Review by Ben Bussey Lisa Johnson (Abigail Breslin) is a day away from turning 16. Naturally she’s a gloomy little thing with her Smiths posters, Siouxie and the Banshees T-shirt and dark eye make-up, at odds with the perpetual chirpiness of her parents and little brother, who seem to think nothing of being housebound all […]
Review by Stephanie Scaife If you ever thought that the werewolf movie sub-genre was missing something, I’m pretty sure the first thing to come to mind wouldn’t be the addition of a “were-cicada” to the canon. However, that’s precisely what we get here in Philippe Mora’s The Beast Within. This bizarre film is scripted by […]
Review by Ben Bussey I don’t know; kids these days. Bloody hooligans, the lot of ’em. Specially them what were born within minutes of one another during a solar eclipse, who grow to be evil incarnate with a lust to kill anyone who crosses them, but the smarts to get clean away with it. There, […]
Review by Tristan Bishop Although it is actually a remake of a Thai film from 2006, 13 Sins is probably going to suffer from the effect of coming along right on the tail of Cheap Thrills. The films share a very similar conceit – men manipulated into committing increasingly outrageous/destructive acts for money. Whilst they are part […]
Review by Stephanie Scaife Fresh off the back of the success of Oculus, Mike Flanagan’s Absentia is getting a Blu-ray release. This Kickstarter backed indie horror film did pretty well on the festival circuit a few years back and received very favourable reviews (from Ben and Kayley Viteo) here at Brutal as Hell, so I […]
By Keri O’Shea Editor’s note: this review contains mild spoilers (though nothing more than on the website or packaging blurb). Whilst Vincent Price is rightly revered for all of his extensive filmography, it’s often the slightly more unconventional, the more unorthodox roles in which he truly stood out. That may sound like a very silly […]
Review by Karolina Gruschka Invasion of the Scream Queens is a feature length documentary about a few actresses from the VHS generation that made a career out of performing in low budget horror films. It features short informal interviews with Michelle Bauer, Martine Beswick, Janus Blythe, Veronica Carothers, Ruth Collins, Monique Gabrielle, Marya Gant, Katina […]
Review by Quin I recently watched a Q&A with filmmaker Werner Herzog where he pretty much says that if aliens from other planets exist, we’ll never see them here on Earth. The reason being, that these planets are so far away, it would take too long to get here, and if they traveled faster they […]
Review by Stephanie Scaife Oculus is the new film from Mike Flanagan (Absentia) and despite the innocuous title and rather unspectacular marketing campaign, it’s actually a little bit more interesting than your standard horror-lite multiplex hit. It’s so unusual these days to find a horror movie that tries to do something different, and actually succeeds […]
Review by Tristan Bishop The masters of the classic Italian horror film were never confined to just one genre. Dario Argento, arguably the most dedicated of the horror directors, also made westerns early in his career. Mario Bava made westerns, sci-fi and peplums (historical muscle man films) even after astounding the world with his official […]
Review by Ben Bussey Perhaps the key problem with most modern attempts at grindhouse is that they’re just too cute. All wacky camera angles, edits and music cues, bright colours, knowingly outlandish dialogue and scenarios: the bulk of these movies, from the high profile (the Machete movies) to the instantly forgotten (Bounty Killer), are delivered […]