“Where do the ideas come from?” It’s a standard question which, for many people working in the creative industries, there’s probably never a standard answer; however, in the new indie movie A Brilliant Monster, the trials and tribulations of continually coming up with workable new projects is given a dark, original twist. It’s an original […]
It may star an actress widely regarded as one of today’s predominant scream queens, and its central character may visit a creepy old house in the woods within the first five minutes, but don’t be fooled: Ayla is pretty far removed from your standard ultra-low budget indie horror movie. Written, produced and directed by Elias, mononymous […]
The contemporary straight to DVD action movie is a fairly odd breed. For the best part of two decades now, the ageing action superstars who previously reigned supreme at the box office have for the most part been ushered to the back of the bus, and with the exception of Schwarzenegger and Stallone, the bulk […]
As I’ve discussed at length in the past, we really can’t overstate the impact of The Silence of the Lambs; a bona fide game changer, it blurred the lines between police procedural and horror story (not to suggest this hadn’t been done before: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, anyone?), setting the stage for the psychological […]
The Ghost Stories film comes to us off the back of a much-praised stage play of the same title by two of our finest writers, Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson: at the time it was doing the rounds some years ago, I managed to immure myself against hearing even the barest hint of what it […]
It’s been pleasing to see an apparent rise in films about girls and the aftermath of adolescence in the horror genre of late, with 2016’s Raw perhaps being the stand-out example. Blue My Mind is the latest, and it’s a striking and engaging film. The young woman at the centre of the film is Mia […]
In a stark opening scene, composed largely from a colour palette of black, white, and tiny amounts of red – a young woman awakens. She is in a mysterious room, has crippling injuries to her legs, and is clearly shocked and confused by her predicament. As soon as she wakes up, she’s addressed by a […]
I’m very glad that filmmakers seem to be returning to aesthetically-pleasing supernatural tales these days, rather than endless found footage or excruciating ordeal horror. You could argue that there’s plenty of space for all the above, of course, and you needn’t stick with just one genre of horror (or any other genre for that matter) […]
I don’t think I ever anticipated seeing the day when the release of a Steven Spielberg-directed sci-fi adventure would be greeted with such widespread disdain as we’ve seen for Ready Player One. Sure, as the king of the blockbuster, more or less responsible for inventing the format as we know it along with George Lucas, […]
Re:Born marks the grand return of action star Tak Sakaguchi, in what is obviously a bit of a passion project. More a showcase of raw talent than a particularly coherent film, Re:Born is nevertheless hugely enjoyable if you like watching a whole load of remarkable fight choreography. The narrative is familiar: former special operative Toshiro […]
I feel as though I’ve been here before. Not just because there was a film called Bong of the Dead a few years ago, which my co-editor Ben reviewed, nor indeed because this very day he has reviewed another stoner horror (4:20 Massacre) but also because I’ve also reviewed a film which sounds very similar to Bong […]