10 films that trace the evolution of the cinematic zombie first published by BFI in October 2022 Includes capsules of: White Zombie, I Walked With A Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, Nightmare City, The Return of the Living Dead, Braindead, Fido, Colin, Pontypool, One Cut of the Dead Zombies are often unhurried in pace,…
The Visitor From The Future first published by SciFiNow “Turn back!”, are the first words heard in The Visitor From The Future (Le visiteur du futur), addressed to a technician who is running into a nuclear power plant in meltdown while his colleagues are all fleeing the other way. The ambiguity of these words –…
Final Cut (Coupez!) first published by SciFiNow Final Cut (Coupez!) opens with a conflicted young woman (Matilda Lutz) fending off a young man (Finnegan Oldfield) with an axe, while trying to reconcile herself to the fact that he is no longer her boyfriend but a braindead zombie. It is a hackneyed, clichéd scenario, the patchy…
The Dead 2: India first published by Grolsch FilmWorks Key to what made brother Jonathan and Howard Ford‘s feature debut The Dead (2010) a success was its placement of oldschool zombie archetypes into a minimalist storyline amidst astonishing natural locales shot very wide (as though in reference to that other filmmaking Ford). Although this sequel…
Cannon Fodder first published by Grolsch Film Works Ever since Romero’s Night of the Living Dead appeared in 1968, shuffling ‘ghouls’ have proven an excellent vehicle for importing social and political commentary through genre’s back door. So when Marc Foster’s World War Z (2013) landed in a walled Jerusalem beleaguered by mindlessly aggressive hordes beyond,…
Powertool Cheerleaders vs the Boyband of the Screeching Dead had its world première at FrightFest 2022 Emily (Charlie Bond) is a waitress at an “American themed diner” – a location which serves to advertise the broader artifice and overt inauthenticity of Powertool Cheerleaders vs the Boyband of the Screeching Dead, as of course does that…
Super Z had its UK première at FrightFest 2022 If the zombies in Super Z are, as its very title suggests, not quite like the others, then that just places Julien de Volte and Arnaud Tabarly’s feature in a long tradition of zombies who have never stopped changing and evolving. Their ‘classic’ form as slow-shuffling,…
The punningly titled Friend of the World opens with three prefatory elements before its narrative proper gets underway. The first is a quote from Dante, presented as text, and by its nature something of a paradoxical riddle: “The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and likewise pain.” The second is a…
![[Rec]2](https://i0.wp.com/projectedfigures.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Rec2.jpeg?resize=640%2C440&ssl=1)
[Rec]2 first published by Film4 Summary: Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza return to direct this nerve-shredding sequel to Rec (and its quickie US remake Quarantine), further documenting the twists and turns of an unfolding demonic apocalypse. Review: The original Rec (2007), with its terrifying tale of resident evil in a Barcelona apartment building, may have…
Rec (aka [Rec]) first published by Little White Lies Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) may have set the ball rolling, but it was the terrors of 11th September, 2001, recorded live by amateurs at the scene, that made reportage the vehicle of choice for today’s horror films, from Diary of the…
Wyrmwood Apocalypse had its UK première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2022 In 2014, director Kiah Roache-Turner and his co-writing/co-producing brother Tristan gave the world their feature debut Wyrmwood. It was a calling card for what has since – in their follow-up Nekrotronic (2018) and now their formal sequel Wyrmwood Apocalypse – become a signature style:…