By Yourself world première at Fantastic Fest 2026, paired with Nikias Chryssos’ Bloody Tennis “So none of it’s real, nothing’s real with you anymore,” Elliot (Tessa Jean) tells her girlfriend Syl (Zelda Adams), “You just don’t want to be alone.” This apparent overture to a breakup is in fact a flashback, as Syl now really…
Faith in horror: 6 features testing credulity at FrightFest 2025 first published by BFI as a preview piece for FrightFest, 21st Aug 2025 Includes capsules of: Crushed, Transcending Dimensions, Portal to Hell, Dog of God, The Confession, Mother of Flies Despite its dark themes, horror is a genre for optimists. To find its occasional treasures,…
Mother of Flies first published by SciFiNow, for its world première Fantasia 2025, 24 July Mother of Flies opens with graphic if impressionistic images of a corpse, lying on the ground, its bones bared through rotten flesh. “To woo death, one must love it, lie with it,” intones a female voice, as the speaker, legendary…
10 Great Horror Films of the Decade So Far (2020-2024) first published by BFI, 24 Oct 2024 Includes capsules of: Host, The Empty Man, Censor, The Innocents, Nope, Skinamarink, Abruptio, When Evil Lurks, Where the Devil Roams, I Saw the TV Glow This decade began with a pandemic. A few smaller, socially distanced productions, like…
Horror gets weird: six oddities from the Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2023 first published by BFI, 22 August 2023 Includes capsule reviews of: The Blue Rose, Transmission, Good Boy, Minore, My Mother’s Eyes, Where The Devil Roams Horror occupies an uncanny valley between real anxieties and their staging in fantasy form. It offers a nightmarish netherworld…
Where The Devil Roams first published by SciFiNow, 27 July 2023 Where The Devil Roams begins as it ends: on a stage. Shot in flickery monochrome to mimic film from the period, a tattooed, tuxedoed man with no legs drags himself across the platform, and reads aloud from a book before a suited, seated, enraptured…
Hellbender has its world première at Fantasia 2021 Written and directed by John Adams, Zelda Adams and Toby Poser (the aptly named ‘Adams family’), Hellbender begins with overt overkill. Caught squatting around a grisly pile of body parts, a woman (Judy Rosen) with a grotesquely sewn-up mouth is hanged in the woods by a…
The Deeper You Dig at Fantasia and FrightFest 2019 Ivy (Toby Poser) and Echo (Zelda Adams) Allen are a mother and daughter living on the periphery of Sullivan County, Pennsylvania. Once a gifted spiritualist, Ivy has since lost her second sight and her way, and now resorts to stringing along needy, paying local clients with…