horror
DVD: ShiversFriday, 03 October 2014
“Are you going to be to Canada what Ingmar Bergman is to Sweden?” “Oh, I think so.” David Cronenberg’s response to a TV interviewer at the time of Shivers’ release must have seemed like unwarranted boastfulness in 1975, but he did indeed become one... Read more... |
Life After BethWednesday, 01 October 2014
Zombies have feelings too. That's the message at the heart of writer-director Jeff Baena's debut Life After Beth, which begins its life as a sensitive indie comedy with a winning deadpan shtick and ends up salivating and snarling after developing an... Read more... |
The GuestTuesday, 02 September 2014
Dan Stevens puts Downton behind him to become a CIA-built killing machine laying low in a New Mexico small town, in Adam Wingard’s bonkers new thriller. He looks all the better for it. Aristocratic English charm translates into Southern civility as... Read more... |
Murdered: Soul SuspectFriday, 13 June 2014
A detective ghost story with virtually no violence – Murdered: Soul Suspect is an odd construction. It is part point-and-click adventure game, part interactive fiction and part stealth-adventure – none of which are massively successful elements.... Read more... |
OculusFriday, 13 June 2014
Karen Gillan’s first Hollywood leading role finds her in the surely unusual position of not liking what she sees in the mirror. After five years as Doctor Who’s regularly killed and resurrected companion Amy Pond, life doesn’t get any easier for the... Read more... |
DVD: The Abominable Dr Phibes and Dr Phibes Rises AgainMonday, 09 June 2014
In 1921, Anton Phibes was killed in a fiery car crash. Horribly disfigured, he returns to avenge the death of his beautiful wife. So goes the set-up for The Abominable Dr Phibes, one of the UK’s finest cult horror films and very clearly a precursor... Read more... |
Penny Dreadful, Sky AtlanticWednesday, 21 May 2014
We've had endless waves of vampires, zombies and Frankenstein's monsters, so why not bundle them all together under the same doomily Gothic roof? Welcome to Penny Dreadful, created by writer John Logan and producer Sam Mendes (who previously worked... Read more... |
DVD: Theatre of BloodTuesday, 13 May 2014
Many films fuse humour with horror and many of those fail to be accomplished in either genre. Bringing fun to the scary often results in a clunkiness which neither raises laughs or goosebumps. The worst example might be the utterly awful Bloodbath... Read more... |
Willow CreekThursday, 01 May 2014
The Bigfoot legend rests on something close to found-footage: 1967’s grainy film of a large ape-like creature loping through the remote American North-west. The Patterson-Gimlin expedition’s reels are the Sasquatch conspiracy theorists version of... Read more... |
The Strange Colour of Your Body’s TearsFriday, 11 April 2014
Making sense of The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears is impossible. Beyond some early scene-setting, this Giallo-inspired film has no narrative and, apart from its protagonist, it becomes increasingly difficult to work out who is who, what is... Read more... |
DVD: Dead Of NightTuesday, 04 March 2014
Ealing Studios was known for comedy, but when it released Dead of Night in 1945, it unleashed on movie-goers the classic template of portmanteau horror for decades to come. The film comprises six tales – five supernatural stories and a framing... Read more... |
Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2Friday, 28 February 2014
Dracula, the ultimate symbol of undead power, mystery and evil. As the anti-hero in this action-adventure sequel to the excellent Lords Of Shadow, you'd hope this would make for an epic adventure, or at least some toothsome plotting. Instead we get... Read more... |
