Pensive (Rupintojelis)had its UK première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2023. Pensive (Rupinotjelis) derives its title for the ‘Pensive Christ’, a stereotypical depiction taken from the iconography of sculpture. This shows Jesus with his body scourged and suffering, and his head usually in one or two of his upraised hands, as he rests on his way…
Girls Nite Out first published by Little White Lies, as entry 153 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “You know it’s not enough that the school tries to screw you. Everybody else has to screw around with everybody else. Sometimes I think Lynn is the only loyal person left.” This is some way into Robert Deubel’s…
X first published by Sight and Sound online Ti West‘s X opens with a visual trick to confound the viewer’s sense of time. A corpse-strewn farmhouse is shown in what appears to be outmoded Academy ratio, until the camera’s forward movement reveals that the vertical extremities of this squared image are in fact the sides…
Scream (2022) first published by Little White Lies Not long after Wes Craven went all postmodern on a franchise of his own in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), the director gave a similar self-referential treatment to John Carpenter‘s Halloween (1978) and its many Eighties imitators with Scream (1996), along the way using the power of…
Baghead first published by Little White Lies, as entry 148 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “Hollywood has us convinced that it takes 100 million dollars to make a quality piece of art, and that’s a piece of crap statement. I think you just saw that, right?” So says Jett Garner (playing himself) at the beginning…
Stagefright (Deliria) first published by VODzilla.co In the Eighties, Michele Soavi had done some acting in fllms for Lucio Fulci and Joe D’Amato , and quickly forged a working relationship with Dario Argento, serving as assistant director on his Tenebre (1982), Phenomena (1985) and Opera (1987), and debuting as solo director on the filmographic documentary…
Ryan Imhoff and Matt Neal’s Fresh Hell opens with a three-by-three grid of nine faces, each occupying their own mini frame. Had this monochrome Rubik’s cube of folk appeared on screen any time before 2020, its principal reference point would have been the opening credits to television’s family sit-com The Brady Bunch (1969-1974) – but…
The Once and Future Smash + End Zone 2 had their world première at FrightFest 2022 This is a diptych of films: first the sequel End Zone 2 (1970), a proto-slasher which, though now mostly obscured by time and with its final half hour unwatched, forgotten and apparently forever lost, has obviously and directly inspired…
Stalker had its world première at FrightFest 2022 Stalker lets you know where it is going from the outset. That title – assuming that this is not a British remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 classic – seems something of a giveaway. Suspicions are further confirmed by text appearing right at the start which lays out…
Killer Concept first published by VODzilla.co Blonde Mary-Rose (Maddie Ludt) chats on the phone in her kitchen as a hoodie-wearing figure with a machete watches her from the shadows of the street outside. These moments openly riff not just on John Carpenter’s iconic slasher Halloween (1978), but also on Wes Craven’s postmodern Halloween pastiche Scream…
3rd Night first published by SciFiNow 3rd Night opens with a confusion of images: a little girl plays with a skipping rope and doll; and an adult woman, her hands bound, runs terrified through moonlit trees, before her unseen pursuer brains her with a sledge hammer. This blurring of primal scene and subsequent murder, all…