Just One Drink (2015)

Just One Drink may have been made in 2015, but it feels like a film from 2005, not least because its star – Barbara Nedeljakova – is the star of one of the biggest horrors of 2005, namely Hostel. She’s back to her old tricks in filmmaker Andrew de Burgh’s debut short film, which is […]

Heretic (2024)

That’s that, then. That’s religion. It had a good run. Except, of course, if you happen to be religious, and will brush away any such declarations with the power of your faith. In a nutshell, that’s the premise behind, and the dispute within Heretic (2024) – a film which comes off as a kind of […]

MadS (2024)

As MadS (2024) opens, the camera pans back from what turns out to be an image of a woman’s agonised face; you could call it foreshadowing, or perhaps it’s just an incidental feature, an arty poster on the wall of an apartment being used for a drug deal, as a young man called Romain (Milton […]

Spirit of Independence 2024: Reputation

Small-time drug dealer Wes (James Nelson-Joyce) has a good thing going in his hometown of Dennings, with a growing stream of punters getting hooked on a form of ecstasy called “Clown.” He’s in a stable relationship with Zoe (Olivia Frances Brown), they’ve recently welcomed a son into the world and, longer term, they’re looking to […]

The Final Pact (2024)

The Final Pact starts with a Suspiria-lit house and a fleeing priest; we’ll be here again, you catch yourself thinking, but it’s not quite how you’d imagine. Rather than a tried-and-tested religious horror, this is much more of a psychological drama, albeit one which draws on supernatural elements to get where it needs to be. […]

Me, Myself & the Void (2023)

Right, cards on the table at the start of this review: I think we need a moratorium on the kinds of time- and space-bending which are so beloved of independent filmmakers right now. Where big budget offerings have opted to take a flashier route with the likes of high action time travel, explosions, robots and […]

Scopophobia (2024)

An unusual but effective blend between high-colour giallo-esque stylistics and… small town Wales, Scopophobia (2024) is a surprisingly intimate and engaging crime thriller. Thanks to those giallo elements, there’s plenty of proximity to horror too, but overall, this is a surprisingly intimate character study of a group of young women who share a nasty secret. […]

Spirit of Independence 2024: Dinonauts

After being beamed up into an invading force’s spacecraft, a mischievous and resourceful Gigantopithecus called Rufus escapes his captors and hijacks an ongoing scientific procedure, resulting in a dinosaur receiving the brain of a long dead insurgent and becoming Trexx, a courageous T-Rex (well, obviously) who has to deal with a stream of alien thoughts […]