One question that will never receive a positive answer is “how was the funeral?” Sure, they can be pleasant experiences that celebrate the life of a loved one, but they’re always sad, potentially traumatic days. Enter The Funeral from Turkish director Ocrun Behram, which played at 2024’s Glasgow Frightfest the weekend just […]
From the Festivals
Wake Up (Glasgow Frightfest 2024)(Review)
If the name “RKSS” sounds familiar to you, it’s likely because they were the French-Canadian trio responsible for 2015’s quirky post-apocalyptic gore-fest Turbo Kid – likely the stand-out title of the kids-on-bikes-sploitation wave that sprung up around the mid-2010s, when the world was caught in the grip of Stranger Things […]
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 […]
All You Need is Death (Glasgow Frightfest 2024)(Review)
“Folk horror” is a term which has been applied to a large variety of vastly different, and occasionally disparate, pieces of genre film and fiction – yet what ties together almost all of those works is one central, core concept; that which is past is not dead, and furthermore, it […]
Documentary Shorts (Slamdance Film Festival 2024)(Review)
Like any industry film festival, Slamdance has its different strands – Graham talked about the experimental shorts, joining that there are animated shorts, and narrative shorts as well as the more traditional documentary and narrative feature sections that are also sub-divided. Fields that have some impressive alumni, with the festival […]
Experimental Shorts (Slamdance Film Festival 2024) (Review)
Even in a festival as dedicated to the unexpected as Slamdance, there’s only one strand where you can see a film whose descriptive subtitles specify the sound of “[downpour of fish]”. It’s the experimental shorts strand, a useful opportunity to press your ear to the film-making underground. The fishy rain […]
The Complex Forms (Slamdance Film Festival 2024)(Review)
Slamdance is a film festival positioned around micro budget productions, giving writers and directors an early step in their career – a step with considerable lineage given its on the doorstep of its third decade. That qualifier, micro-budget, gives a certain impression of what sort of narrative films the festival […]
Demon Mineral (Slamdance Film Festival 2024)(Review)
Now just a year away from its thirtieth birthday, Slamdance remains focused on low-budget films from emerging directors. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s alienated from the mainstream, though. The 2024 festival has specialist strands dealing with two areas that have been unexpectedly prominent in mainstream media of late. One of […]
Onyx the Fortuitious and the Talisman of Souls (Soho Horror Fest 2023)(Review)
5 fans are invited to the ritual to end all rituals. So starts the hilarious intro to a rollercoaster ride that has all the wit, nostalgia and laughs of Tenacious D and Clerks 2. It reaches into how we all felt as teenagers. Surfing the internet, finding the things you […]
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 […]