A Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2019 Review What’s worse: PTSD-triggered paranoia or cruel gaslighting? Those are the rock-and-a-hard-place options facing Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) in Spiral, a socially relevant horror film from director Kurtis David Harder and writers Colin Minihan and John Poliquin. In 1995, Malik and his husband Aaron (Ari Cohen), along with Aaron’s daughter …Read More
A Fantastic Fest 2019 Review After Bliss, Joe Begos’s previous film, VFW had a hard act to follow. It can’t quite live up to the punk-rock glory of its predecessor, but that doesn’t stop it from being a bloody good time. The film is set at a run-down VFW post that has the misfortune of …Read More
A Fantastic Fest 2019 Review With horror in the grips of 80s-throwback-fever, it makes sense that we’re also seeing a slew of films centering around one of the weirdest and most horrifying aspects of the decade: the infamous Satanic Panic. While we know now that the widespread allegations of satanic ritual abuse were almost entirely …Read More
Fanaticism is a hell of a thing. The line between simply admiring one’s work and being downright obsessed with it can be a fine one at times and when that thought process makes its way into art, it’s always an interesting subject to approach. Whether it be “Stan” by Eminem, Adrian Lyne’s FATAL ATTRACTION or …Read More
A Fantastic Fest 2019 Review The black sheep of the franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge was hated among horror fans for decades, thanks in no small part to its less-than-subtle queer subtext and the audacious choice to cast a male “scream queen.” It’s been having something of a revival recently, due …Read More
A Fantastic Fest 2019 Review The debut feature of writer and director Orçun Behram, The Antenna is a stylish and atmospheric Turkish horror film that, while being critical of the current political climate in Turkey, also carries a message about propaganda and dictatorship that is universally resonant. The film centers around a dingy high-rise apartment …Read More
A Fantastic Fest 2019 Review The ocean is a frightening place, yet writer- director Neasa Hardiman doesn’t wring nearly as many scares out of it as she could in her interesting but somewhat underwhelming debut feature Sea Fever. The film follows Siobhán (Hermione Corfield), a marine biologist forced to board a commercial trawler to complete …Read More
A Fantastic Fest 2019 Review After a slew of disappointing (and sometimes outright insulting) exorcism horror movies flooded the market a few years back, it takes a lot to make viewers take notice of the old head-spinning, pea soup-vomiting, “Your mother darns socks in Hell” routine these days. The Cleansing Hour almost manages to pull …Read More
A Fantastic Fest 2019 Review Religion can be a beautiful and disquieting thing, both when viewed from the outside and from within its sanctified grasp. And few films capture the hysterical highs and gut-wrenching lows quite as successfully as Saint Maud, the debut feature from writer-director Rose Glass. The film follows Maud (Morfydd Clark), a …Read More
A Fantastic Fest 2019 Review Random Acts of Violence is a little deeper than its name suggests, but just as violent. Based on the 2010 comic book of the same name, the film comes to us from director Jay Baruchel, who also stars in and co-wrote the flick, and offers an interesting (if not wholly …Read More
Synopsis: When an unidentified suicide victim goes missing from the morgue, the psychiatric ward of the hospital gets a terrifying new patient. There hasn’t been a good plague film in a while. Not to say that The Dead Center is necessarily a plague film, but the creeping dread with which it unfolds is certainly reminiscent …Read More
Synopsis: A young man gets more than he bargained for when he goes to kill his girlfriend’s father, at her request. Tarrantino meets Danny Boyle meets Eli Roth in writer-director Kirill Sokolov’s hilarious and gory feature film debut Why Don’t You Just Die! (aka Papa, sdokhni). A splatterpunk comedy with enough blood to turn even …Read More
Synopsis: A demanding director and his actors and crew are attacked by zombies while filming a low-budget zombie movie. Or are they? It’s difficult to talk about One Cut of the Dead (aka Kamera o Tomeru na!) without spoiling its ingenious plot, so let’s keep this brief. Made on a miniscule budget of ¥3 million …Read More
Synopsis: In this documentary about the Satanic Temple, director Penny Lane follows the Temple’s co-founder and his followers as they fight to keep church and state separate. Everything you think you know about modern Satanism is probably wrong. That’s what Penny Lane’s brilliant documentary Hail Satan? proves in just a little over 90 minutes, taking …Read More
Synopsis: A father tries to prevent his daughter from leaving their dilapidated house, claiming it isn’t safe for them outside. But when an ice cream truck catches her attention, she becomes desperate to leave the nest. The less you know about Freaks going in, the better. The mysterious script is meticulously plotted, leaving you constantly …Read More
Synopsis: After the Woman led her and her sister out into the woods, Darlin’ has been living feral with her new mother, communicating only in grunts and eating human flesh to survive. But when the local bishop decides to civilise her, mother sets out to bring her back into the fold. When Lucky McKee’s The …Read More
As its brazen American retitling suggests, the Italian LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH does indeed follow in the sleazy and queasy footsteps of Wes Craven’s infamous 1972 shocker. And then some. With the Italian genre film factory decidedly on the downturn by this point, it’s a no-brainer that certain of their number would be more …Read More
Online and real-world identities blur and clash in the psychological/supernatural horror outing Cam, which stars Madeline Brewer as erotic webcam performer Lola. This young lady, whose real name is Alice, is fixated with moving up the highly competitive rankings on the site on which she does her live streams, going to such extremes as faking …Read More
There had already been a couple of ‘ZOMBI 3s’ by this time this one saw the light of day; an Italian re-issue of THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE (1974) bore that title, as did BURIAL GROUND (1981) in some quarters, but these retitled flicks simply didn’t carry that Fulci stamp of maggot-ridden authenticity. …Read More
In this feature from James Crow, a group of cockney criminals are employed by a mysterious client to kidnap a young boy in a onesie and bring him to the eponymous house. However, upon arrival they realise that this is no ordinary job; the mysterious gentleman, who’s fond of drinking of wine, is a servant …Read More
Late, great Spanish genre icon Paul Naschy may have made a few more movies before his passing in 2009, but if any one of his late-period films has the feeling of being his true ‘swan song’ then surely ROJO SANGRE (‘Blood Red’) is it. With a script penned by Naschy himself, as ever under his …Read More
Synopsis: Philip (Sean Harris) is a troubled puppeteer with a waning grip on reality, living in his family home with repugnant uncle Maurice (Alun Armstrong). While there, Philip adopts a terrifying puppet which triggers a descent into insanity and the manifestation of monsters. Philip then has to cut ties with the puppet to halt his deterioration into …Read More
Synopsis: A young girl escapes into her own fantasy land, where she believes she is protecting her town from murderous giants, in order to escape from the harsh realities of her life. Following in the footsteps of touching young adult features like 2016’s A Monster Calls, I Kill Giants explores the difficulties of growing up …Read More
Synopsis: After attempting suicide Michael awakes a psych ward demon and it’s only a matter of time before he must stop her before she kills everyone around him. To put it bluntly, Sam Wineman’s creepy short The Quiet Room is nothing short of brilliance. Exploring mental illness whilst suffocating his audience with terrifying waves of …Read More
Synopsis: Ryan Bowman is informed that his biological father, who Ryan never knew and presumed was dead, has recently died in a surfing “accident.” Dad bequeathed his stunning California beach house, valued at 2.5 million dollars, to Ryan. While assessing the property and its contents, Ryan discovers that he’s inherited more than highly appraised real …Read More
They’re evil! They’re dead. They’re also blind. That’s right, they’re the Knights Templar, back in the first sequel to 1972’s TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD. Known in its native Spain as EL ATAQUE DE LOS MUERTOS SIN OJOS (‘The Attack of the Dead without Eyes’), this one sees writer/director Amando de Ossorio ramping up the …Read More
Synopsis: A man wakes up in a square of an unknown city again and again, after each failed attempt to escape four masked assassins. Though the never-ending chase, he tries to recover his identity, and find out who set him up. Despite sharing the same mechanics as The Edge of Tomorrow and, in some respect, …Read More
Writer/director Joe Badon’s debut feature film The God Inside My Ear is a challenging yet wholly accessible and satisfying blend of surrealism, horror, psychological thriller, and science fiction. Imagine Repulsion by way of David Lynch and Luis Bunuel, with some Douglas Sirk high melodrama for good measure, and you start to sense what you are …Read More
Synopsis: A couple retreat to a quiet cabin to help re-build their failing marriage, but their peace and quiet is soon threatened by a mysterious stranger. The Midnight Man is a clichéd and unbalanced thriller that treads an all-too-familiar path. It fails to offer anything we’ve not seen before countless times, offers awkward humour the …Read More
Belgium. Not a country that comes up all that often in conversations about Euro cult films, or horror films for that matter. Unless that conversation happens to be about DEVIL’S NIGHTMARE, that is. Okay, or Harry Kümel’s much better DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS of the same year, but that’s a whole other column right there. This …Read More
