The key event in Burning (2024) is revealed to the audience in the opening moments: a house is on fire in a small Kyrgyzstani town, and we arrive just as the fire brigade also arrives. In the aftermath of the blaze, a group of neighbours meet up with one another in a local shop, where […]
1892. California. It’s then and there we find novelist Emma Strand (Scottie Thompson) holidaying with artist husband Albert (Connor Paolo) and doing their best to enjoy a day on the beach when they meet George Ford (Jilon VanOver) and his wife Lillian (Vivian Kerr). After a mannered and somewhat awkward chat, the four end up […]
Foreigner (2025) starts with an advertisement: if this seems trivial, be forewarned, it’s actually surprisingly central to the plot, this product called Die [sic] Blonde – a box dye, seemingly particularly popular with teens… We don’t stick around here, though. We next meet a little girl and her mother, dreaming of a better life in […]
To go by a select few recent horror and genre titles, toilet cubicles can be pretty dangerous places. In Stalled (2013), a janitor has to deal with a zombie outbreak; in Glorious (2022), a man has to contend with a Lovecraftian entity – all of which whilst trapped inside a toilet stall. There have been […]
In a way similar to Suspiria (2018), the laboured breathing of a dying woman plays across the opening moments of The Undertone (2025): this film is an aural nightmare and no mistake, starting straight away and keeping up that relentless sensory overload throughout. In a house full of photos and other keepsakes, a young woman […]
Using the short film format to its absolute best by refusing to waste a second of its economical twelve-minute runtime, Shrimp Fried Rice (2025) is a strangely life-affirming little fantasy which pulls apart the central idea behind – and yes, I mean what I’m about to say – Ratatouille – and turns it into a […]
There’s something odd pressing in at the edges of the everyday in The Fairy Moon, the latest short film from director Craig Williams – whose last film, The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras, was one of the standouts of 2024. In many respects, we’re getting something in The Fairy Moon which could seem similar to […]
Rivka (Judith Zins) checks into the titular accommodation, accompanied by an urn containing the ashes of her partner Hugo. She’s also carrying Hugo’s baby and a deep, painful wound on her back which has refused to heal in the wake of Hugo’s passing, Having been advised to isolate herself from those around her, she plans […]
Small in scale, unusual in approach, The Woman (2025) is an intriguing one. It begins with some apparently random events, moving from a chance meeting to a sequence of increasingly alarming follow-ups – and as it goes, it gets increasingly psychologically dark. Its oblique approach may not be for everyone, but it’s in that oblique […]
There have been more than a few social media-themed films in recent years, which is entirely to be expected: in modern life, there’s a widening schism between people who see the constant creep of content creation as quite normal, and those weirded out by such a seismic shift in how people conduct their lives (and […]
We aren’t privy to whatever horrors are taking place right at the start of Hellcat (2025) – though we hear enough, and then we follow a beaten-up but homely trailer – with a woman locked inside – which now seems to be travelling with some urgency along a long, deserted road. The young woman (Dakota […]
