The Vourdalak (2023)

When a film starts with a grand, Gothic peal of thunder, it had better mean it. It had better not be suggesting something it can’t deliver. Well, thankfully, The Vourdalak (2023) very much delivers: it’s a gloomy folktale made even gloomier by writers Adrien Beau and Hadrien Bouvier, and it’s an intimate, though always dreamlike […]

Vincent (2023)

Strange goings-on are pressing in at the edges in Vincent (2023): disappearances, despair, double lives. But despite these blue-tinged, Nordic hints of horror, this turns out to be an immensely warm, often touching film about friendship which absolutely deserves to be seen. This is one of those indie cinema gems which you keep on reviewing […]

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989)

I’ve long had a rather dismissive attitude towards 1989 movie Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, a film that never struck me as a wildly attractive proposition. I’d managed to miss it as festival screenings and although I thought that I had subsequently seen it, rewatching the film proved otherwise (God only knows what film I’ve […]

Sunset Society (2018)

I don’t know about you, but I always feel a moment of trepidation when I see rock stars’ names attached to film projects – perhaps particularly so when at least one of the rock stars in question has now shuffled off the mortal coil. What would they have thought of the finished product? Did it […]