Sean O. McGuiness’ She Listens Alone opens by introducing us to the life of its protagonist Sabrina Nolan (Alivia Levie). It is a life which comprises other people’s lives, seen and heard remotely on screen – and a life which is not turning out as expected, planned or desired, and which leaves her feeling unfulfilled…
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey first published by VODzilla.co, 11 March 2023 The words ‘blood and honey’ are metonyms of what a certain kind of film knows its audience wants. For sex and violence (not necessarily in that order) are the mainstays of B-horror, and Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey certainly delivers both, with some hilariously gratuitous…
Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (aka Nightmare) first published by Movie Gazette, 21 July, 2005, and here revised and altered Meet George Tatum (Baird Stafford). Suffering from schizophrenia, amnesia, homicidal tendencies, dream fixation and seizures, he is “a dangerous psychotic”, and prime suspect for the recent sexual mutilation and murder of a Brooklyn family. Yet…
In Charly Goitia’s Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker, during the witching hour, disc jockey Candy Blue (Paula Brasca) spins some tracks and exchanges spooky stories with her callers, all for her show Nightmare Radio that she describes as the place “where horror stories never end…for insomniacs who want to stay insomniacs”. Yet as she smokes…
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…
Bad Match first published by SciFiNow At the beginning of Bad Match, Harris (Jack Cutmore Scott) is in a bar, texting on his phone, when Rachel (Christine Donlon), his latest hook-up from a Tinder-like website called Head Over Heels, arrives for their first date. As part of his flirtatious schtick, Harris slickly pretends to read…
Blinders first published by VODzilla.co We know from the outset of Blinders (aka Stalker), co-written and directed by Tyler Savage (Inheritance, 2017), that its protagonist Andy (Vincent Van Horn), like most of us, lives much of his lonely life online. For the opening scenes are presented as video shot vertically on his smartphone, documenting his…
Tenebrae first published by VODzilla.co Psychological stories typically come with a primal scene – a significant, scarring incident from the past which influences what is happening in the present, and which holds the key to some sort of resolution, or at least understanding, of otherwise irrational motivations and events. Dario Argento’s Tenebrae features (at least)…
It opens with Sam Ashurst, director of Frankenstein’s Creature (2018) and A Little More Flesh (2020), on a Zoom call pitching the sequel A Little More Flesh II to the original film’s star and producer, Elf Lyons. “After the way you treated me,” she replies curtly, “no – you can absolutely fuck off!” There is…
The twin goals of live comedy are to slay the audience, and not to die on stage yourself – which is to say that there is considerable overlap between the worlds of stand-up and horror. Perhaps most famously explored in Martin Scorsese’s The King Of Comedy (1982) and Todd Phillips’ Joker (2019), this slippery space…
In Alone, Jessica (Jules Willcox) is on the run. This is not just because of the man (Marc Menchaca) who first plays road games with her, and who then follows her creepily from stop to stop making repeated ‘friendly’ attempts at contact despite Jessica’s clear indications that his presence is not welcome, and who finally declares…