By Nia Edwards-Behi The promotional bluster for I Am Alone makes some quite grand claims which had rather the opposite effect on me than what I presume was intended. Rather than make me think, ‘oh wow, this film must be great!’, the claims that the filmmakers “reinvented the [found footage] subgenre of horror” made me […]
By Karolina Gruschka Released within just over a month of each other earlier this year in Japan, Attack on Titan Parts 1 and 2 are based on a popular Manga and Anime series of the same title. Originally unaware of this (I never have developed a thorough appetite for drawn formats of story telling), I […]
By Keri O’Shea Whilst horror films which centre around Xmas time are nothing new, in the past few years more and more filmmakers have started to pay attention to Xmas folklore: films such as Rare Exports (2010) had fun playing with the idea that Santa isn’t necessarily the sanitised, commercialised figure we now consider him […]
By Keri O’Shea Although it’s hardly the first musical genre to bear the association, you have to admit that the relationship between heavy metal and black magic is a strong one. Forget your Stryper and your POD; we all know that these bands are basically aberrations in a pleasingly-familiar landscape of devils, witches and caco-daemons. […]
By Quin The internet has killed reference books. Who the heck would buy a dictionary or a thesaurus or an encyclopedia in 2015? If you have a question on anything factual all you have to do is google it or ask Siri; if you need more detailed information then you might just turn to Wikipedia. […]
By Tristan Bishop The western and the horror film are two of the oldest genres in film – almost as old as film itself, in fact – and so it’s no surprise that there is a long history of cross pollination between the two. From creepy 1930’s pulps such as Riders Of The Whistling Skull […]
By Ben Bussey We’ve had no shortage of documentaries covering the cultural shifts of the 1970s and 1980s. In the US, American Nightmare charts how horror cinema was revitalised from the late 60s onwards by the likes of George Romero, Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper, whilst Going To Pieces chronicles the slasher movie boom which […]
By Keri O’Shea It’s so often the case that, when I sit down to watch a Japanese film, I find that it’s based on an extensive manga and/or gaming series of which I have no knowledge whatsoever. It’s been the case with filmmakers I know reasonably well – such as Takashi Miike (or at least […]
By Ben Bussey Welcome back to Wales! In a strange kind of way it seems fitting that the horror festival of England’s bilingual neighbour should play host to the UK premiere of a movie spoken in Italian though shot by Argentinians. Okay, maybe that’s a bit tenuous, but bear with me on this. To be […]
By Ben Bussey There are few things so tiresome as a horror comedy which is neither funny nor scary. Alas, we seem to get rather a lot of them; and, double alas, The Funhouse Massacre is yet another title to add to that undesirable list. A well-meaning, ambitious endeavour with a very agreeable core concept, […]
By Ben Bussey Few things show up gaps in one’s own film knowledge more acutely than a movie you’ve never heard of dropping in your lap with a press release describing it as a ‘cult classic.’ It’s true, I was hitherto utterly unaware of writer-director Philip Ridley’s debut film, and indeed of Ridley himself and […]