Disforia UK première at Grimmfest, 10 Oct 2026 Christopher Cartagena’s feature debut Disforia opens with both Paradise, and Paradise Lost. For there is an idyllic Spanish woodland, all rich green flora and babbling brooks – and then there is a woman (Aleida Torrent) sitting in her parked car and looking sadly at a photo of…
Crushed had its world première at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025, 16 August “Have you ever watched any scary movies?” teen schoolboy Marcus (Nadech Chatwin) asks the much younger Olivia (Margaux Dietrich) near the beginning of writer/director Simon Rumley’s latest feature Crushed, “There’s monsters and blood and stuff, people watch them because they like being…
Vacancy first published by EyeforFilm, 12 June 2007 In Phillip Noyce‘s Dead Calm (1989), a couple grieving the tragic death of their son are pulled back together when a charismatic lunatic tries to murder them on their ocean-bound yacht. In Neil Marshall‘s The Descent (2005), after her husband and son die in a horrific accident, a woman confronts her…
My Little Eye first published by Daily Info, 14 Oct 2002, here slightly altered Why do we watch reality entertainment? What is it about shows like Survivor, Temptation Island, and especially Big Brother, which makes them so appealing to the viewing public? Is it the greed and paranoia? The voyeurism and exhibitionism? The interpersonal drama…
Red Rooms (Les chambres rouges) first seen at the BFI London Film Festival 2023 She sees him through a screen. While in Red Rooms (Les chambres rouges), Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) sits in a Montréal courtroom, with a prominent crucifix around her neck, watching a criminal trial – and a cause célèbre – unfold, the defendant…
Don’t Click first published by VODzilla.co Expanded by screenwriter Courtney Ellum from G-Hey Kim’s 2017 short of the same name, Kim’s feature debut Don’t Click begins where Oliver Assayas’ Demonlover (2002) ends – with a young man logging on to a secret site where, for masturbatory purposes, he can remotely view and even encourage (via…
Review first published by EyeforFilm As Franklin Guerrero Jr’s low-budget, straight-to-video Carver opens, we watch a terrified woman, tied up in a shed, begging a large, goggled man not to kill her as he holds her from behind and casually saws her head off, all to the accompaniment of an absurdly out-of-place hillbilly banjo traditional…
Review first published by Grolsch FilmWorks Sadik 2 is a film of two halves (and four discrete headed chapters). In its first half, six young men and women, all with troubled pasts (they know each other from earlier years spent together in a community home) gather in a rented wilderness cabin to usher in the New…
Review first published by Grolsch FilmWorks The most prominent feature in Brighton is a ghost. The West Pier, once a symbol of Victorian grandeur, is now inaccessible, burnt out and neglected, a skeletal shadow of the past – although the current construction of the i360 observation tower on the site offers promise of restoration, modernisation…
The Den (aka Hacked) first published by FilmDivider Restricting its point of view to the numerous minicams installed in an isolated house serving as a set for a reality show, Marc Evans‘ My Little Eye (2002) used an innovative narrative frame borrowed wholesale from contemporary programmes like Big Brother in order to expose the undercurrent of sadistic voyeurism…