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 […]
From the Festivals
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 […]
Booger (Soho Horror Festival 2023)(Review)
You’re right, it’s quite a title, and it could have been worse as, if Ted Nugent wasn’t such an unacceptable figure these days, Mary Dauterman’s feature debut could have been called Cat Scratch Fever. Anna, the film’s protagonist, receives a nasty clawing from her pet cat Booger that results in […]
Satan Wants You (Soho Horror Fest 2023)(Review)
In November of 1980 a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Lawrence Pazder from Victoria, British Columbia, wrote and published “Michelle Remembers” – an allegedly factual account of the childhood abuse of his patient, Michelle Smith, by a Satanic cult. Co-written by Smith herself, the book graphically describes how Michelle […]
Hippo (Soho Horror Film Festival 2023)(Review)
The title character of Mark H. Rapaport’s debut film, played by the film’s co-writer Kimball Farley, is an amateur film-maker who, quoting Nikola Tesla, promises his audience “man-made horrors beyond your comprehension” – and the Soho Horror Festival seem to have agreed by hosting the film’s UK premiere. It’s no […]
Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism (Soho Horror Fest 2023) (Review)
Having its UK premiere at Soho Horror Festival’s in-person Satanic Panic Gala, Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism is an exploration that scours the darkest depths of religious exorcism. Directed by Nick Kozakis and written by Alexander Angliss-Wilson, Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism centres around Australian couple Lara (Georgia Eyers), and her husband […]
The Hyperborean (Soho Horror Festival 2023)(Review)
Spoiler warning! “Heaven is still here, but it can’t be breathe.” Cook’s cosmic journey into grief, family dynamics, and moral grey areas. Who doesn’t love whiskey? With coke, on the rocks, with lemonade, it’s the drink that tastes good in every mood. Robert McClaw, a discoverer tasked with finding another […]
Saint Drogo (Soho Horror Festival 2023)(Review)
In Catholicism, Drogo is considered to be the patron saint of the unsightly and the outcast, shepherding a flock made up of those who are exiled and shunned for their perceived ugliness. The Flemish martyr’s relevance to Provincetown, Massachusetts (a small holiday town on the New England coast), may not […]
The Promised Land & The Zone of Interest (Montclair Film Festival 2023)(Review(s)
The Promised Land (Bastarden) I have often found that anything that Mads Mikkelsen is in is usually great and if it is not, it’s not his fault. I say that realizing that I’ve never seen a Danish film of his. So this was my first Danish language film of his. […]