Assassination Nation (2018)

As someone who writes about films, it’s always a telling moment when you find yourself approaching a particular review with trepidation. Given that, at the time of writing, pretty much an entire week has passed since I saw Assassination Nation at Celluloid Screams 2018, there’s no denying that this is one such film I feel […]

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2018)

Tigers Are Not Afraid spins some uncomfortable truths about life in Mexican border towns into a fantastical yarn. In so doing, it embeds its characters in a fairy tale, inviting the audience to see the tale through to the end, and to look for tropes we all recognise. The besieged princess, the ogre, the magical […]

You Might Be The Killer (2018)

As has oft been noted, one of the great pleasures of attending film festivals, getting early looks at films which have yet to (or in some cases, never really do) reach a wide audience, is being caught by surprise by material of which you knew little or nothing beforehand. This is particularly the case when […]

Possum (2018)

Some films excel at that kind of grimy, disconcerting quality which Possum (2018) has in abundance. Every frame of this film makes your skin crawl: it’s a love letter to abandoned places and anonymous spaces, swept through with dead foliage and rot. This, in and of itself, makes the film fairly challenging viewing, even whilst […]

Rondo (2018)

How much can one ninety-minute film reasonably do within its timeframe? Can a film successfully go from awkward laughs to gore, from femmes fatales to OTT-ultraviolence, and from slacker humour to shock? Rondo (2018) believes it’s not only possible, it’s all part and parcel of its overall appeal. Both the ethos and the resulting movie […]

Cinepocalypse 2018 Review: Satan’s Slaves (2017)

A potentially confusing title for anyone more familiar with Norman J Warren’s work than Indonesian genre classics, Joko Anwar’s Satan’s Slaves is a remake of a 1980 film of the same name. Anwar retains the 1980s setting and delivers a modern take on demonic possession, ritual and societal pressures. The film is currently screening at […]

Line-up Announced For Arrow Video FrightFest 2018

We’re no longer the 100% horror site we used to be back when we still went by Brutal As Hell (sigh, remember those days? Anyone…?) However, the genre is still very close to our blackened hearts, and as such we’re as excited as any bloodthirsty Brit for the upcoming horror festival season. While the bulk […]

Cinepocalypse 2018 Review: Seven Stages To Achieve Eternal Bliss By Passing Through The Gateway Chosen By The Holy Storsh (2018)

If a filmmaker wants their work to have an air of eccentricity about it, a sixteen word title isn’t a bad start. After all, it worked with The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain (shit, that’s a whole seventeen words if we count those ‘a’s), so who’s to say it […]

Cinepocalypse 2018 Review: Gags (2018)

If I’ve learned one thing from all my years following contemporary horror cinema (listen to me, making it sound like a tour of duty), it’s that you should never write off any one subgenre or motif. Every time you’re certain that something’s been done to death, along comes a new movie which, against all odds, […]

Cinepocalypse 2018 Review: Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018)

The Monster Squad holds a distinctive and relatively unique position in horror fandom. Released in 1987 back when it was still pretty early days for the PG-13 certificate, it was a box office bomb, and neither its director nor the bulk of its cast went on to do much of note. However, as with a […]