Here’s what you might already know about Glorious: it’s set in a toilet. What you might not yet know (or perhaps you do) is that you can explore some pretty profound ideas in this setting. Think microcosm-macrocosm, where big ideas can be played out on the small scale, but tell us a lot about the […]
Rounding off our Fantasia 2022 coverage, we have a glance at another run of short films – this time, directed exclusively by women. And it’s a varied, often very dark collection of films, touching upon subjects such as superstition, statelessness, secret worlds, the afterlife, friendship, love and trauma. Lily’s Mirror operates in a ghastly early […]
As a long-term fan of both Rue Morgue magazine and his film career to date, I was thrilled to get the opportunity to chat to RM founder and director of recent feature, The Breach – Rodrigo Gudiño. The Breach got its world premiere as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival and will be […]
Remember that meme from a few years ago which pointed out that if you run Godzilla backwards, it’s the story of a benevolent lizard who builds a city before moonwalking into the sea? Yeah, yeah, but it raises a valid point: you have to wonder, in those many fine films where a city gets decimated […]
Let’s cut to the chase here: we’re big supporters of short film as a medium here at the site, but whether you’re a regular reader or not, surely you’d agree that the presence of short films is of tremendous benefit to any film festival. The storytelling is pared back by necessity in a short film […]
Speak No Evil (2022) is so effective because it comes from such a familiar place: in many respects – and stick with me here – it’s the ultimate middle class European horror, where politeness and social norms conspire to place decent-enough people in a devastatingly precarious condition. It opens with a car driving through the […]
Hypochondriac (2022) starts by announcing that is it “based on a real breakdown”, and you quickly believe it. Whilst you may, throughout the film, understand that the protagonist is undergoing a mental health trauma with all of the hallucinations and sensory overload this can bring, it nonetheless feels very real, immediate and personal, something which […]
Honeycomb (2022) is an odd prospect. Electively surreal with a minimal storyline, it often feels a little clumsy where it intends to be out-there. But it’s not without charm, even if much of that derives from its long, mood-drenched shots of long summer days. If you can imagine Yellowjackets remade as a Beck video (complete […]
There’s been a tendency in pop culture to present serial killers as monolithic: they’ve often been painted as almost supernatural, not only ungoverned by the usual social and cultural norms but devoid of familial ties, too. But that is changing: more recent films and TV have hinted at least at something more going on with […]
The spectre of the tower block looms appropriately large over modern society. On one hand these blocks are still ‘modern’ and ‘aspirational’, but on the other, they’re seen as unfriendly spaces, whether because degraded, dangerous or just suspiciously separate from other modes of living. Cinema has examined the worst extremes – Land of the Dead […]
It’s clear by now that the pandemic has had a profound impact upon filmmaking – whether from a logistical point of view, or in terms of subject matter. Skeleton crews, deserted streets, plotlines about contagion…horror, more than other genres, has seen them all in the past couple of years. This is to be expected: as […]