Receiving its world premiere at SXSW, Joy Wilkinson makes her feature film debut as writer and director with 7 Keys, having found success in theatre, television, and radio. Immediately, she shows confidence in executing her vision with the opening shots of houses and flats around London, each one tinged with […]
Mike Leitch
I'm an autistic guy living in Cardiff, searching for any excuse to write and make the most out of what he got from his English Literature MA. Main interests are horror, in pretty much any medium, theatre and literature.
Custom (2024): Sexual Power Dynamics Blurred in Unsettling Debut (Glasgow Frightfest 2024)(Review)
With a tantalising teaser played during last year’s London Frightfest, Tiago Teixeira’s feature debut Custom makes its world premiere at the Glasgow edition. It centres on Harriet (Abigail Hardingham, also an associate producer) and Jasper (Rowan Polonski), a couple who have struggled to get success with their art and have […]
Deliver Us (2024): Antichrist horror sacrifices ambiguity for shock (Review)
I’m no expert on religious horror films, so it’s hard for me to gauge if there’s been a recent resurgence or there’s just a consistent stream of them. Either way, Lee Roy Kunz & Cru Ennis’s Deliver Us comes out in a relatively crowded market, though with recent blockbusters like […]
The Peasants / Chlopi (2023): An Innovative Combination of Historical Epic and Living Painting
Following on from the success of Loving Vincent, which utilised an innovative technique of recreating frames of recorded live-action scenes as oil paintings, DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman have found a new way of exploring their unique aesthetic. The Peasants is an adaptation of Wladyslaw Reymont’s novel of the same […]
The Coffee Table (Soho Horror Fest 2023)(Review)
Caye Casas’ first solo feature is a difficult film to review because its plot hinges on an unexpected and horrifying event early on. It’s doubly difficult as it’s currently on the festival circuit with no clear future in terms of wider distribution, making it hard to recommend since it isn’t […]
The Guard from Underground (1992): Kiyoshi’s Kurosawa’s Brutal Nineties Slasher (Review)
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has explored a variety of genres in a career spanning over forty years, and this release of his fourth feature, The Guard from Underground, demonstrates that his confidence in genre-hopping came early on. The film begins as a work-based drama, but gradually shifts into slasher horror as […]
Good Boy (2023): A Horror Romcom with a Nasty Bite (Review)
Following its UK premiere at Frightfest in August this year, Blue Finch Film have released the much-anticipated Good Boy on digital, and although director Viljar Bøe’s third feature dabbles in the horror genre, as with films like Audition and Fresh, it initially plays out as a typical romantic comedy until […]
Raging Grace (Frightfest 2023): A Striking Genre Take on Immigration (Review)
In the last few years there have been a couple of interesting horror movies that focused on servitude like The Maid (2020), and Nanny (2022). Raging Grace continues this (hopefully growing), trend by following in Nanny’s footsteps and adding anxiety around immigration to the mix. The tale of an illegal […]
Mother May I? (2023): A Therapeutic Nightmare (Review)
The feature length debut from Laurence Vannicelli, best known up to this point for being a co-writer of Porno, is a memorably twisty, paranoid horror that continues Kyle Gallner’s hit-rate of memorable horror films, matched in energy and commitment by his co-star Holland Roden. In Mother May I? Gallner and […]
Hiruko the Goblin (1991): A Uniquely Wild Fantasy Horror (Review)
Third Window continue their gradual releasing of director Shinya Tsukamoto’s filmography with his early feature known as Hiruko the Goblin overseas and Yokai Hunter: Hiruko in Japan, after the manga series of which two stories are adapted. Released in between the first two Tetsuo films that first made his name, […]