Altered Perceptions opens with an aerial image of the Statue of Liberty – that symbol of American freedom and openness to others – at night. To the right is scrolling text that reads “THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION” (sometimes written forwards, but mostly in reverse via mirror writing). As though to validate that message,…
Ashgrove had its world première at the Glasgow Film Festival 2022 Teaming up again with his co-writer Jonas Chernick from James vs. His Future Self (2019), director Jeremy LaLonde brings a dramatic, even an apocalyptic, scenario that, in at least two senses, hits close to home. For Ashgrove is both, topically, a pandemic movie, and…
Hall first published by Through the Trees Hall opens with the camera tilting down from a hotel room door to Naomi (Yumiko Shaku) sat against it in the corridor, rasping and struggling to breathe. The camera then pans to follow her point of view onto others similarly collapsed over the carpet, even as we see…
Red River Road first published by VODzilla.co “If you were infected, how would you know that’s real?,” asks Stephen Witten in Red River Road. “That’s what this does! Don’t you understand? It steals reality right out from under you!” Stephen is played by the film’s writer/director/editor/cinematographer/composer/co-producer Paul Schuyler, who stars alongside his real-life wife Jade…
CTRL fist published by SciFiNow At the beginning of CTRL, Christian Lex (Saabeah Theos) and her boyfriend Dru (Hainsley Lloyd Bennett) are heading to the luxurious fifth-storey apartment of Lex’s brother Leo (Julian Mack), a reclusive computer geek with a strong streak of misanthropy, to celebrate his birthday. As the couple ascends, floor by floor, we…
Mayhem first published by SciFiNow Derek Cho (Steven Yeun) is having a bad day. Essentially a good guy, if driven by ambition, he has been steadily climbing the corporate ladder as a loophole expert at Towers and Smythe Consulting, while slowly losing his soul. This morning, for example, when Melanie Cross (Samara Weaving) meets him begging…
Diverge first published by SciFiNow Diverge opens at the end of the line for bearded Chris Towne (Ivan Sandomire), his ailing wife Anna (Erin Cunningham) and perhaps all life on Earth. Chris and Anna are trudging across arid salt flats, shot wide with a smouldering New York City occasionally visible in the background. Their infant Dylan…
The Cured first published by SciFiNow Where most zombie films take place at the beginning or in the middle of an undead outbreak, David Freyne’s feature debut takes place in the aftermath. For, as its very title implies, The Cured concerns the challenges presented by attempts to reintegrate into a raw, ravaged community those who have…
Mountain Fever (aka Fever) first published by SciFiNow The end of the world is a place that cinema has visited many times, but Mountain Fever brings a grim intimacy to these familiar motifs, while reducing all of humanity to both a tiny dramatis personae and a stripped-down range of hopes and fears. The engine of change…
Longer version of piece published by Sight & Sound as part of coverage of the Cult programme at the London Film Festival 2015 “My future? I dunno.” Although it starts and ends with video testimonies from a group of young adults about their interdependence and prospects, Thierry Poiraud’s Don’t Grow Up is no documentary, instead locating…
Review first published by Grolsch FilmWorks The montage sequence that opens Dead Within comprises aerials of a big city and its suburbs, and then of a road leading to the wooded hills beyond, and a car snaking its way to a rural cabin. These images of the thin line between civilisation to wilderness are also…