Martyrs Lane was one of my favourite films of 2021: an intricate, domestic ghost story, it exercises a deft hand in characterisation and storytelling. If you missed it, then please check out the Warped Perspective review; as of 4th July 2022 the film is now available to buy, and thanks to Aim Publicity have a […]
Fantasia International Film Festival usually winds up giving me a large share of my films of the year: it’s second to none in sourcing and selecting a frankly daunting array of fantastic new features. Now about to launch its 26th edition, and after bearing up under a couple of years of Covid restrictions, it will […]
Nitram (2022) is an immensely uncomfortable film. Even with no idea of the real-life events on which it is based, you can still sense a disaster in the offing, right from the opening credits; we are privy to a close character study of someone lacking in the most basic signifiers of humanity. If you do […]
Lucky McKee’s directorial debut May (2002) was not a huge box office success. It initially made far less money than it cost to make, and it baffled many of the audiences who initially got to see it, including the New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden, although he took for his point of reference the slasher […]
In dystopian worlds, there’s a fascination with the possibility of closed environments. These small bastions of normality in the face of threats from beyond appeal to us, the more so when it ever becomes clear that – where humanity is concerned – nothing can ever be truly hermetically sealed: against hostile outsiders, environmental catastrophe, or […]
The Pain Eater is one of those stories which feels familiar in some aspects, but yet weaves a new potential mythology of its own, one which it launches into a world rendered very recognisable. As such, it’s a convincing and engaging blend of unpolished, everyday family drama, and something else entirely – which comes down […]
In recent years, no doubt as a result of changing social attitudes and debates, there’s been a steadily-increasing number of films which – subtly or less subtly – interrogate the relationships between men and women. This is their specific modus operandi, rather than incidental to the story. Men (2022) makes no secret of its modus […]
The blurb for The Passenger – or La pasajera, to give it its original title – doesn’t give too much away; going from this to an opening scene which seems to point to a different genre of horror altogether, the film we actually get turns out to be quite a pleasant, unpleasant surprise. The Passenger […]
The (alleged) relationship between heavy metal and pure, unadulterated evil has given rise to some great horror movies down through the decades, and the best of these have been able to marry a sense of humour with their often fairly grisly content. When it comes to this humour, it’s also important that the film laughs […]
Whilst it’s usual to get screeners for feature-length projects arriving in the site inbox, it’s less usual to get screeners for short films, so it was great to hear from the UK-based Sketchbook Pictures a couple of weeks ago: Sketchbook has (thus far anyway) exclusively worked in short film – a medium which Warped Perspective […]
Icelandic band NYIÞ are not particularly forthcoming when it comes to publicity. Very little is known about them, and you often need to look to other artists to get even the barest amount of information about them, but it’s clear that – inside Iceland and beyond – they have a small but dedicated group of […]