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…
The Wretched (2019) at Fantasia 2019 “This movie just got good,” declares troubled 17-year-old Ben (John-Paul Howard) into his smartphone, in Brett and Drew Pierce’s The Wretched. While Ben is claiming to Mallory (Piper Curda), on the other end of the phone, that what keeps distracting him from their conversation is a film that he…
Knives and Skin (2019) at Fantasia 2019 A woman clutching a large kitchen knife walks through a home bathed in giallo-esque neon pinks, reds and blues, and knocks at a bedroom door. “Carolyn, are you in there?”, she asks. “Are you still not talking to me?” She then picks the lock with the knife’s blade…
Border (Gräns) first published by Little White Lies It is clear from the outset that Border (Gräns) will be trafficking in the divisions of identity and alterity. A Swedish-Danish co-production from an Iranian director (Ali Abbasi, whose 2016 feature debut was the Danish horror Shelley), and adapted from a short story by Swedish author John…
Tokyo Gore Police (Tôkyô zankoku keisatsu) first published by Little White Lies As Hollywood still picks over the bloody remains of the J-horror movement that flourished at the turn of the twenty-first century, Japan has moved on to a new brand of horror which might, for want of a better term, be called ‘splattercore’. Key…
Critters Attack! (2019) at Fantasia 2019 “What is this, 1986?”, teenager Trissy asks Drea (Tashiana Washington). College-age Drea is babysititng Trissy and her younger brother Jake (Jack Fulton), with Drea’s own younger brother Phillip (Jaeden Noel) in tow – and these words were Trissy’s horrified response to Drea’s proposal that they while away their time…
Porno (2019) at Fantasia 2019 Keola Racela’s feature debut opens with a sequence not entirely unexpected in a film called Porno: a couple fucking in a bedroom. Then the camera draws back, and we realise that much as we are watching this unfold within the frame of the cinema screen, others are watching it through…
The Deeper You Dig at Fantasia 2019 Ivy (Toby Poser) and Echo (Zelda Adams) Allen are a mother and daughter living on the periphery of Sullivan County, Pennsylvania. Once a gifted spiritualist, Ivy has since lost her second sight and her way, and now resorts to stringing along needy, paying local clients with tarot readings…
I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK first published by Film4 Film summary: In Park Chan-wook’s eccentric ‘romantic comedy’, the inmates are running the asylum, and love, though not a cure, is the best therapy. Review: Park Chan-wook’s international reputation is rooted in his so-called Vengeance Trilogy, making it tempting to describe his latest work, the romantic comedy…
The Hoard first published by SciFiNow “The following presentation is derived from footage captured by the catastrophic reality TV pilot Extremely Haunted Hoarders,” reads text at the beginning of The Hoard, over a rapid – indeed, so rapid as to be near inscrutable – montage of monstrosity, mayhem and murder. It is not just a…
Heartless first published by Film4 Summary: Philip Ridley’s third feature is a horror-inflected mind-melt set on the mean streets of East London. Review: Anyone who has seen Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966), the Pang Brothers’ Ab-Normal Beauty (2004) or Ryuhei Kitamura’s Clive Barker adaptation The Midnight Meat Train (2008) will know that films with photographers for protagonists…
Mr. Brooks first published by Film4 Summary: Kevin Costner and William Hurt star as different aspects of a conflicted character in Bruce A. Evans’ multi-faceted psycho thriller. Review: Cleancut, earnest, and just a little bland, Kevin Costner has constructed a highly successful career playing the gentle pioneer, the homespun baseball enthusiast, the unassuming hero and the dishy…