Mother of Flies first published by SciFiNow, for its world première Fantasia 2025, 24 July Mother of Flies opens with graphic if impressionistic images of a corpse, lying on the ground, its bones bared through rotten flesh. “To woo death, one must love it, lie with it,” intones a female voice, as the speaker, legendary…
Don’t Let The Cat Out had its UK première at FrightFest, 3.15pm Friday 22nd August “Oh the wifi is ‘catpeople’ – all one word, lower case,” says Rodney Davis (Jordan James Smith) near the beginning of Tim Cruz’s Don’t Let The Cat Out, as he heads out with his wife Evelyn (Cerina Vincent), leaving their…
The first scene of The Banished takes place in the vast bushland west of Sydney, although this has been preceded by impressionistic shots of flames – less earthly bushfire than abstract hellblaze. If the viewer is unsure how to synthesise these images, then protagonist Grace Jennings (Meg Clarke) also seems lost, as we watch her…
Transmission first published by SciFiNow Transmission begins with a satellite flashing a red light over Earth, and a large radar dish below picking up its signal – which is to say that, as the film’s very title suggests, here the medium is the message, along with its means of distribution. As text announces that many…
Eight Eyes first published by SciFiNow, 4 August 2023 Eight Eyes starts as it intends to finish: with an unsettling enigma. The camera tilts down through the darkness of night to a big fire, onto which some clothing is placed, and in which a charred human head is ablaze. A mask made of wax…
Talk To Me first published by SciFiNow Talk To Me opens with one brother on an anxious quest for another, desperate to talk to him. The camera tracks Cole (Ari McCarthy) as he walks to and through a crowded house party, frantically searching for his brother Duckett (Sunny Johnson) – and when he locates Duckett…
Bryan Enk’s short film Pentagram Girl opens with the adult Jenna Bouchard (Lisa Anne Sclar) sitting sadly in her brownstone home at the centre of a funeral reception for her mother Margot (Stephanie Cox-Connolly), who died a year to the day after Jenna’s father Peyton (Linus Gelber). Yet Peyton and Margot are also well-dressed –…
Kelly Holmes’ The Sin-Eater opens with young Jemima (Carly-Sophia Davies) and her older husband Richard (Gareth Jewell) facing the unimaginable: the death rites for their newborn son Benjamin. Yet in this god-fearing mid-1850s Welsh setting, amid all the harrowing grief and guilt, there is another concern. “Is he safe?”, Jemima asks the young Scottish priest Samuel…
Custom had its world première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2024. “Hi, I’m Snake”, says a young man (Rowan Polonski) direct to camera at the beginning of writer/director Tiago Teixeira’s feature debut Custom. “And I’m Flower,” says the young woman (Abigail Hardingham) sat next to him. ‘Snake’ and ‘Flower’ are not their real names – for…
Sonja O’Hara’s Mid-Century opens in the era of its title – 1963, to be precise – with a montage of well-dressed housewives cleaning in their homes. The setting is the suburbia of (fictional) Mandarin, California, whose houses, designed by local architect Frederick Banner (Stephen Lang) in the late Fifties, are the aspirational envy of the…
Profound Desires of the Gods first published by Little White Lies “The islanders aren’t particularly clever, so they get their stories and reality all mixed up. It just shows how simple and pure they are.” This is what Kariya (Kazuo Kitamura) says of his one-time Okinawan hosts near the end of Profound Desires of the…