“What if I told you there was something else here in the house, and it’s not me?” says Sonya (Georgia Eyers) to her visiting mother Laura (Angela Punch McGregor) near the beginning of Violett. This is the perfect set up for a small-town Australian gothic, where in fact it is not always so easy to…
The Shift opens with several things: firstly, a textual quote (“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall depart”) which, like all the quotes that regularly punctuate the film, is excerpted from the Old Testament Book of Job; secondly the image of a man emerging bloody, as though reborn, from the middle…
Fixation had its UK première at Soho Horror Film Festival 2023 In keeping with a psychological preoccupation already implied by its title, Fixation opens both with a vague textual trigger warning, and a primal scene. In the latter, little girl Dora Ann Rollins (Ariella Cannon) dances alone to a song with joyous abandon before a…
The Hyperborean had its international première at Soho Horror Film Festival 2023 “I’m the patriarch of this family, I have a unique perspective on all this, and I’ve got the most to lose,” says ‘whisky magnate’ Hollis Cameron (Tony Burgess) about halfway through The Hyperborean. “In the basement what we have is criminal exposure –…
Derelict was reviewed from an exclusive preview screener prior to its 2024 festival run The opening sequence of Derelict resonates with its title. For it shows empty spaces at dawn: a forlorn field, and by it an old, graffiti-covered building, perhaps once used for stables, but now long abandoned. Its sole occupant is merely a…
“I grew up watching movies like Rambo and listening to pop songs like Tom Jones,” says Hong J. Kim about halfway through A-Town Boyz, “And I thought America is so free. I want my son to live as freely and be tough.” Kim emigrated to America in 1984 when South Korea was still under General…
Walk Up screened at the London Korean Film Festival 2023. This is a transcript of my onstage introduction. Since his debut feature The Day a Pig Fell into the Well came out back in 1996, polyhyphenate filmmaker Hong Sang-soo has become a darling of Korea’s indie scene. It can be hard to keep up with…
A Wild Roomer (Goein) screened at the London Korean Film Festival 2023 Carpenter Gi-hong (Park Gi-hong) often sleeps where he is working, but also rents a room in the modernist suburban home of Jung-hwan (Ahn Ju-min) and his wife Hyun-jung (Kim Jeon-gil), with whom he also spends quite a lot of time hanging out. Indeed…
A Wing and a Prayer (Dong-e beonjjeog seoe beonjjeog) seen for the London Korean Film Festival 2023 Unemployed friends and flatmates Seol-hee and Hwa-jeong (Yeo Seol-hee and Woo Hwa-jeong, whose homonymous characters are implicitly not unlike themselves) travel on a whim from Seoul to coastal Donghae City as they both await the outcomes of separate…
Greenhouse screened at London Korean Film Festival 2023. This is a longer version of my on-stage introduction (plus programme note) Greenhouse gets its title from the off-road, metal framed structure in which single mother Lee Moon-jung (Kim Seo-hyung) is living. More tent than home, with plastic sheeting for walls, and designed to house plants, this…
Soulmate screened at London Korean Film Festival 2023. This is a longer version of my on-stage introduction (plus my programme note) What is in a picture? A person’s portrait can trigger a flood of memories and fancies. It can reflect who we are and how we feel, and offer, through its image of the other,…