which has workplace stipulations. Fulfil your contract, and you can quit – if you do things to the letter. Of course, roles and responsibilities like this have quite a lot riding on them, with much that could go wrong. Beyond this idea, Ba can be read as a critique of the whole idea of indentured labour – particularly given that we have an immigrant single father here, already pushed to the margins of society with a pre-existing array of very tough decisions to make.
For all its fantasy components, however, Ba isn’t an especially complex film; it does enough, it has great ideas, it utilises subtle effects, but it’s the touching details and strong performances which truly carry it. It also adds in new characters and stories very carefully, with only one exception (a villain arrives, misbehaves and departs at twice the speed of anyone else). However, misfires here are so infrequent as to be easily overlooked. Ba is a richly colourful, well-framed and visually appealing film, and it’s equally gratifying that writer/director Benjamin Wong and his team haven’t succumbed to the frequent indie temptation to push the film to a much longer runtime because they couldn’t bear to part with any footage. The runtime we have – an economical 75 minutes – is more than suitable for the story at hand. Ba is a supernatural tale, sure, but it works as well as it does because of the loving – if damaged – family at its heart.
