Films like Recluse (2026) come along so rarely: with meticulous handling and careful control of atmosphere, it weaves something quite extraordinary out of what, on paper, sounds recognisable. We begin with a painter, a renowned ‘tortured artist’ type, Lawrence Wyatt, working in his fracturing, but still comfortable family home. He is putting the finishing touches […]
We hear a link between music, chaos and quantum theory being suggested as Turn It Up! (2026) gets underway: someone is explaining to us, via a voiceover of sorts, that just the right kind of noise could, quite literally, open (interdimensional) doors. This is just before – in a fun, pace-setting title sequence – we […]
A vehicle races off through the Saudi desert, leaving a young woman dead in the dunes. That’s our opening to Unidentified (2025) – a film which is intriguing due to its background (directed by the first female Saudi filmmaker, Haifaa Al-Mansour), but also a nicely-paced and structured crime thriller, even if for some audiences it […]
If there’s one thing to take away from The Killing Moon (2025), it’s to wonder why some married couples are married couples – and the film leans into this immediately, as we meet key protagonists Elliot (Ryan Caraway) and Olivia (Victoria Diamond), lost on their way to a swanky mountain retreat somewhere in Colorado (discoverable […]
A nameless female gravedigger (director Grace Glowicki) has a work-related issue: she stinks. This has made finding a partner very difficult. Who wants a girlfriend who smells of grave dirt and dead things? She tries to fix the issue by concocting perfumes for herself – which don’t work. The day (or night) job goes on, […]
Like many film festivals, Final Girls Berlin understands the value of short films and includes themed blocks of these on the schedule. This particular block – loosely grouped under the ever-popular title of ‘folk horror’ – is an eclectic range of films from a diverse roster of countries, though there are still, appreciably, thematic similarities. […]
Director Howard J. Ford has had a go at the lot over the past couple of decades, variously delivering independent films on zombies, cannibals, climbing – and now, extra-terrestrials. Moving around subgenres in this way, no wonder there’s been some variability: Bone Keeper (2026) is certainly evidence of that. It’s by no means the first […]
Rarely does a film exercise the public this much before it’s even been released, but Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” – speech marks and all – has done it. This has been rumbling along for months actually, and certainly for longer than usual, even for most contentious film adaptations. Long before the trailer landed, it was […]
We’re busy, busy, busy as we get underway with Indonesian horror movie The Hole (2026), aka The Hole, 309 Days to the Bloodiest Tragedy (which rolls less well off the tongue). Leading with a notice which we normally see on the end credits of a film – ‘Any similarity to actual characters, places or events […]
Whilst the genre of ‘found footage’ is more on a downward arc these days than it was, say, fifteen or twenty years ago – when every no-budget filmmaker was irresistibly drawn to its cheap, practical possibilities – it’s nonetheless so familiar by now that we can instantly recognise its trappings and conventions. As such, we […]
It’s time to look at my favourite short films of the year – and also time to feel sorry, as usual, that so few of these films are, currently, available for wider viewing. But who knows? Maybe in future, cinemas and online channels will diversify further; the beginnings of this are already in motion, with […]