Category Archives: horror

EIFF 2026 – Hungry

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EIFF 2026 – Hungry
Directed by James Nunn,
Starring Madison Davenport, Tracey Bonner, Joaquim de Almeida, Michel Curiel, Samantha Coughlan, Olivia Bernstone, Jim Meskimen, River Codack

This was part of the Midnight Madness where, as the film festival organisers put it, we watch “f**ked up movies”, and the “Hungry” is, as some of you will have guessed, is as in the old family game “Hungry Hungry Hippos”, but of course they can’t use that title for their movie (which does indeed feature ravenous hippos!), so hence “Hungry”. We’ve had sharks, giant snakes, crocs and gators and piranhas, but this time, down in the deepest bayou country, there are feral hippopotami!!

Yes, angry, feral hippos – local legend in the swamplands around New Orleans holds that in the early twentieth century, there was a problem with cattle, so someone had the bright idea to import hippopotami from Africa, with an idea they’d be better suited to the conditions in the state, then breed them for slaughter. But that’s just a legend, right? Right?

Sistine (Madison Davenport) is trying to have a break with her bestie, Hannah (Olivia Bernstone) in New Orleans. Struggling to look after her ill mother, pay the mounting medical bills and hold down a job with a jerk employer (who phones her for work during her holiday, yes, he is that big a swine). Hannah meets Rodrigo (Michel Curiel) and his boss Walker (veteran actor Joaquim de Almeda), who runs swamp tours, with guaranteed views of the state’s alligators, and she decides to book the pair of them on the tour to distract Sistine (who isn’t keen on it, but is talked into it).

Next morning, hungover, they join the tour, alongside a family group and a lone businesswoman, Dionne (Tracey Bonner). Unknown to all aboard, Dionne has promised her kids a photo of the biggest alligator in the swamps, but this means going off the usual routes for tour boats, so she covertly bribes Rodrigo, who is in charge of the boat, to take them to a likely site. Luckily for them the biggest alligator is geo-tagged, so they can focus in easily on his location… Except he isn’t there. What they don’t know, but we do because it was in the opening sequence, was we saw a giant gator hunting in the swamps, only to be ambushed by something bigger and more powerful…

They soon find their gator – well, bits of it. And they are understandably worried about what the hell could take down such an enormous apex predator in its own environment? And, well, I’m pretty sure that those of you who, like me, enjoy a fun creature feature will guess what happens next – there’s an attack by a largely unseen something, they are stranded, the fact they are well off the normal tour boat route so not likely to be spotted easily comes out among recriminations, and people start being picked off…

Like I said, I think most of us know how this is going to go, the numbers are going to be reduced, one by one, there will be sudden threats and the equally sudden relief of that tension when they survive, at least until the next incident. Plans to help themselves if no rescue turn up are formulated, ideas exchanged, and meanwhile they know they are in constant mortal danger. The game now becomes who will make it through and who is going to be chomped??

There’s the usual roster of characters, the ones you like and root for to survive, the ones you suspect will die in some sort of heroic attempt to save them all, and of course there are ones you think deserve to be chomped up. Walker a hunter as well as tour guide, is an obvious stand-in for Quint from Jaws, and delights in telling them that hippos are mostly vegetarian, and they’re not trying to eat you for food, like most predators, they are doing it for fun!

So no, other than being hippos, there isn’t a lot new in this creature feature, but it’s not trying to pretend it is rewriting the sub-genre, it’s rolling with it, and it is inviting us to roll with it too. This is made by people who clearly love a good monster movie, know the rules, know what we expect, and are happy to serve it up. It may not break any moulds, but it knows what it is doing, and who its audience is – this is one to watch, late evening, with your friends and some pizza and food and just laugh and shriek, and enjoy it. I think my only surprise here was, that despite a number of kills, the gore level is fairly low, but then it does feel like they’re going for an uncomplicated, fun beast feature.

Hungry will appear on Sky Cinema in September

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: The Red Sacrament

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The Red Sacrament,
Sara Hinkley,
Titan Books,
Paperback,
ISBN: 9781835410820

It’s Paris, 1869, an era when this most famous of cities is claiming its title as “the city of light”; the new Haussmann boulevards, enormous department stores like the famous Au Printemps dazzle with size, light and sheer range of goods, the pavement cafes bustle, the opera and theatres are busy, the many new squares and garden spaces are lined with flaneurs, and the new gas lighting illuminates everything.

This is not entirely to the taste of our main protagonist, Arnault, who runs the small Théâtre Saint-Siméon , tucked away from these elegant, wide, new streets. It is an unusual venue, where one cannot purchase a ticket – instead black tickets are distributed out among certain sections of society, free of charge, and many are keen to obtain one. How does the theatre sustains itself with no box office, you may ask? It transpires the cast has, shall we say, other methods of obtaining an income, and that income is only secondary to something else they require more urgently: blood.

Yes, this is a theatre of vampiric actors and singers and jugglers; some have only been undead a few years, others performed their stage trade at the open-air fairs of the old Paris, centuries before. Arnault himself is the oldest; a monk and scribe once upon a time, chosen by a pale nobleman to become his painter apprentice. Despite his centuries of existence, he maintains the low, careful profile for himself and his troupe, and truth be told, he takes little interest in the events of the outside world, which tend to surprise him when he notices, giving him a slightly grumpy old man aura, despite his youthful appearance, as he mutters about everything changing around him, as the Modern Era really starts to show.

(Portrait of Clémentine, Mrs Alphones, by Henri Lehmann, in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the original artwork the book cover design is based on)

Into this fairly static existence – select pieces to perform, rehearse, put on a season on the stage, arrange the usual bribes and covering charges, putting aside takings from their victims into a pool that accrues interest for these immortals over the years – disruption is about to arrive, partly in the form of something unusual. Not just two new vampires from another country (from the New World, the islands of the Caribbean!), but a brother and sister, both vampires, both beautiful, elegant, happy in this new world of artificial lights, masked balls, operas and department stores where they can buy whatever they desire.

The other disruption bearing down on them, almost unnoticed at first – such is Arnault’s disinterest in the wider world – is history itself. As anyone familiar with European history will be aware, this is the era of the Franco-Prussian War, which the French assumed they would win easily, but in fact lead to a humiliating defeat, a long siege of Paris itself (the infamous one where the restaurants butchered the zoo animals and served them in fine sauces as food became scarcer), the surrender of territory and the establishment of what would become a united Germany (laying the groundwork for all the alliances and grievances which would lead to disaster in 1914). How do the citizens deal with the cold and hunger or a months-long siege? And how do vampires sustain themselves when their prey is harder to find at night, and what they find is mostly weak and starving?

(The Siege of Paris, 1870, by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier)

There are obvious nods to the queen of vampire fiction, Anne Rice – her sequel to the now iconic Interview With the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, also boasted an exclusive theatre in Paris run by vampires, and both are clearly paying homage to the famous, or infamous, real Théâtre de Grand Guignol, which was a fixture in the city’s demi-monde for many decades. And while Rice fans (myself included) will find some familiar material here, this is, I am happy to report, its own beast, albeit one Rice fans will enjoy, I think. Sumptuous descriptions of the new, improved Paris, and especially of the styles of the period (Hinkley herself is a costume designer for film and stage) are rich, and it all comes with a nice sense of the Gothic.

Add in a witch from a backward, rural part of France (not even touched by “the iron rail”, as Arnault refers to the trains), this young, new vampire brother and sister who they know next to nothing about (exciting new friends? It has been decades since they last saw a new vampire visit the city. Or are they a threat to their comfortably carved out existence?), a potential queer romance as Arnault finds himself, despite his normal reticence to anything new, towards Victor, the visiting male vampire, who in turns seems quite taken with Arnault (unlike his sister who seems to disdain the entire group), and then the historical siege, and you have a rich, Gothic, romantic, bloody stew to enjoy, which also makes gentle commentaries on ageing, on the nature of change and moving on.

The Red Sacrament was published by Titan in July; this review was originally penned for The Shoreline of Infinity

If you are able, please support your local independent bookshop for purchases – if you don’t have one nearby, you can buy through Bookshop.org , and nominate a local bookshop, which will get a cut of the sale (to hell with Spamazon!)

Reviews: the Mortuary Assistant

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The Mortuary Assistant,
Directed by Jeremiah Kipp,
Starring Willa Holland, Paul Sparks

Jeremiah Kipp (Slapface), returns with a delightfully creepy and atmospheric horror in The Mortuary Assistant, co-written by Brian Clarke, who created the original video game which inspired the film, and Tracee Beebe). Yes, this is that unusual beast, a fascinating flick born from a video game, brought to us via Shudder. We meet Rebecca (Willa Holland), undertaking her final practical examination in mortuary science – she performs an embalming procedure on a corpse by herself, but supervised by Raymond (Paul Sparks), which adds a touch of nervousness to the already somewhat macabre work; not only do we watch all the tools of the mortician’s trade being used, we also have Rebecca having to look up to her supervisor frequently, wondering if she is performing correctly, the sort of thing that would make most of us nervous, no matter how much we have practised an learned.

At first it is hard to tell how he is rating her – Raymond seems very quiet, very unemotional and hard to read, but when she pauses once or twice and asks if she was doing something wrong, he quietly reassures her she is doing fine. She is now qualified to work for him, to her relief. We start to learn that Rebecca is in recovery, in a sponsored programme for addiction recovery, and this is her one year anniversary of being clean, so passing her exams, getting her new job secured and being free of her addiction all coincide.

However, all of this also makes her a target for what will follow. After initially telling her she didn’t need to volunteer for the “graveyard shift” (sorry, bad pun for a mortuary based film, I know), he later calls her to say something has come up and can she go in to take care of some work overnight, which she is happy to do. As you can imagine, a funeral home at night, with just bodies in storage and a single, solitary live person is a fairly creepy setting to begin with, and Kipp takes this and uses it to slowly build atmosphere. We already saw Raymond gently remonstrate with Rebecca for going to a basement storage space for more supplies, saying she doesn’t need to go down there, which right away signals that there is something here she is not meant to know… And of course there is.

Kipp starts it quietly and slowly – tiny little things, like reading a list of preparations for a body which is then to be simply cremated – why carry out all this work if the body is just going to be burnt to ashes?? Still, these are the instructions, and Rebecca dutifully follows them. And that’s when we start to notice little things, like the way an eye suddenly blinks or the head tilts on a corpse on the preparation table when she isn’t looking. Just little movements, no big jump scare, and it is far more effective this way.

Noises and strange visions soon start to come to Rebecca, and some seem to tie back to events in her past, involving running away while on substance abuse, her father desperately trying to find her, but something happens to him, for which she blames herself. At one point she becomes even more freaked out when she finds herself back in her own apartment, with no memory of leaving the funeral home, then a banging on the door – her sponsor from the addiction programme, who she called (but again has no memory of doing so). Obviously her sponsor takes this as a sign that she has relapsed, despite Rebecca’s protests, but then things just get stranger. And then Raymond calls for her and tells her urgently that she has to go back. She says no, she is scared to go back after the weird experiences there, but he insists she must, and that, for reasons he won’t elaborate on, she will be safer there than at home.

Now we become even more suspicious of Raymond – he clearly knew something was likely to happen, has been waiting and watching for it to unfold, but what is it and why? What is his role, is he helping her or using her? It becomes harder to tell even after he explains some of it – demonic beings trying to take control of recently deceased bodies, but they use links to certain people, people with troubled pasts that the demon knows all about and exactly how to exploit, people like recovering addicts like Rebecca…

I don’t want to ruin too much of this by explaining too much more. Suffice to say Kipp ratchets things slowly, and puts us alongside Rebecca in not knowing exactly what is going on or what to do – should she trust Raymond? He hasn’t told her everything, this is clear, but why? And then there are moments when he does seem to explain something to her on the phone, but gives her very odd, harmful instructions, only for the phone to ring again moments later and it is Raymond saying he didn’t just speak to her, he has in fact been trying to call her for some time. Was he lying? Was it the demon impersonating him, trying to trick her to its bidding? Both? The levels of creepiness and the inability to tell who to trust, or if she can even trust her own senses, builds continually, and we feel ourselves being drawn into this nightmare with Rebecca,

The film evoked memories of the excellent Brian Cox-starring The Autopsy of Jane Doe, partly because of the funeral home setting, but also because both chose the slow, something isn’t quite right approach that gradually unfolds from there’s something wrong here to what was that, to oh my god, and that just works so well, loading the atmosphere and tension. It doesn’t hurt that when we get glimpses of the demon, in its own form, outside of any cadaver it is trying to control, it is a simple but very creepy looking critter. This is one to watch late night, with the lights down.

The Mortuary Assistant is available on demand, DVD and Blu-Ray from Acorn Media Entertainment from the 20th of July

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Exit 8

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Exit 8,
Directed by Genki Kawamura
Starring Kazunari Ninomiya, Yamato Kochi, Naru Asanuma, Kotone Hanase

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Exit 8, having been unable to make it to the cinema release, and having heard a lot of good things about this – gasp! A good video game to film adaptation! I was not disappointed.

As with the Kotake Create game, the bulk of the movie is confined to one location, following the perspective from The Lost Man, Kazunari Ninomiya. We start with him on a typically crowded underground train, where he pauses listening to his headphones to look up and see a rude, aggressive Salaryman type angrily berating a young mother because he baby is screaming. Like the other commuters around him, he looks, is not impressed by the bad behaviour, but does nothing to intervene.

When he alights on his platform and starts to walk to the titular Exit 8, his phone rings. His ex-girlfriend is calling, and she has news – she is in the hospital, and she is pregnant Our Lost Man is unsure how to react to this, but it feels very much like he is reluctant to be a part of this situation, and looking for a way out of it (the irony, given the situation he will soon find himself in). As he walks into the sterile, shiny tiled corridors towards the exit, the phone signal breaks up and then is gone. He continues walking, taking the turns, then the long straight passages, then the turns again…

…And this is where it goes from a normal, if cold, public space to a more liminal one, then to downright disturbing. He takes a corner, walks past a row of lockers, a pile of sheets dumped next to them, and a photo booth, then another sharp turn into the longer, white, tiled corridor, and another man, known as The Walking Man (Yamato Kochi), in his business shirt and tie, attaché case and phone, striding down the corridor towards him and past him, but seemingly utterly oblivious to The Lost Man. He continues, turns another sharp corner, and finds himself passing identical lockers, sheets and photo booth, turns the next corridor feeling an uneasy sense of deja vu, and yes, this corridor also looks the same, but then so do most in such places.

Except around the corner he hears footsteps, and it is the same Walking Man coming around the corner and then walking past him again. Now The Lost Man is getting worried, grabbing his asthma inhaler from his bag as he starts to panic a bit. He tries to keep going, but he can’t – he is in a loop, like something from an Escher print crossed with Groundhog Day. In fact among the advertising posters on a wall he passes, is one for an Escher exhibition, featuring ants trapped in a Moebius loop, the shape imitating the “8” of the eponymous Exit he is searching for.

He finds instructions on one wall, which he struggles to understand at first – it tells him to keep walking forward, unless he spots an anomaly, in which case he should go backwards. Unsure what this means, he starts walking again, pondering their meaning. When he encounters the Walking Man again, they pass as usual, without any acknowledgement. But then he hears his footsteps stop suddenly, so he turns slowly and the Walking Man is standing stock-still behind him, a creepy grin on his face. Somewhat freaked out, he realises this is some kind of anomaly and retreats. He notices another sign, where the number changes each time he passes, from a zero to a one and on, if he completes a stage correctly, indicating how many times he must succeed to reach Exit 8. This simple sign becomes quite an emotional touchstone, and you really feel the desperation or elation when he passes by it again and finds it has gone down or up.

The anomalies start small, but soon start to become more disturbing. We also start to get a handful of other perspectives – we see a little but from the perspective of The Walking Man, a small boy (Naru Asanuma) and a young high school girl (Kotone Hanase), which adds a much-needed, but carefully rationed element of interaction and alternative views of what is happening in this strange space. We also start to find that some of the phenomena they think are new anomalies – in fact it may be that some of them are some sort of life-lesson, but how to understand which is which is not always obvious (until passing the number sign and seeing if it has gone up or reset itself). It also breaks the repetitive corridors a little for some flashbacks, or possibly flash-forwards, hinting that his moral choices as well as his ability to spot anomalies, may play an important part in any escape.

This is a compact, atmospheric, clever piece of work, slowly taking its time to build the sense of unease from boring, everyday location to the feeling something isn’t right, to downright disturbing, and many of us will empathise because we too have experienced the way these liminal spaces that seem so ordinary most of the time, can start to feeling different, say late night when almost nobody else is there, and it plays on this beautifully, as well as that repetitve nature of our own daily commutes, seemingly the same thing again and again. I watched this the same week I got to see the much-acclaimed Backrooms film, and I thought that superb too, although I think Exit 8 slightly superior, largely because it feels like whatever force puts each person into this loop is doing so not out of malice, but partly to try and impart a personal lesson in their lives too, and that adds another level to it.

Wonderfully disturbing and creepy in places, but taking its time to build that sensation up, we really start to become immersed, walking those same repeating corridors with our protagonist, seeing much of it from his perspective, feeling what he feels, that mounting sense of frustration that then becomes desperation as he realises he is not merely lost, not taken a wrong corridor, he is stuck in something unnatural. The endlessly repeating cold, white tiled corridors could easily have been boring after a few scenes, but the camera work keeps it fresh, and you find yourself looking with the Lost Man for anomalies, for the tiny differences – was that door handle always in the same place? – as you are all but walking around with him. Exit 8 sits well among films like Backrooms, Groundhog Day or River. Highly recommended.

Exit 8 makes its digital platforms debut from Monday 8th of June, and will be available on Blu-Ray from 29th June

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Rippy (the zombie kangaroo!)

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Rippy,
Directed by Ryan Coonan,
Starring Michael Biehn, Tess Haubrich, Angie Miliken

Those of us old enough to remember watching Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo way, way back in the day, will doubtless have a small chuckle over the deliberate play on names here with this zombie ‘roo flick from the Land Down Under, and indeed it is even referenced in one brief scene, where a startled police officer spots the titular, undead marsupial and mumbles “g’day, Skip” before bloody mayhem ensues.

Rippy is a bit of an odd beast – it really was not what I was expecting. With this title and concept, I was really assuming I would get a slice of silly but fun Ozploitation horror here, something to go on a nice double bill with, say, Razorback, some evening. And yes, there are some elements of that in Rippy, as you might expect, but there is also a lot more talking heads and drama going on, and back story in between the zombie kangaroo attacks.

Maddie (Tess Haubrich), is the only copy in an outback town, daughter of a local hero, always trying to live up to that inheritance. Despite carrying that weight of expectation, and a long-lived guilt over the accidental death of her hero father (which she blames herself for, despite only being a child at the time), she does her best to ensure the safety of her small town, and she seems to be genuinely respected and loved by her local community. We also see that she is not to be messed with when she sorts out two drunken workers who get too rowdy in the local pub, and make the mistake of testing her (she kicks their butt in short order).

Her late father’s best friend, Schmitty (the iconic Michael Biehn), lives outside the town, a loner, carrying too much psychological baggage from his time in the Vietnam War, where he served with Maddie’s father, and while largely withdrawn from town life (including his estranged former wife, Donna, played by Angie Miliken, Maddie’s aunt), it’s also obvious that he still cares deeply for Maddie, like a good uncle.

But when he reports to her that a giant, undead kangaroo is on the rampage, and seemingly immune to his rifle bullets, she doesn’t believe him – fairly understandably (especially given he hunts the outback around his remote property in boots, shorts and an old dressing gown!). It’s only when ripped-part bodies start showing up (starting with the drunks she dealt with earlier and told to walk home – which I think you could guess was going to lead to them encountering Rippy) she acts, but she thinks, again understandably, they have a human killer on the loose, and there’s a very likely suspect working nearby. Of course, eventually they realise that mad, old Schmitty was actually right all along, but the body count it racking up by that point!

It’s a peculiar beast though – I was ready, as I said, for some silly but fun Ozploitation, gorey horror, and that’s only a small part of Rippy, it spent much more time on Maddie, Schmitty and Donna, and their back-story and the shadow of her father. I must admit I resented this a bit, probably because my expectations meant some mental gear changing, but actually once I had thought about it for a while, I actually appreciated that Rippy wasn’t just what I had predicted and actually did some things differently.

It does mean that perhaps it falls between two stools for some viewers, I suspect, some would prefer more straight drama with a touch of horror, some would prefer it to embrace the schlock horror more fully, which could be a problem, but as I said, once I realised it wasn’t going the full Ozploitation schlock route I actually enjoyed it for being different to what I had expected. A mixed offering, for sure, but I found it fun enough for a late night screening.

Rippy is available on DVD, or to stream on demand now from Altitude Film Entertainment.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Haunted Ulster Live

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Haunted Ulster Live,
Directed by Dominic O’Neill,
Starring Mark Claney, Aimee Richardson, Siobhan Kelly, Dave Fleming, Antoinette Morelli, Owen James, Dan Leith

It’s Halloween in Belfast, 1998 – the Troubles are still ongoing, and a local station is doing a live, outside broadcast from a purportedly haunted house, complete with the “Ghost Tent” (where local paranormal investigators have set up their equipment for the night), and vox pops on the street outside with locals, all eager to appear on the telly, of course (including a trio of youngsters all dressed up a Power Rangers, leading co-host Michelle (Aimee Richardson) to smile and comment that at least the street is protected tonight!). Inside the house the other host, a middle-aged veteran broadcaster, Gerry (Mark Claney) talks to the mother and children about the hauntings, and introducing a couple of paranormal experts, including a medium, Sinead (Antoinette Morelli), while a local radio DJ Declan (Dan Leith) is staying alone in the loft and broadcasting all night from there to raise funds for charity.

Those of you familiar with your British TV history will, of course, guess right away that Haunted Ulster Live is something of a homage to a famous/infamous live broadcast from the early 1990s on the BBC, when they aired Ghostwatch. Presented by a range of very well-known public broadcast figures like Michael Parkinson, the show managed to fool a large segment of the viewing audience into thinking they were watching a real documentary coming to them live (some of us were not fooled, we’ve seen too many horror films! But many were). The film quite lovingly re-creates that 1990s live TV experience – the mix of the veteran prima donna presenter and the younger one, the overbearing producer, the almost embarrassing interviews on the street with people just desperate to get their face on the screen, even the colour schemes, the screen size ratios, the local station idents and cuts to ads and the main studio, all evoke the look and style of the period’s broadcasting.

However, despite the short run time, there’s a lot more going on here than simply taking a well-remembered broadcasting hoax and running with it. While that provides the basic skeleton of the film, as it progresses, O’Neill rather cannily starts to feed some other material in there, including elements of folk horror, and mixes some light-hearted comedic moments with increasingly dark material. Even the presenters, who seem straight out of 90s broadcasting stereotype school, develop more character as the events begin to take on their own route, away from the Ghostwatch formula.

I don’t want to discuss those later elements too much because we’d been moving into Spoiler Territory, but I was quite impressed with the way O’Neill used Ghostwatch more as a foundation, not a whole blueprint, taking it to get the concept launched, then building his own fascinating horror take on top of it (and keeping it to a tight running time, so it maintains the tension and doesn’t exceed its welcome), with some clever ideas saved for the final reel. In addition to lovingly recreating the colours, styles and looks of live broadcasting from the era, O’Neill also reminds us that 1990s Belfast was a different place from now – a very loud noise prompts one presenter to reassure visitors that it was not an “incident” (in other words, a terrorist attack). A terrific combination of loving homage to a famous 90s live TV event and also very much its own thing too, this is a cracking bit of viewing for the Halloween season.

Haunted Ulster Live is available on digital platforms from October 15th.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: I Saw the TV Glow

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I Saw the TV Glow,
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun,
Starring Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Fred Durst, Amber Benson, Helena Howard

Owen (played by Ian Foreman as a boy, and Justice Smith when older) is an awkward schoolboy in small-town America in the 1990s – he seems to have no friends, he doesn’t even make eye contact with others (it may be that he has an undiagnosed condition), and home-life isn’t much better – his mother has a serious illness, which will claim her life fairly soon, and his father is a remote presence at best, but his few interactions are not encouraging (when Owen mentions wanting to be allowed to stay up to watch a show he has heard of, The Pink Opaque, his father gruffly proclaims “isn’t that a show for girls?”)

He first spots the Emo-esque Maddy (Bill and Ted Face the Music’s Brigette Lundy-Paine), sitting by herself, reading a book which he notices is an episode guide to The Pink Opaque (remember those? Pre-internet those paperback books of episode guides were our main way of finding out details of favourite series), and he later makes a shy, tentative approach to her. Maddy is also a misfit, playing the loner style card, but something about Owen causes her to slowly start reaching out to him, allowing him to come over to watch the show with her, while he tells his parents he’s having a sleepover at another friend’s house, and she starts sending him VHS copies of episodes she’s recorded.

The show itself features two main female characters, each with powers they are still exploring, and learning to work together to fight various preternatural monsters sent by the Big Bad of the series, Mister Melancholy, with echoes of actual 90s shows like Buffy or Charmed. And as with those real series, this becomes more than just a show to these two awkward, isolated kids – it’s not even that it is an obsession in watching it and talking about it, it starts to feel like elements of the show are real, more real and vibrant and important than their own lives.

When Maddy vanishes – she previously told Owen she needed to get out of this town, but he wouldn’t go after panicking – he continues with his life, a succession of boring, menial jobs, unable to even brighten these by befriending colleagues (he still can’t even meet their eyes), feeling trapped, not just in that life, but that life, meagre though it is, is flipping by faster and faster as he gets older (he likens it to skipping chapters on a DVD). Even rewatching the show, years later (now on streaming – he doesn’t even need to buy a tape now, he comments), it isn’t as he remembers, instead is it a cheap, cheesy show that he can’t relate to, totally different from his memories of it. When Maddy, long since considered missing and dead, returns, and claims to have seen into the “real” Pink Opaque, he’s unsure how to react.

I found this to be a fascinating piece – one of those films that comes along every now and then which doesn’t fit into an easy category (hurrah!). It’s part horror, part reality-bending drama, part coming-of-age tale, while the asexual nature of the relationship between the two leads (Maddy tells him early on she’s not into boys, Owen replies he’s just into TV shows, really), aided by having a non-binary actor in Lundy-Paine is refreshing, no forced romance, just two damaged souls who find a connection.

It is beautifully filmed, filled with some wonderful visuals (for instance, glimpses of Mister Melancholy show a “man in the moon” face, a more disturbing version of the famous one from Voyage Dans La Lune). It’s beautiful and dreamlike, and doesn’t spoon-feed easy answers, leaving much of it to the audience to interpret (again, rather refreshing, I thought), with elements sometimes feeling a little like an episode of Stranger Things if filmed by David Lynch.

Unusual, beautiful, and touching in its own way, and one of the more unusual films you can catch this year.

I Saw the TV Glow is available to buy on digital from September 30th from A24.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: old-school Italian horror in The Well

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The Well,
Directed by Federico Zampaglione,
Starring Lauren LaVera, Claudio Gerini, Gianluigi Calvani, Linda Zampaglione

I’ve been hearing about Zampaglione’s The Well on the film festival circuit, and was lucky enough to be sent a screener. It starts with a young woman, Lisa (Lauren LaVera), travelling by herself to a remote Italian village. Along the way she meets a group of other young people, who are going to the woods near the village to conduct some research; all slightly adrift in a foreign land, they bond and make promises to catch up with one another in a few days in the village, when they have finished their respective jobs.

Lisa is the daughter of a famous art restorer, the one any rich collector turns to when needed. Normally overshadowed by her famous father, here he is not available, so she has been sent for some emergency restoration work for the local duchess, Emma (John Wick 2’s Claudio Gerini). A large oil painting above a fireplace has been damaged, and an important international auction is coming up, so there’s a lot of money involved, hence the rush job. Lisa protests that this kind of delicate work cannot be rushed, but the countess insists, and then reminds her there is a penalty clause if she fails, one which could bankrupt her father’s business, so she has no choice.

Naturally, as many of my fellow horror hounds will have guessed, the auction is a ruse, and the painting is tied to a secret ritual which needs to be carried out by a specific evening. As Lisa begins to gently clean soot and other detritus from the painting, she is quite upset as some of the disturbing imagery it slowly reveals, piece by piece, imagery which seems to be leaking into her dreams, creating nightmarish images. Are they just dreams from the stress of work and being alone in a strange place with the enigmatic duchess and her peculiar daughter (Linda Zampaglione), or are they harbingers of something more?

Meanwhile, the group of young researchers Lisa befriended at the start of the film have been attacked and kidnapped, dragged to a hidden torture chamber, which just happens to sit in the old dungeon levels well below the home of the duchess. Overseen by a lumbering, slow but brutal ogre of a man, each of them is brutalised in turn, before being dropped down the titular well, where something is waiting to finish them off…

This is very much an Old School Italian horror style offering, very much in the vein of the 1970s and 80s horrors and Giallos by Bava, Argento et al. And like those, it really doesn’t always quite make sense! But also like those, it is stylish, so you don’t really mind that too much at all – there’s enough there to give you the main idea: possibly cursed painting, a secret ritual, a potential bit of Elisabeth Bathory influence.

And some truly gruesome, downright nasty deaths, usually prefaced by brutal wounds, spaced out across the film so it doesn’t come across as too much (although I couldn’t help but note that the most protracted and nastiest death scene was for the one black woman in the cast, who endures the worst for quite some time before death). And again, like some of those 70s and 80s films, the gore is extreme but sometimes ludicrously so.

Despite a bunch of flaws, I really enjoyed this, mostly because, well, I love those 1970s and 80s Italian horrors, with all their silliness, lack of narrative clarity and OTT death and injury scenes. If, like me, you loved the films of Argento, Bava, Fulci et all, this is just a terrific night’s retro-tinged Italian horror for you to enjoy. The next festival screening is in October for Manchester’s Grimfest.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: The Vourdalak

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The Vourdalak,
Directed by Adrien Beau,
Starring Kacey Mottet Klein, Ariane Labed, Grégoire Colin, Vassili Schneider, Gabriel Pava, Claire Duburcq

It’s the traditional dark and stormy night, as the foppish Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé, an aristocratic envoy of the king of France (complete with powdered wig and painted face) batters on a formidable door, seeking aid. His escort has been slaughtered by bandits, his baggage and horses stolen. The man within only peers out through a slatted grille – he informs the Marquis that he opens this door for no-one after dark (shades of classic Hammer films, the villagers locked up at night, terrified), but he does at least advise him to travel on (without stopping) through the night to the home of the venerable Gorcha, who will assist him.

Left with no choice, the Marquis (Kacey Mottet Klein, playing him just like the fish out of water that he is, more suited to the meaningless rituals of court life than traversing the wilds) does as instructed. As the new day breaks he comes across a couple of figures as he wanders through the forest, a mysterious, beautiful woman, Sdenka(Ariane Labed), and then Piotr (Vassili Schneider), who turn out to be the daughter and son of Gorcha’s household. In reaching their home, the oldest brother, a gruff man called Jegor (Grégoire Colin), hears his pleas, and despite not being the friendliest, agrees to assist him, but he will have to wait a day for a horse.

This is a household with a missing patriarch, however – Gorcha himself is absent, and Jegor, the oldest son, is trying to fill in as best he can, although his younger sibling are clearly chafing at his attempts to be as tough and hard-line as their venerable father. Gorcha has left to hunt down Turkish bandits, but left an ominous warning to his family: he would return inside six days. If he returned even an hour after those six days, then it is not him, but a Vourdalak that returns, and on no account should they give it admittance to the home, no matter how much it may sound like him, or what it says.

While Piotr, Sdenka and Jegor’s wife Anja (Claire Duburcq) seem to believe in this warning, Jegor is scornful of such superstitions, asking the Marquis, as an educated man, how anyone can believe such nonsense. As they eat at an outdoor table, they spot a fallen, emaciated body by the edge of the woods, which turns out to be their father. The others are all apprehensive – it is just past the six day deadline, but Jegor tells them off for their concerns, and angrily demands how long could their poor father have lain there without them noticing?

Of course he is brought to the table then into the home – after all, if the warnings had been followed, there wouldn’t be much of a story, would there?? And despite looking very much like a barely animated cadaver, Gorcha still commands obedience – this is a very patriarchal society, and he is in charge, and that’s it – despite all their fears the others all fall into line, setting up the events of the second half of the film.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this since first hearing of some excited reviews from the film festival circuit, and, being an old Gothic Fiend, I have long been familiar with the short 1839 story by Aleksey Tolstoy which inspired it. Predating Stoker’s Dracula by half a century, this draws far more on the then-common legends of vampiric-type creatures, which were often little more than revenants, reanimated corpses which usually rose at night to feed on their families and neighbours, miles away from the debonair, castle-dwelling, Satanic lord of the Dracula model (inspired by Byron, and Polidori’s “The Vampyre”), which is more common in cinema.

This has a much more folk-horror feel to it, appropriately, given the source material draws on those eastern European myths of vampires that so fascinated the salons of early 19th century Europe (then as now, our culture seems very drawn to these nocturnal blood-drinkers, and cinema has been in love with them almost from its beginnings). The low budget is no bar here – a nice, remote, rural location and small but effective cast is made to work well on that wee budget, while the use of Super 16MM film adds to the stylish look.

And then there is the Vourdalak itself – no CGI, no actor in make-up here, instead the undead Gorcha (voiced by director Beau himself) is a puppet, a marionette. And an incredibly effective device this proves to be – I mean, sure, there are a couple of scenes where it looks odd, but that adds to the charm of this piece, beside which, given it is portraying a supernatural creature, that oddness actually works in its favour, I think. Most of the time though I found using the puppet approach worked brilliantly (it also clearly gives the actors something to react to, enhancing their performances).

This is both innovative and unusual, while also paying homage to classic horrors (not least Hammer), and working in folk-horror into its stylish, intriguing mix. A fabulous new entry into the vampire film genre for fans to sink their fangs into – best watched after dark, with just a few candles on!

The Vourdalak is released on digital platforms from September 16th.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 – The Substance

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Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 – The Substance
Directed by Coralie Fargeat,
Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid

This was another of the revived Midnight Madness strand of late night flicks a the Edinburgh Film Festival this August, arriving with quite a reputation ahead of it, partly from the reputation director Coralie Fargeat garnered with her previous film (Revenge) and the win at Cannes (The Substance won Best Screenplay), partly from having such a major Hollywood star as Demi Moore tackling this kind of film. And yes, it is a doozy! Loud and very much not subtle about some of the points it is hammering in, and yes, Fargeat’s love for the likes of Carpenter and Cronenberg is very, very much on show here.

The premise is fairly simple at first, and deals with a subject that is all-too-real (in contrast with the film’s more fantastical elements): the way the media, especially in Tinsel Town, chews up talent, especially women, creating stars, but only as long as they remain beautiful, young – perfect. When that idealised version on the screen can’t quite be achieved anymore (wrinkles, grey hairs, how dare a star – especially a female star – dare to grow old, grow imperfect). Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has been at the top of her game for years, her morning workout show a huge hit. But now she’s getting older, and this is a kind of show that doesn’t really sell exercise and healthy living, it sells a sanitised, idealised, and unattainable version of perfection. They don’t call it the Dream Factory for nothing…

Let go from her previously huge show, Elisabeth is furious, and her treatment by Harvey (Dennis Quaid), the incredibly sleazy, amoral boss just increases the sting. On a downward spiral, she gets involved in an accident, and it is at the ER for treatment that an incredibly handsome young doctor tells her she is a “good candidate”, slipping something into her pocket. This turns out to be a USB drive with a phone number and a hand-written note saying “it changed my life”. When she finally feels driven to try this, she has to follow mysterious instructions which take her to an unusual location, where a package is waiting for her, and the promise of a better, more perfect version of her being attainable.

I don’t want to go too much further into the narrative here, because this is a film that is best experienced knowing only the bare bones of the desire that pushes this story. That’s how I went into it, knowing it was something to do with a big star hitting her 50s, finding she’s no longer seen as desirable, and that there was some mysterious method to recapture or recreate her more youthful glory (Moore herself said this was one of the reasons she agreed to the film, because she’s had first-hand experience of this very common, not to mention sexist and ageist, problem). But there were so many ways I could imagine that idea being developed – is it a serum? The kind with a price? Is is illegal cloning of some sort? Genetic manipulation? Magical elixir like Death Becomes Her? Go down the Portrait of Dorian Gray route?

Well, again, I’m not saying, except to note that it unfolded in a manner I really wasn’t expecting. A method that was visceral and disgusting and gruesome (oh, the things we do for youth and beauty and fame!), far more so than I had anticipated. In fact I’d say some scenes in The Substance are up there with the disturbing yet compelling body horror of earlier Cronenberg, or The Thing-era Carpenter.

This is not a subtle film – right from the start it really makes its points in a heavy manner, from the time-lapse of Sparkle’s star being created on the iconic Walk of Fame, photographed, admired, slowly forgotten as years pass, to those giant L.A. Billboards (including one right outside the window of Sparkle’s apartment), or flashing up the heavy, block lettering of the instructions on each stage of her package being thrown up massively on the screen, all to pounding, thumping music (the soundscape is as relentless as the visuals). It doesn’t just make a point, it hammers the viewer over the head with it, repeatedly, aurally and visually.

I’m really in two minds about that approach – one part of me really admires and enjoyed it, and loved Fargeat for such an all-out, no-holds-barred, fearless approach, while at the same time there were moments where I found myself too much, too often. Which is it, ultimately? Both, I think! Yes, sorry, that is a bit of a cop-out, but it really did leave me impressed and taken aback but at the same time feeling battered and bruised by its relentless, OTT approach too. Although set in the present (judging by the tech, like the phones), the visual flair and style really put me far more in mind of that pumped-up 1980s vibe (think Jane Fonda’s workout era), and as with the intense, almost breathless approach, I suspect that too was deliberate, being a decade remarkable for excess and that “be all you can be” ethos taken to the max, not to mention when Moore herself was first starting her rise to fame.

Moore and Qualley give their all, even when it comes to scenes involving a lot of practical effects and make-up (all credit to them, I mean they really go the distance and then some with this -you’ll see what I mean if you watch it!), while Quaid seems to be revelling in playing an absolute sleaze bag of a Hollywood suit, cocksure, leering at the female talent (as long as they are still young and perfect), seeing them just as something to use, consume, mould, discard and onto the Next Big Star when the first crow’s feet appear, disgusting in his habits, uncaring. Everything here isn’t just dialled up to 11, it goes far beyond.

As I said, it both wore me out with this relentless visual and aural assault, and at the same time it impressed the hell out of me, the way it took a real-world problem and blew it into all sorts of new shapes (often disgusting shapes!), with some incredible and frequently stomach-churning visuals and effects (and I say this as someone who loves The Thing and Society and the Cronenberg oeuvre). A remarkable, highly unusual, full-throttle, OTT but in the best way; horror that has to be experienced.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Oddity

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Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 – Oddity,
Directed by Damian McCarthy,
Starring Carolyn Bracken, Gwilym Lee, Tadhg Murphy, Steve Wall, Jonathan French

My first screening of this year’s 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival, and it was a welcome return to the very late night strand, which we used to enjoy in previous, pre-Covid years at the Filmhouse, when films which suit that late-night atmosphere (usually horrors) would be screened. This year, the Filmhouse still being closed (but with the fundraiser successful, currently renovating for its return, hurrah!), the equally wonderful old Art-Deco Cameo Cinema, long a part of the film fest, welcomed us into its comfy seats. The show may not have been starting until midnight, but the place was bustling, the crowd in excited, enthusiastic mood despite the lateness of the hour, and the excitement mounted as we had some of the cast and crew present for a brief talk before the showing.

Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is alone in an old, rural set of buildings she and her husband are slowly renovating, well outside of the city. Ted Timmis (Gwilym Lee) is a doctor at the local psychiatric hospital, and forced to work nights, meaning his wife is entirely alone in her isolated, large house. Dani is delighted to find that despite the remoteness, she has managed to find one spot, upstairs, in a far corner, where she can get a phone signal, and chats to her husband as she finishes some repairs, before retiring to the small tent she has set up in the ground floor area to stay in for the night (both the phone signal and the renovations will be referenced again as the film unfolds).

Despite nothing having happened yet, the film’s opening moments are adept at starting to build an atmosphere of unease and menace; the isolation of the location and Dani, the bare, unfinished old stone building interior, and most especially the soundscape all contribute hugely to his. The sounds throughout are vitally important in building that atmosphere in Oddity, from unsettling music to simple but incredibly effective sound effects, like the creaking of old wooden beams and floors. Sure, that could just be the sounds of an old building on a windy night, couldn’t it? I mean, surely that’s all it is…

Dani is startled on finding there is someone in the courtyard when she goes to retrieve something from her car, despite the remoteness of the building, and flees back into the building as the person knocks on the door and demands entry. She slowly slides a viewing panel back to reveal an unkempt man with wild hair, and one glass eye, who turns out to be one of her husband’s former patients. She is understandably terrified by this, but he begs her to let him in, insisting he is no threat to her – on the contrary, he believes she is in danger and that he saw someone sneak into the building when she was at her car, that person now being in there with her. Poor Dani is now double terrified – she thinks the man at the door is the threat, but what if there is really someone inside, as he is warning? The creaks and groans of the old building build this suspense to an unbearable pitch.

I’ll give out a spoiler warning here in case you don’t want to know anymore, then don’t go past this point. That said this is a mild spoiler, as most of the promotional blurb I have seen for the film all give this away in their descriptions: Dani is indeed killed, by a creepy, masked figure inside the house. We move forward a year and her bereaved husband is visiting Dani’s twin sister (also Bracken), Darcy, a blind woman who claims to have certain psychic powers, who runs the old curiosity shop their mother left to her, a place filled with disturbing items, most of which have a story attached to them.

Darcy can pick up the truth of someone from handling a personal item, like a watch, or a ring – or a glass eye. She has asked Ted to bring this item from her sister’s killer, Olin (Tadhg Murphy), who was blamed for the murder, and who himself was subsequently murdered. Through it she intends to learn the truth of her twin’s brutal death, and after a vague promise to invite her over for dinner around the anniversary of the death, Ted leaves, having unsettled Darcy by revealing that he is already living with a new girlfriend, still in the same house where Dani was murdered (the girlfriend, Yana – Caroline Menton – is, as you can imagine, less than happy about staying there, especially as Ted still works nights, leaving her alone there, and she’s sure she has glimpsed Dani’s ghost in the shadows).

I don’t want to get too much deeper into the second half as I don’t want to spoil it; suffice to say events are not all as they have been previously been explained, which is, of course, not really a surprise (I mean it wouldn’t be much of a film if it were all as they said!). Darcy makes an unexpected visit, bringing a large trunk which contains a life-sized wooden male figure that is incredibly disturbing (you’re just waiting for it to move), and sets in motion a plan to reveal what really happened on the night of Dani’s murder.

A lot of the set-up will be quite familiar to any regular horror fan, especially those of us who loved works like the old EC comics, with those killing and revenge from beyond type tales. You can often see what is coming, and while in most films that is a failing, here it isn’t – McCarthy clearly loves those old stories too, and in fact I think was revelling in them. You know roughly where it is going, and it doesn’t matter because it is so well done it’s still immensely satisfying. Even some of the scares are well-telegraphed – you can see the set-up, you know full well any moment that jump scare is coming, as McCarthy and his crew ratchet it up, and up, and up, and suddenly there’s that release. And despite knowing it was coming, I still jumped like the rest of the audience (when you’re a seasoned horror hound, plus you know it is coming, yet it still get you? That’s some good, creepy horror film making!)

Yes, you will recognise many of the beats and tropes here, and I think that is partly the point – this is made for those of us who love our horror films, books and comics, and appreciate seeing work from someone who obviously loves them too (one of us). And as I said, despite the fact that so many set-ups here are familiar, they are so damned well-done that they are very satisfying to watch play out. Making the most of its few locations (the remote, creaking old, isolated mansion, the decaying, depressing psychiatric hospital) and small cast, and with just a few well-deployed props (the life-sized wooden figure is just superbly creepy), used well, Oddity is a horror fan’s delight of murder, revenge and the supernatural, dripping creepy, unsettling atmosphere throughout. One to watch late at night.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Thine Ears Shall Bleed

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Thine Ears Shall Bleed,
Directed by Ben Bigelow,
Starring Andrew Hovelson, Hannah Cabell, Lea Zawada, Duke Huston, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe

This debut by director and writer Bigelow follows a family headed by the preacher Ezekiel Thatcher, heading through the vast American landscape in the mid 1800s in a covered wagon He and his family, wife Sarah (Hannah Cabel), daughter Abigail (Lea Zawada) and their blind son Luke (Duke Huston) are travelling across country to pick up, of all things, a pipe organ, to take back to Ezekiel’s church (he’s convinced this addition will bring in more worshippers to his church). As the deeply religious family travel slowly across the forested, hilly landscape, the road comes to a y-shaped fork, which isn’t on Ezekiel’s map; after some debate they decide since Jesus sits at God’s right hand, they will choose the right fork.

Unfortunately, after travelling this path between the trees for some time, they find the road simply peters out. Deciding it is too late to turn back to the fork now, they prepare to make camp there for the evening, planning to backtrack in the morning. Of course, as any self-respecting horror fan will likely suspect, when you take a road that isn’t marked on the map, into some remote, rural place, you can be fairly sure something is going to happen, and it does.

It starts slowly – the family hear strange noises in the night, which they try to shrug off as part of the natural world, but you just know whatever made those sounds is not natural. In the morning they find that both of their horses have somehow gotten loose from their ropes. Ezekiel tracks their hoof-prints through the forest until they just vanish by a swampy pond, with no sign of the animals. Stuck now in the wilderness with limited supplies, the mother, Sarah is concerned, but Ezekiel adopts the “the Lord will provide” approach, seemingly unconcerned.

When he hears the booming noise once more, he tracks it to a large canyon, the sound so loud it makes his ears bleed. He becomes increasingly obsessed with the sounds, believing it is a message from God, that he must transcribe into his journal and pass on, as if he is a prophet of old. Ezekiel is encouraged in this by young Luke, who likens the echoing, booming, roaring sound to the voices of angels from on high.

When Luke wakes one morning to discover his sight has been miraculously restored to him, he and Ezekiel take this as a further sign that this is a blessed place and they have been chosen, while Abigail and Sarah, although delighted at Luke’s miracle of sight, are far more sceptical – what if this isn’t God speaking to Ezekiel? What if it is something else? Finding a seemingly lost traveller (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe’s Woodrow) just adds more uncertainty to the mix – is he what he seems? Why couldn’t he leave this place and are they also stuck?

While far from perfect, I found Bigelow’s debut to be a very atmospheric chiller, with knowing nods both to the religious horror and to the folk horror genres (and I must confess to a particular soft spot for folk horror). Like Brit folk horror To Fire You Come At Last (reviewed here last year), this film knows it doesn’t have a lot of resources in terms of budget or effects, but it deploys atmosphere very well to cover this, and like that other film, it also uses a small cast, with remote location and night sequences to help suggest things rather than show outright, aided hugely by the score and the excellent soundscape.

The darkness of the forest night, with those noises, is wonderfully creepy, then the sudden flare of light from a burning torch, mysteriously planted right outside their wagon at night, casting shadows over the canvas of the wagon (was that a figure moving outside or not?), building that creepy atmosphere, as Ezekiel becomes more and more religiously deranged.

While not without its flaws, I thought this was an impressive debut, and I found the clever use of sound and darkness to slowly build an increasing sense of unease and an atmosphere that somehow, even surrounded by the nature of the great outdoors, there is something simply wrong, something unnatural about this place. A good one to watch late at night, with most of the lights out.

Thine Ears Shall Bleed will be available from Miracle Media on digital platforms from July 15th

This review was originally penned for Live For Films