Jun 24, 2016
Stars: Christopher Wiehl, Kym Jackson, Tina Lifford, Samantha Smith, Yohance Myles, Kennedy Brice, Brea Grant, R. Brandon Johnson | Written by Danny Kolker, Christopher Wiehl | Directed by Padraig Reynolds It’s been quite some time since I saw Padraig Reynolds’ debut feature Rites of Spring back at Glasgow Frightfest 2012 and since then Reynolds has(…)
Jun 21, 2016
Stars: Beth Riesgraf, Martin Starr, Jack Kesy, Rory Culkin, Leticia Jimenez | Written by T.J. Cimfel, David White | Directed by Adam Schindler Anna Rook is isolated from human contact in nearly every way, which is exactly how she likes it. Suffering from crippling agoraphobia and holed up in an old Victorian mansion on the(…)
Jun 12, 2016
Stars: Natalie Dormer, Taylor Kinney, Yukiyoshi Ozawa, Eoin Macken, Stephanie Vogt, Yasuo Tobishima, Noriko Sakura, Yûho Yamashita, Lidija Antonic | Written by Nick Antosca, Sarah Cornwell, Ben Ketai | Directed by Jason Zada After her sister is reported missing, Sara (Natalie Dormer), journeys from her home in the US to Japan in search of her(…)
Stars: Robert Carradine, Mario Ceara, Katie Savoy, Akari Endo, Tony Evangelista, Mario Arturo Hernández, Rib Hillis, Alan Nadal Piantini, Conan O’Brien | Written by Matt Yamashita | Directed by Kevin O’Neill If you thought it was only studios like The Asylum who were cranking out giant sea creature flicks for Syfy you’d be completely wrong(…)
Feb 19, 2016
The Witch, ’70s Style
Feb 18, 2016
“I don’t understand anything that’s going on around here, Kit. I feel like a fly caught in a spider web.”
Feb 16, 2016
American Horror Project, Volume 1
Jan 26, 2016
The Fear Inside
Jan 15, 2016
The post-modern Prometheus Classic literary works like Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein will stand up to all kinds of interpretation. James Whale’s 1931 film classic went wildly off-book to define cinema’s long relationship with the text, and the past few years alone have seen adaptations both faithful (Danny Boyle’s stage version, with Benedict Cumberbatch(…)
Oct 7, 2015
Catch it if you can
Jul 2, 2015
My regular readers may remember that I am psychologically predisposed towards liking any horror film that comes from Australia.
Jul 1, 2015
They have such sights to show you…
Jun 5, 2015
Legend has it that, far beyond the town of Mitchell, some 600km inland from Queensland’s coastline, an abandoned homestead – once the scene of unspeakable depravities – is now supposedly haunted. Which makes Charlie’s Farm, as the place is known, a magnet for horror-happy backpackers willing to go way off the beaten track in pursuit(…)
Apr 27, 2015
John McNaughton comes back out to play It’s been nearly 30 years since director John McNaughton announced himself to the world with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which gifted us Michael Rooker, and far too long since he returned to the horror genre. So that’s reason enough to celebrate his latest film, The Harvest,(…)
Apr 24, 2015
Any time a film undergoes a significant name change before releasing to the international market, especially one designed to capitalise on an upcoming blockbuster, it can’t help but ring a few alarm bells in the viewer. Jake Paltrow’s second feature, formerly known as Young Ones (no relation to the anarchic post-modern ’80s sitcom) has been dutifully changed to Bad Land:(…)
Jan 15, 2015
Reliably exciting UK distributor Arrow has set a DVD/VOD release date for Beneath, one of several as yet unreleased films screened at FrightFest 2013 back in August. Patrick Doody and Chris Valenziano’s trapped-miners tale of terror will be released in the UK on February 23. Read Scott Weinberg’s exclusive review after the jump.
Jan 6, 2015
Whatever else As Above, So Below has to recommend it, and it has several things that eminently do so, it has breathed a little fresh air into the found-footage genre of horror film. This is a tidy little flick, heavy on mood, light on gore, and bursting with a refreshing originality of story line. Fans of(…)
Nov 11, 2014
The Greatest Horror Movie of All Time? Your mileage, of course, may vary. Whether you’re more of a fan of The Exorcist or a Halloween lover, there’s no denying the impact Tobe Hooper’s backwoods slasher classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has had on the horror scene since its 1974 release. We all know the story, of course: packing into their(…)
Nov 4, 2014
Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer), bemulletted and dressed as though he just stepped out of a Tom of Finland photograph, has been having dreams, about a place called Midian, “where the monsters live.” His former psychiatrist, Dr. Decker, is most interested to hear about Boone’s nocturnal imaginings, not because of any professional interest, but because Decker(…)
Oct 28, 2014
The last time we saw serial killer Jacob Goodnight, in See No Evil (2006), he was as dead as his eight victims: he’d had a pipe stuck in his eye socket (a neat parallel to his own modus operandi, putting out the eyes of his victims), been pushed out of a window, fallen through a glass(…)
Oct 28, 2014
Nihilism can make for a very effective tool when you’re trying to craft a rough, tough, and aggressive horror film. Once you show your audience that “all bets are off,” morally speaking, your film can (sometimes) start to feel like a loose cannon. In a good way. Filmmakers like Michael Haneke, Michael Winterbottom, and Pascal(…)
Oct 28, 2014
There are numerous mysteries to be explored in Spanish director Jorge Dorado’s feature debut, released in the UK under its original title Mindscape. Mysteries such as: why was the film retitled with the more prosaic monicker Anna in the US? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that: after all, the film’s star, Mark Strong, was born Marco(…)
Nov 25, 2010
Imagine you’re a car mechanic and you’re tasked with fixing a car made entirely of body parts. Or pretend you’re a doctor who is faced with a shocking, violent disease that nobody’s ever seen before. Now here’s me: a (very) horror-friendly film critic who is asked to review a film that’s so shocking, so outrageous,(…)
