HOSTILE DIMENSIONS After Death of a Vlogger, Graham Hughes takes another stab at making a distinctly modern found-footage film, and it begins with what you might call a Blair Witch speedrun. A pair of documentarians exploring a derelict house find something uncanny and disappear without a trace. It’s then revealed […]
From the Festivals
Illusion (Review) (Kinoteka Festival 2023)
The spectre of a missing person creates a different type of distress than death, because not knowing is a unique form of anguish. While there may be grief over the strong possibility that the missing person is dead, this grief is hard to process when the lack of certainty adds […]
The Pawnshop (Kinoteka 2023 Review)
The great documentarian Molly Dineen once said her preferred subject was “anything British that’s dying”. Łukasz Kowalski’s debut film The Pawnshop, presented as part of the 2023 Kinoteka festival of Polish cinema, shows that this formula works for anything Polish as well. It’s set almost entirely within the four walls […]
The Perpetrators (BFI Flare 2023) bite-sized cinematic rumination on depictions of queerness and villainy (Review)
The Perpetrators is a ghost story. This is likely obvious to anybody familiar with the film’s concept, with its lead character being a pre-pubescent phantom, but beyond that, this 14-minute short is a tale of the collective ghosts of a queer past, ones which still continue to haunt the LGBTQ+ […]
Aberrance (SXSW 2023)(Review)
Aberrance is a Mongolian psychological thriller by director Baatar Batsukh. Erkhmee and Selenge have retreated to a holiday home deep in the wilderness, keen to escape their lives in the city. Erkhmee seems determined to provide some peace and quiet for Selenge, but this seems at odds with the increasingly […]
My Drywall Cocoon (SXSW 2023)(Review)
The only Brazilian feature in competition at this year’s SXSW, My Drywall Cocoon has a director who may not be familiar to English-language audiences, albeit largely due to the timidity of our distributors. Caroline Fioratti’s debut feature Meus 15 Anos was a huge crowd-pleaser in Brazil, but crowd-pleasers tend not […]
This World Is Not My Own (SXSW 2023) (Review)
Receiving its world premiere at the SXSW festival this week is This World Is Not My Own, a film about a remarkable artist you’ve probably never heard of, yet by the time the credits roll she may well become a new favourite. Nellie Mae Rowe was born on the 4th […]
#ChadGetsTheAxe (Glasgow Frightfest 2023)(Review)
The dopamine rush that comes with social media is second to none. The likes and interactions you gain from strangers on the internet have shaped modern society in ways no one could imagine. As social media and the personalities within only grow in popularity, it’s only inevitable the lines of […]
Smoking Causes Coughing (Glasgow Frightfest 2023)(Review)
Anyone who found this winter’s cycle of Oscar-bait movies about the magic of cinema rather too middlebrow may find respite in Quentin Dupieux’s Smoking Causes Coughing, the opening film at this year’s Glasgow FrightFest. Rather than the sanctified work of John Ford or Gene Kelly, Smoking Causes Coughing is inspired […]
Mother Superior (Glasgow Frightfest 2023)(Review)
A young nurse comes to a spooky house in the middle of nowhere to care for an old woman, with a crusty groundskeeper – the only other company for either of them. Within this house, strange things happen, and the nurse starts to wonder how much she is actually seeing, […]