Whilst director Julia Ducournau has made just three features to date (taking roughly a decade to do so), it’s a case of quality over quantity. Any minor quibbles with her work aside, the films she’s produced so far have offered intriguing takes on what could, in other hands, be quite simplistic body horrors. But in […]
My new book, Celluloid Hex, is now available to buy! The book takes a look at ten films about witchcraft and covens across nine detailed, illustrated chapters. Some of these films are well known and loved; some are less familiar. However, in each case, they offer up great opportunities to consider the motif of witchcraft […]
Deathstalker (2025) is, by design, completely ridiculous. It’s also a film which, if it weren’t ridiculous, would be a disappointment. Both an amalgam and an homage to the original Deathstalker trilogy of the 1980s (produced by Roger Corman), it’s respectful to the original low-budget fantasy madness of the originals, whilst coming smack bang up to […]
Asher (Steve Kasan) is having a pretty bleak time. He’s out of work, struggling to pay even his phone bill and sleeping out of his car. In many respects, the art of super innovative indie flick Head Like a Hole is in how it takes and tweaks an economic situation which will be recognisable to […]
Australian apocalypse cinema has turned up some excellent examples over the past decade or so; that’s even without naming a certain franchise, itself named for a certain seminal character, which re-emerged in 2015. These Final Hours (2013) – which I now realise I reviewed a decade ago at the same festival – places modern Australia […]
Hacked (or to give it its full title, Hacked: A Double Entendre of Rage Fueled [sic] Karma) has an interesting pedigree. In 2021, writer/director Shane Brady and his wife, producer Emily Zercher, were phished out of a sizable amount of money – $20,000 – intended as a down-payment on a new home. Having lost everything, […]
In the history of Ghost Stories for Christmas – at least of the most familiar, British and televised variety – M R James is the author who has tended to be most strongly represented. Which is fine, and fitting; Jamesian horror, with its subtleties and horrors intruding onto the ordered lives of (almost invariably) British […]
Mickey (Stephen Reilly) is a labourer who wants much more out of life. When he meets Kenny (Johnny Wilson) in a bar, he finds himself with a sideline gig of peddling drugs for gang boss Luther (Peter Hirst) but Mickey wants much more than that and, if he’s going to take risks, he’d like to […]
There’s a serial killer on the loose in LA. As a shock jock-type DJ jokes about it being someone with ‘mommy issues’, your thoughts turn pretty quickly to the standard: a man who loathes women. Which, to be fair, it usually is, but not today: the killer we see dispatching a terrified woman on the […]
Tattoo artist Tales (Lorn McDonald) is living in his place of work after being kicked out by his girlfriend. In the middle of the night, he’s awoken by a phone call from a guy called Truth (Michael Akinsulire) who represents a well-known figure who needs some new ink right now and has heard Tales is […]
After the death of her father, Charlotte (Kelsey Cooke) faces a mountain of debt and the prospect of losing the fabulous holiday villa she currently resides in. Via social media, she hooks up with Danni (Sophie Ablett) who joins her in sunny Spain and the two concoct a plan to stream – and charge for […]