Although its title suggests something pulpier, Shudder’s latest release, Daddy’s Head is actually a frightening exploration of grief told via polished filmmaking. It leans towards elevated horror aesthetics, most notably in the modernist house setting which recalls Ex-Machina, Parasite, The Invisible Man, etcetera. It is the distinction between the sharp-edged, […]
Movies & Documentaries
Haunted Ulster Live (2023) Ghostwatch… with Laughs (Review)
Arriving just in time for Halloween this year, Haunted Ulster Live is another addition to the horror subgenre that can perhaps best be described as “fake live Halloween broadcast”. Late Night with the Devil earned plenty of plaudits earlier this year, and back in 2018 Inside Number 9‘s Dead Line […]
Night Of The Living Dead (1968) A Pioneering but Imperfect Trailblazer
At this point in time it’s fair to say that the reputation of George A Romero’s zombie trilogy is so embedded into the history of horror that no amount of criticism would be able to shift their reputation. Even me, apologetically as a first-timer to these films, knew so much […]
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) Vin Diesel’s Patchily Plotted Sci-Fi Space Opera
Like the first film, The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), continues to shape the “Riddick-verse”, enhancing the foundation that was created in Pitch Black (2000). In that first film we’re given a basic story and world view, and it works – in fact, it’s an excellent film because of it. Vin […]
V H S Beyond (2024): Far From Out Of This World
If you look at the list of directors and writers who have contributed to the V H S series, it is impressive how many would go on to huge success such as Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Benson and Moorhead and Chloe Okuno, to name a few. By this point though, […]
Red Sun (1971) East Meets Western (Review)
At first glance Red Sun seems like a standard western, however, the first thing you notice is the starry international cast: Charles Bronson (American), Toshiro Mifune (Japanese), the recently deceased Alain Delon (French) and Ursula Andress (Swiss) – it truly is an interesting film. This is one of the aspects […]
The Hitcher (1986) What a Picture! (review)
Released in 1986, The Hitcher was the brainchild of writer Eric Red (Near Dark, Blue Steel) that was directed by Robert Harmon. Between the paltry box-office takings and criticisms regarding the film’s “sadistic” violence (including zero star reviews from Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel), it was an unappreciated work that […]
Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives (2023) Transgenerational Guilt Haunts this House (Review)
Out now from Blue Finch Films is the rarest of rarities for the modern horror fan, a German genre title – Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives. Aside from the halcyon days of Expressionism and the Euro Horror boom there are only a handful of titles from Germany and Austria […]
We Still Kill the Old Way (1967) An Enigmatic Tale of Crime and Corruption (Review)
Released on Blu-ray by Radiance is yet another slice of classic crime drama from Italian cinema – Elio Petri’s 1967 movie We Still Kill the Old Way, starring Gian Maria Volonté and Irene Papas. The film is an adaptation by Ugo Pirro of the 1966 novel To Each His Own […]
Megalopolis (2024) It’s A Lot, And A Lot Of It Is Not Good
At the age of 85, Francis Ford Coppola has literally nothing to prove as a director, and whatever the reception was to his small-scale films throughout the 1990s and 2000s, they managed to coast by due to the fact that the filmmaker behind them made the first two Godfather films […]