If you have come to Projected Figures expecting accountancy, you are in the right place. Accountancy is what film writers do: counting minutes, counting words, reducing all cinema’s abstract expressions to calibrations, evaluations and calculated formulae on a simplified, and simplifying, worksheet. Critics, you see, operate a kind of reverse-alchemy, transforming vibrant sights and sounds into bland verbiage and, if you’re…
Homebound had its UK première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2022. First published by Little White Lies Home is, as they say, where the heart is – that formative place where the secret codes and private rites of family living embed themselves from an early age and develop into deep-seated habits, making you who you are….
Monstrous had its world première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2022. First published by Little White Lies “It’s your new home. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s like a dream.” So says Laura Butler (Christina Ricci) to her seven-year-old son Cody (Santino Barnard) of the Californian lakeside house that they have just started renting. Indeed, while the title…
Funky Forest: The First Contact first published by Little White Lies, as entry 149 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column Funky Forest: The First Contact (Naisu no Mori THE FIRST CONTACT) opens with the image of a cute-looking UFO. White, with two blue portholes that look like eyes, it is perched on the barren surface of…
Deadstream had its world première at SXSW 2022. First published by Little White Lies. “I’m Shawn Ruddy – and I’m a piece of trash!”, says a chirpy young bearded man, who is played by Joseph Winter, the co-writer, co-director, co-producer and co-editor of Deadstream along with his wife Vanessa. Shawn’s words are as good an…
The Cellar had its UK première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2022. First published by VODzilla.co The cellar is a special location in horror. It is typically dank and dark, full of cobwebs, dust and neglect, and seldom visited – indeed, the part of the home that is literally underground, and closest to hell. It is…
Agatha opens in darkness. A dim light is intoduced as a woman’s hand pulls loose bricks from a wall, and reaches into the shadowy niche beyond to extract a mysterious wrapped object, and to observe it under an electric bulb. There is then a cutaway to an old crone crossing a misty field, apparently some…
Murder, Anyone? begins with a shadow – the silhouette of a male figure in a wide-brimmed hat, illuminated by a circle of light. This monochrome image, and the melodramatic orchestral score that accompanies the superimposed opening credits, point to the now rather passé genre of film noir, while that figure – a projected artefact of…
The Ledge had its UK première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2022, and was first published by VODzilla.co The night before Kelly (Brittany Ashworth) and her friend Sophie (Anaïs Parello) are due to scale the dangerous face of Antelao, highest pinnacle in the Dolomite Mountains of northeastern Italy, they are joined at the complex of cabins…
Some Like It Rare (Barbaque) had its UK première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2022. Review first published by VODzilla.co Fabrice Eboué’s Some Like It Rare (originally called Barbaque) opens with meat – or more specifically a prime, marbled fillet of beef being lovingly sliced, hand-massaged and packaged by butcher Vincent Pascal (played by Eboué) while…
Seven glimpses outward from the Glasgow Film Festival 2022 first published by Little White Lies Includes capsules of: The Girl and the Spider; Once Upon A Time In Uganda; Time of Impatience; Silent Land; Karmalink; Happening; Wild Men Unlike many of its circuit siblings, the Glasgow Film Festival does not have the word ‘International’ in…
Night’s End had its world première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2022. Review first published by VODzilla.co Night’s End begins with the camera on the tree line over a suburban street, before panning and tilting down to a brick house, and tracking in through its front entrance to the staircase beyond and up to a closed…