Leigh Whannell should be a familiar name for anyone who’s being following horror cinema this century, as co-creator (hand in hand with James Wan) of two of the genre’s most popular and profitable franchises of the past fifteen years: Saw, and Insidious. Yet while Whannell’s work is known for making money, this hasn’t necessarily equated […]
After the Firefly family got caught in a hail of bullets at the end of their little road trip in The Devil’s Rejects, I don’t think anyone really foresaw a sequel. But it turns out these characters have a life of their own now that defies expectations: House of 1000 Corpses and Devil’s Rejects are […]
For a brief, shimmering moment, it almost looked as if the oft-maligned SyFy might finally have cast aside its long-held status as the home of subpar genre material, and had finally developed into a platform for genuinely well-made and entertaining films from creators who were really putting forth the requisite effort. The moment I’m talking […]
Reflections on the twilight years of any great artist or company tend to be tinged with sadness and regret, lamenting on how the mighty had fallen, how their latter day work could only serve as a pale reminder of how great things had once been. Conventional wisdom would seem to dictate that this is how […]
There’s hardly any need at this stage to say that the late Jess Franco was one of the most prolific low-brow filmmakers we’ve ever known, but the terrific plus side to his frenetic pace of work during a nearly sixty-year career is that, for most of us, there’s still a wealth of film titles out […]
It always seems to me a bold move – and a risk – to start your film with what are evidently the closing scenes, but that is just what we get with Next of Kin, a mystery mixed with a horror, and the sole foray into genre film from director Tony Williams. A young woman, […]
In recent years we’ve had no shortage of tongue-in-cheek exploitationers presenting themselves as lost movies from decades gone by, but Top Knot Detective takes this same jumping off point from a different angle. This Australian indie comedy from writer-director duo Aaron McCann and Dominic Pearce (making their feature debut here) posits itself not as rediscovered […]
Ask me to name a reality TV-related horror movie from the turn of the century, and my first responses would be My Little Eye and, after a moment of head scratching, Series 7: The Contenders, whilst doing my best to black out Halloween: Resurrection. One title which, before now, would never have come to mind […]
As I type these words it’s International Women’s Day, and audiences worldwide are eagerly flocking to the multiplexes to see Captain Marvel, so I guess it’s as good a time as any to remind ourselves that bad ass female action stars are not a 21st century invention. In the annals of Japanese exploitation cinema, Etsuko […]
As I remarked the last time we got a Blu-ray edition of Re-Animator (it wouldn’t surprise me if there have been more since), there are times when the task of reviewing a ‘new release’ of an old genre favourite feels arbitrary in the extreme. For anyone who knows their movies, there are some titles that […]
Love them as we may, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are perplexing figures at times. Given their obvious, long-proven skill as both performers and writers, it’s hard not to be struck by how often they lend their talents to projects that are clearly beneath them; this is especially true of Pegg, who may have carved […]