There have been, in recent years, a number of imaginative explorations of the role of technology in our lives. It’s a diverse topic, ripe for horror: the increasing levels of control we afford to tech, as well as the importance we attach to apps and platforms, have made for some great films – some scary, […]
We know that attempted home invasions can often flip on the perpetrators; the likes of Don’t Breathe (2016) and before it, Livide (2011) serve as reminders that, once you’re in someone’s home, you are very definitely at a disadvantage. Peppergrass (2021) sounds for all the world like it could be another one of these films: […]
The casting call provides fertile ground for the topic of a film, particularly one looking at its pitfalls. It is, after all, a profoundly vulnerable place for actors: all that pressure, that power imbalance, and the fact that actors are often fairly itinerant, desperate to work and to get their ‘break’. From Mulholland Drive to […]
In 2001, right on the cusp of the slew of New French Extremity and ordeal horror, a peculiar, lavish period horror emerged from France. It’s many things, but above all else, Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) is a film made during changing times, about changing times. Taking for its basis the Beast of Gévaudan panic […]
With a beautiful double-bluff opening – and not the film’s last double-bluff, either – Evil Dead Rise (2023) takes us straight to the ubiquitous cabin in the woods for its opening scenes. Reluctant cabin-goer Theresa (Mirabai Pease) is trying to dig in to her copy of Wuthering Heights, but her friend’s boyfriend Caleb is all […]
Working in any kind of public-facing role is a test of one’s patience and mettle, and the food industry has to rank highly on any objective or subjective measures of tedium, ick or just downright stress – and that’s just when it comes to the customers. Let us not underestimate one’s co-workers, as it is […]
You don’t have to ask me twice. Warped Perspective covered a number of the National Film Festival for Talented Youth’s horror, sci-fi or otherwise left-field short films last year; not only did this prove to be a good call, but two of the short films featured made it onto my favourite short films of the […]
The Artifice Girl (2022) comes straight to the point in its opening scenes, as Special Agent Deena (Sinda Nichols) asks Siri – in amongst its other, more straightforward household tasks – to distinguish between right and wrong. It can’t, and it’s this disconnect between technology and the human condition, not to mention our strenuous and […]
Whilst starting from a reasonably realistic, grounded place, Surrogate (2022) is soon racing along with a raft of recognisable supernatural plot elements, sacrificing its chances at doing something original or innovative to do something tried-and-tested. It’s an often attractive film which does much with its limited budget in terms of its framing, lighting and limited […]
Please note: this review discusses some points re: the film’s structure which could potentially offer mild spoilers. The Unheard (2023) feels like a difficult film to review as one, cogent whole. It doesn’t demarcate a number of chapters with title cards, like an awful lot of films do, but feels very much like two, distinct, […]
We seem to be living through something of a golden age for documentary film. With the rise and rise of Netflix and other platforms, there now seems to be endless scope to provide for people’s endless appetite for them, to queue them up; they don’t necessarily only want to see great, momentous events being explored, […]