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 […]
David Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel ‘Dune’ emerged in 1984 to a double whammy of both box office failure and a vicious critical drubbing. Not that these are in themselves perfect indications of a film’s inherent lack of value or cultural longevity; 1982’s Blade Runner was also a critical and box office flop, […]
Ghosts have feelings too. That’s been one of the most noticeable shifts in supernatural horror (and other genre-straddling) films in the past couple of decades, from the fairly high-profile film The Others at the start of the century, through to the likes of A Ghost Story, a largely-mute, but very poignant story from 2017. (There’s […]
Insomnia – hand in hand with its best friend, anxiety – is a bizarre experience. A fundamental inability to do the most basic, fundamental thing your body requires; like the snake which eats its own tail, the complex brain which requires rest and recuperation is the very thing which prevents that, via its own complex […]
Office parties. Not even once, in an ideal world. But, the thing is, sometimes they’re unavoidable, if you want to get on in your career – that seems to be the case with the unnamed protagonist of Why Haven’t They Fixed the Cameras Yet? Using an internal monologue, she ruminates over an evening that would […]
Magpies are notorious for their willingness to eat almost anything. In fact, it is due to this habit that they lend their Latin name, picave, to the psychological condition known as pica. Listed in the DSM-V as an eating disorder wherein one persistently eats non-nutritive, non-food substances, pica is basically the formal diagnosis for someone who […]
We don’t do this very much, but – want to win a copy of Koko-Di Koko-Da on Blu-ray? To celebrate the recent release of this unusual, often challenging and often poignant horror (check out my review here) we have a copy to give away. If you would like to be in with a chance (provided […]
The gig economy, specifically ride-booking and vacation rental apps, has turned the social contract of the service industry upside down. For better or for worse, hailing a ride or renting a place now typically includes a personal flourish that might not be entirely welcome. Personally, I love when I get into a taxi, and the driver […]