A Horror Film Blog

An effective but uneven folk horror from the Netherlands, a place not generally associated with unspeakable ancient evil steeped into the soil ... but is the real monster the atrocious dubbing? Sorry to bother you.  We're here to talk about the terrible ancient curse afflicting your bloodline.  Can we com in? Moloch is a mixed bag.  First of all, the dubbing is terrible.  Characters speak without moving their lips and then their lips flap for several seconds after the finish their lines - which are rendered in unemphatic fashion by voice actors who sound bored rather than terrified or annoyed or aroused.  Why, couldn't they have stuck subtitles on?  The set of people who are willing to soldier on in spite of the dire dubbing is identical to the set of people who will read subtitles.  Why degrade their experience by this travesty? But that said ... Beneath this superficial issue is a good film, made in a very small way and with a tight, claustroph...

Finally, after a long line of grotesque, sadistic and exploitative trash masquerading as horror I stumbled upon  Offseason  , directed by Mickey Keating, a near brilliant film. It will be appreciated by those who like atmosphere, suspense and the horror arising from being trapped; but disappoint those who like gore, jump scares, nudity and on camera eviscerations. "Just try and blend in, everything will be fine." Keating seems to have gleaned a lot of information about Things I Like and put them all together in one place: films that centre on strong female characters; abandoned places; a pervading sense of doom or punishment for crimes known or unknown; and that mysterious hinterland where the land becomes the sea.  It's also a very Lovecraftian films without actually invoking Lovecraft. So it has a nodding acquaintance with films like Carpenter;s The Fog (there  is s lot of fog billowing about the empty streets in Off Season); the magnificent Messiah of Evil directe...

It took me a while to catch up with this loose Lovecraft adaptation.  In fact, it has taken me over two decades.  Even great Cthulhu, locked in aeon long slumber in sunken R'lyeh, thinks I'm taking things a bit slowly. The reason for my dalliance is fear.  Not of being scared of the film - I'm familiar with the concept of fiction and I'm pretty sure that's what Lovecraft was writing - but being scared of disappointment.  When it comes to Lovecraft adaptations there are very few good ones.  Reanimator ?  Give me a break.  It's a lurid, trashy comedy with an unpleasant streak of 80s misogyny running through it. So I viewed Dagon with trepidation, especially when I learned the man behind the camera was none other than the director of Reanimator and self appointed master of Lovecraft adaptations, Stuart Gordon.  The man is certainly a trier, still seeking to convince the world of Scary Movie that it should really be interested in the profoundly unfu...

 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...