A Horror Film Blog

Best advice for this film is: read the summary below (no spoilers).  If, based on that, you have ANY reservations AT ALL, avoid. If you aren't put off, you should probably still avoid, but for different reasons. There is a gun.  There is a woman.  I guess we know now how they came up with the title Gun Woman (2014, directed by Kurando Mitsutake) tells a vaguely familiar story.  A depraved maniac tortures, rapes and murders a young woman.  Her husband, a brilliant surgeon, decides to gain revenge.  Realising his quarry is taking steps to protect himself and only now indulges his predilections in a sealed, guarded facility and only with fresh corpses, the surgeon concocts a plan.  He kidnaps a young woman, imprisons her and trains her to be a lethal fighting machine.  He then explains she's going to be drugged to appear dead, offered to the target as 'fresh meet' and when she recovers consciousness, she'll arm herself with the weapons he will have ...

So, there is a short film on Shudder called White Girl.  It's directed by Nadia Latif.  It's 13 minutes long. The plot is fairly simple, as befits a short film.  The titular white girl - a wholesome looking teen - wanders the streets of London, interacting briefly with various people - usually people of colour who react in a variety of ways, mostly guarded or hostile. In the end she is approached by an elderly woman in a hijab, and the girl savagely murders her. This is the picture pretty much everyone uses when they talk about this film, so I'll use it, too. On Shudder, a lot of the reviews complain about racism.  I mean, what are we to make of this? no polotics for Satans sakes Or what about: Next up, the sequel "Black Girl" and the prequal "Arab girl" and the remake "Asian Girl"....Oh, wait. Thats right, your only allowed to point at white folks in "current year". If people cant see the psychological programming going on in Hollywo...

This Italaina film, directed by Lorenzo Bianchini, is a curious effort.  It is pretty much setting and atmosphere in search of a story.  There are some very ambitious ideas here - the film is virtually a one-man show, with our attention centered squarely on wildlife researcher Marco Contrada (played by Renzo Gariup) who wanders into an old abandoned village, redolent with menace, and finds himself somehow unable to leave. It starts brilliantly - the first half is an assured demonstration of building up unease, as Marco potters about putting cameras on foxes and so on, before exploring the obviously doom laden abandoned village. Even with essentially one character and virtually no dialogue, it is is fascinating. The use of sound is particularly good - every crunch of gravel, scrape and creak seems to intimate a mysterious danger. The cinematography is brilliant - stark and drained of colour, to the point where it seems we are watching a series of sepia photographs come to life....

This Australian film is on Shudder, but it isn't exactly a horror film - look elsewhere if you want gore or shocks. It is, however, a very well made film and Quentin Tarantino's championing has helped get it some much deserved attention.   The plot does revolve around the search for a serial killer - kind of - and there are some well crafted suspense sequences, so if you need justification for its inclusion here, there's that. It's a semi-comic thriller built on three great performances - Stacey Keach as the trucker Quid; a hound credited as 'Killer' as his 'dingo' companion; and his truck as ... his truck. All roads lead to Rome, but what road diverted Jamie Lee Curtis to Australia in 1981? It's worth taking a moment to consider how Stacey Keach manages to be brilliant in many remarkable films (this one; Fat City; The Heart is a Lonely Hunter) but inexplicably hasn't enjoyed the success of lesser actors. More intensity, Stacey! While we are on t...