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…
Here For Blood had its international première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2023. Here For Blood begins with young student Elise (Holly Jade Balmer) jogging to her suburban home, only to discover her girlfriend bleeding out in the shower, and a masked man waiting nearby who stabs her multiple times in the chest. This bloody prologue,…
Agatha opens in darkness. A dim light is introduced as a woman’s hand pulls loose bricks from a wall, and reaches into the shadowy niche beyond to extract a mysterious wrapped object, and to observe it under an electric bulb. There is then a cutaway to an old crone crossing a misty field, apparently some…
In The Earth first published by VODzilla.co In The Earth begins with an image of the object at its centre: a menhir with a circular opening in its middle through which the arboreal foliage beyond is framed. It is like the monolith from the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – a mysterious, numinous…
The Weird Kidz had its world première at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival In the centre of Black Bird – established only a decade ago in 1975 and, according to its sign, “A real nice place to raise your kids up” – are three 12-year-old friends who embody the community’s first generation of children. They…
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…
Anything For Jackson first published by VODzilla.co Satanists come with their own stereotype. The picture that they present in the popular imagination usually goes something like this: young, male, long hair, black leather, listens to heavy metal, incel. What you probably do not picture – unless your internal iconography is dominated by Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s…
The Unburied had its European première at FrightFest 2021 Writer/director Alejandro Cohen Arazi’s The Unburied (El cadáver insepulto) is the story of a prodigal son’s return. In Buenos Aires, Dr Maximiliano Espósito (Demián Salomón) has just had his book Tribal Education published, outlining the peculiar codes and traditions elaborated by boys who have grown up…
Sacrifice (aka The Colour Of Madness) first published by VODzilla.co At the heart of Sacrifice (aka The Colour Of Madness) is a painting of a man on a tiny vessel, its tattered sails surrounded by monstrous waves. This image of being lost at sea will come to pervade both the film and its reception, as…
The Sonata first published by SciFiNow Andrew Desmond’s feature debut The Sonata, co-written with Arthur Morin, opens with composer Richard Marlow (the late Rutger Hauer) putting the finishing touches on a musical score. He then walks downstairs, heads outside into the dark night with a petrol canister and candle in hand, douses his body in…
The allegory of the cave in Plato’s Republic figures the unenlightened as prisoners locked away in a dark subterranean chamber who imagine that the shadows they see artificially projected on the wall before them are reality, while in fact the only reality is in the sunlit world outside and beyond their perception. Unsurprisingly, this philosophical…