The Angry Black Girl And Her Monster had its world première at SXSW 2023 “Death is a disease,” says Vicaria (Laya DeLeon Hayes) in voiceover at the beginning of The Angry Black Girl And Her Monster. Vicaria is a high-school teenager, in her prime and very much alive, making her experience of death, in keeping…
10 Sci-Fi Adaptations first published by BFI, 14 October 2021, to coincide with the release of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Includes capsules of: Frankenstein, Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Horror Express, Starship Troopers, War of the Worlds, A Scanner Darkly, 1, The Congress, Aniara With its immense world building, vast ensemble of characters, and complicated…
Cerebrum had its world première in the First Blood strand at FrightFest 2022 Writer/director Sébastien Blanc’s feature debut Cerebrum opens with a quote from Goethe (“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes”) and with a creepy dream sequence about the ties that bind. For young William Blackwell (Tobi…
Casshern first published by Movie Gazette In 1973, Tatsunoko Productions created an animated series for Japanese television called Shinzo Ningen Casshan, about a heroic superfighter named Casshan who defended the human race against wicked androids accidentally unleashed by his father’s experiments. It was pretty much your standard good-versus-evil anime, daft enough to find room even…
Frankenstein’s Army first published by Grolsch FilmWorks “Everybody’s sick. The Nazis! The Communists! Capitalists! Everyone. The sickness cannot be cured, so it must be cut out.” The speaker is Dr Viktor Frankenstein (Karel Roden), explaining his solo surgical strike against all sides in the Second World War. A German who was interned in the concentration…
Depraved had its world première at on 20th March, 2019 at What the Fest!? “You’re so pale. What are you, like a vampire or something?” This is what, a good way into Depraved, Shelley (Addison Timlin) asks the taciturn, heavily scarred stranger (Alex Breaux) with whom she has started drinking in a South Brooklyn bar. Shelley…
Chimera first published by SciFiNow “I’m running out of time. I need to freeze time.” So says scientist Quint (Henry Ian Cusick) in writer/director/producer Maurice Haeems‘ feature debut Chimera, as he races against fate to save his young children from the same hereditary disease that took his wife Jessie (Karishma Ahluwalia). Given Quint’s pioneering work…
[note that this review of Frankenstein’s Creature was based on a test preview] “My story lies in pieces, but I’ll offer it to them in pieces, and extend to them the chance to piece it back together.” So says the Creature (James Swanton), unravelling the sorry tale of his brief but extraordinary life of constant rejection and…
FrightFest 2015 Dispatch #3 first published by Twitch (now ScreenAnarchy) Titles featured: Frankenstein, Another Me, Inner Demon, Road Games, Farhope Tower, Scherzo Diabolico, These Final Hours Four days in, and FrightFest has entered that bleary-eyed state of exhaustion where everything, on or off screen, seems hallucinatory, and conversations outside the cinema take on a rambling, incoherent…
In depicting the collapse of homespun American patriarchy before a resurgent nature that can never be completely denied or repressed, George McCowan’s Frogs (1972) is what ecological horror might have been like if tackled by Tennessee Williams, and easily earns its place as one of the very finest nature’s revenge films of all time –…
Patchwork first published by EyeforFilm One day – Friday the 13th, if you listen carefully – three complete strangers all spend an evening in the same bar, without actually running into each other. Not long after, lonely corporate Jennifer (Tory Stolper), airheaded ‘bar star’ Ellie (Tracey Fairaway) and quiet Madeleine (Maria Blasucci) wake up on a slab…