A crisis of belief besets a West African village in Mami Wata, as corruption and greed sweep in behind it. A dark, often cruel story unfolds, painting a devastating picture of the repercussions of change. The film does this without being overly simplistic, and it does it without any chiding, even if its message is […]
We get some on-screen preamble before the events of The Lair (2022) unfold before us. Locating the film in conflict-ridden Afghanistan in 2017, we’re told that a US bomb strike on a certain province, intended to destroy an insurgent stronghold, occurred after alleged ‘disturbing activity’ in the area. So there we have it: we’re going […]
The Fantasia International Film Festival is a genuine delight and a highlight in the Warped Perspective year; its organisers definitely have the gift when it comes to selecting intrepid cinema from around the world. If anything, it can be a little intimidating to scroll through the selections: there’s enough there to keep a film fan […]
By guest contributor Darren Gaskell Following an energy-sapping battle against an evil giant turtle, five superheroes known as the Tobacco Force are instructed by Didier, their chief, to head for a rural retreat in order to work on their cohesion as a team. Soon after they reach their swanky recovery pad, bickering and uncertainty among […]
As dystopia has become established as a genre, it’s become the case that the futures it explores have wound up with a few similarities. There’s no mystique about this; dystopia amplifies and extends our fears about the world we currently live in, so environmental angst, fear of political corruption, conspiracy, loss of selfhood – all […]
With on-screen text which tells us that events in the film genuinely took place in Brisbane, Australia in 1997, Bliss of Evil avowedly sets itself up as something other than the more typical supernatural set-up we often get when music – particularly rock music – is concerned. And indeed, the opening scene is very grisly, […]
Irreversible does, at least, warn us of what is coming. In its first few minutes, with its hammering soundtrack, its almost infrasonic hum, its extraordinary, pinballing camerawork and its first pitstop with two odious, broken men who warn us that ‘time destroys all things’, the film instils a kind of sensory fight-or-flight response. It sets […]
To mark the release of Sight Extended, a film I called “restrained and savvy” in its careful treatment of AI and social media, we have two sets of iTunes codes to give away so that those of you who are tech-savvy yourselves can take a look. All you need to do to win is to […]
You know that bit at the start of There Will Be Blood (2007), where a silent, grizzled man is digging into the earth – eventually striking oil? Okay, good. Now, let’s shift things to WWII-era Finland; here’s another grizzled, silent prospector, wandering the landscape alone – only this guy is looking for gold, not oil, […]
Irish folklore about the ‘other crowd’, or fairy folk, remains ripe for use by horror cinema. Far from our modern cultural understanding of fairies as Disneyfied, benign, pretty little entities, the Irish stories hang onto a notion of the little people as ambiguous at best – malevolent at worst. Their hill forts, their meeting places […]
Sight Extended (2023) starts out looking like a space-set sci-fi; it’s only when you look closer that you realise you’re looking at a much more familiar, convex shape – a lens, specially-adapted to allow a person to access all of their push notifications, calls, maps, you name it, with a mere, literal blink of an […]