Unorthodox stories of the afterlife seem to offer a great deal of potential for exploring fundamental ideas about what it means to be alive: when faced with disruptions to what we know, or think we know, or believe in, we’re encouraged to think differently, or given a new focus on what’s important. A Ghost Waits […]
I can’t help it. I see a film is set at sea, I hear mention of ‘creatures’ and my Pavlovian response is ‘Lovecraft!’ God knows, we don’t need every horror story set at sea to feature the Great Old Ones, but it’s a response that’s always lying in wait with me; saying that, some elements […]
Perhaps it’s to be entirely expected that the number of social media-related horrors continue to grow and grow. Alongside the likes of Tragedy Girls, Assassination Nation and Making Monsters, we can now count The Cleansing Hour, though quite unlike those others, this most recent film melds the premise of a successful social media channel with […]
Short films are fun because they often make for statements of intent: whilst good short films do more than simply act as calling cards, it’s still true that the best of these show something, in terms of style and theme, of what could follow. This is certainly the case with Mr. Clean (2020), an economical […]
It was with no mean amount of anticipation that I went in to Robert Eggers’ newest film; his last film – and his first ever feature – The Witch (2015) blended just enough ambiguity with its supernatural content, leading to a film which kept its mysteries without sacrificing its scares, but perhaps most of all, […]
Anyone who’s been paying close attention to the changing face of horror in the 21st century should hopefully be well aware of filmmaker Johannes Roberts. In some respects the British writer-director always seems to be just one big film away from really breaking through into the popular consciousness, yet at the same time he’s quietly […]
Slasher movies, we might theorise, are like the pizza of horror. In other words, even when they’re not much good, they’re still kinda good, so long as those same basic ingredients are being used in the right quantities: masked killer, witless sinful victims, creative or at least gory death scenes. Think of those as the […]
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula has always proven a particularly rich seam for filmmakers hoping to develop their own interpretation of his story. Thus, Dracula has been a rat-like creature, a suave nobleman, an aged warlord, and all manner of subtle variants of same. By no means is every interpretation going to please all of […]
For the first part of Keri’s article, please click here. ‘Keep Filming…’ It would be borderline impossible to write about the horror of the first two decades of this century without mentioning a phenomenon which, like ‘torture porn’ cinema, has been rather divisive. I’m talking about the found footage craze – and I think ‘craze’ […]
It’s hard to believe that two decades of the new millennium have already passed. It seems like only yesterday that we were complaining about ticket prices for Millennium Eve, whilst simultaneously fearing a computer glitch which would potentially mean the end of the world as we know it. Well, it didn’t quite happen that way […]
It’s easy to overlook the American contribution to the good old days of British horror. Take Amicus Productions: much as we think of them as a British institution, they were in fact run by a duo of American producers, Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg. On top of which, several of the most esteemed Amicus […]