On Christmas Eve, self-confessed Christmas hater Tori Tooms just wants to get whiskey wasted and make some bad decisions. Her plans are interrupted when a robotic Santa in a nearby toy shop glitches and goes on a rampage, leading to a festive, neon-drenched killing spree that will drag Tori into […]
Reviews
The Forgiven (2021) – Desert Slow Burner, Full of Repression, Class Divides, and Grief (Blu-Ray Review)
The Forgiven opens with married couple David and Jo Henninger (Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain) in Morocco for their wealthy friend Richard’s party (Matt Smith) and after sinking a bottle of wine and a squabble over directions to the remote palatial venue, they accidentally hit and kill a local teen […]
Croupier (1998): Hold on Tightly, Let Go Lightly (Blu-Ray Review)
Uunnnngh, how sexy is Kate Hardie? OK, now I’ve got that out of my system for the umpteenth time, we can begin… Released to Blu-ray by Arrow Video this month comes Croupier, the film that afforded Get Carter director Mike Hodges a brief resurgence at the turn of the century […]
Mad God (2022): A Beautiful Collage of Sickening Horror (Blu-Ray Review)
Mad God is a film that is easy to recommend since it has something for everyone: it is a stop motion animation; an ambitious personal project over thirty years in the making; a gross horror film; a shining example of pure visual storytelling; a particularly squelchy take on dystopia; and […]
Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes (2021) Surrealist, Classical Euro Horror reinvents itself (Cinema Review)
A knowing film can be a tricky thing. Make the knowing winks too subtle and it can go over the viewers’ heads. Be too obvious and the nudges become as distracting and irritating as actual elbows in the ribs. This does not stop many a filmmaker from tipping their hat […]
The Driver (1978) Walter Hill’s influential, minimalist crime classic (Blu-Ray Review)
Even though it’s only Walter Hill’s second feature, The Driver feels like it was made by someone with decades of experience. Hill takes tropes from old-school Westerns and Noirs and strips them back to their most primitive forms, although it retains a revisionist approach to the genres where no character […]
The Cat and the Canary & The Ghost Breakers (1939/1940) (Blu-Ray Review)
The classic horror set-up of a group of strangers finding themselves stranded together on a dark and stormy night at a spooky gothic mansion is one as old as the genre itself. A staple of the stage and screen, the concept of the “old dark house” has endured for over […]
The Leech (2022) Straying From The Path of God Leads to Deadly Consequences (Blu-Ray Review)
Being a man of God means to be a man of principle as you follow and conform to the path that the man above wishes you to uphold. As we face temptation and lust, it’s the power of God that should theoretically help us survive these sins to live a […]
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) One of the earliest and purest examples of cinematic dread (4K Review)
Few cinematic movements have been as influential to the formation and development of cinema as German Expressionism. Its intricate and fantastical set design, emphasis on close-ups and fantastic use of dynamic lighting to craft deep shadows have gone on to influence a wide range of Hollywood genres from gothic horror […]
Father Earth (2022): big issues tackled in Graham Fellows’s small-scale fashion (Review)
There is a school of thought that, if you’re going to make a film with one obvious vulnerability, you should acknowledge it as soon as possible in order to disarm your critics. Anyone making a film about climate change in 2022 will know exactly what the naysayers will come out […]