A Rockwork Orange [WIP: In Nature]

Timelapse for building the first set

The Brick And The Dead [WIP: In Nature]

NEW FILM PROJECT

It's been about a decade since my last foray into filmmaking. In the past few weeks I've started work on a new project: "In Nature" a short horror film using LEGO stopmotion.

I have ambitious goals for this project: including zero use of generative AI, and creating a theremin-based score. At the same time I've learned from my previous experience with LEGO filmmaking and have written the script more carefully, using a smaller cast and fewer locations.

Sets were designed in Bricklink Studio...

...and arrived looking like this

Colour-sorted and ready to build

Raising The Bear [Review: Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2]

Office Marlow: "F**k it, let's bounce."

Tigger: "That's my line!"

Although Christopher Robin has survived the horrors of his time in the Hundred Acre Wood, he has not escaped the nightmare. Not only has he seen his fiancée murdered and witnessed a series of traumatic killings, but he is now being blamed for the massacre, no-one believes his version of events, and even worse the story is being made into a film. And then the killings begin again.

Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey, released in 2023 and reviewed here, was a lot of fun, with plenty of action, gore and sacrilegious dismemberment of fond childhood memories. It was entertaining but never really rose above its super-low budget and amateur or student project vibe, and it felt rushed and messy in places. The 2024 Golden Raspberry Awards jury agreed with my take, awarding it Worst Movie, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Remake/Rip-Off/Sequel and Worst Screen Combo. I guess they liked the music then.

Something strange quickly became apparent as I began to watch Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey 2. It's actually rather good. There's a step up in every aspect of the filmmaking - excellent camerawork, colouring, editing, a much stronger script, and some really good performances, adding up to a complete film. The conceit of the horror-film-within-a-horror-film is a deliberate and classy callout to the Scream movies, and there are plenty of other genre references to enjoy.

There are also smart backstories for both Christopher Robin and Pooh, leading to a climax and some shocking final revelations. Admittedly some of the backstory is revealed through dialogue, but if the first rule of moviemaking is "show don't tell", then the second rule is "if you must tell, get Simon Callow to do the telling."

And I am happy to report that all of this decent filmmaking does not detract from the gore, sacrilege and subversion of the first movie. Pooh and Piglet are now joined by Tigger and Owl. Tigger takes some time to get into his stride - it's only towards the end that he really gains bounce and earns his stripes. Owl on the other hand is marvellous - played by Marcus Massey in Hammer villain style with plenty of creepy monologues. The gory body effects, one of the strengths of the first movie, are multiplied to stomach-churning levels.

This is no Get Out or Babadook, but if it's not elevated horror it's still a horror movie that will satisfy die-hard horror fans. It also bodes well for the next batch of films in the Pooh cinematic universe - the Poohniverse. I am now looking forward to Bambi: The Reckoning, Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare, Pinocchio: Unstrung and Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble.

Score: Three stars out of five.

All movies reviewed on The Sci-Fi Gene blog are awarded three stars out of five.

Bearing All [Reviews: Cocaine Bear and Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey]

While all the bear stuff is happening on all the social medias (#TeamBear) this is a good time to retrospectively review two bearsploitation movies released in 2023.

Cocaine Bear (2023), directed by Elizabeth Banks, is loosely based on a real incident in 1985, where a bear found and ate cocaine that had been dropped from a smuggler’s plane.

The movie tells the story of some tourists, a mother, daughter and friend, a park ranger and a wildlife campaigner, some wannabe criminals and some serious criminals who all converge on a forested national park. Into the mix is added the missing cocaine and the bear that finds it. In real life there is no evidence that the bear harmed anyone. In the movie this is not the case and there are several gory fatalities. However this is a character-driven story rather than a bloodbath for its own sake.

The bear is also a character. Early scenes show the effects of the drug – one minute the bear is aggressively focussed on hunting tourists, the next it is happily distracted by a butterfly. As the movie continues we learn a little more about the bear’s background and can empathise with it – this is particularly true of the final act.

Overall this is a unique, enjoyable movie with an excellent, witty and thoughtful script and great performances from all of the ensemble cast, and I would recommend it to fans of horror, comedy, action and bears.

Score: Three stars out of five.

All movies reviewed on The Sci-Fi Gene blog are awarded three stars out of five.

Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey (2023), directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, is one of a new crop of copyrightsploitation movies taking advantage of the fact that many classic books are now out of copyright. Other recent examples of this genre include Mad Heidi (2022) and Mickey’s Mouse Trap (2024).

The entirely reasonable premise of this movie is that Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet, abandoned by Christopher Robin when he grew up and went to medical school, have become violent, sadistic killers. They take revenge on CR and his fiancée Mary when they return to the Wood try to find CR’s childhood friends, but also go on an indiscriminate killing spree, attacking a group of students holidaying in a cabin. There is blood. Honey, too, but mostly blood to be fair.

The copyright-busting movie genre has its interesting quirks. It is A.A.Milne’s Winnie-The-Pooh books that have come out of copyright – the Disney movie version is still protected. So there is nothing to stop a filmmaker presenting Pooh as a serial killer, but he cannot legally be shown wearing a red T-shirt (instead he wears a redneck-style lumberjack shirt). To make it even clearer that this is the book Pooh not the Disney Pooh, the movie starts with an animated introduction very much in the style of the original E.H.Shepard illustrations.

The genre is also growing fast – there is a sequel, Blood And Honey 2, out this year, and further films in the Poohniverse or Twisted Childhood Universe are in the pipeline, including Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble which will feature Pooh alongside twisted literary versions of Bambi, Pinocchio and Peter Pan. Meanwhile the first version of Mickey Mouse, as seen in Steamboat Willie, is now unprotected hence Mickey’s Mouse Trap and several other movie and game projects.

Blood And Honey is a low-budget, low-expectations movie: viewers expecting the quality of script, plot, performance or production values of Cocaine Bear may be slightly disappointed in some ways. These unreasonably high demands from cruel, selfish moviegoers might also explain why this movie won five Golden Raspberries and hardly any Oscars. On the other hand this is a full-on, no-holes-barred gorefest. It’s probably the most violent Winnie-The-Pooh film ever - even more violent than A Blustery Day. And as an animator who myself, back in 2012, put swearing, drug-taking and generally badly behaved LEGO minifigs on screen here, I do appreciate there is a pleasure in the subversion of innocence.

Score: Three stars out of five.

All movies reviewed on The Sci-Fi Gene blog are awarded three stars out of five.

Killing Me Softly [Reviews: The Love Witch and Season Of The Witch]

Witches are an endless source of fascination. Despite the attempts of Hans Christian Anderson, centuries of overzealous missionaries and Roald Dahl to paint them as agents of evil, our culture is full of more positive examples of witchcraft, whether in books, films, or in the real world with the modern day resurgence of Wicca. As a child I learned to read with Meg and Mog and later enjoyed reading about Mildred Hubble which should allow you to calculate my age. TV is full of portrayals of witches as powerful but sympathetic figures, such as Julia Wicker in The Magicians, or the magical cadets of Motherland: Fort Salem. Meanwhile there are plenty of films that use the concept of the witch in interesting ways - here are two recent examples I enjoyed.

The Love Witch

The Love Witch (2016) stars Samantha Robinson as modern-day witch Elaine Parks who sets out to start a new life and find love - with unfortunate, deadly consequences for her would-be lovers. It's filmed as a stylish tribute to 1960s Technicolor, with lavish settings and exaggerated colour schemes. Parks is literally a femme fatale but also a complex character, vulnerable, lonely and driven, and mesmerizing to watch. In some ways she reminded me of Alice Lowe's character Ruth from Prevenge, but Parks is not actually driven to kill (well, not often), it's just that her love is too intense for the men she charms.

The Love Witch also celebrates another form of witchcraft - that is, obsessive auteur-driven filmmaking. Anna Biller wrote, directed, scored, edited and produced the movie, spent several years finding, restoring or making the furniture for each scene, and made her own foray into witchcraft. The result is a unique and powerful vision combining feminine and feminist themes.

Season Of The Witch

Season Of The Witch (1973) is an early George A. Romero film. It's curiously deficient in brain-eating swarms of zombies, instead the story revolves around dissatisfied and Wicca-curious housewife Joan (Jan White), her controlling husband, and her daughter who is having an affair with a teacher. Joan is introduced to Marion, a newcomer to the suburb who practises witchcraft, and gradually becomes drawn into witchcraft herself. This is more of a drama than a horror film, although there is threat and violence in places, and Joan experiences some creepy dream sequences in which she faces exaggerated or metaphoric versions of her everyday life. 

Romero described this as a feminist film, and I think this is justified: it is the story of a woman in a controlling relationship who finds a way to empower herself and change her life (this escape theme also qualifies it as Science Fiction TM). The feminist aspect is simpler and less sophisticated than The Love Witch, and arguably the feminist credentials are further eroded by the release history, as a cut-down version was published and marketed (I think misleadingly) as softcore porn.

Both films portray witches as powerful and unintentionally dangerous, while at the same time portraying witchcraft as a positive feminine role and as an alternative to patriarchy and convention. I awarded both films three pentagrams out of five.

Ghost In The Machine [Review: Host]

Housebound under lockdown conditions, Haley and her friends decide to use their weekly Zoom call to carry out an online séance. Haley (Haley Bishop) has hired a medium, Seylan (Seylan Baxter), to lead them in what will no doubt be a fun, entertaining evening without anything sinister or dangerous happening. What could possibly go wrong?

Host (2020) is a found-footage horror movie that takes place in real time during a Zoom call. It’s not in any way related to The Host (2013), the movie based on Stephenie Meyer’s alien parasite rom com novel reviewed here, or to Korean newt-based horror The Host (2006), reviewed here. Host is set during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic - and it was also filmed during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, during a period of lockdown. Cast and crew could not leave their own homes so had to set up equipment and film themselves at home, with director Rob Savage guiding them remotely. The concept of the Zoom séance is a clever way to make a film under these tough conditions.

Other aspects of the film add to the improvised feel – the cast all use their own names, and family members appear in cameo or supporting roles. The script makes good use of all the Zoom cliches we’ve grown to love tolerate over the past year – sound and vision glitches, people joining while mute, dodgy animated backgrounds, pyjamas and badly-timed Ocado deliveries. Acting is excellent, there’s a lot of humour, and there’s a good, gradual ramping up of tension leading to full-on catastrophe.

In a year where making any movie has been difficult, a crew have come together against the odds to release a new, low-budget, creepy and effective horror movie not unlike Paranormal Activity, reviewed here. In fact my only criticism of this movie is that it is a little too like Paranormal Activity, with one or two fright scenes almost borrowed wholesale. For this reason, although I really enjoyed Host, I am only giving it three stars.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

Shake, Rattle and Roll [Review: Shivers]

Along with Nakatomi Plaza, Peach Trees, Wyndham Tower and the unnamed High-Rise, I have unfortunately had to add Starliner Towers to the list of high-rise buildings to avoid. It's a shame - the period architecture, the peaceful island location and the easy accessibility of the on-site swimming pool, supermarket, medical and dentist's surgeries and parasitology research lab all make it so tempting...

Shivers (also released as The Parasite Murders and They Came From Within) is a horror movie from 1975 directed by the emerging David Cronenberg and set in a tower block in Montreal. Dr. St-Luc is the resident MD tending to the inhabitants who have started to develop odd stomach complaints that are definitely not related in any way to his colleague's work on a parasitic organism designed to replace organ transplants. He is asked to investigate a suicide-homicide that took place in one of the apartments, and discovers a link to the parasites - and the possibility they have already been spread to several other residents through their fun and games.

Taking Shivers out of the context of other films, it's an uneven quality experience and mainly of interest as it shows an early Cronenberg still coming into his powers. Acting is hit and miss, sometimes sincere and convincing, sometimes melodramatic or wooden. Scenes of violence, sex or sexual violence are also variable. A few of these scenes are horribly effective, including the homicide-suicide where an older and sinister man appears to be attacking a schoolgirl, and clips of their fight are juxtaposed with a new couple being shown around the luxury tower-block. 

Other effective horror scenes betray the director's influence by his contemporary George A. Romero as the residents, turned into sex-crazed demi-zombies by the parasite, try to corner St-Luc and nurse Forsythe.  The parasite creature is fun but doesn't ever appear convincing or threatening itself - the most effective creepy scenes are the ones that don't show the creature at all but just its' trails of blood. However the legacy of this film is the continued popularity of parasite-horror, including such classics as Alien (1979), The Thing (1984), Species (1995), The Faculty (1998), the Cronenberg-inspired Slither (2008) and so on. Meanwhile Cronenberg grows in filmmaking ability and his own later films such as Videodrome and eXistenz develop the bio-horror theme further, and the high-rise genre also continues to develop - High-Rise (2015) is essentially a re-make of Shivers without the parasites.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

High School Musical Of The Dead [Review: Anna and the Apocalypse]

Anna (Ella Hunt) dreads breaking the news to her father that she doesn’t want to go to University. Her father is still grieving for the death of her mother. Her best friend John is “secretly” in love with her, while their other friends Chris and Steph are tryin

g to find their voices as student filmmaker and journalist.

Anna and the Apocalypse is easily the best of the High School Musicals. Disney’s decision not to include zombies in any of the others was clearly a mistake. It’s not too serious – more Shaun than Dawn, but still with plenty of bite, and just enough blue language and young-adult themes for a Christmas movie. Zombies themselves make a poor movie enemy. They’re slow and weak except in numbers, so there always needs to be a human threat, in this case the melodramatic deputy head Mr. Savage (Paul Kaye).

The dance numbers are fun and the songs are good, very much in the HSM / Grade 4 Keyboard style. A highlight is Turning My Life Around, a bright, joyful number as Anna dances through town oblivious to the horrors around her.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

Trailer:

Singalong version of Turning My Life Around

Harvest Moon [Review: Elizabeth Harvest]

Newly-wed bride Elizabeth (Abbey Lee) and her super-rich husband Henry (Ciaran Hinds) arrive at their isolated mansion to begin their honeymoon and are welcomed by Henry’s servants Claire (Carla Gugino) and Oliver (Matthew Beard). Elizabeth is shown all the riches of the house – swimming pool, endless wardrobe, wine cellar blah blah blah but there is one door Henry instructs her never to open. Henry then immediately abandons his bride for a brief work-related trip, leaving her to her own devices, and Elizabeth makes a terrible discovery – the first of many.

Elizabeth Harvest is a dark, soulful mixture of horror, sci-fi and fashion film. Although the setting is different, the twists and turns of the plot, the beautiful cinematography and the pervasive sense of loneliness reminded me of Duncan Jones' Moon.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

Bring On The Wall [Review: Deep Dark]

Hermann (Sean McGrath) is a Failed Artist TM trying to express himself through the oft-neglected medium of hanging mobiles and trying to win the attention of gallery owner Devorah Klein (Anne Sorce). Hermann’s mother sends him to his rich uncle in search of a Real Job TM – but instead his uncle sends him to a dilapidated apartment to use as an artist’s retreat until he finds inspiration. So nothing weird so far. However…

In the apartment, Hermann finds a mysterious hole in the wall. Pulling a thread from the hole leads to communication with a strange entity – one who has the power to help Hermann make his mobiles into successful art. And all the poor lonely entity wants in return is Hermann’s company. What could possibly go wrong? Surely there won’t be a terrible price to pay for all that success…

Deep Dark is a lo-fi horror movie from 2015, directed by Michael Medaglia, with shades of Being John Malkovich and Little Shop Of Horrors, but with a few more WTF scenes than either.

Deep Dark also has a wicked sense of humour and a fair helping of blood, guts and other disgusting stuff, although it’s also strangely restrained at times. Not everything makes sense. For example the opening scene features a man removing a bathplug from his abdomen. It’s a great horror scene, really inventive, well done! but I have no idea how this fits in with any of the rest of the film. However for the most part this is a well plotted movie with a strong subtext. The relationship between Hermann and his somewhat unusual muse is a metaphor for the pain of the creative process. At least I hope it's a metaphor. If all artists actually have to do this then I have more respect for them than ever.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

Midsommar Murders [Review: Midsommar]

Dani, recovering from grief after the deaths of her sister and parents, and her boyfriend Christian who wants to break up but doesn't think this is the right time, travel to Sweden with some friends to attend the midsummer celebration at a pagan commune, the Harga. They all have a happy, healing and relaxing time, there's nothing sinister about this secret community or their religious festival and there will definitely be no murders or mutilations *innocent face*.

Sorry. Midsommar is a bleak and bloody horror film about a secret commune that appears very friendly and social at the start, but it's not long before Dani and Christian are shocked to witness a ceremony where two older members of the community take their own lives by jumping from a cliff. From here the weirdness builds up quickly. The festival includes other rituals including a version of Maypole dancing as an endurance competition and a May Queen coronation, all building towards some sort of final ritual. Meanwhile there's a mysterious book, mysterious goings on at night, mysterious disappearances, mysterious glances, mysterious food and drink, mysterious lack of mobile phone signals and mysterious inability to leave the commune. As is often the case in this genre of films, this is not going to end well.

Midsommar is directed by Ari Aster, also responsible for the unsettling horror film Hereditary. Dani is played by Florence Pugh. I would describe Pugh's performances in Lady Macbeth and in this film as intense and unforgettable. Possibly because the cast is large, there are few other stand-out performances.

Horror based on pagan culture (or misunderstandings of it) is a well-developed subgenre. In some ways Midsommar is a Swedish take on The Wicker Man and there are many similarities between the films. However while Police Sergeant Howie is a sane man (if a bit of a prude) cast into an insane world, Dani is different. She's already traumatized before she arrives at the Harga and, while she is further traumatized by what she sees, she responds in unexpected ways to her situation and becomes stronger, calmer and more open to the strange ceremonies.

A horrific three stars out of five.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

Meet The Parents [Review: Get Out]

Photographer Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is travelling with his girlfriend Rose (Alison Williams) to meet her parents for the first time, and is anxious about how they will react to an interracial relationship. On arrival he is greeted warmly and his fears appear groundless - but the parents have their own eccentricities, and the more he gets to know the Armitage family, the more he becomes convinced that there is something strange and sinister afoot at their household.

Get Out is a well-received horror movie from 2017, directed by Jordan Peele. It has won several awards including the Oscar for best screenplay - and well deserved. This is a clever film. The theme of racial intolerance and stereotyping is explored intelligently to play all sorts of psychological games with the audience, while subtle clues are incepted to pave the way for a horror twist in the final act. The movie opens with a subversion of a stereotype - a black person becoming increasingly nervous as he walks through a white neighbourhood, and proceeds to a fairly brutal kidnapping - this scene signals from the start that this is a horror movie, as otherwise the build-up of tension in the first act is so restrained that you might forget this and think you are watching some other kind of drama. There is a challenge in a film like this - if you make racism the main theme throughout, how do you come up with a horror twist that's even more horrific at the end? I don't want to spoil the movie, so all I can say is that this goal is achieved.

There's little to criticise here. In addition to the script, the performances are excellent and the setting deeply atmospheric. There are one or two tiny plot holes, including an escapology feat that I still haven't figured out, and a completely superfluous and ill-advised use of a candle, but that's about it.

Meeting the parents is a terrifying concept in itself, explored in depth in the films Meet The Parents (2000) and Meet The Fockers (2004). These films are sometimes misclassified as comedies rather than psychological thrillers. They are however enjoyable, unlike the all-time worst meet-the-parents movie, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1968). I have watched this double-Oscar-winning film to spare you the pain of doing so - its' excruciating to watch in the 21st century, even knowing that it was progressive and well-meaning back in the day, and exploration of racial issues is clumsy, a million miles away from Peele's brilliant script.

Get Out succeeds on all levels. A truly horrific three stars out of five.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars

Eerie, Indiana [Review: Stranger Things 3]

Stranger Things season 1 celebrated the Eighties. Stranger Things 2 started to get a bit creepy around the Eighties if we're being honest. Stranger Things 3 has been stalking the Eighties in violation of its court order for months, and now the Eighties hasn't been seen for several days  - we suspect that Stranger Things 3 has kidnapped the Eighties and is holding it hostage in some kind of fortified basement dungeon, possibly in preparation for some kind of nightmarish ritual.

Stranger Things 3 is set in a strangely exaggerated 1985. I'll try to avoid major spoilers for those of you who haven't yet binge-watched the whole of season 3. This is just to report that Stranger Things 3 is definitely worth watching, it's up to the same standards of insanity, creepiness and Eightiesism as the other two series. Your favourite characters are back (whoever they happened to be). Some minor characters from previous series come out of the shadows - it happens quite late in the current series but when given a chance Erica (Priah Ferguson) really comes into her own.

There are baddies trying to re-open the breach to the Upside Down (this is only a minor spoiler for the first scene of the first episode), and these particular baddies are absolutely consistent with the global political situation in 1985. My only minor criticism is that we don't get any sense of what motivates them, or exactly they want from the Upside Down. It's not exactly prime construction land.

On the other hand, the mysterious forces from the Upside Down set into motion during series 2 are also up to something nefarious of their own, and they certainly do have a real motivation - this aspect of the plot is a slow burner but it's beautifully thought out, with everything falling into place and making sense about two thirds of the way through. The new big bad is a clever development of ideas from season 2, and also gives the Duffer Brothers plenty of opportunities to reference iconic movies such as The Blob or Terminator 2.

It's also really satisfying seeing that all of the main characters, without exception, have grown and changed since season 2. It would be interesting to see this in other movies from the 80s - there was no sequel for ET (I'm not counting the Atari game) so we never really get to see how Elliot and Gertie were affected by their rather strange childhood.

Here there's a lot going on for the younger generation about the transition from childhood to adolescence - and particularly about what happens when Mike, Lucas and Max are going full steam ahead with this while Will is in a different place and Dustin... well, just watch. Different life challenges await for the young adults, particularly Nancy and Jonathan who are working in literally the worst local newspaper ever, and for the adult adults - you might have thought that Joyce and Hopper had suffered enough over the past two seasons, but no. The challenge for the writers is to keep all these stories going in parallel, and this is achieved in an interesting way through synchronicity - in each episode, all the groups are doing something in common, whether that's searching for someone who can help solve a puzzle or dealing with a romantic break-up.

Stranger Things in general, and this series in particular, has really impressed me. It stands head, shoulders and very long legs above most other Netflix content, as well as other eighties nostalgia pieces such as Super 8 or Ready Player One. Now the visual style has become so well defined I'm really interested to see where it goes next - perhaps the Nineties?

Medium Latte [Festival Report: Horror-On-Sea 2019]

I was only able to attend one out of the six days of Horror-On-Sea this year so I made the most of it, taking in 6 feature films and several well-chosen short films. I picked up some... unusual DVDs on the second hand tables, so more on that story later when I've watched them. I ended the day in the casino beneath the venue for a drink and a chat with some of the festival organizers and filmmakers - as I found last year, this is a friendly, down to earth festival where the Underworld can meet the elite. After a brief flutter I left the casino up by £4 and a free pen, so can't complain about that either. I have added screening one of my films at Horror-On-Sea to my bucket list. In order to achieve this item I may need to actually make some films.

Themes for this year, at least for the day I attended, included vampires, mediums, cats, hipsters, curses, parallel worlds, international film, great memorable characters, and bonkers. Bonkers is the new jump scares.

Overall I was bowled over by the quality of the films screened. Every single one was either highly enjoyable, or still highly enjoyable if slightly too long. I'll post individual reviews of some of the films later, but I'd like to highlight some of the highlights - so here are the Sci-Fi Gene Awards for Achievement In Horror:

Snakes On A Plane Award for Achievement in the Naming of Horror Films:
awarded to Polterheist (UK, dir David Gilbank)

Last Temptation Of Christ Award for Achievement in Theatrical Portrayal of Jesus:
awarded to Vidar The Vampire (Norway, dir Thomas Aske Berg and Fredrik Waldeland)

Hidden Figures Award for Advancement of the Cause of Feminism:
awarded to Space Babes from Outer Space (USA, dir Brian  Williams)

If the winners would kindly proceed through the interdimensional gateway to the parallel universe where there is actually money for this kind of thing, I (or my interdimensional double) look forward to welcoming them to the glamorous award ceremony and presenting them with their antimatter trophies.

It's Oh So Quiet [Review: A Quiet Place]

It is the post-apocalypse. We know this because the streets are deserted, the traffic lights have fallen over, and three children are raiding a supermarket and their parents are encouraging them. Encouraging them silently though - the family communicate in sign language and are taking care to stop any loud noises. Why? The family leave the shop without incident but an incident on their walk home explains everything you need to know about the threat facing humanity from the new rulers of Earth: vicious predatory creatures that are blind but respond in an instant to any loud sound.


A Quiet Place is not your typical Michael Bay film. It's quiet! And short! This is a low-key creature horror focusing almost entirely on the fate of one family in their farm hideaway. Their quest is not to unite the people of Earth and take back our world, although Lee (John Krasinski) is obsessed with finding the aliens' weakness, but simply to survive and protect each other. Keeping everyone silent is hard enough when your family includes an anxious child and a frustrated teenager, and you've all been through a traumatic tragedy already - and all of this pales into insignificance when Evelyn (Emily Blunt) discovers she is pregnant. The film remains true to this focus and even when the family come face to face with the creatures, it avoids any temptation to build into massive action-movie set pieces. There's almost no exposition - the scenario tells its' own story. And there isn't too much lens flare. The main use of overt CGI is the creatures themselves, and they are a particularly nasty bunch.

The concept of A Quiet Place, perhaps the cleverest horror movie concept I've come across for some time, reminded me of Day Of The Triffids, another post-apocalyptic scenario where humanity is robbed of its advantage over the creatures, in that case by being blinded. This is also the second mainstream movie in the past year to feature prominent use of sign language as a major plot point, following in the very quiet footsteps of The Shape Of Water.

Fifty Angry Men [Review: Circle]

Fifty people awake to find they are standing on glowing red spots in a circle in a dark room. They quickly learn that they are playing a deadly game – every few minutes one person is killed instantly by a shock from the hemisphere in the centre, their body then dragged out into the darkness by unseen forces. If they step off their circles they also die. It takes them a few rounds, and a few deaths, to understand that while they cannot prevent the scheduled rounds, they can choose who dies in each round.

Circle is a literal, minimalist version of the balloon debate – if the balloon is losing altitude and you can’t all survive, who gets chucked out of the balloon and how do you persuade others to do the chucking. The starting fifty are diverse enough to (loosely) represent all of humanity. As the players learn how to vote for each other, alliances and dividing lines appear around age, race, gender, sexuality, politics and profession. Players try to use this to their advantage, but if they seem too manipulative then other players may turn on them next.

This is a low-budget, one-room, concept movie – The Hunger Games meets Exam meets Cube (links are to my reviews of these films) with a dash of Lord of the Flies and a twist of Twelve Angry Men. While the scenario is contrived, even compared to other one-room movies, the writers and directors, Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione, have hit on a simple but effective concept which builds tension over and over again, and the script stands up well covering a lot of ground.

The main expense for this film was probably the cast of fifty actors - all unknown but certainly up to the job, so the conflict is believable. There's a lot of death, it's sudden and brutal although not too bloody, and while some deaths are shown directly many are communicated through reaction shots. The ending isn't easily predictable, and left me with a lot to think about. The film could be a metaphor for political extremism, media bias or the rise of prejudice in general, and of course it's even more relevant in the age of Reality TV.

Two important questions are left unanswered: when does the board game version come out, and how many batteries will it require?

To disambiguate, this is low-budget movie Circle (2015) – not the movie of Dave Eggers’ internet parody novel The Circle (2017).

Snarl And The World Snarls With You [Review: The Snarling]

A film crew set up in a quiet village and start making their zombie movie, to the amusement of the locals - but a series of gory murders, committed during the full moon, draws the interest of the local police.

The Snarling was first screened at Horror-On-Sea in 2016 and has been brought back for a new screening in 2018 by popular demand. It's a well written, well produced comedy horror in the vein of Shaun of the Dead - light on gore, although there are some bloody moments, and heavy on jokes. The script features many colourful and funny characters amongst the film crew, the locals and the police - the fool archetype recurs in all three groups and there's a constant stream of jokes based on misunderstandings that is just to my taste. There are also plenty of visual gags including some extremely witty editing choices. Laurence Saunders stands out for playing two very different comedy characters - Greg, the male diva actor, and Les, the village fool who happens to be his doppelganger. Director Pablo Reybould also appears in the film as a food-obsessed police chief.

Horror-on-Sea features films made by passionate, creative filmmakers and from what I've seen the focus is definitely on films that are enjoyable to watch as opposed to professionally produced. However The Snarling is both and as such deserves wider recognition and circulation, perhaps a theatrical release - it could definitely hold its own against Shaun.

Get Out While You Can [Review: Escape Room]

Four friends sign up for an escape room challenge - an hour to find the clues and unlock the door. The scenario of this particular escape room is creepy - dim lighting, cracked walls covered in mysterious documents and clues, and a mysterious hooded figure at one end of the room, attached to a very short chain. However, as if all of the existing décor wasn't creepy enough, the curator has recently added a skull-shaped chest, ignoring warnings that it might contain something deeply evil, and failing to warn the players of this. What if one of them turned out to be allergic to evil forces? There'd be grounds for a refund at least. And maybe, just maybe, if you have locked four strangers into a room with an evil entity in a box, this might be a bad time to leave your escape room building altogether and go for a sulk.

Hard-core escapologists may enjoy films such as Cube, Exam or the Saw series - you may find this film a little lightweight, it's definitely on the easy setting. On the off-chance you might actually watch this modest but passable film, I'll avoid further spoilers. However I will take a tip from another blogger, Big D, and analyse the poster/DVD cover a little.

Not bad? Pretty dramatic, nice logo.

Now I'll take you through some elements of the poster.

The chained-up double door with the windows and the scratch marks - never appears in the movie. Looks to me like hospital or laboratory doors, and the movie is not set in either.

The scratch marks on the door suggest that someone is trapped in the room for days or weeks - but the movie takes place over the space of an hour or two. It's common for real-life escape rooms to have a time limit of an hour.

There's a young woman kneeling on the floor, covered by blood, and screaming from pain, terror or both. Without giving too much away, this is true to the film.

There's a creepy fellow standing by the right edge of the poster looking creepy. Again, does feature in the film.

Most interestingly, there are three huge circular saws in the picture, set into gaps in the floor suggesting that they may be able to move along them. They look pretty deadly, the kind of thing Jigsaw might dream up in the Saw movies - in other words a deliberate trap intended to kill players who failed a test of some kind. The film does not feature any circular saws at all, and no similar deliberately designed killer traps - the threat comes from the evil entity that has unknowingly been introduced to the puzzle room.

So I'd just like to say thank you to the cover artist for completely obscuring the actual content of this movie, no doubt deliberately to preserve its precious few moments of genuine horror and suspense unspoiled.

The Director's Cut [Review: Egomaniac]

Struggling horror-movie obsessed filmmaker Catherine Sweeney has a dream - to bring to life her Warm Bodies-style zombie romcom. She has the idea, now all she needs is a script, a cast, a producer, funding, a crew and a camera. Her first taste of reality comes when she draws the attention of a big player willing to come on board as executive producer and provide seven-figure funding - as long as she can write a talking dog into the script.

Egomaniac, screened at Horror-On-Sea 2018, is a bittersweet black comedy about the experience of compromising to get the movie made - with a particular emphasis on the treatment of women in the industry. It was made in 2016 but with the Hollywood scandals breaking in the past few months it's deeply relevant right now, and perhaps can serve as a reminder that far from being the clean, happy alternative to Hollywood, the indie world is the Wild West of moviemaking.

Catherine Sweeney, played by the real-life director Kate Shenton, carries the film with an intense performance. The script is outstanding - the characters Catherine comes up against in her Kafkaesque journey, inside and outside of her head, are hilariously and disturbingly seedy, and I particularly liked the conceit of Catherine arguing with her imagined characters in her head. When she finally snaps it's completely believable and she takes the audience with her to the murderous conclusion.

Horrid Henry [Festival Report: Horror-On-Sea]

I spent Saturday at the Horror-On-Sea Film Festival in Southend-On-Sea*, Essex. I will review the features I saw (Egomaniac, Witches Brew, The Snarling) in separate posts but wanted to share some lessons about the horror movie zeitgeist gleaned from this festival.

1. It's not about horror any more. It's all about comedy horror now. Shaun Of The Dead changed everything.

2. It's not about zombie movies any more. It's all about films about filmmakers making zombie movies now.

3. It's as good a time as any to stick two fingers up to production values and just make movies that entertain.

4. The future of indie filmmaking is in good hands, proven by the premiere of a short horror film directed by a ten year old with a (literally) killer twist.

5. Finally! Someone else understands the nightmarish, Lovecraftian plastic tentacled horror that is Henry Hoover.

Horror-On-Sea is a fun, friendly festival for those of the horror persuasion. Movies are clearly selected simply for being enjoyable to watch rather than on any mainstream criteria - production values are random, there's not a Hollywood name in sight and everything is funny or at least fun. The features are topped with a well-chosen shorts programme, including a quadrilogy of animations from my erstwhile collaborator Molly Brown (those in the know will have caught my brief voice-over in Attack Of The Killer Eels From Mars) as well as horrors based around such naturally creepy concepts as the baby monitor, a chihuahua and Henry.

It was also great to attend filmmaker Pat Higgins workshop on fear in cinema - a rambling, autobiographical journey through fear and phobia which somehow managed to teach without teaching, plus a round of Consequences leading to the greatest horror film pitch of all time, all presented in the form of an Atmosfear-style 80s video board game.

ALL HAIL THE SCISSORS MAN.

*Southend-On-Sea is not on the sea, by the sea, at the sea, or juxtaposed to or even near the sea in any way shape or form. The only sea in Southend-On-Sea is the ConspiraSea that puts out a constant stream of marine propaganda keeping the Southenders in blissful ignorance of the truth of their estuaryside existence. Any who accidentally discover the truth by, for example, looking across the river and seeing the bank that is clearly visible on the other side, receive a mysterious invitation: "Congratulations, Southender #22358-33761. You're going to the pier!"