Tag 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

Best of the Year – 2025

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It’s time for a look at some of what I most enjoyed reading this year – fiction, non-fiction, and graphic novels. As every it is not a complete list, and given how much I read over a year, there are always titles I will only remember well after posting this (with an oops, how did I forget that one? slap to the head, so apologies to anyone missed out).

If you are interested in buying any of these, please, if you can, consider doing so from your local, independent bookshop (Jeff Bezos does not need another yacht, as one of my colleagues put it!). If you buy online, you can use BookshopDotOrg which allows you to order a book and nominate a local Indie bookshop who will get a percentage of the sale (so you don’t have to use Spamazon)

Non-Fiction

The Sun Rising: James I and the Dawn of Global Britain,
Anna Whitelock,
Bloomsbury

2025 marked four centuries since James VI & I died, and there were several new history books marking this anniversary. I didn’t have time to read them all, of course, but Bloomsbury kindly sent me this one. Not so much a biography of the Scottish king who succeeded Elizabeth I to then sit on both the Scottish and English thrones, but about the world around him, changing, and laying the groundwork for what would come in later centuries (uniting the kingdoms, for both good and ill, something we’re still arguing about, the movement into colonialism that would lead to empire and to global trading, again something we’re still dealing with).

Earth Shapers: How Humans Mastered Geography and Remade the World,
Maxim Samson,
Profile Books

Samson traverses the centuries and the continents, examining the way different human cultures have interacted, for good and bad, with their environments, from the astonishing road networks linking pre-Columbian civilisations in South America to the “green wall” across the edge of the Sahara. It takes in history, politics, psychology, sociology and nature, in a fascinating and thought-provoking manner. Ideal for those who enjoyed the likes of Power of Geography.

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: the Epic Story of the Making of the Godfather,
Mark Seal,
Gallery Books

Coppola’s movie has earned its place in the pantheon of greatest films of the 20th century, while Puzo’s novel which inspired it has remained in print for decades. This deep-dive explores both, taking in Puzo’s struggling writing career and gambling addiction, a struggling studio deciding to make a film of the book, the many problems that plagued the production, from personality clashes to problems with the real Mafia (from threats to suddenly wanting to be in the film), it is as compelling as the movie itself, and a great read for anyone who loves cinema.

It’s also a reminder that there was a time when now almost gods of cinema like Coppola and Pacino were all but unknown, with producers and studio execs wondering why they were bothering with them (seems bizarre to us now, from our perspective, of course)

Is a River Alive?
Robert MacFarlane,
Hamish Hamilton/Penguin

I love Robert’s work, and have been waiting several years, since his remarkable Underland book, and I was not disappointed. Travelling to different parts of the world, from South America to Canada to India, water is the connection here to each chapter, just as rivers and seas have traditionally been the connections between human societies.

MacFarlane doesn’t just visit these places, though, he travels with and listens to the local people who try to protect these environments, who explain its importance to them, not just a natural resource, but a part of their way of life. It doesn’t shy away from the awfulness of environmental damage, but it also underscores those fighting back – it is a warning, but it is also hopeful and inspiring, wrapped in MacFarlane’s beautiful, lyrical prose; one of those precious books that rekindles your sense of wonder about how remarkable our world is (and why we must take better care of it). My favourite read of 2025.

Graphic Novels

The Casebook of Stamford Hawksmoor,
Bryan Talbot,
Jonathan Cape

I consider Bryan Talbot to be pretty much the UK’s greatest comics creator, someone who has been at the top of his game for decades (I’ve also been fortunate enough to chair Bryan at the Edinburgh International Book Festival). His Grandville series was an absolute masterclass of clever storytelling (building layers with each volume), astonishingly detailed, rich artwork, and with multiple references (to history, art, films, other comics and more, demanding re-readings).

Here we have a prequel to Grandville, with LeBrock’s mentor, the great detective who trained him, Stamford Hawksmoor, a deliberately Sherlock Holmes themed character. It’s a superb piece of work, an engrossing mystery, woven through the last days of the old regime changing hands to the one we know in Grandville, and again layered with references, from Spiegelman’s Maus to The Outlaw Josey Wales (let no-one say Bryan’s influences are not diverse!). Although it is a prequel to Grandville, this could be read by anyone who hasn’t encountered that series, but obviously those who have will find more in the details to spot.

Muybridge,
Guy Delisle,
Drawn & Quarterly

I’ve taken photographs for as long as I can remember – my late Uncle Jim gave me a Kodak 110 camera (remember those?) when I was in primary school, then a few years later, my first 35mm camera – and I have been a huge fan of Guy Delisle’s work, especially his travel literature comics, so Guy looking at the odd life of Muybridge, one of the pioneers of early photography, was always going to fascinate me. If you’re not familiar with the name, you have almost certainly seen his astonishing sequence of still images that first captured a running horse, showing each step, and that the hooves did all leave the ground. Injured in a stagecoach accident, his personality noticeably changed (a head trauma?), and while his photographic genius remained, this is a man who would later commit murder (and get away with it).

It’s a fascinating insight into an unusual man attempting the impossible, and the influence that work had (not least cinema), although I think it could have done without the use of a photograph of animal abuse in one scene (that really wasn’t required, and should have had a warning, I think, the explicit scene not adding anything other than disgust, but that’s just one niggle in anotherwise fascinating book).

Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years,
Reihnhard Kleist,
SelfMadeHero

I’ve shouted out Reinhard’s work since the early days – back before his groundbreaking Cash: I See a Darkness graphic biography of Johnny Cash was published, on the FP Blog we highlighted it and said it needed to be translated and published into English. I’ve followed his work ever since, and had the good fortune to chair him at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Reinhard is a master at creating fascinating graphic biographies, especially of artists (his works on Nick Cave and Johnny Cash are amazing); he interweaves their artwork through the events of their life, knowing with an artist you really cannot separate them, giving a real flavour of the complex person who created that art.

Also, you have Bowie sharing a flat in then West Berlin (still Cold War, so Berlin Wall still up) with the equally iconic Iggy Pop, which almost sounds like the set up for a sit-com.

Second Shift,
Kit Anderson,
Avery Hill

I always find myself backing Kickstarter campaigns for some of Avery Hill’s new slate of publications each year, and this was one of them for 2025. A science fiction work, set on a distant world where three humans, working shifts and spending time between in isolation, plugged into “Station”, their AI, for distraction and amusement. There are echoes of the film Moon here and there – what are they really doing on this distant planet, does the mega corp that sent them even still exist, does the AI tell them the truth?

The discovery of a similar but now empty base to their own opens up a new line of enquiry for the main character, with Kit expertly sliding us into her world from the start so we discover things alongside her.

Dry Cleaned,
Joris Mertens (translated Julia Blackburn & Sandra Van Der Beek)
Jonathan Cape

François is a middle-aged man, the same suit every day, the cigarette dangling from his lips, doing the same work – a daily run in a van for a dry cleaning business. It always seems to be raining (symbolically he lacks even a raincoat), the raise he’s asked for over the years never appears, and now he’s training a younger worker, and worried they will take his job. His only lights are a local single woman and her daughter, who he dotes on, and he dreams of winning the lottery (playing the same numbers every time) and giving them and him a better life.

When a chance delivery for work leads to him stumbling into a bloody crime scene, there’s a chance to make easy money, and it is very tempting… I wasn’t familiar with this European creator until this book, and while I enjoyed the story, I did find it a little predictable in places, but oh wow, the artwork lifts it beyond that. Published in a larger format, it lets you enjoy that art – the rain-lashed streets of the city, the lights reflecting on wet roads, it is simply gorgeous comics artwork.

Fiction

Automatic Noodles,
Annelee Newlitz,
Tor/Macmillan

This was a lovely surprise – the publisher sent me a copy unexpectedly, and I was very pleased they did. A brief novella, it follows some robot workers in a bad fast food joint, waking each other up to discover their former employer has shut their awful business and fled, switching them all off and abandoning then. It’s near-future California, recovering from a war against “the Yankees” for independence (some of the robots also took part in the war, and have issues from it), and while the robots are nominally free, there are some who don’t like that, and the Yankee agitators operate social media sock puppets to sow dissension about things like robot rights.

In an attempt to keep their freedom, they all pool together to turn the abandoned business into a very good noodle place, something they can all enjoy working in and take pride from, while dealing with obstacles along the way. It’s brief, but it is a delightful read, and packs in a lot about identity, acceptance and second chances into a slim volume. Smile inducing.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye,
John Scalzi,
Tor/Macmillan

I’ve enjoyed Scalzi’s work for years, and his most recent works, such as Starter Villain (a man in a career-life crisis discovers he has inherited his estranged late uncle’s business empire, which turns out to be a front for a supervillain organisation, complete with volcano lair!), have veered towards a more light-hearted approach, partly in response to the dismal period of Covid and Lockdown. Moon is another fun read, taking one of the oldest comedy tropes in SF – that the Moon is made of cheese – and making it a reality.

Starting with panic in the Neil Armstrong museum as they realise their prize moon rock specimen is now cheese (“what kind of cheese?” someone asks), it then goes around a diverse cast of people coming to the realisation of what has happened, impossible though it should be, and what it actually means, from physicists to religious figures trying to make sense of it.

Dinner at the Night Library,
Hika Harada (translated Philip Gabriel),
Scribner

Japanese fiction in translation has been big in the UK in recent years, every since the success of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series (which I enjoyed), and it is a bit of a running joke in the book trade that so many feature a bookshop or library and a cat on the cover (as indeed this one does!). Our central character is offered a job by a mysterious employer who only appears online (with no video) to talk to them, at a remote library that houses collections from deceased authors, all the books they wrote, all the ones they collected.

It’s in a distant location, so has its own dormitory and canteen, where the chef makes daily menus inspired by recipe ideas from novels. There’s a mild mystery or two, and it is a gentle read, very Japanese (everything done a certain way), but after a couple of heavy duty books, this was the perfect tonic, well-written but also easy going, and very much aimed at book lovers.

The Haunting of Hero’s Bay,
Amanda Block,
Hodder

I really enjoyed Amanda’s debut novel a few years ago, The Lost Storyteller, and recommended it quite a bit in our bookshop, so I was looking forward to her second book. Following a young man who finds himself drifting a bit following his long-time romance falling apart (and worse, his ex is now marrying someone else and inviting him and his family to the wedding), he takes a job with his aunt, swapping Edinburgh for the West Country, where she is renovating an old buildings as a hotel.

The tiny, seaside village is famed for an enormous painting showing a shipwreck in the bay, created by an aristocratic artist who lost his life swimming to the rescue of a similar shipwreck. The past of smugglers and wreckers on that rugged coast, art and modern day life start to converge in a very satisfying manner. Ghosts, art, history and romance.

Jesus Christ Kinski,
Benjamin Meyers,
Bloomsbury

Yes, this is that Kinski – Klaus, the famously insane German actor (and I do mean insane literally, he was certified and put into care at one point). This is quite a departure for Meyers, very different from his other works, and you find him pondering his choices as half of the book is Kinski’s inner monologue as he performs a one-man show about Jesus on stage in Germany in the 1970s, and the other half is the author debating with himself, why am I writing this, why does this performance by a much-maligned, egotistic, mad German actor most folk don’t remember compel me to write about them instead of doing another “hit” novel or another that gets filmed? It’s very different and totally compelling, one of the more intriguing and unusual novels I’ve read in 2025.

Dark Crescent,
Lyndsey Croal,
Luna Press

I’ve known Lyndsey for some time, through our Edinburgh based Shoreline of Infinity journal of science fiction, and our annual Cymera SF literary festival, and I was delighted to read this collection of short tales by her, ahead of us having an absolutely terrific launch night for it in our bookshops. Dark Crescent’s stories mostly riff on, or are inspired by, Scottish folklore, some with obvious roots, given their own, unique twist and angle, others are more her own invention, but feel very much like there is a real legend inspiring it, which you feel you could go and look up.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre,
Philip Fracassi,
RunForIt/Orbit

I really enjoyed Philip’s Boys in the Valley, a horror novel with icy teeth, set in a remote, early 1900s Catholic orphanage during a snowstorm, where a sheriff’s posse bring in a dying suspect covered in arcane tattoos, that looses something demonic within the walls. This new book is tonally totally different from that Exorcist-vibe tale – yes it is horror, there are multiple deaths, but it also much lighter and actually rather fun in places (despite the body count!).

Set in a retirement home where a couple of residents start to suspect the recent spate of deaths is not just due to the age and infirmity of the residents, but a cover for a serial killer to do their work, this is a total hoot – imagine your slasher movie “final girl” being in her eighties, and you start to get the picture. A terrific collision of humour and horror.

Reviews: The Pearl Comb

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The Pearl Comb,
Directed by Ali Cook,
Starring Beatie Edney, Clara Paget, Ali Cook, Simon Armstrong

Writer, director and actor Ali Cook’s intriguing short film arrives with a most-impressive list of awards garnered at forty international film festivals, including the Méliès d’Argent, as well as qualifying for the 2026 Academy Awards. Set in 1893, on the rugged coastline of the West Country, we see a middle-aged lady, Betty Lutey (Highlander’s Beatie Edney), fussing nervously with her hair and clothing as she awaits a visitor at her remote, coastal cottage.

It transpires her visitor is a young man, a doctor, who also happens to be related to her. Betty, it appears, has acquired something of a local reputation as a folk-healer, the sort of thing not unknown in rural areas of the period, and which would likely have remained just a local story, until it is widely reported that she cured a young lad of tuberculosis. The medical establishment (which in Victorian England means a lot of influential, wealthy, white, middle and upper class men, with, let us say, a pretty guarded interest in being the gatekeepers in regards to curing people), have sent Doctor Gregory Lutey (Ali Cook) to investigate.

The tale that Beatie spins is a fantastical one – she claims she didn’t so much cure the case of tuberculosis, at least not in the normal medical sense, she “healed” it, using her gift, which in turn was a gift from her late husband, Lutey (Simon Armstrong). Upright, Victorian medical man that he is, Gregory is rather sceptical of this claim. Betty recounts to him a tale of her late husband, how Lutey had gone foraging for medicinal plants but not come home one evening. Assuming he was drunk on local home-brew, she tracks him down a day later, sleeping in a barn, surrounded by bottles, but claiming not to have touched a drop. Instead he seems badly shaken, and recounts an incredible tale to his disbelieving wife.

Old Lutey tells her of hearing a strange singing from the rocky shoreline as he was foraging, and on following the sound finds the remarkable sight of a mermaid (Clara Paget suitably ethereal), sitting by a rock pool, fish tail and all. After being initially startled by the appearance of a human, the mermaid begins to speak to him, and then requests his help, offering gifts and wishes in return, such a riches, which she assumes all men want, but Lutey is happy to simply help her and doesn’t care about vast wealth. In fact the only thing that he can think of he’d like as a wish, is the ability to heal people of illness, especially his wife.

Of course, as any of us know, offers of services and wishes from any residents of the Otherworld should always be taken with caution – they always come attached with terms, not all of which are good for you. And that’s assuming he’s telling the truth – Betty is, understandably, not convinced, until he produces the pearl comb from the mermaid’s hair and demonstrates his healing ability.

At this point, Gregory is not exactly taken with this story – a fine yarn for the grandchildren, of course, but not a serious explanation for her supposed healing abilities that he, as a doctor, chosen to investigate this case, can accept seriously, even though he is related to her. In fact he’s quite dismissive of her, and of women in general, with all the scorn of a patriarchal Victorian man, sure of his place in the world and acknowledging nothing that science cannot explain (and certainly sure that there are strict places for what women can and cannot do).

While interesting, and very well-made, this could easily have moved into a predictable third act, but instead – well, no spoilers, of course, but suffice to say Cook brought together a satisfying conclusion, drawing on aspects of science, of folklore, and drawing inspiration from real history (such as the early women medical pioneers who had to fight to be recognised). The Pearl Comb packs a whole lot into such a short run time – it sets up its premise swiftly but assuredly, introduces its characters and then mixes elements of drama, horror and fantasy into a piece with some social commentary thrown in too, all in about twenty minutes – impressive.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2025 – Dead Lover

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EIFF 2025 – Dead Lover,
Grace Glowicki,
Starring Grace Glowicki, Leah Doz, Lowen Morrow, Ben Petrie

Another of the wonderfully out-there selection from this year’s Midnight Madness strand, and, oh boy, this one was a total hoot! Using a tiny main cast of four actors, each of whom plays multiple roles (adopting very obvious disguises and accents for maximum comedic effect), and all shot on a set using minimal décor with strategically placed lighting, Glowicki, who co-writes, directs and stars (as the Gravedigger) conjures a delightfully fun romp riffing on Frankenstein.

The Gravedigger (Glowicki in brilliant make-up and with an amazing range of facial expressions) is love-lorn – she comes from a long line of grave diggers, and has been doing the job so long no—one will come near her because she now has a permanent stink of the grave about her. Even the priest at the burials asks her to keep her distance. Desperate for a lover of her own, how is she to achieve this when nobody can stand being within a few feet of her?

She turns to her books and experiments in her shack in the boneyard, trying various concoctions to disguise her sepulchral scent, to little avail. However when burying the deceased wife of The Widower (Lowen Morrow, playing a comedy cross between Poe and Byron), sister to The Poet (Ben Petrie), the Poet runs off, overcome with grief, straight into the Deep Dark Woods, where, naturally, he is at once attacked by a wolf, which the Gravedigger saves him from. On scenting her unique aroma he is far from repelled, in fact he is intoxicated. A man who has wallowed in all the outrageous and scandalous pleasures, here he has found a new taboo-breaking one, and soon pledges eternal love to the Gravedigger, to her delight.

Sadly, the course of true love never runs smooth, even in an oddball horror-comedy, and returning from a voyage (to have his naughty bits restored to health, no less), his ship is wrecked, and the Poet is lost, only his finger with the ring she gave him saved by a dementedly daft group of fishermen with incomprehensible accents (all played by the main four actors again), who return it to the Gravedigger. She turns to her books and chemicals to try and restore her lover from the finger, leading to, shall we say, a partial success, but not quite what she’s looking for, so digging up bodies it shall be…

The lo-fi sets and sheer sense of fun here were a delight – Glowicki was hoping to be at the Festival, but being heavily pregnant couldn’t travel, so she sent a recorded message to show before the film, and she told everyone not to think about it too much, that it was made to be fun, so just take it that way, and she’s right. If you laughed at Mike Cheslik’s brilliantly bonkers Hundreds of Beavers, this has a similar feel – low budget but with invention making the most of what they have, and a small group just trying to have and make something fun.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2025 – The Toxic Avenger

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More from this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival:

EIFF 2025 – The Toxic Avenger,
Directed by Macon Blair
Staring Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Luisa Guerrero, David Yow, Annette Badland Elijah Wood, Julia Davis

We live in an age of constant reboots – or “it’s not a reboot, it’s a re-imagining!” – but I must admit I was very surprised when I first heard that a new version of 1980s schlock classic The Toxic Avenger was in the works. Like many of you reading this, I suspect, I grew up raiding the video rental store at the weekend (ah, the pre-internet, pre-streaming days!), and my chums and I delighted in the “so bad it’s good style of film”. Indeed something I still delight in (see my recent review of the Japanese flick Hot Spring Shark Attack here!).

So I have history with Troma’s oeuvre, and Lloyd Kaufman is up there for me as an even schlockier (in the good way!) Roger Corman. But much as I loved Toxie, I was still surprised – this didn’t strike me as the usual IP to plunder for a reboot. And then I heard it was starring Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood among others, and I found myself intrigued. I strongly suspected those actors too had fond memories of watching the originals on VHS back in the day, and so when the film cropped up in the final Midnight Madness screening of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, well of course I was going.

In the broadest strokes, this pretty much follows the simple formula from the 1980s: mild-mannered, put-upon everyman, now a janitor, Winston Gooze (Dinklage, using his hangdog expression perfectly here) has been dealt a series of bows, one after the other. He lies in St Romaville (the letters on the sign are faded so mostly the “T” and “ROMA” are visible, Geddit?), a rough, urban wasteland, run-down, polluted (by the very company he works for), run by corrupt politicians and gangsters in cahoots. He lost his wife,partner a year before, is now stepfather to a young boy with mental health difficulties, who doesn’t connect with him, despite him trying his best to look after him, then he discovers he has an inoperable brain condition, with only months to live.

But hey, fear not, there is a new experimental medicine! And his polluting company’s health insurance will totally cover it, right? Right?? Ah, no. An almost comical-tragical attempt to beg for help from the CEO (Kevin Bacon, clearly having fun here as a thoroughly despicable and preening villain) sees yet more rejection and disappointment, forcing him into a desperate attempt to break into his own workplace to steal money from the vault for his treatment.

Which of course goes wrong – he intersects with Taylor Paige’s environmentalist, J.J., who has been working with a crusading journalist to expose all the pollution and illnesses caused by the company, while Bob Harbinger (Bacon) has his minions, a metal group of psychopathic killers, commanded by his brother Fritz, a superbly creepy Elijah Wood chasing her. When their paths cross, she gets away, he is shot in the head and dumped into a tank of Toxic waste and… Well, I think most of you know what happens next!

Since most folks who are going to be interested in this new version are more than likely existing fans of the earlier films, comics and other media, I’m not going to rehash the plot here, you pretty much know what it is going to be: dunked in chemicals, mutations, new powers, coming to terms with it, using those powers to defend the town (with Luisa Guerrero donning the suit, having worked closely with Dinklage to match his mannerisms through the latex). The important question is, with modern resources and better budget than dear old Troma could ever have managed, does this still feel like a Toxie flick?

Well, of course it is a bit different, but overall this plays a lot of the familiar beats you both expect and want. Gags, puerile sexual references, ridiculously OTT splatter-gore (arms will be ripped off, heads removed by the glowing, Toxic mop, acidic pee will be deployed, toilet bowls are weapons!). It’s Grand Guignol, it’s messy, but it is also delightfully, knowingly silly, and all that violence and gore is so cartoonish that it is funny rather than horrifying. Kaufman himself makes a cameo, and according to a recent interview is delighted with the result.

The Toxic Avenger goes on general release at the end of August, and it is the sort of film best seen with a group of friends. Grab some drinks, some popcorn and sit in a group and laugh and cheer, and just enjoy some OTT fun (with an environmental message!).

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Hot Spring Shark Attack

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Hot Spring Shark Attack,
Directed by Morihito Inoue,
Starring Takuya Fujimura, Masaki Naito, Mio Takaki, Koichi Makigami, Shôichirô Akaboshi, Daniel Aguilar, Yuu Nakanishi

The attractive coastal town of Atsumi is famous for its Onsen – natural hot springs with traditional Japanese guest houses. A perfect place to get away from all the stresses and strains of modern life and simply relax. Well, usually, at least, but not so much here since, as the more eagle eyed of you will have likely discerned from the title alone, this hot spring resort has a nasty problem with vicious sharks.

Okay, before we go any further, let’s be upfront here – I think most movie fans can pretty much guess what they are getting simply from that title and premise alone. This is insanely silly – ridiculous, even – nonsense, pure schlock, drawing on influences from Jaws to the Sharknado films and its spin-offs, even the Japanese tradition of Kaiju flicks too. And it doesn’t try to pretend to be anything but that – in fact Hot Spring Shark Attack pretty much revels in how damned silly it all is, it glories in the terrible special effects. It knows what it is, and it is happy to be that silly but, if taken the right way, incredibly fun watch.

We have a major (Takuya Fujimura), determined to expand the tourism to his small town, and who initially denies any problems (reminiscent of another mayor in a rather more well-known shark film), a lacklustre local police for lead by a chief more interested in finding a new hobby for his impending retirement, some marine biologists, and an increasing number of people mysteriously disappearing from the hot springs, which coincides with mutilated bodies washing up on the beach. It isn’t long before they connect these two and realise that, somehow, guests in the hot springs are being attacked and dragged off by something into the sea.

This involves some wonderfully bonkers justifications, such as a biologist explaining because sharks have cartilage instead of bone, they can squeeze down to go through pipes to the springs (yes, really!), including images of pipes trembling as they squeeze through them. Soon even those crazy explanations are dropped as the sharks start to be able to seemingly go anywhere, with pools opening up in roads, even in playgrounds, where our critters gleefully emerge to chomp someone before vanishing. This even leads to animated sections are various strategies are devised to deal with the growing threat (think the sort of animation Wes Anderson might put into the likes of The Life Aquatic, but much, much cheaper).

How an audience will react to this depends very much on the views. Those of us who actually take a delight in watching schlock, who know that there are Good Movies, there are Bad Movies, but there are also Good Bad Movies – think of those 80s cult flicks like Hell Comes to Frogtown or The Toxic Avenger (now being remade!). Pure schlock, yes, but this film, like those ones, knows what it is and plays with it, and the audience also knows and its partly why we’re there for it. It’s delightfully bonkers, nonsensical, crazy stuff, and yet it’s just so much damned fun! A good, daft, fun flick to watch on a Saturday night with some friends and drinks.

Hot Spring Shark Attack is getting a limited cinema release in the US, and is available on streaming platforms

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Cymera time!

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This weekend sees the return of the annual Cymera Festival, Scotland’s festival of literary science fiction, fantasy and horror. As usual I will be there all weekend (there are author panels, workshops, gaming rooms, dealer’s rooms and even theatre!), and again I am also fortunate enough to be chairing againg this year. On Sunday 8th I’ll be in conversation with Gareth Powell, E.M. Faulds and Stark Holborn about their latest works. Many of the events are also available to view online if you can’t make it to Edinburgh.

Reviews: The Rule of Jenny Pen

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The Rule of Jenny Pen,
Directed by James Ashcroft,
Starring Geoffrey Rush, John Lithgow, George Henare

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN – Official Poster

Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) is a judge, presiding over his court with a cold, superior air over all who come before him, both the criminals and even the families of the victims. In an opening sequence we see him not only tearing into a criminal in the dock before him, he then berates the mother of the victim (after she quietly repeats “thank you, thank you” after the guilty verdict), accusing her of failing in her duty to protect her child. As introductions go, it doesn’t exactly set us up to have much sympathy with Stefan, and yet it is this man we will largely follow throughout the film.

During his sentencing tirade, Stefan starts to struggle with his words, losing his thread, before collapsing. He has, in fact, suffered a stroke, right there in the courtroom, and the next we see of him, he is being moved into a care home for the elderly. He has gone from the feared and respected judge to a sad figure, now mentally and physically impaired, and alone (he appears to have no close family) in among the strangers of the elderly care home. That would be upsetting for any of us – the sudden loss of independence and dignity (no longer to even still take a bath alone, requiring help for even that task now) – but for an arrogant man like Stefan it feels even worse, leading him to rebuff any friendly overtures from other residents (such as his room-mate, Tony (George Henare), or the activities designed to keep the residents entertained and diverted.

But there is much worse to come, in the shape of Dave Creary (John Lithgow). Glimpsed at first in the background, a bedraggled looking, older man, who wears a child’s plastic dolly on one hand, like a glove puppet, and speaking through it (he refers to it as “Jenny Pen”), he gives every appearance of being a man lost in some form of dementia, eccentric but harmless. But he is anything but, and that dolly becomes an incredibly creepy totem.

Dave, it turns out, is not lost in mental illness, he is perfectly aware of his surroundings, and of his own desires and actions, and how exactly to move around his environment, which buttons to press, what he can get away with, how to stage things so that in the unlikely event anyone stands up and tries to tell the staff about his actions, he can make it look like they are the guilty party, shamelessly attacking a poor, demented, bewildered old man.

By night Dave creeps around the facility, terrifying the residents, without the staff ever catching on. The others are so cowed by him they no longer put up any fight, even Stefan’s room-mate Tony, a tough, former sporting star, is now too scared of this bully. Stefan, of course, will have none of it, but finds when he tries to get others to listen to his explanations of what is going on, nobody will listen to him. Added to this, his initial hope that he would only be here until he was rehabilitated is soon dashed as he learns his condition is actually likely to deteriorate further, and Dave knows this, gleefully explaining to him how he has watched others before him go this way, and just how much he will enjoy it.

This is simply a superb slice of compelling storytelling, drawing on elements of the horror and the thriller, and powered by having to absolutely powerhouse actors who are clearly relishing their roles and playing off one another. Frankly it’s worth the ticket just for watching Rush and Lithgow here, but director Ashcroft not only encourages such great performances from his stars, he crafts an increasingly uneasy, disturbing atmosphere, both the home itself (taking something so ordinary, mundane, almost dull, and making it into a disturbingly creepy place), and a personal sense of impending unease (Stefan’s increasingly failing faculties are depicted with some clever camera work and editing, in addition to Rush’s acting, that gives us a terrifying taste of what it is like for him as he realises he can no longer rely on his own mental acuity, Lithgow’s depiction of Dave’s sheer cruelty is terrfying).

Quite simply a superbly told tale, with two magnificent actors given roles they can really sink their teeth into.

The Rule of Jenny Pen will be released in cinemas from March 7th

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: 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