Somewhere in a cramped apartment block in urban China, a little girl plays as her father works. She’s carefully drawing a corpse flower; she then feeds a live mouse to their pet snake; it’s all wholesome stuff. Her father, it seems, is a scientist who has tasked himself with ‘fixing’ the presumably hereditary skin condition […]
Moon (2024) starts in a cage fighting arena: old favourite Sarah Reisinger (Florentina Holzinger) seems to have unexpectedly lost her spark. Losing the fight seems to mean losing her career, too. The whole faded fighter idea might be a recurring motif in film, but the way it’s handled in Moon is altogether more existential, using […]
Peacock (2024) opens with a scene both oddly quaint and chaotic, and as such gives us an early, handy symbol for what is to follow: there’s a lot of quaint chaos here. In a rolling, sunlit golf course, we see a burning golf buggy. This attracts the attention of a young couple who come to […]
Recently single Ally (Olivia Holt) feeds her current feelings on romance into a bold pitch for the jewellery company she works for, focusing on doomed couples throughout the ages. This does not sit well with Ally’s boss Crystal (Michaela Watkins) who thinks the ad is in poor taste and could easily be linked to the […]
A cyclist making his way up a winding Austrian hill is first paused, then stopped forever by a sniper’s bullet before two surprisingly languid-looking hunters step out of the undergrowth, seizing his pushbike in the name of ‘recycling’. That’s about as dramatic as we ever get in Veni Vidi Vici (2024), a film which spends […]
Loved-up couple Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) head off for a weekend getaway of what they think will be rustic living, only to find that their accommodation is far swankier than the cabin they’d expected. The place is owned by the well to do, slightly scary Sergey (Rupert Friend) who is currently is […]
A group of outlaws led by Porter (Laura Holloway) finds their hideout discovered by security forces and, following a struggle in which one of their number is critically injured, they must decide whether or not to make their escape or make a stand and defend their fellow criminal. As increasing numbers of law enforcers descend […]
The Mire (2023) opens with video footage of a man named Joseph (Antony Knight), leader of an organisation called The Canon. It’s soon clear that it’s a cult by any other name, with shades and aspects of very real cults, past and present. The video states that ‘the day is coming’, and we all know […]
The story of Bokshi (2025) is, in essence, a simple one. For horror fans, it will also feel like a very familiar one: a young woman follows her mysterious destiny into the mountains and woods, where it turns out she’s linked by fate to ancient folklore. Along the way, there are interesting snippets and ideas […]
A grim history lesson kicks off Round the Decay: pay attention, because it matters later on. We start in, I’m assuming, the 19th Century: a pursuit through woodland leads to the capture of a Native American woman, who is then brought to the tent of a white settler – who it seems is expecting her. […]
There are a couple of things to say ahead of this review of Rampo Noir. The first is that, assuming you have read some Edogawa Ranpo and always longed to see more of his work brought to the screen, that you should be careful what you wish for: this anthology film’s scattergun selection of tales, […]