As I remarked the last time we got a Blu-ray edition of Re-Animator (it wouldn’t surprise me if there have been more since), there are times when the task of reviewing a ‘new release’ of an old genre favourite feels arbitrary in the extreme. For anyone who knows their movies, there are some titles that […]
Have you ever sat through one of those Old Dark House style movies, where everyone speaks in RP and smokes continuously through ornate cigarette holders, and thought to yourself – this is fun, but wouldn’t it be glorious if the social niceties and subtly barbed comments gave way to something else entirely? We’ve had a […]
Of late, there seem to have been a fair few films which focus on what happens to the human body in the interim period between death and burial – in particular, the inner workings of the morgue and the postmortem examiners who are employed there. More and more, too, horror audiences are interested in looking […]
Even on first glance, something seems to be terribly wrong with the Vestalis Academy. Its premises are falling down and in disarray, save for the state-of-the-art CCTV everywhere, and although it’s ostensibly a boarding school for girls, the education they receive is all about feminine propriety; their treatment is clinical and brutal. Unless the girls […]
Love them as we may, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are perplexing figures at times. Given their obvious, long-proven skill as both performers and writers, it’s hard not to be struck by how often they lend their talents to projects that are clearly beneath them; this is especially true of Pegg, who may have carved […]
A confession: I am not familiar with the work of director Gaspar Noé, despite his presence as a notorious, divisive figure in the cult cinema scene. The verdict on 2002’s Irreversible was so split amongst people whose opinions I trust that I’ve still never sought the film out, and as such I’ve never caught up […]
I have to say right away, it takes some balls to slap a title like that on a low-budget indie horror from a largely unknown cast and crew. It’s almost as if writer-director Justin McConnell and company are inviting the likes of me to snidely declare that it’s far from a life-changing experience. By extension, […]
The first clue that all is not well with friends (and fast food connoisseurs) Tan and Javid is that, as they leave a Berlin kebab restaurant which has apparently not passed muster, they have to step over a lot of dead bodies as they go. In a neat move, then, Snowflake establishes key elements in […]
If you’ve seen your share of historical martial arts movies, chances are you’ve heard the name Wong Fei-Hung. A real life pioneer of Kung Fu and Chinese medicine and all-around folk hero, he’s been heavily mythologised in Hong Kong action cinema, notable films including Drunken Master and Iron Monkey. However, where both those films followed […]
This feature discusses the series in full and as such may contain spoilers. Mike Flanagan gets it. He gets the power of horror, and he doesn’t seek to delegitimise that power by needlessly talking it up or talking it down; with his work adapting Stephen King, his films such as Oculus and (the rarely-mentioned, but […]
I start this review with something of a confession: it has only dawned on me in the past few years, really, that my liking for Dario Argento’s work is based on a very small number of his films. And it’s awful – as well as terribly unpopular these days, given the vicissitudes of the likes […]
