Director Howard J. Ford has had a go at the lot over the past couple of decades, variously delivering independent films on zombies, cannibals, climbing – and now, extra-terrestrials. Moving around subgenres in this way, no wonder there’s been some variability: Bone Keeper (2026) is certainly evidence of that. It’s by no means the first […]
Starting with a couple of fake 80s DTV trailers (The Piano Killer and Don’t Go In That House, Bitch!) Jimmy & Stiggs – presented by Eli Roth – feels a little like an in-joke in places, and the Roth fan service and nods are clear to see, particularly in the early part of this feature. […]
Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has it made: we know he has it made the moment we first see him, barbequing eel outside his spacious home whilst wearing a contented smile and a ‘happy at my level of maturity’ moustache. Not only that, but the eel was sent as a gift by his impressed new bosses at […]
So this is Glacier National Park, Montana in the 1960s and we start with a question: why are two people open-air camping in grizzly territory? Roll opening credits – genuine retro footage of people behaving stupidly around wild brown bears and the discomfiting reminder that the incidents in the film, open-air camping and all, are […]
By contributing writer Chris Ward Valeria (Natalia Solián) is a young woman trying to start a family with her husband Raúl (Alfonso Dosal). After visiting Monumental de la Virgen De Guadalupe – a large statue in Chalma, Mexico, sculpted in 2017 by artist Víctor Gutiérrez – with her mother and her aunt, Valeria discovers that […]
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 […]
Relentless (aka Syphon) starts life as a home invasion movie, with all the requisite anxieties of that genre. However, it quickly moves beyond home invasion, hovering over other genres along the way, but holding hands with horror as its sustained, often grisly pursuit unfolds. It’s also the third film I’ve seen in almost as many […]
The Housemaid paints in very broad strokes. On occasion, its strokes are so broad and even a bit clumsy, that it seems like the paint will tear straight through the canvas. However, if you wait it out, it gets into a much more horror-adjacent, nasty phase which feels like a decent payoff for all the […]
John (Adam Pally) and Kathy (Rosebud Baker) start off Hell of a Summer (2023) with a fireside guitar session, which as we all know is just asking for trouble. They’re the owners of a summer camp called Camp Pineway, but they live there permanently – their photos are all over the refrigerator. Anyway, we see […]
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 […]
I didn’t intend to start this rundown of my favourite independent films of the year with a rant, but it feels like the most honest way to start my preamble. Of course, I could start by saying what a diverse year it has been for a wide array of titles, genres and shooting styles, many […]