The past few years haven’t been an easy time to be transgender (if there ever truly has been an “easy” time to be trans), not least in the United States, so it’s not surprising that the majority of films by trans creatives in recent memory have been on the angstier […]
From the Festivals
Rose of Nevada (BFI London Film Festival 2025) A Ghost Story That Gets Under The Nail
After working on his Bafta-winning feature Bait and folk-horror follow-up, Enys Men, Mark Jenkin vowed that he would never work with boats again: too many logistical problems, unpredictable tides, sea sickness, etc. Thank goodness he went back on his word, as it is hard to imagine a better impetus for […]
Relentless (Grimmfest 2025)
An underrated aspect of the horror festival is the programming process as you need to satisfy the demands of the genre faithful, whilst also providing palate cleansers since a weekend of nothing but horror is exhausting. After previously playing Grimmfest in 2019 with his movie, Artik, writer/director Tom Botchii returns to […]
Frankie Maniac Woman (Grimmfest 2025)
It can be tempting, when reviewing a low-budget film you have no real preconceptions of, to compare it with a recent hit. In the case of Pierre Tsigaridis’s Frankie, Maniac Woman, a graphic horror movie about a woman driven mad by unreasonable beauty standards, the obvious comparison point would be […]
Deathstalker (Fantastic Fest 2025) Retrograde 80’s trash finds glorious new purpose
In an age when to be dorky is to be damned, when eons have passed since the final battle between charm and naffness sealed the fate of many brave artist-warriors yet to be born, a hero will rise. His name… is Steven Kostanski. His conquests are legendary in the latest […]
Marama (Fantastic Fest 2025)
Colonialism is an ill of the “political class”, an eternal manifestation of the 1%’s insatiable greed. Their empire way of thinking has drawn together some far-flung corners, such as North Yorkshire and the Maori people of New Zealand, as facilitated by the violence of Captain James Cook. While Captain Cook may be […]
Dildo Heaven (2002) (Fantastic Fest 2025)
You’d think you would know what kind of film you’re in for when you decided to sit down and watch a movie called Dildo Heaven (2002), but no matter what your expectations might be, you’d only be half right. It’s a hell of a title, to say the least. For […]
Kenichi Ugana Interview: The Curse (Fantastic Fest 2025)
We continue our 2025 coverage of Fantastic Fest with something a little different now… Yesterday, I talked about the latest movie from Japanese indie director, Kenichi Ugana. A bit fan of his previous work, The Gesouidoz, as soon as I saw it was part of this year’s fantastic fest line-up, […]
A Woman Called Mother (Fantastic Fest 2025)
The Indonesian horror scene is currently doing very strong domestic business; it hasn’t had a break-out international film on the level of Japan’s Ringu or South Korea’s A Tale of Two Sisters yet, but you wouldn’t bet against it happening. Randolph Zaini’s A Woman Called Mother probably won’t be that […]
Meat Kills (Fantastic Fest 2025)
Upon brief inspection, mainly the title and synopsis, Meat Kills would appear to be a horror-thriller about the grotesque way that animals are treated for human consumption. A group of activists stage a rescue mission to release pigs suffering under atrocious conditions in a pig farm, and come face to […]