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 […]
It’s always promising when a horror short film gives itself a title as straight up and out there as ‘The Thing That Ate The Birds‘, and accordingly, this film certainly doesn’t disappoint. It packs a lot more into its eleven-minute running time that a Thing which Eats Birds though, so whilst you get what it […]
There has inevitably been a surge in ‘lockdown horrors’ over the past couple of years. It’s a fairly broad church, with some of these films simply being made under lockdown conditions, whilst others directly address the threat of novel viruses – but nearly every one of these films has directly or indirectly addressed the things […]
If you knew that the world was about to end, what would you do? No, what would you do? Rage? Panic? Loot? Or spend the time trying to atone for a lifetime of missteps, treating your imminent demise as a means of finding purpose? Films tend towards the louder, messier, angrier answers to that question, […]
There’s been a run of very good music documentaries lately. This has been facilitated by the likes of Netflix and Amazon, ever hungry for new content, but regardless of the means, the best of these have been about bands with careers and fan bases of a certain vintage, making them commensurate with enough highs, lows […]