Review by Stephanie Scaife Jeremy Lovering’s feature film debut In Fear opens in UK cinemas today. It’s an extremely taut little thriller that very efficiently follows the number one rule for effective low-budget horror – keep it simple! Tom (Iain De Caestecker) and Lucy (Alice Englert) have just started dating; in fact they barely know […]
By Tristan Bishop Anyone who has been to Abertoir will tell you it isn’t like other film festivals. In fact I lost count this year of the amount of people I overheard talking about this. Why? Well some of the newcomers were praising the non-commercialism of the event. There are no corporate sponsors here, for […]
Review by Tristan Bishop I bet you’ve never really considered having a demon living up your arse, have you? Or if you have, your thinking probably went along the lines of ‘I really don’t fancy having a demon living up my arse’. Well, it’s a tough concept to sell, I’ll admit it, but Bad Milo […]
By Kit Rathenar Read Part 1 of Kit’s BSIFF report here. SATURDAY, 26 October Halfway through the festival, and this morning took an academic turn with one of the lectures that BSIFF likes to sprinkle into their programme. This one, entitled “Crucifixes, Cadavers and Demons”, was presented by freelance horror lecturer and journalist Dr Karen […]
Review by Quin In general, I am not a fan of blending comedy and horror. I think horror is best when there is non-stop tension with as little relief as possible. Now of course there are many exceptions to this rule. I enjoy comic relief when it’s used sparingly, and the more subtle it is […]
By Kit Rathenar You’d think it wouldn’t be that difficult to review a film festival when you’ve got a reviewer actually living in the right town and another one available a mere hour up the road. However, apparently the gods had a grudge against Brutal As Hell when it came to this year’s Bram Stoker […]
Review by Ben Bussey If you’ll forgive me for opening on something of a negative note: one rather noticeable problem on the horror festival scene this year – and I do mean across the board, not just at Abertoir – is the absence of any one film that’s well and truly set the (mimes quotation marks) horror […]
Review by Tristan Bishop The horror remake machine trundles along with no sign of slowing down, but as much as the horror fan’s learned reaction to the word ‘remake’ is the same as that of the term ‘found footage’ to a Brutal As Hell writer, remakes are not always a bad thing. Before you crucify […]
By Keri O’Shea Y’know, it’s a funny thing. For a genre which has always gone so firmly hand in hand with fantasy, there’s always been a small, but stubborn undercurrent to horror which obsesses over the antithesis of that fantasy – the portrayal of ‘real events’. Whether it’s rumours of real footage being hidden in […]
Review by Ben Bussey 2013 is well on its way to becoming the year I start liking found footage again. I’ve never been particularly enamoured with the format – I always disliked The Blair Witch Project, for one thing – but there have indubitably been at least a few truly great horror movies made in […]
Review by Abbie Stutzer Cannibal Diner is nothing special. It’s a run-of-the-mill “murderous mutant family” horror film. It’s filled with gross-out gore and most of the deaths are relatively tame, and not creative. Lame! (I mean, you’d think mutants would think of creative ways to kill young co-eds, whilst wasting away in their toxic, industrial […]