Most of the time, when a film engages with the theme of time travel, it tends to be a bit po-faced. Sure, it can be epic, but the basis of that is usually dystopian futures, mercenaries, world-ending wars and glimpses of horrific alternatives – and no, I swear I’m not just thinking of Terminator. It […]
I Hear The Trees Whispering is a strange experience. It’s certainly the case that there are ideas in here, but whether these land is quite another matter. The film comes off as a bit of a cut ‘n’ shut, with a first two thirds or so which comes across as a standard, and dare we […]
The phenomenon of ‘folk horror’ has been with us for some considerable time – you might argue for as long as storytelling has existed – but, at least in terms of folk horror cinema, there does seem to have been a real explosion of interest in the last decade or so. This has found expression […]
By Guest Contributor Chris Ward Kicking off the new year in explosive style, Arrow Video’s latest addition to their catalogue is 1973’s Dillinger, the directorial debut of John Milius, a filmmaker not known for exploring his sensitive feminine side on the screen. Milius had a hand in several violent movies in the early 1970s, including […]
It’s been said on the site many times before, but it’s a real shame that short films are so rarely seen outside of the festival circuit. I would certainly welcome compilations of short horror films – these could quite easily be organised by theme or subgenre – and it’s surprising that these kinds of compilations […]
Amazon is not an organisation known for its tight budget, so it was no surprise to find out that its recent exclusive TV series The Wheel of Time – according to some sources – has cost an eye-watering $80 million to make. Based on a series of so-called ‘high fantasy’ novels by author Robert Jordan, […]
Anyone feeling a sense of deja-vu? Well, if at the end of 2020 anyone optimistically thought we’d be back to some kind of normal by now, it seems – sadly – it’s not yet to be. And perhaps it’s never to be at all…that’s not to suggest that we will forever be completely under the […]
The affectation and awkwardness of the dinner party has never been particularly appealing – and, if you already share those feelings, An Exquisite Meal (2020) is really not the film to change your mind. It’s a surreal, deliberately alienating glimpse at an especially abortive evening in. If your tastes can tolerate this particular kind of […]
The Darkness of the Road (2021) takes a few risks in how it composes its particular brand of existential horror. With a very limited set (long shots are curtailed by, well, the darkness of the road), a tiny number of characters and a disrupted narrative arc, the film sacrifices a lot of the usual plot […]
By the time Stagefright emerged in 1987, the Italian exploitation film scene that had managed to outlast most of its European counterparts was on its last legs. Within a few years, the slew of horror, action and sex films that had been churned out since the 1960s was reduced to a trickle, and then more or less […]
I’ve long had a rather dismissive attitude towards 1989 movie Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, a film that never struck me as a wildly attractive proposition. I’d managed to miss it as festival screenings and although I thought that I had subsequently seen it, rewatching the film proved otherwise (God only knows what film I’ve […]