“Every judgment is meaningless” declares a voice at the beginning of Belgian director Gust van den Berghe’s Lucifer, before launching into a mythic account of the perfect knowledge attained by ancient peoples, and of the eventual “downward path” (with which the speaker expressly identifies himself) that came with humanity’s developing awareness of the difference between good and…
“So this is the basement. It’s for killing people or raping animals,” jokes Christian (Evan Dumouchel). “Why am I showing this to you?” Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews) has just arrived unexpectedly in New York, so Christian is giving his old schoolfriend a tour of the apartment, including the rooftop space and downstairs storeroom, which until recently Christian had shared…
When Cleo Callaghan (Emma Eliza Regan) goes into the local supply store to buy hollow-point bullets for her hunting rifle, clearly visible in the scene’s foreground is a female dummy with a red-stained gauze over one of its eyes. Not only does this monocular mannequin model Cleo’s own future appearance, but it also alludes…
“It’s not weird,” says Phoebe (Jennifer Kim) in the opening scene of Jiyoung Lee’s Female Pervert. “It’ll be really fun.” After playing her theremin for a male guest (Skizz Cyzyk) in her home, Phoebe gets on her knees before him, and encourages him, to his increasing discomfort, to play the instrument first with his finger,…
“It’s the big house on… oh my god, there’s blood everywhere… he can’t be dead… please, please.” Body opens with audio only: a very distressed call to the emergency services from one or several female voices. Bad things – even what cinema likes to call Very Bad Things (1998) – are evidently in the works,…