10 Great Horror Films of the Decade So Far (2020-2024) first published by BFI, 24 Oct 2024 Includes capsules of: Host, The Empty Man, Censor, The Innocents, Nope, Skinamarink, Abruptio, When Evil Lurks, Where the Devil Roams, I Saw the TV Glow This decade began with a pandemic. A few smaller, socially distanced productions, like…
The Boogeyman first published by Little White Lies, 30 May 2023 Stephen King’s 1975 short story The Boogeyman blurs the psychological and the supernatural. Unfolding entirely within the confines of a psychiatrist’s office, it purports to be the story that distraught patient Lester Billings tells about his three children’s deaths – and while Lester insists…
Dashcam first published by Sight & Sound, Summer Edition 2022 Review: Presenting only what the characters see on their devices as a séance conducted over Zoom goes wrong, Rob Savage‘s feature debut Host (2020), co-written with his regular collaborators Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd during the first Covid lockdown, was pure ‘screenlife’ horror. This is…
The Found Footage Phenomenon had its world première at FrightFest 2021 “The following is based on real events,” reads the glitchy, juddery text that opens The Found Footage Phenomenon, as though we were watching a VHS of one of the very films this documentary celebrates. That, of course, is a crucial point established early here:…
The word ‘host’ can refer equally to anyone accommodating a houseguest, to the organiser of a group webchat, or to a person who has become possessed. All these meanings will come into play in Rob Savage’s Host, in which six friends, bored by the isolation of lockdown and eager for any kind of stimulation, agree…
You know where Dawn of the Deaf is going, both from its title (even if, within the film, that does not strictly appear on screen until the end), and from opening text which promises that we are in London “one hour before the pulse”. From the outset this short film is clearly headed towards a Romero-style zombie outbreak,…