There are a couple of things to say ahead of this review of Rampo Noir. The first is that, assuming you have read some Edogawa Ranpo and always longed to see more of his work brought to the screen, that you should be careful what you wish for: this anthology film’s scattergun selection of tales, […]
Is Nina (Nahéma Ricci) on her own in the wilderness? That’s the first question in the provocative and left-field horror-thriller Hunting Daze, a film which offers rather subtle moral questions in amidst its much more brutal, alarming developments. Nina, then, is at first framed as though she’s alone; actually, she’s part of a group, and […]
As Immaculate opens, we are shown a young woman, ardently praying to the Virgin before packing a bag and attempting to leave – though pausing to steal a substantial bunch of keys from an elderly woman’s bedside cabinet. She’s trying to escape from a convent, as revealed by the ominous group of nuns who intercept […]
In the year 2050, the world is in the grip of economic disaster. In South Africa, the city of Cape Town is hardly an exception to the rule, experiencing ninety percent unemployment and daily unrest as the homeless try to survive in a society where it’s just them and the super-rich. Displaced from a middle […]
Well, Robert Eggers has done it again; whether you think he should have or not very much depends on your level of affection for his work to date. His spin on Nosferatu has been tantalising audiences for what seems like forever, but certainly ever since it was announced as an alternative Christmas 2024 movie. As […]
The menacing blue of distant, jagged mountains opens The Damned (2024), revealing an inhospitable, if still beautiful Icelandic landscape. It immediately looks like an environment ill-fitted for human habitation, and so it turns out to be. The female narrator who speaks briefly to us espouses a similar sentiment, walking through what is left of the […]
You’d better get used to the discordant screeching soundtrack to Cuckoo (2024), because it starts early and man, it keeps on going. It accompanies the opening scenes, where we witness a young woman fleeing both a family fight and, it seems, the weird noise in her head which quickly afflicts us, too. As she runs […]
Emma (Corrinne Mica) stands to inherit the estate of her aunt Milda (Jane Hammill) if she agrees to abide by a specific and somewhat odd set of stipulations. Faced with financial problems, Emma sees this as a serendipitous – if tragic – way of getting both her and boyfriend Gabriel (Guillermo Blanco) out of their […]
Making good use of its drone shots – as many films do – Oddity (2024) opens on a remote, grand old house in rural Ireland which is being renovated by a woman named Dani (Carolyn Bracken). It’s one of those houses which no one you know ever lives in – all open plan, stone walls, […]
2073, despite initial appearances, is not a narrative film. It certainly enjoys playing up to that appearance, though, with its big, dystopian-style movie poster, its big star (Samantha Morton) and its opening scenes, which tease that it is set in 2073 – 37 years after ‘the event’. Don’t be fooled, however. There’s no key ‘event’ […]
Starting with a lone, bloodied man tormented enough to start pulling his own fingernails out, Itch! (2024) could go in a number of ways, albeit none of them very pleasant. It seems as though the film – with its stark opening titles and heavy cinematic grain – is calling on the nastiest, grisliest of its […]