Review by Ben Bussey How fondly and vividly I recall the build-up to Piranha 3D. From the moment those first photos came online, with Kelly Brook and Riley Steele dancing in their bikinis and throngs of nameless extras plastered in astonishingly gruesome make-up, my heart was captured, along with that of every other horror fanboy. […]
Review by Stephanie Scaife Piggy is the debut feature film of young Brit writer and director Kieron Hawkes. It is a psychological revenge thriller starring Martin Compston (The Disappearance of Alice Creed, Sweet Sixteen), Neil Maskell (Kill List) and Paul Anderson (A Lonely Place to Die). Although a fairly solid effort from all concerned it […]
Review by Keri O’Shea Since cinema’s earliest inception, the presence of the Devil has been ubiquitous – whether Old Scratch appears as a monstrous entity or a cunning outsider, a gentleman magician or a horned miscreant, the silver screen has never been long without him. That is the central thesis of author Nikolas Schreck’s far-reaching […]
Review by Ben Bussey Ah, football (or soccer, for the benefit of our American readers who give that name to a sport which strangely doesn’t involve much kicking). The beautiful game, they call it; up and down the British Isles it is celebrated for bridging the generation gap, uniting communities, and giving mindless pissheads an […]
by Keri O’Shea Nothing, absolutely nothing, will make you want to see a film more than being told you can’t. This is a maxim which holds true now (some filmmakers seem to actively court the type of controversy which will get their film banned) and, back in the pre-DVD days, before you could spend five […]
As tomorrow is Walpurgisnacht, we at Brutal As Hell decided this would be as good a time as any to celebrate Satan on screen. Kicking things off, here’s an appropriately devilish entry from Keri O’Shea… The Devil’s relationship with cinema is a lengthy one. As the horrors of Hell have always found their way into art […]
Review by Stephanie Scaife Warning: Contains moderate spoilers. Admittedly I was a bit late to the game when it came to The Cabin in the Woods. I’d been intrigued by the posters I’d seen and had heard rumblings of greatness, not least from Britt Hayes who provided a glowing review after the SXSW screening earlier […]
Review by Keri O’Shea Evil occultists are alive and well and residing in good old Blighty, where it seems they enjoy fucking around with unwitting hitmen – at least that’s the case in a couple of instances in the horror movie universe recently, including The Devil’s Business, an as-yet little known film which I got […]
Review by Keri O’Shea “Satan has only the power we give him.” A highly tense chiaroscuro Confessional gives us the opening scene of The Monk (2011), and introduces us to our main character – the ‘model of rectitude’, Ambrosio (Vincent Cassel), a monk legendary within his order and for miles around his Capuchin monastery, an […]
Review by Stephanie Scaife Sometimes a screener comes along that is so bad that it makes you consider giving up watching movies altogether, so Break was rather apt both in title and tagline. I wanted to take a break from film after watching it and it really was no mercy, just pain… terrible, derivative, throbbing […]
Festival Report by Nia Edwards-Behi This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival. The genre giant, as ever, provides a packed schedule of great films, notable guests and plenty of atmosphere. A cornerstone of genre festivals, it’s testament to the festival team that a crowd of die-hard fans can mingle […]