A Horror Film Blog

I enjoyed this.  It is obviously a low budget effort, with just three actors and a limited set (cabin / woods) but whatever money they had was spent wisely, getting capable performers and splashing out (pun intentional) on lots of gory wolf action. Has anything nice ever happened when people go to an isolated cabin in the woods? The first half is building up characters and relationships.  The second half is a fight for survival against some mean doggos.  Neither part is quite on-the-money but it is still engaging enough.   The characters and the conflicts are  a bit stock - you get the feeling we're in a mash up of the Hunger Games (Tough girl with bow in a love triangle with her rugged best friend and her soft city boyfriend) and ... uh ... something with wolves.  But the acting and setting is good.   The mis-en-scene helps you work out it is a love triangle, and it ain't the boys who are hot for each other The second half feels a bit rushed...

 Forgettable home-invasion-with-a-twist boiler. Social media star Mia agrees to pet sit her sister's doggo while said sister goes off to get some medical treatment.  Because someone is murdering local dogs, as you do.  While watching doggo, Mia is menaced by the creepy neighbour and her vapid influencer friends are simultaneously targeted by a Deranged Psycho (tm) who mutilates them as Mia fails to answer questions. So, yeah, we can assume someone watched Scream and thought they could do better.  They can't. If this seems familiar it is probably because you've seen Black Christmas.  Or Halloween.  Or Scream.  Or a any of a thousand better films. Daisye Tutor is very good as Mia. She effectively has to hold the whole film together as she is often the only character on screen for large amounts of time, and none of the rest have any development.  But the rest of the film is a mess, with an incoherent plot, poorly presented characters, a setting that ...

 Suitable Flesh materialised on Shudder recently and I watched it almost straight away. I had low expectations.  They were not met.  I mean that in a bad way. I knew, going in, it was a product of the Troma-style group of film makers associated with Stuart Gordon, a film maker often but inaccurately described as an 'adapter' and sometimes even a 'great' or even the 'greatest' adapter of Lovecraft's fiction. This accolade only makes sense if you have a) never read any of Lovecraft's fiction and b) never seen a Stuart Gordon film.  If you have done both, you'll know even if Stuart Gordon was the only person trying to adapt Lovecraft, he wouldn't be the best.  Some non-Euclidean director existing only in the curious space beyond the walls of Keziah Mason's would be doing a better job, even if the films produced could only be viewed though special spectacles manufactured by Migo and had the unfortunate side effect of rendering the viewer insane. ...

I am going to be controversial and say this revered film is only so-so. Yeah, I know, a real hot take on a film released 17 years ago. This is Pan.  He has a labyrinth. In a nutshell, for the three people who don't know nothin' about this film.  It is set in Spain during the Civil War.  A young girl, Ofelia, and her mother travel to a large house commandeered by fascist troops.  One of them their fascists - the commanding officer - is Ofelia's step-father and the father-to-be of the child Ofelia's mother is carrying. Ofelia soon discovers there is a whole whacky world of fantastic beasts living in the ancient labyrinth behind the house (rumours Jack Nicholson can be seen in a photograph on the wall can not be confirmed at this time.) One of these kooky characters is a faun who tells her to do a lot of stuff because she's actually a princess and if she does them she'll get her magic kingdom back.  So she does.  Meanwhile some plucky partisans are scrapping w...

A family shelter in an isolated cabin.  A hostile group of relentless marauders lay siege to them.  This is the stuff of many films, and it is also the stuff of 2017 Jackals .  A film about which the best thing you can say is it does what it sets out to do pretty well, and the worst thing you can say about it is it could have been a much better film. "Daddy, we will have a lot of things to talk through once this is over." The idea underpinning the narrative - a family attempts to 'deprogram' their son, the brainwashed member of a cult - was interesting and could have been developed a lot more. There was scope for an intriguing cat-and-mouse battle between the family and their ex-army deprogrammer, and the swivel eyed son; and the belief system of the cult could have been explored.  Instead, the intervention aspect is really just a MacGuffin, used to set up the plot of the film, because it requires these people to be in an isolated area so they can be assailed by the ...

A young couple decide to have a weekend away at his daddy's beach house in a town perched on the edge of the ocean.  Damned if they don't choose the weekend of some terrifying ecological catastrophe for it. Emily and Randall smooch.  We don't get many essentially nice people smooching in horror films, so let's celebrate them. I enjoyed the first two acts of this of this film a lot. And they are distinct acts - the initial establishment and location of character, then confusion and mounting horror, followed by an action-orientated climax. I particularly appreciated the director's willingness to take things slowly and let unease and uncertainty build up. For the first half hour everything seems normal and mundane.  Our characters - Emily and Randall - arrive at the beach house.  They meet an older couple who are also planning on staying there.  Delightfully, and so unusually for films, no-one is unpleasant or acts like a total dick. Misunderstandings smoothed over...