Late Night with the Devil is an adroit piece of work, a tribute to a time and a place but also an enjoyable and imaginative trip into fantasy, breathing new life into two tired formats – the mockumentary and the found footage phenomenon – by making them entirely engaging and, at least in terms of […]
A wounded hand disappears into nothingness as a modern, chain link fence divides us, at least initially, from an idyllic English churchyard; if Penda’s Fen (1973) can be seen as fairly recusant in its treatment of themes and narrative structure, then you could equally argue that it spells out its key themes, or at least […]
You’ve gotta love a film that straight away states its intent (and understand a film which needs to sell its merits pretty damn quickly) and Nightmare (1981) does both of these things. We’re off with a dream of a dismembered body, a shrieking nightmare, a man in a straightjacket – and the immediate need to […]
Continuing with Warped Perspective’s interviews with the directors behind ARROW Player’s recent Sharp Shorts, we asked director Joanna Tsanis about her own short film – a very brief, super-focused study of depression, grief and fear. Oh, and it’s a monster film, too. Here’s our conversation about Smile (2021). Warped Perspective: This is a very brief […]
Part of the recently-reviewed ‘Sharp Shorts’ package, Itch (2021) plays with ideas around faith, mental illness and temptation, and seemed like a project we wanted to explore a little more. Having recently reviewed the title, we were fortunate to next get the opportunity to speak to the director of Itch, Susannah Farrugia, and we’re grateful […]
On occasion, you see a film – whether a short film or a feature – and something about it stays with you afterwards. Something about the visuals, perhaps, or some ingenious touch to the plot, or its characters – or perhaps some of its hints of a universe existing on its periphery, not fully extrapolated, […]
Every year there’s always some comment about how it’s been a terrible one for horror movies, and every year I think “What have those people been watching”? The genre rarely fails to deliver terror of all types and, as usual, narrowing the field down to my favourite ten (plus five honourable mentions) has been just […]
Every year – and I have done lists like this for quite a few years now – I wonder what I’ll say for the little preamble: before getting straight to talking about the films themselves, it always feels proper to say a little something first. Well, this year I’ll start by saying this: 2023 has […]
Appearing midway-through what might once have been the new normal of the New Extremity movement of the Nineties and early Noughties, Calvaire (2004) was, nonetheless, an odd and interesting fit for that movement. No doubt it was helped into existence by the advent of films like Irréversible, which had been released two years prior (sharing […]
After the actor went missing earlier this year whilst hiking in the San Gabriel mountains, it was always a slim-to-none chance that Julian Sands was going to turn up unharmed. Now, sadly, remains recently found in the area have been confirmed as him; whilst not a surprise, it also feels greatly sad to receive that […]
Irreversible does, at least, warn us of what is coming. In its first few minutes, with its hammering soundtrack, its almost infrasonic hum, its extraordinary, pinballing camerawork and its first pitstop with two odious, broken men who warn us that ‘time destroys all things’, the film instils a kind of sensory fight-or-flight response. It sets […]