Spirit Of Independence 2025: Tummy Monster

Tattoo artist Tales (Lorn McDonald) is living in his place of work after being kicked out by his girlfriend. In the middle of the night, he’s awoken by a phone call from a guy called Truth (Michael Akinsulire) who represents a well-known figure who needs some new ink right now and has heard Tales is […]

Spirit Of Independence 2025: The Quiet Ones

After the death of her father, Charlotte (Kelsey Cooke) faces a mountain of debt and the prospect of losing the fabulous holiday villa she currently resides in. Via social media, she hooks up with Danni (Sophie Ablett) who joins her in sunny Spain and the two concoct a plan to stream – and charge for […]

Spirit Of Independence 2025: The Fog (45th Anniversary)

Having knocked it out of the park twice in a row with 1976’s Assault On Precinct 13 and 1978’s Halloween (three times if you count 1974’s Dark Star, which I do), it’s safe to say that John Carpenter had folks clamouring for his next project. For some, it was a surprise that, after the nigh […]

The Severed Sun (2024)

The Severed Sun (2024) opens in a remote religious community, just prior to a calamitous event. A young woman named Magpie (Emma Appleton) has, presumably with the tacit approval of her bruised and battered elder stepson David (Lewis Gribben), concocted a plan to poison her monstrous husband. Husbands tend to be monstrous, by the by, […]

Ash (2025)

Ash (2025) is, for the most part, as much about thoughts, impressions and experiences as it is a conventional piece of narrative film. It comes in like a space-age fever dream, all body horror and blaring noise, before pausing on the lone, prone figure of Riya (Eiza González), injured and amnesic on the floor of […]

FrightFest 2025: Pig Hill

“Towns like Meadville haunt you.” So goes an early voiceover by Carrie (Rainey Qualley), who is working on a book about the local legend of Pig Hill, centred around mutant, porcine creatures who are supposedly responsible for a string of young women going missing. We’ve already seen the latest of these disappearances in the cold […]

The Balconettes (2024)

The Balconettes (2024) is an odd customer. It perhaps starts with the title, a slightly clunky translation of the French title, Les femmes au balcon – choosing a word which may indeed mean ‘women on the balcony’ but is more likely to conjure the word ‘bra’ for most Anglophone audiences. It’s not the last time […]