Being a tiny nation, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Iceland hasn’t yet featured very prominently, in its own right, in cinema. Its stunning and evocative landscapes have been used a thousand times in films which simply seek a striking location, but it’s comparatively rare to see Icelandic people, language and stories making their own way to the screen – at least for audiences outside of the country. For this reason alone, it’s welcome to see I Remember You (Ég man þig) – an Icelandic thriller which unites the noir stylings of popular TV shows like The Killing and The Bridge with something altogether more supernatural, more intangible. To achieve this – which it does, largely effectively – it relays an extensive story via two seemingly separate narrative arcs.
We first encounter a doctor, Freyr, apparently a psychiatrist (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) but enrolled to attend a death scene out of sheer necessity, when an elderly woman commits suicide in a remote church. She’d clearly died in some distress, having trashed the church’s interior and carved numerous crosses into the walls before hanging herself. The mystery deepens; the crosses carved into the walls have also been carved into her flesh, by whom we do not know: it’s something which has apparently been taking place for years given the differing degrees of scarring. Alongside detective Dagný (Sara Dögg Ásgeirsdóttir) Freyr becomes embroiled in trying to understand the reason for this death. Examinations of her background reveal that a number of people from her childhood have also died in strange circumstances – in fact, only two of the children from an ominously defaced group photograph are still alive, whilst another boy disappeared decades previously, never to be seen again. This would all be troubling enough, but when the elderly survivors seem to know something about Freyr’s son Benny – himself long missing, presumed dead – then Freyr has to follow the mystery to its origins.
Elsewhere, husband and wife Garðar and Katrín (Thor Kristjansson and Anna Gunndís Guðmundsdóttir) arrive in a weathered corner of the country with the goal of renovating a dilapidated shack in what was once a whaling village, long since abandoned. Katrín’s friend Líf has come along to help out, and on the surface, they seem a happy trio who aren’t afraid of the hard work ahead; there’s money to be made from the tourism which summer will bring, Katrín asserts. However, the ulterior motive behind all of this also pertains to a lost child. Katrín recently gave birth to a stillborn son, and the resulting pressure on the marriage caused a rift which is only just healing. Things are not as promising as they seem, however, and the cracks are soon to show, but Katrín seems to be prone to seeing and hearing things which seem to be supernatural in origin. The more she seems affected, the more issues between her and Garðar come to the fore; is she seeing the ghost of a little boy in the property because of her own trauma and her own situation? Or is there something else at play?
How these two stories will intertwine is kept quiet for a large share of the film, with each story generating its own interest (and several low-key scares); course, you can probably gather that they will, eventually, overlap, and to give credit to writer/director Óskar Thór Axelsson, it’s quite hard to predict the process. That said, it feels like a long road to get to this point: the film runs at 105 minutes, which in today’s climate is not that long at all, but given the deliberation and pace of I Remember You, it feels somewhat longer. If you have patience for these kinds of slow-burn thrillers, then I would say there’s plenty there to reward it, but if you prefer your films more tightly-wrought then you may also feel that this film meanders in places.
Still, what a place to meander: part of the joy (if that’s the right term) of so much of this scandi noir comes simply from looking at the Scandinavian locations where these various shades of hell are unfolding. Like its neighbours, on one hand Iceland is neat, orderly and picturesque, and on the other it’s stark, barren and oddly colourless: these places look like nowhere else on earth. In fact, it’s a wonder more specifically supernatural cinema isn’t coming from Scandinavia, as the whole ethos of order being overshadowed by something sublime and terrifying is right there in the landscapes and the towns in equal part. I Remember You also has decent performances throughout, which underpins the unsettling horror at its core: lost, dead children, and the impact this has on their surviving relatives, especially parents. Still, this has been done elsewhere in recent years: the stark locations notwithstanding, I Remember You is thematically quite similar to The Orphanage, with a similar balance of mystery and supernatural phenomena (mercifully brought to the screen with a minimum amount of jump scares, though a few black-eyed child ghosts, which seem irresistible to filmmakers everywhere). The problem is, once you spot this similarity, many of the mysteries may lose a little something, but this is to be expected when there are comparatively so few modern ghost stories which rely on this kind of mystery-solving.
All in all, however, I Remember You is a well-shot film which shows us that ghosts inhabit the bleakest corners. It lingers over its exposition in ways which may challenge the patience of some viewers, but those who enjoy things to move a little slower and quieter will find plenty here. Not an instant classic perhaps, but an aesthetically-pleasing slow burn chiller nonetheless.
For many of us growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, being terrified by the Borley Rectory hauntings was practically a rite of passage. For my part, I must have been around nine years old, I’d guess, and found out about ‘the most haunted house in England’ from a Readers’ Digest Mysteries of the Unexplained compendium. There were other tales of ghostly phenomena which also fascinated and appalled me – the Matthew Manning story, the Bell Witch case – but the allegedly ghostly scrawls addressed to ‘Marianne’ really fixed themselves in my imagination. I couldn’t bring myself to re-read the section on Borley Rectory for weeks at a time, but thought about it constantly, even beginning to practise my own automatic writing after I read about its use in Borley – thus, terrifying myself even more.
Borley Rectory (2017) is unusually framed as a documentary film, exploring and discussing the events mentioned above in largely linear order with the help of a narrator – none other than Julian Sands. Ashley Thorpe explained at the screening that his film had been heavily influenced by his own childhood nostalgia for spooky 70s TV, such as the works of Lawrence Gordon Clark and the Armchair Thriller series, which had a scary ghost nun of its own. I’m sure I saw some Ghost Story for Christmas artwork tucked away in one of the sequences, too. However, Thorpe also mentioned a love of 1920s and 30s Hollywood horror, which seems altogether heavier in the mix: Borley Rectory is shot entirely in black and white, and the actors wear the heavily stylised costumes and make-up beloved of, say, early James Whale cinema. Whilst it’s somewhat engaging to see some well-beloved actors both dressed in period costume and acting accordingly – with Reece Shearsmith as the Daily Mirror reporter, Nicholas Vince as Reverend Smith and author Jonathan Rigby as Price himself, the rather studied delivery somewhat dwarfs any stylistic links to the barely-glimpsed horrors of Gordon Clark.
The legacy of Catholicism in French and Belgian left-field cinema seems to mean a strange predilection for Christian themes, although it finds its form in curious ways. In recent years we’ve had Calvaire, made in 2004 (retitled ‘The Ordeal’ for English audiences, which neatly strips it of its Biblical meaning), the Christmas creation horrors of Satan (2006) and of course Martyrs (2008). Now, ten years later, we have something which merges crime drama with something altogether more spiritual and not a little gonzo: voila, Doubleplusungood.
The film, for all its unusual contextual factors, is however broadly linear: it takes its unconventional elements on a pretty straightforward journey through a series of kills, which can feel repetitive, despite the film’s efforts to draw down interest via its inventively-nasty sequences. The film certainly steers away from conventional style or approach throughout: it’s thoughtfully shot, with a wide range of locales and lots of artistic, experimental detail (even veering into psychedelia on occasion). There is undeniably something of the new-wave of French/Belgian horror cinema in the way Doubleplusungood looks, with lots of that blueish colourisation, though it’s still far more of a crime thriller overall. That said, we do see a bit of ‘implement torture’ going on here, which also chimes with those new wave horrors.
Honestly, I’m the sort of reviewer who thinks that the vast majority of slashers (and many gialli) are better enjoyed as still images than films – being largely an array of stylish, bloody set pieces only loosely linked by some sort of plot – so watching Sergio Martino’s crossover film Torso was an opportunity for me to test my misgivings about this type of catch ’em and kill ’em horror. His other work has been pretty diverse fare in its way, after all, and a who’s who of cult film stars helps to underpin the potential of the film under discussion. Worth a shot, right?
All of that said, Torso does achieve many things which distinguish it against a crowded field of carved-up nubile flesh. It boasts beautiful locations (mind, Italian cities seem to do the hard work by themselves) and some scenes border on the supernatural, in ways beloved of Martino’s near-contemporary Michele Soavi. It’s also an incredibly tactile film, with close attention to small details; whilst the gore FX haven’t aged particularly well, they’re very brief, whilst interesting, unusual shots (such as a woman’s hands palpating mud) show artistic flair. And, after moving all of its pieces into position for benefit of the big whodunnit, the film generates tension very effectively: yes, this takes time, but the closing twenty minutes or so give a good pay-off for all that has come before, resulting in a genuinely gripping finale. I’m not sure I can say that Torso has won me over fully to this style of filmmaking, but certainly, this is an arresting example of its genre, which manages some real surprises, in amongst the various nods to Bava et al.
1970s cinema has many noteworthy qualities, but amongst these, the decade is certainly remarkable for its brief, but intriguing phase of imagining animals ‘going rogue’ and attacking humans; some of the resulting films were breakthrough hits, such as Jaws (1975), whereas some, such as Day of the Animals (1977) would be long-lost to obscurity if the DVD age hadn’t decided seeing Leslie Nielsen wrestling a grizzly bear was too good to pass up. Before sharks, bears and other beasts were redressing the natural balance, however, there was Willard (1971) – a film where it’s the humble rat who’s up to no good, though all at the behest of a rather lonely young man. I suppose the initial premise makes some sense: compare the number of people killed by sharks to the number killed by rats over the centuries, and the rat is definitely king – though to be fair to rats, they’ve simply been clearing up after Man for millennia, fighting over the same resources, often dying of the same things, whilst not being particularly deferential along the way.
In the sequel, Willard’s rat posse have escaped and decided to go it alone, moving into the sewers beneath the city. Forging a link to Willard before it, people establish that Ben is the leader of the rats via some pages from Willard’s diary (which we never saw him keep, but hey.) This eventually throws them into the path of a young lad, Danny, who is being bullied and suffers from a heart condition: Danny befriends Ben in particular, and Ben – who is already rather comfortable with people – becomes his best mate/avenging angel, protecting him from the bullies. Thing is, Ben the rat isn’t always a force for good. Ben and his crew aren’t too keen on human intervention in their now-habitat, and anyone making the mistake gets attacked by a whirlwind of flying rodents; again, probably not safe terrain for a phobic.
Truth be told, neither Willard nor Ben are superb films and Ben is the weaker, but they’re certainly quite unlike anything else, and they have had some influence elsewhere. Willard even got a fairly glossy remake/’reimagining’ in the Noughties featuring cult actor Crispin Hellion Glover, so its reach was definitely there. Willard, in particular, is also notable for a surprising cast featuring ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ Elsa Lanchester in one of her last roles, alongside Ernest Borgnine as the execrable boss. There’s enough here to entertain and some material which can surprise. Well, you can now own this ratsploitation double bill in an attractive limited edition Blu-Ray box set: the good folk at Second Sight are about to release this, and you can find out more about it 
Rather than a straightforward stand-alone short film, Empire of Dirt is intended to introduce characters and themes which will be explored fully in a feature-length offering. As such, no time is wasted: we’re shown, briefly, that these events are taking place in Manilla, 1997, and then we’re straight in to a frantic shootout, followed by a skirmish in a dilapidated building. It seems as though our protagonist is coming to the aid of a desperate, terrified woman, at least on first impressions: whatever his loyalty to her is, he pitches himself into some gritty, bloody and physical action, killing those he finds, with the violence happening both on and off screen. It’s a testament to Mason’s directorial abilities here that, even in a few short minutes, you feel as disturbed by the violence taking place off-screen as you do the violence in front of you.
Few writers have had their work adapted for the screen half so much as Stephen King, nor with such variable results, but then this is exactly to be expected when the man himself’s work has varied so wildly over the years. When it comes to the huge tomes from his early days, such as The Stand and IT, the TV miniseries has often seemed to be the way to go, rather than making a feature film. Particularly bearing in mind that epic-length films are really more a contemporary domain, it no doubt made sense, even if for manageability alone, to serialise the events of the books over a period of weeks. The resulting TV version of IT, made in 1990, for all its (now apparent) flaws cemented itself as a formative experience for many viewers, particularly those of us in our thirties. Look at it now, and what you mainly see are the awkward birth pangs of CGI; back then, though, everyone – very few of whom had read the book, and many of whom were children themselves – were frightened of Pennywise the Clown.
IT also uses its now thirty-years-old setting, a world before health and safety, safeguarding and more concerted efforts to tackle bullying, to present childhood itself as horrific. Sure, these kids didn’t have to prefix ‘bullying’ with ‘cyber’, but no one was tranquilised by mobile phones and social media, either: it plain didn’t exist. Your plight was your own, and your world ended at the edge of town, or went as far as your friendship group – if you had one. It seems to me that knowing all of this – seeing these changes – has also been used to add to the impact of the supernatural horror. (This would have been as much the case had they left the setting in the mid-twentieth century, mind, but fewer of us would now recognise that in the same degree of detail.) As for the adults in IT, and bearing in mind that many viewers are now approximately the same age as them and not the kids, they’re represented as negligent at best, incestuous at worst: they cajole, they medicate, they exploit but most of all, they ignore their offspring completely. Their children are ripe pickings for any sinister force which might come along.
Festival season is upon us once more, and one by one, the best horror and genre film festivals of the UK are revealing what they have lined up. Myself and co-editor Ben often take ourselves down to Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema for Celluloid Screams: now in its ninth year, it has introduced us to a range of excellent films during the years we’ve been attending, and films we see there have often wound up on our ‘Best Of’ lists at the end of the year – proving that festivals are where it’s at for film fans. This year looks to be no different, with an absolutely stellar line-up coming our way. Whilst there’s often a bit of overlap between festivals of this nature (no bad thing, in my opinion, meaning that most people will be able to get to at least one of the screenings they’re after) Celluloid Screams has also got the steal on some intriguing and exciting new films.
Though a few notable films have bucked the trend, it’s still comparatively rare, at least in Western cinema, that we see so much of a mention of Stalin or the Soviets whilst Nazi bad guys are ten a penny in all manner of horror, sci-fi and exploitation cinema. So, when I saw the promo material for Guardians – a modest budget Russian sci-fi – it seemed that here we’d have a film to buck the trend, what with all the mentions of Stalin taking action in response to the Nazis developing ‘super soldiers’ and what-have-you. It turns out that this context is mainly for the press information and doesn’t really feature in the film at all, however, so aside from some black and white images relative to the Cold War in the opening credits, the film is set squarely in modern-day Russia.
The Guardians themselves, once back together, need to use their slightly odd array of skills to defeat their erstwhile engineer. So we have: Ksenia, a woman who becomes transparent in water, and is impervious to extremes of temperature; Khan, a guy who can move very fast and has some equally speedy swords; Ler, who can make stones move, and (my obvious personal favourite) Arsus, who can turn into a half man, half bear (the top half) or if he’s really up against it, an ENTIRE BEAR, replete with Incredible Hulk style magic reappearing trousers when he becomes a man again. The rest of the film prioritises a number of what look like reasonably budgeted fight/action scenes, with a fair few head-scratching moments regarding the plot: it feels rather as if things are being raced through here, simply in order to introduce some action heroes who are clearly being set up for a sequel by the end credits – which is okay, but if you’re expecting a detailed story, best forget it. In fact, you’re probably already thinking of a certain other franchise at this point, and yes, the similarities to X-Men are manifest, albeit the latter takes more time (or more time makes it to screen) to establish character and motivation. It’s as if director Sarik Andreasyan has looked at all the X-Men movies and got a little ahead of himself, wondering how he could propel his own characters to those heights. This is clearly a film made by a team cognisant of the rage for superheroes ongoing in cinema. Guardians goes at a run throughout, where perhaps it would have established itself better by taking a breath.
The way that I first found out about its existence no doubt did a great disservice to A Ghost Story. Remember that Guardian newspaper article from July, which argued for something called ‘post-horror’? Post-horror is, of course, simply the latest in a long line of terms invented by people who can’t quite accept that they may have liked or made some horror: we’ve had dark fantasy, social thrillers, and now we have post-horror; 
At this point, C sits bolt upright. The sheet which covers him stays in place, referencing the old idea of ghosts wearing shrouds (see the alleged ghost photograph taken at Newby Church in the UK as an example) and also the prevalent idea in Western culture that ghosts remain because of some sort of unfinished business. Instead of walking through what looks like an exit, which is incidentally the only slightest nod to conventional ideas about the afterlife in the film, he walks home. From now, the character is mute and invisible. Whereas in a book like The Lovely Bones, where the deceased narrator is again drawn back towards their loved ones, in the novel we have just that – a narrator. Here. we have to read the ghost’s actions, even gestures, and we can do no more. We do know, however, that C’s ghost is fascinated by M, and desperate to reach out to her. Here. it could easily have segued into something which feels familiar – a Ghost (1990) for the Tumblr generation, where things seem bleaker but more picturesque as a rule. However, the key moment comes when M moves out; the ghost remains, trapped, waiting for her. Weeks – or years, decades? – go by. He observes life unfolding, but it is intermittent; a moment gives way to a different season, different residents. Still the ghost is there, (usually) invisible and unable to voice his thoughts. In this, A Ghost Story is indeed a horror story, because there can be few things more horrifying than the prospect of an eternity in this state.
In a small US theatre, the cast of avant-garde performance The Night Owl are readying themselves for their big opening night. In true Stanislavsky style, the director wants everyone locked in, so that they can really get into their roles. This is a health and safety disaster waiting to happen in its own right, so it’s even more of a shocker when a psychopathic luvvie breaks out of a nearby psychiatric hospital that very night, dons the suitably eerie owl mask being used in the performance and then runs amok, picking off the actors one by one. Yep, this is the film most commonly now known as Stage Fright (or StageFright, but I’ll stick with the distinct words if I may), the first film made by director Michele Soavi as a foray away from his mentor Dario Argento: it carries a lot of the hallmarks of Argento’s work, as you’d suppose it might, but it also shows a director already more than capable of committing his own style to celluloid.
For all that, this is a horror film, and by this point in the 80s, horror was established enough and popular enough to be self-referential on a scale not seen before: horror cinema had often become about the knowing nod, relying on audiences to know some of the conventions, or at least to have seen enough of the wealth of films already floating around and far more readily available, thanks to good ol’ analogue technology. Freddy Krueger was doing the rounds by now, wisecracking and gurning for the camera as he terrorized teenagers; Henenlotter was grossing audiences out with his body gore gags; even Romero could afford to reference his own work in the otherwise relentlessly grim Day of the Dead (remember the little jingle from Dawn which plays over the zombie being left in the dark to ‘think about what he’d done’?) Stage Fright, too, is often cleverly self-referential, and deserves more dues for it. The whole film-about-a-play which is itself based on an exploitation script, where in one scene director Peter matter-of-factly announces that it’s time to give the rape scene a go, seems to me to be a spin on the behind-the-scenes elements of many of the films being made under the masked killer banner around this time. It’s an actor who initiates the horror here, after losing his mind in his acting career.