A nightmarish (and as-yet mysterious) opening scene segues into what appears to be something like normal life, as we get started with Night After Night (2026): this is a false impression which persists as a motif throughout this alienating, unsettling film. We meet security guard Andy (Scott Poythress) and his buddy Willis (Johnny Sibilly). They […]
The short film Purge (2026) poses an interesting question, if at first a broad one: what makes us who we are? It then sees the question through in a sharply focused, often brutal manner, invoking aspects of body horror and, arguably, some modern Gothic elements. Honestly, it feels very much like a filmmaker-specific fever dream, […]
A lot of independent films find their way to Warped Perspective, and now and again, one arrives which makes a bigger impact than many of the others – be that for its originality, its ambition, or its earnest levels of nastiness. Cara is one such film, noteworthy for the way it’s steeped in a deeply […]
The menacing blue of distant, jagged mountains opens The Damned (2024), revealing an inhospitable, if still beautiful Icelandic landscape. It immediately looks like an environment ill-fitted for human habitation, and so it turns out to be. The female narrator who speaks briefly to us espouses a similar sentiment, walking through what is left of the […]
“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 […]
Gatecrash (2020) has an interesting pedigree; based on a play, and directed by Lawrence Gough – who has spent far more of his time working on television than cinema over the past decade – it’s a film which contains aspects of both the stage and the small screen. That being said, there are some similarities […]
Never before released in the UK on any format (at least not legally), by all accounts the only press this sleazy slasher got on release was down to director Ivan Nagy’s role in the Heidi Fleiss scandal. Not long thereafter it sank without a trace, and for the best part of 20 years it was […]
As I’ve discussed at length in the past, we really can’t overstate the impact of The Silence of the Lambs; a bona fide game changer, it blurred the lines between police procedural and horror story (not to suggest this hadn’t been done before: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, anyone?), setting the stage for the psychological […]
It’s comparatively rare these days to go into a film viewing with no idea of what to expect, so often your best chance at this is to gain access to an online screener – particularly if these screeners come via film festivals which, for good or ill, have a fairly selective audience until such time […]