Using elements of fantasy or horror seem to allow a filmmaker to approach many subjects which may not come to light by more conventional means. One of these subjects is loneliness. On first consideration this may seem strange, but it’s in the realms of horror and fantasy that human loneliness is often brought into closest […]
The provenance of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula has very nearly led to warfare down through the years: every researcher and author with an axe to grind has shown themselves willing to fight over their take on Stoker’s inspiration, and to what extent he drew upon Transylvanian history and folklore. Well, it may complicate matters, but […]
My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To (2020) was quite rightly described to the waiting festival audience as ‘sombre’. This is a tale of a family unit isolated by extraordinary circumstances, in several ways reminiscent of We Are What We Are (2013), with the same carefully-considered gaps in the narrative, never handing the […]
Honeydew is a film which represents certain challenges for a reviewer: this is because to describe anything of its plot – in a linear kind of way – would very likely be to misrepresent the vibe and style of the film. On paper, it fits quite neatly in the category of ‘backwoods horror’ which reminds […]
I’ll be honest; I’ve been dreading the inevitable ‘lockdown horror’ boom, and it’s something which is already happening: bored folks with cameras riffing on ideas about coronavirus is unlikely to bring us too many in the way of classics. Happily, Hall (2020) is not of this stripe. It’s born of coincidence rather than opportunism, a […]
Amelia Moses’s work ethic is certainly to be admired. I’ve not long since reviewed her feature Bleed With Me, and yet it seems that she’s released a second feature this year – Bloodthirsty, another worthwhile film which doesn’t quite match Bleed With Me in terms of warped interpersonal dynamics, but still has much to recommend […]
Many supernatural horror tales make the audience wait for any sort of ‘big reveal’, opting to use sound design, blink-and-miss-it visuals and false starts, tantalising the viewers before offering up the big scares. This is not the case with The Return (2020), a film in which the opening scene plunges straight into a nightmarish childhood…dream? […]
The year 1816 is often recalled as Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death. Fallout from the eruption of the Tambora Volcano in Indonesia a year earlier led to freezing temperatures and disastrous weather patterns. In June of this “year without summer”, heavy rains near Lake Geneva drove a small group of vacationers to seek refuge within […]
Eraserhead is a film which has been around for over four decades now: its influences can be traced down through all of those decades, in projects by creatives as disparate as Frank Henenlotter and Peter Gabriel (I’d argue, anyway). So it’s difficult to know how to introduce the film, assuming anyone reading this feature hasn’t […]
A curious set-up introduces us to The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw: is it a period piece? It certainly looks like one, but the on-screen text explains that, although the Irish colony appearing in the film arrived in the US in 1873, they have remained isolated from the modernising world outside – through the Fifties, when […]
Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) is having an argument over the phone. His conversant assures him, “The world’s a different place. It’s not like it was back then.” Malik disagrees vehemently: “The world is exactly the same place it was back then. People don’t change, Liam. They just get better at hiding how they feel.” Indeed. Director Kurtis David Harder’s Spiral […]