Ah, here we go then. An older man who seems to be living and bill-dodging at a hotel on the French Riviera (Fabio Testi) becomes fixated by a young woman on the beach; the diamond jewellery in her nipple (!) prompts him on a fractured and somewhat looping trip down Memory Lane, as he recollects […]
As Dangerous Animals gets going, we first observe tourists and sightseers Greg (Liam Greinke) and Heather (Ella Newton) popping up on a Queensland quayside, hoping for a ‘marine experience’ with a local: they’ve just missed their organised tour doing something similar. The gaffer, Tucker (Jai Courtney) is straightaway signposted as a bit of a wildcard, […]
A dog lies sleeping the sleep of the righteous before being awoken by …something. It could be the mobile phone buzzing away on the arm of the chair – or it could be something far more ominous. Todd, the human at Indy’s side, is unconscious and unresponsive. The room seems odd, too – there’s weird […]
Amber (Sharlene Cruz) is woken in the early hours of the morning to an upset call from her boyfriend, Justin (Dario Vazquez), but what is he ‘so sorry’ about exactly? We don’t discover that immediately, but we can soon glean that he’s not hurt or sick or anything like that: judging from Amber’s furious response […]
Freddy (Thom Mathews) is a new employee at the Uneeda Medical Supply Warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky. Supervisor Frank (James Karen) attempts to give this thoroughly unglamourous form of employment some umph by taking Freddy to the basement, where drums of a toxic gas called 2-4-5 Trioxin have been stashed by the military. Frank accidentally breaks […]
Horror cinema teaches us many things including caution and recently, there have been more than a few lessons about the dangers of going up into the mountains – and not just for the usual reasons, such as (mainly) the risk of falling to your death from a great height. In Confession (2024) (aka Kokuhaku Confession), […]
God bless Netflix money. In common with the similarly vast, similarly monolithic Disney, whatever the complaints and concerns about this level of power and influence may be, there’s at least the comfort that, when they pull in one direction, they can support eminently worthwhile projects – just like Frankenstein, or in Disney’s case, like their […]
Dre (Katy O’Brian) is an event organiser, DJ and general fixer at Bushwick’s Yum club, which is all set to bring in the punters with a drag show featuring top notch headliner Yasmine (Dominique Jackson). However, the draw of a more lucrative gig for Glitter Bitch Vodka has Yasmine heading for the hills – well, […]
Whilst director Julia Ducournau has made just three features to date (taking roughly a decade to do so), it’s a case of quality over quantity. Any minor quibbles with her work aside, the films she’s produced so far have offered intriguing takes on what could, in other hands, be quite simplistic body horrors. But in […]
My new book, Celluloid Hex, is now available to buy! The book takes a look at ten films about witchcraft and covens across nine detailed, illustrated chapters. Some of these films are well known and loved; some are less familiar. However, in each case, they offer up great opportunities to consider the motif of witchcraft […]
Deathstalker (2025) is, by design, completely ridiculous. It’s also a film which, if it weren’t ridiculous, would be a disappointment. Both an amalgam and an homage to the original Deathstalker trilogy of the 1980s (produced by Roger Corman), it’s respectful to the original low-budget fantasy madness of the originals, whilst coming smack bang up to […]