The Pianist (A Pianista) first published by Dirty Movies for a screening at MotelX 2025 “In a near future”, as text near the beginning of Nuno Bernardo’s The Pianist (A Pianista) reads, Ana (Teresa Tavares) and her teenaged son Pedro (Gonçalo Almeida) are struggling, in different ways, to cope with the recent death of Jorge…
Blood Secret world première at FrightFest, 27th August 2026 Blood Secret opens with a wide shot of a beach and the sea beyond – a littoral, liminal space between one element and another. The camera pans left across the sand to reveal a woman’s bloody body lying lifeless there. Then, although the camera keeps fluidly…
Influencers first published by SciFiNow, for its world première at Fantasia, 26 July 2025 “The island, how’d you get off it?” This is a question that hangs over Influencers, given that writer/director/editor/producer Kurtis David Harder’s film is a sequel to his previous Influencer (2022). It is like Aliens (1986) to Alien (1979) or Predators (2010)…
Love and death may be literature’s two greatest themes, but they make strange bedfellows in cinema. Conventionally love belongs to the romance, and death to horror, but Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes brings them together in this slasher rom com that genuinely adheres to the rules of both genres. Wearing a mask with heart-shaped pink lights…
Frankie, Maniac Woman had its European première at GrimmFest 2025, 10th Oct “Let’s talk about the gruesome murders happening in East Los Angeles,” says an unseen DJ at the beginning of Pierre Tsigaridis’ Frankie, Maniac Woman. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a man with some mummy issues, folks – so hang on to your dildos,…
Past Life had its world première at Grimmest, 9th Oct 2025 “Syria, six years ago,” reads the text that opens Simeon Halligan’s Past Life, as we are shown a harrowing sequence in which journalist Jason Frey (Aneurin Barnard), abducted by Islamic State, sees his own left hand being crushed with a mallet before he is…
Strange Darling first published by SciFiNow, for its international première at FrightFest, 24 August, 20204 “Are you a serial killer?” says a woman credited only as The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) to the man credited only as The Demon (Kyle Gallner). This may be how Strange Darling opens, but then time moves in mysterious ways here. After…
7 Keys first published by SciFiNow, for its UK première at FrightFest 24 August , 2024 At the beginning of 7 Keys, single mother Lena (Emma McDonald) recounts in voiceover the story of a diminutive homeless women who hid away for an entire year undetected in the closet of someone else’s apartment in Japan. “All…
Incomplete Chairs had its world première at Slash Film Festival 2025, 24th Sept Kenichi Ugana’s Incomplete Chairs is, among other things, a peculiar character study. Intense, uptight, arrogant and odd, with the top button of his shirt always closed, protagonist Shinsuke Kujo (Ryu Ichinose) is an up-and-coming ‘chair artist’ whose designs are displayed on his…
Sick Puppy had its world première at FrightFest 2025, Monday 25 August “Good girl,” says Charlie (Natasha Calis), looking right into the camera at the beginning of writer/director Jay Reid’s feature debut Sick Puppy. Charlie assists at a veterinarian clinic, and her words are addressed to a little dog that she is trying to coax…
The Mannequin had its UK première at FrightFest 2025, Sunday 24 August The Mannequin opens in 1955, as catalogue model Ruth Calvert (Krystle Martin) is being photographed with a flash camera in a private Los Angeles studio by its current owner, whistling Jack Bernard (Jack Sochet). Jack is a sleazebag, getting a little too handsy…