Joe Dante is an interesting director. He’s worked almost entirely in the mainstream, on movies that are ‘family entertainment’ – sometimes for Spielberg, sometimes for other highly corporate filmmakers. His films are often glossy, expensive-looking affairs. He, and his movies, ought to be very annoying. Yet I find myself really enjoying his movies, albeit as […]
When you see the names Pegg and Frost attached to a project, then by now you probably have a fair idea of what to expect: the type of humour, the affectionate inclusion of horror and sci-fi elements, and – when they’re at their best, I’d argue – something intrinsically British. The unfinished pub crawl of […]
First Bite is not a short film which sets out to reinvent any particular genre – but what it does, it does very nicely. It gets good things out of its key elements and, in a little over six minutes, it manages at least one ‘wince’ moment to boot. It’s also set at a metal […]
So, as you will hopefully have noticed, given the sticky post here on the site, myself and David Flint of Reprobate Press have recently published a book. Horror Out of Control is a collection of horror and genre cinema reviews spanning the first two decades of the new millennium, taking in the best, the worst […]
The Neolith is not a conventional piece of storytelling. Largely non-verbal, certainly not linear and difficult to place in terms of a time frame, it evades easy categorisation. Perhaps it works more as an allegory than it does as a yarn – and it’s a strangely-captivating experience, wonderful to look at and very immersive. To […]
Between 1959 and 1984, thousands of ethnic Koreans born in Japan were offered the chance to resettle in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under a grand cross-government migration scheme supported by the Red Cross Societies of both countries, and the International Red Cross. A benign-sounding Japan-based organisation, the General Association of Korean Residents in […]
Now this is a first feature. The Woman With Leopard Shoes is a striking and economical piece of film, taking some elements of noir (though not as many as I was expecting, frankly) and skirting close to gothic horror in places, but all in all, offering up a crime thriller which makes good use of […]
A selection of short films of potential interest to Warped Perspective readers… We have always tried to champion the world of short film: these interesting calling cards often appear at film festivals and then rarely again, which is a shame – and unfair. A festival like Raindance won’t automatically be curated for horror tastes – […]
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 […]