Lovely, Dark, and Deep had its world première at Fantasia 2023 “Into the forest I go, to lose my mind, and find my soul” goes the text quote from John Muir with which Lovely, Dark, and Deep opens. Sure enough, this feature debut from writer/director Teresa Sutherland, who previously scripted Emma Tammi’s The Wind (2018),…
Freshly released from a mental institution, a young, taciturn ‘Man’ (Rory Alexander) with a history of violence and a head full of elusive childhood memories heads back to the only people he knows – the fatherly Dunleavy (Mark Rylance), plus old playmates Daisy (Nell Williams) and Toby (Sebastian Orozco). Yet in writer/director Fridtjof Ryder’s first…
As a church bell tolls in the night at the beginning of The Petting Zoo, a figure dressed in creepy wicker mask strides past a graveyard in an otherwise empty village lane – and then enters the Cornewall Arms Free House in Clodock, Herefordshire. There the figure reveals herself to be not some ghostly creature…
Nightsiren (Svetlonoc) has its UK première at Glasgow Film Festival 2023 “Even in modern Europe, in certain lonely villages, folklore and medieval superstitions are still considered a way of life,” reads text at the beginning of Nightsiren (Svetlonoc). The film opens with a primal scene: faced with the hair-pulling wrath of her abusive mother Alžbeta (Petra Vajdová), little Šarlota (Sára…
Broadcast first published by Little White Lies, as entry 143 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column We know from the beginning how a filmed expedition into New Jersey’s remote Pine Barrens in search of the legendary Jersey Devil will end, because it has already ended. On the night of 15th December, 1995, cable TV host Stefan Avkast…
Dark Nature has its world première at Fantasia 2022 “There’s no coming to consciousness without pain and discomfort,” Dr Carol Dunnley (Kyra Harper) tells Joy (Hannah Anderson) some way into Dark Nature, as she leads Joy and three other damaged women on a therapeutic weekend trek through Little Deer Lake in the Canadian Rockies. “People…
Bring Out the Fear first published by VODzilla.co There is a careful ring-compositional rhyme between the first and last times we see recovering alcoholic Rosie (Ciara Bailey) in writer/director Richard Waters’ Bring Out The Fear. For in scenes that bookend the film, she is shown lying in a cosy-looking white-sheeted bed – and several scenes…
Are We Monsters first published by VODzilla.co “I wonder what comes after this,” says Michael (Justin Hayward) in the opening scene of Are We Monsters, in what is clearly for him the beginning of something new as much as the end of an era. Michael and his family have for generations been hunting and killing…
Writer/director Anubys Lopez’s feature debut Those Who Call opens in well-worn generic territories. Lauren (Reese Fast) is driving alone in the wooded outskirts of Whispering Pines. With its signposted population of 53, it is the kind of town that you just pass through, and sure enough, Lauren is on a long-haul interstate trip when she…
Woodland Grey screens at Grimmfest Easter 2022 A man heads from his rusty caravan into the rainy night, holding up a hurricane lamp to the shadowy tree-line beyond, from which a four-note lilt is repeatedly whistled by someone – or something – unseen. This opening scene from Woodland Grey – Adam Reider’s feature debut which…
Greywood’s Plot begins with two videos. In the first, an old VHS camcorder films a horrific, if impressionistic, act of surgery being performed in a shed, and ending with a flatline. The second opens with the line “This is where my existence ends,” as Dom Stafler (played by the similarly named Josh Stifter, who is…