Smoking Causes Coughing (2022)

By guest contributor Darren Gaskell Following an energy-sapping battle against an evil giant turtle, five superheroes known as the Tobacco Force are instructed by Didier, their chief, to head for a rural retreat in order to work on their cohesion as a team. Soon after they reach their swanky recovery pad, bickering and uncertainty among […]

Silo (2023)

As dystopia has become established as a genre, it’s become the case that the futures it explores have wound up with a few similarities. There’s no mystique about this; dystopia amplifies and extends our fears about the world we currently live in, so environmental angst, fear of political corruption, conspiracy, loss of selfhood – all […]

Sisu (2022)

You know that bit at the start of There Will Be Blood (2007), where a silent, grizzled man is digging into the earth – eventually striking oil? Okay, good. Now, let’s shift things to WWII-era Finland; here’s another grizzled, silent prospector, wandering the landscape alone – only this guy is looking for gold, not oil, […]

Sight Extended (2023)

Sight Extended (2023) starts out looking like a space-set sci-fi; it’s only when you look closer that you realise you’re looking at a much more familiar, convex shape – a lens, specially-adapted to allow a person to access all of their push notifications, calls, maps, you name it, with a mere, literal blink of an […]

Invoking Yell (2023)

Invoking Yell (2023) is clearly a film that likes to layer its influences, giving us a grab-bag of themes and styles. These chiefly being: found footage; 90s-style analogue cameras; the EVP phenomenon and the film’s biggest, boldest theme – 90s black metal. By way of some on-screen text at the start, the film explains that, […]

Beau is Afraid (2023)

Review by Darren Gaskell As we’re introduced to Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix), he’s attending what seems to be an all-too regular therapy session and the talk soon turns to a forthcoming journey to his hometown, where his formidable-sounding mother lies in wait. Beau’s building trepidation about the trip results in an updated prescription, but those […]

Motion Detected (2023)

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, […]