by Keri O’Shea Regular visitors to Brutal as Hell will have noticed that we’ve got a bad case of retrospective fever at the moment; well, what can we say? 1982 in particular was obviously a hell of a year for renegade horror cinema, and we can’t let these milestone birthdays pass us by without celebrating […]
by Ben Bussey If you’ll forgive me for using a dirty word in my opening sentence… remake. Yes, yes, I know. In the hotbed of first world problems that is movie fandom, surely no subject is the cause of as much debate in this day and age, as for most of the past decade the […]
Review by Keri O’Shea “There is no clean fight in a war.” Like many cult movie enthusiasts, I declare myself to be a huge fan of the films of Takashi Miike but in truth, I have only seen a tiny fraction of his work. To be fair, it’s hard to keep up with his output […]
Review by Keri O’Shea Some of the hardest things to watch unfold on screen are tales in which ordinary people – people who are perhaps only once-removed from being any one of us, thanks to an event in their lives – are propelled into extraordinary circumstances, as they simply try to get by. This isn’t […]
25th anniversary retrospective by Ben Bussey As is the norm with these kind of things, beware of spoilers… March 13th 2012, and it’s another silver jubilee. This time, however, I’m really not sure if I can find the words. This time it’s a film so unique, so unmistakable, that as familiar as it is it’s […]
Review by Keri O’Shea The Raven feels as though it has sneaked up on its audience a bit. I remember hearing about this proposed release a long time ago: my initial excitement gave way to a sneaking suspicion that the whole project had collapsed in on itself, as so often happens to compelling projects – […]
by Keri O’Shea “We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.” Those of you who are regular visitors to Brutal as Hell might […]
Review by Nia Edwards-Behi This keeps happening to me. I hear about a film. I avoid the specifics of why everyone loves it. It becomes something of a festival darling or a genre fan favourite. Then, I eventually watch it and… oh. That’s it? Is the hype machine doing its worst, here, or am I […]
Review by Keri O’Shea ‘Suddenly, it was obvious we had lost our way and been unwillingly lured into a world where our artistic talents had been bought out by corporations wanting to sell stuff, and we were going to get old and die miserably, having never made that film that had sparked our youthful passion […]
Review by Ben Bussey What makes a rebel? The dictionary definition is “1. a person who refuses allegiance to, resists, or rises in arms against the government or ruler of his or her country; 2. a person who resists any authority, control or tradition.” Presumably we’re safe to disregard the first definition in relation to […]
Review by Stephanie Scaife Here we have the sophomore effort from Canadian director Jon Knautz, who brought us the amusing festival pleaser Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer in 2007. This time he plays it entirely straight in this ambitious but ultimately disappointing horror film that arrives on DVD and Blu-ray this week. Ambitious young journalist Carmen […]