Hooptober
Cuckoo
Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo has been one of the most hyped horror films of 2024. No easy task considering this is the year of Longlegs, Trap, Alien: Romulus, and Maxxxine to name just a few. Back in 2018, Singer’s Luz was the darling of the festival circuit, a dreamy take on possession horror with a queer slant […]
Strange Darling
After a season of big blockbusters and gripping genre offerings, JT Mollner’s Strange Darling brins an intriguing and explosive full stop to summer 2024. Even amidst the likes of Longlegs and Cuckoo, Mollner’s latest is the quiet underdog, arriving with a host of rave reviews from its limited but lauded cinematic release. Kicking off with an […]
The Velvet Vampire
Vampires tread a world between extremes. So full of life, but surrounded by death. They are the ultimate consumers, perfectly placed to spend eons accruing wealth, luxury, property, knowledge, and taste, yet doomed to spend eternity starved of pleasures like food and wine and love. Eternally hungry. Eternally horny. Sometimes monstrous. Often Gorgeous. Its a […]
My Soul to Take
Though Scream 4 was Wes Craven’s final film before his death in 2015, My Soul to Take was the last film he wrote, directed, and produced. Much derided on release this overstuffed slasher takes us on a messy thematic tour of Craven’s hits and, whilst not as clean-cut as the Scream film which came after […]
Frenzy
Frenzy, the penultimate film from Alfred Hitchcock, is a far cry from the director’s classics. Hitch had, after all, held a strangle hold on Hollywood for most of the 60’s. He defined cinematic espionage, the psychological thriller, even helped legitimize and popularize the horror film. But Frenzy offers a different kind of Hitchcock. It feels […]
Sick
It’s kind of mad that a new film written by Scream scribe and co-creator Kevin Williamson slipped out into the world unannounced this year. Sick, directed by John Hyams (director of the much loved, sadly overlooked Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning), is a pandemic horror, something we’ll probably see a lot more of over the […]
Altered States
Though written by three-time academy award winning writer Paddy Chayefsky (adapting his own novel), Altered States had a surprisingly tough trip to the big screen. Pawned off by production companies, plagued by budgetary issues, and shunned by a litany of directors, the film eventually found salvation in Ken Russel. Altered States’ heady, sometimes silly, mix […]
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
In the context of fatigued properties, André Øvredal’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter, adapted from just one short chapter in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is a refreshing concept. It’s a big budget Gothic sea-fairing horror, a cinematic curiosity somewhere between Hammer Horror and The Pirates of the Carribean. When it was announced that the man who […]
Hatchet for the Honeymoon
Mario Bava, best known for his Giallo-instigating film Blood and Black Lace, is perhaps one of the most influential, original directors of the 20th century. The horror genre is still working with, and trying to deviate from, a blueprint he crafted half a Century ago. Whilst Hatchet for the Honeymoon is by no means Bava’s finest […]
Knife + Heart
With queer retro slasher Knife + Heart, Yann Gonzalez takes us on an evocative, dangerous, journey through the sensual underbelly of Paris’s sex industry, circa 1979. It’s a world of underground nightclubs, porn theatres, cruising areas, baroque porn sets, and rain-spattered sidewalks, all populated with gorgeous queers and drenched in lurid primary colours. The attention […]
