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, […]
From the Festivals
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 […]
The Piano Accident (Fantastic Fest 2025) France’s greatest prankster goes straight
Quentin Dupieux is the rarest of all filmmakers: someone who is at their best when actively getting in their own way. A prankster of both the music and film scenes, his dual-career as electro-maestro Mr. Oizo and teasing deadpan feature film sketch-comedy auteur has inspired as much laughter as it […]
Tie Man (Fantastic Fest 2025)
Every so often, a movie comes along which is so deeply committed to being sincerely odd that – regardless of my overall enjoyment of it – I can’t help but appreciate it on principle. Tie Man (2024) is one of those movies. Directed by Rémi Fréchette, best known for his […]
Looking Forward to Celluloid Screams 2025
The UK festival scene is strong, but one facet of it is stronger than all other – the horror festivals. We know the top of the totem pole is in central London, yet spotted up and down the country are all manner of weekend long events for the macabre genre. […]
A Blind Bargain (Frightfest 2025)
In 1922, acclaimed silent filmmaker Wallace Worsley would release one of his most famous directorial efforts, A Blind Bargain – a tale of mad science and medical malpractice which starred horror legend Lon Chaney as both the sinister Doctor Lamb and his creation, “The Ape Man”. Worsley drove the censors […]
Where is Juan Moctezuma? & Human (Frightfest 2025)
When in the moment of covering a film festival with multiple stages and screens, there are conflicts that mean you often don’t get the chance to see everything you’d like to. Today, I’m talking about two wildly different movies that fell victim to this – Where is Juan Moctezuma? (dir. […]
Mother of Flies (FrightFest 2025)
At the time of writing, it has been a week since I watched Mother of Flies, the latest film from ‘The Adams Family’, a filmmaking troupe composed of Toby Poser, John Adams, and their two daughters, Zelda and Lulu Adams – and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about […]
Bambi: The Reckoning (Frightfest 2025) Public domain horror that (almost) finds its footing
The public domain gold rush is alive and well from one side of the globe to another, with low-budget filmmakers picking away at the mummified remains of fresh ideas from nearly a century ago. The US seems content with pedalling out three cursed Popeye films in one year, as well […]