Dystopian cinema – often based on dystopian literature – sometimes likes to centre itself around a special event of some kind. A TV show, perhaps. A day where conventional law goes out of the window. A special competition, or spectacle of some kind – or, if you’re the screenwriters behind Boy Kills World, maybe a […]
We start this short film in the natural domain of the nose-picker: a classroom, where a group of kids are learning all about plant biology. Little Georgie (Leo Adoteye) is not fully paying attention, however: clearly distracted and distant, he’s more engaged by digging things out of his nose than he is the lesson at […]
It’s not instantly clear what you’re looking at as Body Odyssey (2023) begins: perhaps led by the title, my first guess was an Inner Space type scenario, which turns out not to be the case. In a way, this is a very fitting opening for such a strange, unsettling but highly rewarding film: disorientation is […]
Cat Call (2023) is essentially a rom-com, though it starts by subverting a few expectations and – to do it justice – it sticks with this odd, if easy-going approach throughout. We’re introduced to our main character, a young woman called Fáni (Franciska Töröcsik) sauntering through – a cemetery. And yet, her laidback demeanour and […]
A blend of styles and themes but ultimately a body horror, Tiger Stripes is incredibly worthwhile: lively, evocative and multifaceted. Like the best of horror, it strikes a solid balance between humane and fantastical: the crazy things which happen here, happen to people who are completely plausible and likeable. This is a daring and darkly […]
Anxieties about illness, technology and the conspiracy theories which operate in between have proven a rich source for filmmakers post-Covid. You could even suggest that this has grown into a specific subgenre. Buying Time (2024) adds to this number: it’s a super low-budget outing, with all of the attendant challenges and issues that low budget […]
Emma (Bethlehem Million) is in the proverbial cinematic pickle, having been sacked from her job, instantly hitting the “necking sauvignon blanc straight from the bottle” stage and being given notice by her roommate because of unpaid rent. However, friend of a friend James (Marc Senter) offers her the chance to make a welcome pile of […]
There’s not a lot of greenery in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, but we get a few flashes of a more abundant way of life as, at the very start of the film, we meet the heroine of Fury Road in her childhood days. This is the mysterious Green Place, then, and it’s somehow been […]
On her twenty-seventh birthday, Elizabeth Cadosia (Lani Call) inherits her grandmother’s dilapidated schoolhouse. Soon after Elizabeth moves in, she begins to experience disturbing visions and the subsequent discovery of various artefacts around the place reveals that her grandmother was a practitioner of black magic. Will Elizabeth follow in those footsteps too? The blurb for this […]
Are the undead growing less vicious? Once upon a time, they’d be up and at you the second they were resurrected, but a few films of late have taken a drastically different approach, repositioning the dead as a moral and philosophical quandary – which brings us straight to Handling the Undead, a film which very […]
The best way to sum up Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker is to say that it’s mesmerisingly weird – both in its plot and in its origins. It was directed by William Asher, who is better known for gentle TV comedy series such as I Love Lucy and Bewitched: this film is – to say the […]