Five female BFFs wish the party would never stop. Amber (Helena Howard), Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zión Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry) and Maddy (Sophia Ali) have all recently graduated, and are on the cusp of their adult lives – but in writer/director Izabel Pakzad’s debut feature Find Your Friends, they are treating this summer like…
Bamboo Revenge had its world première at FrightFest 2025, Monday 25th August Sometimes all that there is to a film can be found in the title. David R. Ellis’ Snakes on a Plane (2006), Anthony C. Ferrante’s Sharknado (2013) and Elizabeth Baks’ Cocaine Bear (2023) all come with their Unique Selling Point inscribed right upfront…
Writer/director Aimee Kuge’s feature debut opens with impressionistic shots of Mark (Nate Wise), alone in his apartment and watching horror movies – which both is and is not a piece of programmatic misdirection. For while Mark is meek, sensitive, very much single and, after being deceived and dumped by his last girlfriend, rather anxious about,…
Animale had its North American première on 20th September at Fantastic Fest 2024 “You did great for a girl,” says Kylian (Vivien Rodriguez) to Nejma (Oulaya Amamra), a little way into Emma Benestan’s Animale. Though Kylian is ostensibly Nejma’s colleague, mentor and friend, his words are patronising and back-handed, putting the young woman in her…
While her husband Robert (Jason Faunt) sleeps, Zara (Rocio Scotto) slips out of bed and downstairs to the basement storeroom, where, from a case in a chest, she takes out a notebook scribbled with the kind of inchoate chiaroscuro sketches that in horror conventionally codify a person’s diabolical descent. This opening to writer/director Andrew de…
In Michael Bay’s Transformers (2007), adolescent protagonist Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) purchases a banged-up 1976 Chevrolet Camaro to be his first car, although it is not Sam but Mikaela (Megan Fox), the object of Sam’s affection (also objectified by the film, right from the very first leering pan up her bodywork) who actually knows something…
American Mary first published by Film4 (for a different review, see here) Synopsis: Canadian twins Jen and Sylvia Soska write and direct this tale of surgery and revenge, starring Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps). Review: “Surgeons don’t have the luxury of being sorry”. So Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle) is told by Dr Grant (David Lougren) after her mobile…
Maria (aka Mar.IA) had its UK première on Friday 27th Oct at the Halloween FrightFest “Between the mind that plans and the hand that builds, there must be a mediator, and this must be the heart,” reads the text that opens Gabriel Grieco and Nicanor Loreti’s Maria. The content of the text is rather less…
Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (Seperti dendam, rundi harus dibayar tuntas) first published by Little White Lies “Only a man who can’t get it up can face death without fear.” This line comes from near the beginning of Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, just after we have seen the film’s young…
Hékate UK première at Sohome Horror Pride Virtual Film Festival Hecate is an ancient Greek goddess typically depicted – sometimes in triple form – with dogs, keys and torches, and associated with crossroads, witchcraft, poisons, night and the moon. Although this feminine deity is never mentioned in Nadia Benedicto’s Hékate beyond its title, her presence…
We Had It Coming opens with two programmatic sequences. In the first, Katja (Sofie Holland) is woken by the sound of a hardcore porn clip landing on her phone – a video in which, by implication, she features. She then, after grimly donning the transparent platform shoes that are part of her work costume, hangs…