A Horror Film Blog

A negligible found-footage film which doesn't bring anything new to the genre and which - even at 74 minutes - feel interminable. Found footage films can be very good - The Blair Witch Project , obviously, and I have a guilty fondness for the first Hell House LLC film.  They can be notable for innovation, essentially setting up the rules of the genre, like The MacPherson Tape and the mighty, repulsive yet glorious Cannibal Holocaust .  Or they can just be a bit rubbish, like Evidence . Happy campers. Have these guys never seen any found footage films? The stereotype of the found footage film is that it is what wannabe film makers do when they lack ideas, creativity and cinematic skill.  That's usually unfair because making something that looks like amateur handheld rubbish while still keeping it watchable, making sure the camera is actually pointing at the right thing at the right time, and making everything audible is actually difficult.  Even when you try to make...

This is not the other current film called Julia , which is a documentary about well known cook, writer and television personality, Julia Child. This Julia is a glossy, slickly made rape-revenge film starring Ashley Williams. So it pretty much goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that there are likely to be trigger warnings for rape and sexual violence. Rape-revenge films are always going to be challenging.  I am not opposed to the topic of rape being used in art.  After all, I like films in which people are terrorized, tortured and murdered.  Rape is, on an objective level, just another terrible thing that can be done by one human being to another.  it is interesting to observe, however, as a society how we seem far more comfortable with murder and evisceration than we are with rape. We'll laugh at some dumb lummox getting chopped into little pieces, and jeer as the blubber about it.  But as soon as rape is involved it becomes much more .... problema...

An Indonesian revenge chiller is not to be confused with the Indonesian revenge chiller from 1981 also called Queen of Black Magic. I'm sure this nice lady doesn't mean anyone any harm. The premise is familiar - the one time children who grew up in an orphanage reunite as adults, drawn back by the impending death of the kindly old man who cared for them as children. All Hell breaks loose as some mysterious force menaces them secrets revealed and revenge exacted on the guilty and the innocent. This had a lot of potential.  It is an interesting take on a familiar premise premise and the director takes time to establish characters, setting and location, and build up a sense of entrapment.  But a good set up is spoiled by bloody and gross special effects which break the illusion by not being convincing (or necessary). Don't worry.  The corpses will vomit bugs and we can all laugh about it. Then in the final act it swerves away from suspense altogether into torture porn - whic...

Director Sam Walker delivers a predictable and obvious alien invasion film, containing evidence he might be capable of better, given a script and resources. Three girls - predictably, the irritating social media influencer, the spoiled rich girl and the nice, sensible one (aka the brunette) - repair to an isolated luxury getaway.  Three girls on a fun weekend in the middle of nowhere.  Who do YOU think will still be breathing in 90 minutes time? They are there to bicker, drink smoke weed and witness a 'once in a lifetime' meteor shower.  The next day, they find a weird smelly turtle thing in the garden that proceeds to menace them in spite of their attempts to befriend it. I don't think this counts as a spoiler, because it is implicit in the title - the girls then find themselves 'impregnated' by the alien turtle thing, because after half a century or so it seem the aliens still just want to get our girls with child, and male film makers are still weirdly fixated on...

Jamie Lee Curtis gets to rest on her post Halloween laurels in a fun slasher film directed with far more skill and panache than you would expects kill.  Even in 1980, no-one would have mistaken this a a groundbreaking, genre-redefining film but it is still enjoyable. This is definitely one of the better examples of post Halloween / Friday the 13th tongue-in-cheek slasher silliness.  While the frankly dull Prom Night might be the one that everyone reveres, this cheerfully gory little film should enjoy a far more prominent place in the slasher cannon. Rather than imitating Black Christmas / Halloween / Friday the 13th and throwing a dart at a calendar and using whatever date it lands on as the 'justification' for someone murdering a bunch of co-eds / cheerleaders / babysitters / camp counsellors, this time they decide to shake things up by Putting It On A Train. FACT - everything is better on a train.  Sex is better on a train.  Food is better on a train.  Murder...

I rate films using the star system developed by legendary film reviewer Leslie Halliwell, who was notorious for not really liking films very much.  **** identifies something of great significance, a pinnacle of achievement. A horror landmark, renowned or neglected.  *** means the film is remarkable accomplishment - a genuinely good film, which is terrifying or intellectually satisfying - or, in rare cases, highly entertaining.  ** indicates something lifts this film a little bit above the run of common things; it's a good effort which will reward investigation.  * means an undistinguished film; a routine affair that might be adequate entertainment, but can certainly be passed by.  No Star means something actively unlikeable; a waste of time; an offensive piece of trash. Don't bother.

 This film answers the all important question that I know has been keeping many of us awake at night: what would have happened if Jean Luc Godard had decided to make horror films? That might sound frivolous but I can't think of any other way to characterize this remarkable film.  It might be the greatest  Nouvelle Vague  film made outside of France.  It feels like some strange piece of Euro art-horror, only it (thankfully) eschews the 'artistic' nudity and 'daring' sexual transgressions that that pretty much goes hand-in-hand with the territory. A woman arrives in a small town and immediately hooks up with some dissolute bohemian types.  It turns out the locals are all vampires, or zombies, or something like that.  There is a lot of nothing happening for ages, and then scenes where things happen but don't really seem to make sense.  It feels like key moments or important dialogue has been carelessly left on the cutting room floor ... And if that s...

** Contains spoilers - but none that could spoil your enjoyment of this film, for it is not possible to enjoy it on any level.  Also some trigger warnings : rape and sexual assault ** If you ever get the chance to see a Finnish film called Bunny, the Killer Thing - don't. Longer version: I watched it recently on Shudder and wrote a review so caustic it seems they have pulled the film altogether.  Long may it stay pulled. In short: a giant crazy rabbit with a huge schlong terrorizes a group of horny teens in a remote cabin. That makes it sound interesting, a sort of lurid parody of every slasher film ever made.  It isn't, and it isn't.  Don't see it. Longer version: an unidentified man and a woman arrive at an isolated cabin.  They are surprised to discover there are already people there.  They are even more surprised when they are tasered, and the woman shot in the head with a shot gun.  At least, for her, the ordeal is over.  her partner is injec...

The Marshes , directed by Roger Scott, is an Australian film about a team of ecologists who get lost in an endless Australian swamp, while some malevolent force menaces them. Boffins Priya, Ben and student Will are conducting environmental research in a vast isolated wetland.  At first the evil seems human: Priya encounters a gnarly local at a gas station and inevitably they encounter him again in the swamp.  Ultimately, however, he is the least of their problems. We gonna be just fine in this here swamp. The Marshes feels like it is trying to be a mix of Wolf Creek and The Blair Witch Project , and this doesn't work too well. The first half - the Wolf Creek part - is promising, playing on the perennial Australian fear of the Bad Man in the Outback.  Nothing too original happens but it shows promise - which makes the failure to realize that potential more disappointing. We're introduced to our main characters and the initial premise with economy.  The conflict with...

 I like horror films and I like writing about stuff.  So I shall write, here. about horror films I have watched. I like horror films because I like horror films; I also think they can be important.  What makes us frightened is revealing about us as individuals and societies.  What makes us laugh is revealing as well, but I don't like comedies so much.  Of course, with horror films you often both in quick succession. I used to blog fairly regularly about politics and books and even - for about two posts - about roleplaying game mechanics.  But life has a habit of getting in the way and I lost my impetus.  Even though ew are living through a time that is -remarkably - even more fucked up than it was fifteen years ago when I started muttering darkly on the internet, I find it hard to think of anything worth saying about the real world.  It's too real. So I retreat into the world of cinema, and the squalid genre of horror in a bid to impose some self-...