We are wrapping up for 2025, but before we do, we have to conclude our coverage of one of our final festivals of the year—specifically its online sibling. Soho Horror has become one of the more respected British horror film festivals in recent years, forming a B-tier alongside Sheffield’s Celluloid Screams, Aberystwyth’s Abertoir and Nottingham’s Mayhem, supporting acts to the titanic main stage allure of FrightFest. One thing Soho Horror has over the others, however, is that it has long championed accessibility by continuing to host an online event long after the peak of COVID lockdowns. It’s from this Sohome Horror event that we pick these five movies: Dutch sci-fi from Michael Middelkoop in Straight Outta Space, the intense character drama Crossword from Michael Vlamis, the endearing yet scatological sci-fi Stinker (SASYQ) from Kazakhstan, the horror anthology Bloody Tales in Bonfire Light from one-man Spanish animation team Charli Sangr, and, as if to imitate the “one more thing” segment from video game conferences, Mooch—a Myspace mall-rock version of The Big Lebowski from Jeff Ryan. By any stretch of a genre film festival, we are talking about a hugely diverse and interesting selection of movies from across the globe.
Starting off with Straight Outta Space (Straatcoaches vs Aliens), Michael Middelkoop’s comedy sci-fi sees best friends Amin (Shahine El-Hamus) and Mitchell (Daniël Kolf) trying to survive a sudden alien attack akin to any version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, albeit an invasion where people are turned into super-strong zombies who spread their “infection” by vomiting black gunk on one another. It all takes place in a working-class estate that has been earmarked for gentrification, in spite of the community that already lives there—a line of satire that sees the script become very unforgiving toward the Dutch political establishment. Rounding out its concoction are a pair of idiot policemen who also run a YouTube channel, Amin’s refusal to grow up (which causes a falling out with his girlfriend, played by Stephanie van Eer), and questions about his friendship with Mitchell. And let’s not forget the best character, Panter (Sinem Kavus), a local drug dealer and best friend to seemingly everyone in these suburbs—an important character to highlight as she is the one person with her head screwed on straight.
Despite borrowing from Body Snatchers and the visual language of zombie cinema, Straight Outta Space is a very light and airy sci-fi comedy; there’s very little in the way of gore, with the worst scene of violence happening out of shot as the cast comically reacts to how extreme it is. The character who gets the worst treatment is a fluffy dog, a plot beat that reminded me of Fred Dekker’s eternally overlooked Night of the Creeps (also a body-snatcher/zombie movie). These space zombies aren’t after human flesh—just food. Any old food will do to satisfy their insatiable appetite, and they aren’t intentionally propagating their numbers; as they say on multiple occasions, they just want to go home. It won’t be the last time I say this, but it is a genre movie that can be watched by the whole family—if you are comfortable with drug use, of course. While it doesn’t do anything exceptional, Straight Outta Space is a very funny sci-fi comedy that could do very well for itself with the cult cinema crowd on a streaming platform. It’s just a pleasing project all around.
The tone takes a huge 180 now with Michael Vlamis’s intense chamber drama, the horror-adjacent Crossword. This two-hander takes place exclusively inside a lavish designer house, where married couple Tessa (Aurora Perrineau) and James (Michael Vlamis, who quadruples as writer and producer) come to terms with their young daughter’s tragic, accidental death. Both are grieving in their own way: Tessa is deep in the press cycle for her latest book, while James buries himself in the tradition of completing the daily newspaper crossword.
The movie follows James as his psyche crumbles, his grief manifesting in extreme paranoia, with the crossword puzzles and their answers feeding into his mania. It’s a very intense, mood-based character drama that goes to some incredibly emotionally dark places. While a very good movie, Crossword is a bleak number and a great vehicle for performances; however, I’d have a hard time recommending or watching it again when it has a more general release. Impressively acted by everyone involved, and empathetic in its consideration of psychological unravelling, it is still a movie about parents being unable to save a young girl drowning in their own back yard. An impressive, intense movie that is bleak in an all too real way.
Over to Kazakhstan now with Stinker, a movie I can only describe as E.T. with more shit. It starts with a character others call “Stinker” repeatedly attempting—and failing—to commit suicide in increasingly tragicomic ways, a process that eventually leads him to a truckstop in the middle of nowhere. Just when it appears he may have finally succeeded, an alien spaceship crashes nearby. Luckily, his noose isn’t tied tightly enough, and he falls back to Earth. Returning to the truckstop, he asks for help from the business owner and a stuttering policeman tasked with clearing out undesirables ahead of an upcoming presidential motorcade. Neither believes him. When he goes back to find the spaceship, it’s gone, and it’s there that he meets an alien who can’t survive in our atmosphere and keeps itself alive by hiding in the pond of poop beneath a toilet. The film charts the budding friendship between the overlooked Stinker, the denizens of the truckstop, and the alien—until the local politician decides to put on a show of strength ahead of the political visit.
For a movie that stars an alien that can only survive by hiding in liquefied shit, Stinker is incredibly likable and endearing—and vitally, not as disgusting as that sentence implies. A movie that starts off being utterly glib about ending your own life comes to be surprisingly life-affirming, telling the story of a character who lost all hope finding himself again thanks to the help of an unlikely friend. If you don’t have a problem with the amount of bodily waste on camera—and later, blown up—I would have no problem describing Stinker as a movie you could watch with your entire family. To go further, and probably lose the room, I actually prefer it to E.T., as Yerden Telemisov’s movie isn’t obnoxiously sentimental or mawkishly manipulative. What can I say—Stinker is a charmer. Even if you don’t harbour such a distaste for Spielberg’s fan favourite like I do, this light Kazakh sci-fi movie has charm to spare.
Heading to Spain for the penultimate movie, with Claymation horror anthology Bloody Tales in Bonfire Light, directed by Charli Sangr—who not only directs and animates but does everything, like an animating Neil Breen-multihyphenate. The story follows two criminals who brutally shoot up a bank and go on the run, hoping to make it to France. On the way, they happen upon a group of stoners and, under threat of death, force them to tell bloody stories—after all, they only need one person to guide them across the Spain-France border.
One thing Soho Horror has over the others, however, is that it has long championed accessibility by continuing to host an online event.
The first story is about gangsters torturing people they believe stole drugs from under a park bench, a tale that ends badly for all involved. This short opens with an extended argument while one captor watches Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on their phone. The second sees a military squad exterminate rebels in the woods; the sole survivor makes a Faustian pact with a talking tree. The last follows a group of stoners trying to survive and escape a city during a viral outbreak that turns people into zombies.
On the face of it, the fact that this is a one-man project is incredibly impressive. Even with the homemade aesthetic of the characters, it’s a remarkable achievement, and you can’t undersell the work Sangr put into bringing these Bloody Tales to life. However, that endeavour is considerably tainted by its length. More problematic is that not one character even flirts with being anything other than hateable, with homophobic slurs regularly normalised in the dialogue. The entire film is littered with dialogue scenes that feel like they go on forever without a meaningful payoff (the whole tangent about who directed From Dusk Till Dawn is a prime example).
Stylistically, the closest comparison is Lee Hardcastle (Thingu), who keeps his work to around five minutes tops. There’s certainly space for longer-form solo animation, but Bloody Tales in Bonfire Light could be halved in runtime, and it would do it a world of good—there’s that much excess and aimlessness. While it is undeniably an incredible achievement, it also exposes its character flaws by being so drawn out. If Sangr can improve his characterization and keep it under an hour, I’ll be there. For now, these Bloody Tales are simply far too raw.
Last but not least was a late addition to the Sohome slate: Mooch from Jeff Ryan (Mean Spirited, 2022). Ryan stars as Shane, the titular Mooch, an aimless 20-something bumming his way through life—evidenced by his job as a caddy at the local golf course, where his colleagues are all teenagers at least ten years his junior. His life is scored by emo-pop or Myspace-era mall rock (I refuse to call it post-hardcore, but then, I’m a purist for this sort of thing). It all seems to be falling apart for Shane until an interaction with one of the golf course’s regulars, Don (Scott Cohen), goes south. After Shane gets handsy with the contents of Don’s wallet, Shane is strong-armed into working as a private detective to figure out what’s going on with Don’s ex-wife and his business partners.
The Big Lebowski or The Long Goodbye are good reference points, but unlike their cases, the one here is mired by incompetence and stupidity at every level—it also doesn’t help that Shane isn’t the most likeable of souls. Yet, ironically, it all translates into a likable comedy neo-noir that has all the usual flirtations and ensemble of eccentrics you’d expect from a Raymond Chandler story, albeit more down-to-earth, provincial, and clumsy. All intentionally, of course.
In terms of its comedy, it isn’t especially funny in a moment-to-moment sense; its humour is more successful in the slightness of its world-building and characterisations. Where it is funny, however, is in Jeff Ryan’s surprisingly deft touch with slapstick and his commitment to making an absolute fool of himself (the credits sequence nails this especially). He does it with such a liberated abandon that it actually makes the unlikeable Shane a joy to spend time with. I appreciate how contradictory that sounds, but it doesn’t make it any less true. I wish Jeff Ryan all the luck as a director, but if that doesn’t work out, he has a second calling in physical performances like this. Mooch isn’t for everyone, yet there is a crowd out there that will lap up this very unconventional comedy neo-noir. Respect to Soho Horror and its sole organizer, Mitch, for giving it such a platform—a fact Ryan was very gracious to reiterate in his humble introduction.
For 2025 though, we are done with film festivals. There are a lot we hope to return to (Soho Horror included, check out our YouTube for some interviews) and others we hope to make our debut with. But for 2026, remember, there’s no such thing as festival season. We hope to see you there, thank you for reading and your continued support.
