By Adam Page I want to put my position on the table before a frame of this comes up on the screen, as I think you should know where I stand before I tell you this documentary is really quite good. In my considered and totally unrepentant view, Exorcist II: The Heretic is a bad […]
On the outskirts of a drab Australian town, we meet new boy Naim (Joe Bird). After what can be gleaned to be a period of isolation, he seems pleased to be hanging out with someone from his school, Ryan (Stacy Clausen) – Ryan seems older and tougher, although he’s a classmate, and he’s definitely got […]
It feels like a while since we had a really good, honest-to-goodness zombie flick. For a while there, there were enough of them that we could debate whether zombies should be able run or not; with a few exceptions, though, the genre has stalled since the ferocious Train to Busan a decade ago (despite the […]
“This is a true story…sort of.” Wasting no time in getting its players on the board and establishing its own sardonic spin on Americana, Valley View Motel (2026) is a love letter to the 70s crime genre cinema with which it shares its setting. We start with what looks like a robbery gone very wrong […]
There’s a popular line of films and television which consists of finding an idyllic (or idyllic-seeming) retro America, and then menacing it with something bloody horrible – as if to say it was never that good, not really, but also because once you’ve created a weird feeling of audience deja-vu over the clothes, toys and […]
A nightmarish (and as-yet mysterious) opening scene segues into what appears to be something like normal life, as we get started with Night After Night (2026): this is a false impression which persists as a motif throughout this alienating, unsettling film. We meet security guard Andy (Scott Poythress) and his buddy Willis (Johnny Sibilly). They […]
São Paulo party planner Malu (Martha Nowill) has a lot to do, toilet breaks notwithstanding. She has a cake to worry about, there are last-minute arrangements to make, and her twins’ father hasn’t come to pick them up as arranged, which is unhelpful, so she optimises a spare moment by helping to yank out her […]
We start with a shock in the opening moments of A Safe Distance (2026), as a tranquil forest setting erupts with a gunshot – and the film then obliquely reveals a body. Two women silently depart the scene, clean themselves up and then hitch their way out of there, finding their way to the nearest […]
Nightborn (2026) is a film hectic with female and feminine anxieties. In common with director Hanna Bergholm’s last feature film, Hatching (2022), it explores childrearing and infant care through a supernatural lens, and whilst the supernaturalism itself flows parallel to the very real human issues in the story, the supernatural elements themselves are beautifully handled […]
When do you first remember seeing an Asylum studio title? Established in the late 90s, they may have been knocking around for a while before they ended up on your radar. So at a guess, your first Asylum title might have been Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009) or if you’re a little younger, perhaps […]
Prison inmate Tommy (Calem MacDonald) escapes prison via a bedbug-infested drop-off of mattresses and bedding at the local dump. Not only does this show commitment to the bit but, given the reaction of the worker who spots him, it isn’t even the first time this has happened. Tommy makes it into town, where he heads […]