His name has been whispered on the winds for years unknown, inspiring dread in those who feel its creeping power in their bones. Travelling the seas from his European homeland, his conquests of lust and violence have been writ into legend. And now, as 2025 draws to a dark close, […]
Movies & Documentaries
Sohome Horror 2025 Round Up: Featuring Mooch, Stinker & More…
We are wrapping up for 2025, but before we do, we have to conclude our coverage of one of our final festivals of the year—specifically its online sibling. Soho Horror has become one of the more respected British horror film festivals in recent years, forming a B-tier alongside Sheffield’s Celluloid […]
István Szabó: Mephisto/Colonel Redl/Hanussen (1981-1988) Faustian Pacts & A Landmark Trilogy on Complicity
Released to Blu-ray by Second Run this week is a boxset of films from acclaimed Hungarian director István Szabó. Made between 1981 and 1988, these three films (Szabó himself is loathe to term them as a trilogy, though they have thematic- to say nothing of geographic and historical – similarities) […]
City on Fire (1987) How Ringo Lam Defined Hong Kong’s “Heroic Bloodshed” Genre
In the early 80s there was a new breed of action film starting to plant roots. A genre that kept a lot of the righteous chivalry of old but now it was no longer the pursuit of mastery in the martial world, it was the gun that ruled supreme. Stories […]
Kinki (Imagine Festival 2025) Koji Shiraishi’s Unnerving Scavenger Hunt
Koji Shiraishi may be best recognised in the West for his contributions to the found footage genre with films like Noroi and the Senritsu Kaiki File series, but a closer look at his filmography shows a reluctance to be pigeonholed. The general unavailability of his work outside of Japan makes […]
The Misadventures of Vince and Hick (Soho Horror 2025)
This may sound like a contradiction or beside the point, but personally, it’s the “palate cleansers” at a horror festival—the movies that stray from the fest’s titular genre—that mark it out as one to pay attention to. Some don’t offer those, whereas the good ones do. Soho Horror has long […]
What The Tide Dragged In (Sohome Horror 2025)
Premiering at Soho Horror Fest is Chilean drama-horror What The Tide Dragged In, an intriguing but ultimately underwhelming exploration of grief from director Patricio Valladares. What The Tide Dragged In fits into the burgeoning world of mumblecore cinema. Yes, I hate that term as much as you do (‘elevated horror’ hasn’t […]
Head Like a Hole (Sohome Horror 2025)
Slow cinema has a curious history. Once upon a time, it wasn’t even a thing; for a movie to be slow meant something was taking its time to evoke a world or character. Then the term “slow cinema” was invented, and it eventually became a lazy byword and strategy for […]
Blood Shine (2025): a hauntingly beautiful dive into belief (Sohome Horror 2025)
Close your eyes and picture a cult for me. Strange request, I know. You may be thinking about real-life cults from the Manson Family and the People’s Temple (of Jonestown massacre infamy) to Scientology. Or perhaps your perception of cults has been shaped by pagan cults with strange and sinister […]
Seeds (Imagine Film Festival 2025)
How many indigenous actors can you name? Whether Australian, Canadian or American, I assume it will be a handful at most. More often than not, they are consigned to the sidelines, limited to a specific type of story — a range which has become more limited with the western fading […]