By Keri O’Shea Japan, 1960s: a young man by the name of Jiro ( the effortlessly cool Akira Kobayashi) has just been released after eight years in the big house. No sooner has he walked through the gates, but an approaching man curtly reminds him that, as Jiro was implicated in the death of his […]
By Ben Bussey Our old hero Joe Dante doesn’t seem to be having the best of luck with his new movies in recent years. His last feature, 2009’s kiddie horror The Hole, sat on the shelf for a couple of years before being largely (and unfairly) ignored by the mass audience. Half a decade on, […]
By Keri O’Shea When modern life comes crashing down on screen, you can depend on Australian genre cinema to represent this in gratuitous levels of detail, and let’s just say – we love them for it, don’t we? There have been so many examples of ingenious, batshit insane cinema coming out of the antipodes that […]
By Ben Bussey Such is the contemporary horror scene’s fascination with all things 70s and 80s, it’s easy to forget that our current strain of gore-strewn cinema has roots dating back further than that. Yes, messrs Romero, Hooper, Craven and co took the cheapie drive-in scary movie by the short and curlies and dragged it […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi I know, I know, I’m lazy (editor’s note – no she bloody well isn’t, she’s written 11 full length reviews and another round-up in the past 10 days). But watching 21 films in five days inevitably means that my brain forgets a lot of the detail to some films, even when I […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi It’s the 1950s. Montse (Macarena Gomez) lives with her younger sister, Hermana (Nadia de Santiago), in a small apartment. Both their parents are dead, but their father (Luis Tosar) remains a spectral figure in the apartment for the burdened and fragile older woman. Hermana has just turned 18, and Montse struggles to […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi Sometimes a film experience comes along that’s difficult to review. One the one hand, I want to explain my experience of it, but on the other… it’s difficult not to provide a certain type of spoiler. I don’t plan on literally spoiling anything, but sometimes there are certain expectations of a film […]
By Keri O’Shea When I saw that The Haunting of Radcliffe House (formerly titled Altar) was set in Yorkshire, I asked for it purely on that basis. Having lived in Yorkshire for around half my life, I think it’s fair to feel a little pride in the place, and although the city I live in […]
By Keri O’Shea and Ben Bussey Given how Blumhouse Productions have come to more or less completely dominate theatrically released horror these last few years, and how frequently their output leans toward ghost stories and/or found footage, at a glance it’s easy to assume their latest release Unfriended might not offer anything new. However, your intrepid […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi Hideo Nakata’s most recent films have not had the glowing reception his reputation following Ringu and Dark Water might have set him up for. I quite like 2013’s The Complex, myself, which, although a bit cliched was certainly enjoyable and featured some effective chills. Monsterz seems to have failed to impress critics […]
By Keri O’Shea Explorations of unhinged femininity have long been archetypal in horror and exploitation cinema. It’s that whole ‘hall of mirrors’ effect: anxieties and fears regarding women make for overblown, engrossing movies, and the depiction of all facets of female behaviour and concerns – to include adolescence, relationships, sexuality, pregnancy, motherhood – have been […]