“Take your chances – you don’t get many.” How far can a person be pushed before they finally, irrevocably snap? It’s a question horror cinema has seemingly enjoyed mulling over for as long as it’s existed, pushing for ever more disturbing conclusions as the decades pass. And, as the intense focus on distressed and vulnerable […]
Friend of the World (2020) starts with a few moments of that kind of angst which can only come from a place of relative practical comfort. Hence, as we see a woman meander back and forth against a beautiful, sunny backdrop, a female voice ponders her own lack of engagement with the world; she wants […]
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 […]
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 […]
The second feature-length film by noted graphic designer Ryan Brookhart, Two Ways to Go West moves outside of the horror genre and endeavours to explore the big topics: personal demons, unspoken truths, repercussions. However, the style and approach it takes doesn’t really serve its themes; whilst visually sharp, it can feel tonally erratic, and badly […]
How much can one ninety-minute film reasonably do within its timeframe? Can a film successfully go from awkward laughs to gore, from femmes fatales to OTT-ultraviolence, and from slacker humour to shock? Rondo (2018) believes it’s not only possible, it’s all part and parcel of its overall appeal. Both the ethos and the resulting movie […]