When did spirituality stop being cool? Our collective faith in faith seems to have taken a beating from the moment we stopped believing in religious middle-managers who got outed for the narcissists and manipulators they often were … but as a species and as individuals, does that cut us off […]
From the Festivals
Buffet Infinity (Fantasia 2025): Innovative and Hilarious Genre-Shifting Filmmaking
If you’ve seen classic Adult Swim videos like Too Many Cooks or Unedited Footage of a Bear and wondered what they’d be like as a feature film, then look no further than Buffet Infinity, which I can only describe as Adult Swim meets Welcome to Nightvale. If you’re familiar with […]
Burning (Ot) (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
The famous quote about movies is that they are an “empathy machine”, and personally I believe that is at it truest within the genre space – whether it be marginalised voices or something from an otherwise culturally “uncharted” part of the world – horror has it all. Whenever I see […]
Noise (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
Horror works when it taps into something primal that you can feel in your bones. As dramatic as that sounds, it doesn’t need to something hard, deep or physical, it can invoke something mundane, twist it and there we have it – the uncanny. The uncanny is not only where […]
Dog of God (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
The awards success of Gints Zilbalodis’s Flow over the last year has really put the Latvian film industry on the map in a big way, animated entirely through Blender, it’s been called one of the best films of the decade so far and is the highest-grossing Latvian film of all […]
Hellcat (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
Isn’t it funny how time can heal all wounds in the world of movies? Just a few short years ago, the words “contained”, “chamber” or “one location horror” had utterly exhausted the genre audience – to the extent that people didn’t want to see another film set in one place […]
Hold the Fort (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
William Bagley’s Hold the Fort had its world premiere at the 2025 Fantasia Festival, and two films in, the director of The Murder Podcast seems to be flying his flag for comedy horror with gleeful abandon. It’s a sub‑genre often deemed unbankable by the studio system and those who finance […]
The Well (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
Apocalypse cinema is fairly self-explanatory and, if you listen to certain fatalistic people in the media and on social media, we’re currently living through one. Post-apocalypse, in which the end has happened and society falls into a violent anarchy, has been endlessly mined as part of the zombie sub-genre – […]
Saint Clare (2024) Fun, Atmospheric Play on the Cycles of Vengeance
“Everything I have said and done is in the hands of god” Clare Bleeker (Bella Thorne), has been plagued with voices since she was a child. Righteous justice, only to be brought by her down on the heads of those who deserve. But how will she live with the shadows […]
Fantasia Festival 2025: What We Are Looking Forward To!
The dog days of summer are upon us, along with a season of mania, chaos, and high strangeness – all of which can be found in the line-up for the 29th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which continues to bring attendees the best, boldest, and often most bizarre […]