Sorry for the delay if you’re trying to stay up-to-date on the London Film Festival. I’ve been a bit lax in getting it written up.
Even so, enjoy these capsule reviews of everything I saw over the course of Days 4-6.…
Tag: horror
Blair Witch gets a bit lost in the woods
There’s something ironic about having your phone confiscated when going in to see a found footage movie, as I did.
Initially marketed as an original project, The Woods – complete with misleading trailer footage of a very non-Maryland forest – Adam Wingard’s arboreal horror was unexpectedly revealed as a sequel to the genre-launching Blair Witch Project, which famously grossed almost a quarter of a billion off a budget of $60,000 all the way back in 1999.…
Lights Out: too self-illuminating to be truly terrifying
Is there any fear more primal than that of the dark?
After all, what you can’t see can kill you, especially if the what is Diana, a twitchy, pinhole-eyed wraith with an attraction to the mentally ill.
Based on a genuinely creepy short that went viral back in 2013, Lights Out, the feature début of David F.…
REVIEW: The Witch
The Witch is a theological nightmare that will get under your skin – and, just possibly, that bit deeper.
Is there a more potent symbol in American mythology than that of the witch? Though an export of the old world, the witch is also a symbol of modernity – a frightening sort of progressiveness.…
Cooties is a indie zombie flick that won’t give you the lurgy
There are many opportunities for dread offered by the zombie genre. The shambling, increasingly putrefying undead. The threat of losing one’s own humanity. Cooties introduces in a new one: chickens.
A new horror comedy from first-time directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, Cooties the gruesome passage from battery farming to school meal via flies, maggots, and pink sludge.…
Crimson Peak: the height of Gothic thrills and chills?
With Crimson Peak, beloved horror director Guillermo Del Toro sets about creating another period ghost story.
While his previous work of course includes The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, both of which are set in and around the Spanish Civil War, this entry on his filmography takes its cues more from classic Gothic melodrama.…
Don’t Grow Up is a conflicted kid torn between arthouse and genre
The challenge with “genre fiction” is how to to blend the recognizable tropes, the cliches even, with new and exciting elements. Take Don’t Grow Up, the latest film from director Thierry Pouiard.
Opening at a mysterious youth facility amidst a misty forest of dark evergreens, six troubled teens find themselves abandoned and alone.…
The Messenger delivers some originality from a hackneyed premise
In a world of heavyweight prestige pieces, like the upcoming Suffragette, and straight-to-Sunday-evening light dramas, like the charming but forgettable Mr. Holmes, the British film industry does seem to be lacking in low-budget genre (excluding the ever-present straight-to-DVD Mockney gangster contingent.)
…The Visit makes for a sublime, ridiculous semi-return-to-form for M. Night Shyamalan
On a sliding cinematic scale from Christopher Nolan to Michael Bay, M. Night Shyamalan falls somewhere in the middle.
Equal parts auteur and hack, his output ranges from the sublime — The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable — to the ridiculous — The Happening, The Last Airbender.…
The Nightmare, or if It Follows was a documentary
What’s the worst night’s sleep you’ve ever had?
However bad it may have been The Nightmare delves into something worse: the nighttime torment of eight sufferers of sleep paralysis — a condition equally notable for bizarre and terrifying visions.
From visitations by shadowy figures — more literally, figures made of shadow — to out-of-body experiences, Rodney Ascher’s documentary relies on firsthand testimony as opposed to scientific evidence: they all seem to the agree that the medical community seems singularly unable to offer remedy for the condition.…