Social media, being a hellworld of our own making, is inevitably creeping into horror cinema; The Columnist (2019) is unusual, however, as it focuses on the implications of online trolling before riffing on what for many people is probably pure wish fulfilment – finding and punishing the worst offenders. In this regard, it mixes social […]
I’m aware that all the good movie titles, like all the good band names, have been taken. But For The Sake Of Vicious (2020) is as clumsy a name as any I’ve heard. It has no particular relevance to the film – at least not to the point where it was necessary – and is […]
It is likely that you’ve heard some version of the term “Mind Palace Technique” used in conversation around feats of memory. Known formally as “The Method of Loci,” it is a memorization technique wherein one memorizes the layout of a building, associates an item with each location in the mental image, and later mentally retrieves […]
A boat drifts, its lone crewman (Neville Archambault) coming to and shocked by the disarray on board. A horrific, guttural sound attracts his attention…this all takes place within the first few moments of The Block Island Sound, a neat, often inventive horror which splices a kind of eco-horror with something altogether more supernatural, though it […]
“Does your head hurt yet?” This is the question posed by Robert Pattinson’s character ‘Neil’ during Tenet, as he explains the concept of reverse entropy to the David John Washington’s protagonist – who helpfully goes under that name (‘Protagonist’) throughout the film. It could just as easily apply to any of us during the last […]
During the opening credits of Kriya, on-screen text tells us that in Hindu tradition, it is the son who must be the one to perform a father’s last rites. We cut straight from this into a modern club scene: in this way, the film establishes straightaway that old and new India will find themselves in […]
When I read the synopsis for Bleed With Me (2020), my mind jumped straight to ‘body horror’ – but that’s a term reminiscent of jarring, even ludicrous extremes, from Tetsuo to Videodrome. In truth, though, there are many quieter entrants into that genre with their own questions to ask; this brings us to Bleed With […]
The BBFC-esque send-up at the beginning of Fried Barry – with a ‘warning’ of all the adult content to follow and the pointer that film certification is there to help us make informed decisions – suggests from the outset a film stacked with OTT content which is also ready to send itself up. In the […]
Horror has often examined the role of addiction: lots of its best-known antagonists have laboured under something of this kind, and it’s fertile ground for taking a closer look at people, their motivations and their flaws. This is the rationale behind short film Boo (2019), an economical exercise in filmmaking which shows a careful hand […]
In case you, like me, have some holes in your world history and were hoping that Don Enrique Monteverde (Julio Diaz) was invented for this film- I’ve got some bad news. Monteverde is a dead ringer for Guatemalan leader and General José Efraín Rios Montt, who is very real indeed. Montt led the military government from […]
The first character we meet in We Die Alone is Aidan (Baker Chase Powell); he’s preparing for a date, and he’s nervous – so nervous that he is practising the same line, over and over. We never see him get to the restaurant; his nerves are so bad that he stands the girl up, receiving […]