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 […]
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), […]
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 […]
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 […]
Asher (Steve Kasan) is having a pretty bleak time. He’s out of work, struggling to pay even his phone bill and sleeping out of his car. In many respects, the art of super innovative indie flick Head Like a Hole is in how it takes and tweaks an economic situation which will be recognisable to […]
Australian apocalypse cinema has turned up some excellent examples over the past decade or so; that’s even without naming a certain franchise, itself named for a certain seminal character, which re-emerged in 2015. These Final Hours (2013) – which I now realise I reviewed a decade ago at the same festival – places modern Australia […]
Hacked (or to give it its full title, Hacked: A Double Entendre of Rage Fueled [sic] Karma) has an interesting pedigree. In 2021, writer/director Shane Brady and his wife, producer Emily Zercher, were phished out of a sizable amount of money – $20,000 – intended as a down-payment on a new home. Having lost everything, […]
In the history of Ghost Stories for Christmas – at least of the most familiar, British and televised variety – M R James is the author who has tended to be most strongly represented. Which is fine, and fitting; Jamesian horror, with its subtleties and horrors intruding onto the ordered lives of (almost invariably) British […]