It is not every film set on the wooded outskirts of present-day Oakland, Maine that opens somewhere in the Scandinavia of 912 AD, yet Harley Wallen’s Beneath Us All, scripted by Brett Miller, finds obscure connections between these different places and times. After the bloody murder of a child, Vikings hunt down, injure and encase…
After a series of brightly coloured illustrations depicting vodou death spirit Baron Samedi together with, and then apart from, his beloved wife Maman Brigitte, Richard Elfman’s Bloody Bridget begins with its Van Nuys trailer park heroine Bridget O’Brian (played by Elfman’s wife Anastasia) performing a burlesque on stage with fellow artists Pepe (Marcos Mateo Ochoa)…
Boy #5 has its world première at FrightFest 2021 Falling into the (recent) tradition of films like Michael O’Shea’s The Transfiguration (2016) Simeon Halligan’s Habit (2017) and Abner Pastoll’s A Good Woman Is Hard To Find (2019), Eric Ian Steele’s feature debut delivers its genre tropes in a mode of social realism. It begins with…
Let Me In first published (in slightly different form) by EyeforFilm in Oct 2010 The year was 2008 and the world of horror was changing. Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In (Låt Den Rätte Komma In) came out, based on the novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Delicate, melancholic, oblique and cool in…
Vampyr first published by Film4 Summary: Carl Theodor Dreyer’s first sound-film is a nightmarishly disorienting reverie on the vampire myth. Review: In the first ever vampire film Nosferatu (1922), FW Murnau used the full expressionist force of his black-and-white imagery to underscore the conflict between darkness and light that is so essential to vampire mythology. Made…
Nosferatu (Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens) first published by Film4 Summary: F.W. Murnau’s expressionist horror – and the world’s first vampire film – still casts its long shadow over the history of both Germany and cinema. Review: Sometimes a single sequence can come to encapsulate not only the film in which it appears, but a whole style…
Climate of the Hunter is in select UK cinemas from Friday 13rd August 2021, and then on digital platforms to rent and download-to-own from Monday 23rd August, via Bulldog Film Distribution. Climate of the Hunter opens not with a voiceover (those will come later) nor with an authorised textual quotation, but with a yellow manila folder being opened…
Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) first published by Film4 Summary: Comedy director Tomas Alfredson turns his hand to a quiet horror story of pre-teen angst and vampiric longing in Cold War Stockholm. Review: “Not too close, not too far. Keep distance.” The broken Swedish of gym teacher Mr Avila (Cayetano Ruiz)…
Bliss introduces us to the crumbling world and fragmenting headspace of Dezzy Donohue (Dora Madison). A Californian artist who has run out of creative juice, Dezzy has twice asked for extensions on her latest commission, and is getting nowhere with it. David (Chris McKenna), her agent of long standing, can see the writing (if not…
The Keloid Clinic (Inc.) is situated by a motorway in the sticks some way from Montreal. Offering plastic surgery and post-op recovery in resort-like surroundings, the Clinic represents a model that Murray Cypher (Joe Silver), business partner to founder Dr Dan Keloid (Howard Ryshpan), hopes to turn into a franchise – even if Keloid himself…
Vampire Clay (Chi o sû nendo) first published by SciFiNow “I don’t want to lose my individuality to convention.” These words, uttered by one of five students in a new rural prep school for Tokyo’s hyper-competitive fine arts courses, cuts to the heart of Soichi Umezawa’s feature debut Vampire Clay (Chi o sû nendo). For…