As the film begins, it seems that two different spheres – the domestic and the world outside the home – are being drawn into sharp relief here; navigating these two spheres, and the risks attendant on each, does indeed form a key part of In Flames. We are first faced with a young woman, who […]
A genre-splicing look at broken people and relationships, The Seductress From Hell has a wealth of creative visual ideas, but its rather flustered approach to storytelling (and its script issues) do unfortunately hamper the film’s overall success. In essentials, this is a revenge flick – albeit some of the targets are more collateral than anything […]
Much is made in supernatural horror of what is seen or unseen, but so much of what scares us is down to what we hear – or think we hear. Using that idea, Last Words (2023) is an effective short film which, although it tantalises several ideas regarding the source of its horror, is ultimately […]
There’s nothing more galling in life than a dwindling promise, and sadly, that is a real problem for Pandemonium (2023). What begins as a rather beautiful, stark and savage riff on what happens to us after we die disintegrates into a mess of clumsily-stitched parts, united for the most part only by two ideas: death […]
There are a couple of mysterious proverbs – at least they seem to be proverbs – at the beginning of All You Need is Death. ‘Love is a knife with a blade for a handle’; ‘Love goes in at the eye’. Taken together with the version of a certain Beatles track used for the title, […]
In a dusty pub, an evidently already troubled man (Peter Mullan) is disturbed by the arrival of a stranger, who enigmatically requests an audience with ‘her’. A short conversation ensues and the younger man, Neil (Jeremy Irvine) is sent away, agitated, in evident grief. It seems that this situation, and even living in this place, […]
Getting a new job is a time to celebrate, right? Well, not always: you might be coming from a dark place, and going to a darker one. That’s the central idea behind short film The Queue, as we meet IT specialist Cole (Burt Bulos) just ahead of his first shift at a new company. Things […]
The Stoic Breeze may only be thirty or so minutes in length, but it is a film all about taking one’s time; by extension, it’s kinda all about time, and a person’s relationship with it, negotiated through the natural world. We start with a hand-held camera which very soon begins to feel like a character […]
Property (2022) is a film of mighty complexities and great heart, and as such, it outstrips a whole host of films which have tried and failed to sustain a similar balance. If some of its reasoning and momentum dissipate at certain points, then it’s never at the expense of the film’s involving, invoking, grim and […]
With a rather unwieldy title, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant) starts at – a little girl’s birthday party. The little girl, Sasha, surprises her close-knit family group with her innate ability to play the keyboard she’s given as a gift – something which they puzzle over while she plays. […]
How do you signal to your audience that things are going to head south pretty fast – other than by titling your film A Most Atrocious Thing, that is? Turns out it’s by showing us almost instantly a sign reading Danger! Contaminated Water! Then a deer drinking from this water, before cutting straight to some […]