Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

This cheerful three-disc collection, presented by the BFI and culled from the archives of the Children’s Film Foundation, offers another opportunity to wallow unashamedly in a bright, breezy, mildly perilous world of youthful hi-jinks, colourful adventure and shameless adult-baiting. If ever we needed reminding that the past was a foreign country where they did things differently, the BPI’s CFF releases are the only port of call we need to make.

The beauty of Children’s Film Foundation productions lies in the fact that, filmed virtually entirely on location all over the UK (no boring stuffy soundstages here), they produce gorgeously-preserved snapshots of the times and places in which they were made. Football frenzy drama Cup Fever (1976), for example, is set in and around the backstreets of Manchester and Eccles, many of which have remained unchanged in the subsequent fifty years (we know, we’ve Google Mapped) and which features an extended guest sequence with the then Manchester United squad including legends such as George Best, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, and Nobby Stiles. 4D Special Agents (1981) is a stolen jewels caper set around London’s now-unrecognisable Docklands and 1976’s eerie nuclear era thriller One Hour to Zero fully exploits the visual and dramatic potential of its cold, remote north Wales location. Peril for the Guy (1956) stars as a tiny Frazer (Doctor Who) Hines and is a hair-raising yarn set around post-war London involving a dastardly plot to steal a handy new oil-detection machine as well as extraordinarily lax attitudes to the use of fireworks which are flung around, waved about and stuffed into pockets with a lack of concern for potentially-deadly consequences which would turn modern health and safety types into pillars of froth.

The nine 60-ish minute films included here demonstrate how the CFF matured and changed with the times across the decades. There’s very little correlation between the agonisingly-twee Mr Horatio Nibbles (1970) and the surprisingly mature and environmentally-aware thrills of 1976’s The Battle of Billy’s Pond and 1984’s Pop Pirates (starring The Who’s Roger Daltrey), lifted from towards the very end of the CFF era, in which a teeny reggae band dabbles in the world of pop music piracy. Viewers yearning for more innocent times might find some solace in the naive but likable Anoop and the Elephant (1972) and the rather surreal Zoo Robbery (1973) in which a Yeti (‘presented’ by Eileen Helsby, who would go on to feature in the first season of the BBC’s 1970s series of Survivors and… err… EastEnder’s Dr Legg actor Leonard Fenton) is stolen from London Zoo alongside three canine-related short films included amongst the ‘special features’.

The Children’s Film Foundation is unlikely to be of any interest to today’s generation of streaming, phone-obsessed street-savvy kids but then these releases are quite determinedly not aimed at them. These are discs targeted squarely at ageing former kids who dragged themselves out of the house of Saturday mornings in their thousands in the CFF’s prime (the rise of 1970s weekend kid’s TV famously did for the CFF) looking for a shot of warm, naïve nostalgia in increasingly-alarming times. Grab yourself a hot chocolate and a fish finger sandwich, settle down and prepare to bathe in the warm glow of simpler times…

Extras: Multi-part CFF documentary / Doggie Delights

CHILDREN’S FILM FOUNDATION BUMPER BOX / CERT: PG / DIRECTED & SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: FRAZER HINES, DAVID LODGE, LINDA ROBSON, PHIL DANIELS, BERNARD CRIBBINS, DEXTER FLETCHER, ROGER DALTREY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

There are cult films, and then there are cult films. Jim VanBebber’s Deadbeat at Dawn falls into that second category, as does the filmmaker himself. This new Arrow release serves as a full tribute to the man and his work. Deadbeat at Dawn was made when, as the story goes, Jim dropped out of film school and used his student loan to finance finishing this project. It tells the story of Goose, a young gang leader in Dayton, Ohio. Goose is happy bumbling along having fights with other gangs and selling drugs, until his beloved girlfriend gives him an ultimatum: it’s her or the gang. When Goose tries to leave the life behind, it refuses to let him go and he is soon set on a path towards blood and violence.

And what violence it is, as VanBebber crafts a film almost cartoonish in its confrontation, but also sincere with emotion and almost surreal in the execution. It’s a wonderfully made film, brimming with confidence and ambition and heart, and stuffed with great quotable moments, performances and numerous wince-inducing fights. That he wrote, produced, directed and starred in it at the age of 23 is an incredible achievement.

For VanBebber completists, this release is superlative, stuffed to bursting point with extras and boasting a lovely 2K restoration. It’s a visually vivid film that deserves respectful treatment and this it gets here with a print that, considering the low budget and restrictions he was up against, is now beautifully sharp and clear. The major extras here are a lively commentary including VanBebber and cast members, and a new 80-minute documentary on VanBebber and his career, covering his high school experiments in film, Deadbeat at Dawn itself, his career after that and his short films. It’s slightly uneven, but for the director’s appreciators there’s a lot here. There’s archival footage that provides further context on the difficulties inherent in getting anything made. VanBebber is still going as well, and this release has four of those short films to show what he could do given the right conditions. It’s rounded out by music videos VanBebber shot, image galleries, a trailer for an unmade film and further writing on the main feature.

Deadbeat at Dawn is a great example of what someone can achieve when they have a clear vision and self-belief. It’s a generous package of extras that really does VanBebber’s achievement justice. For any committed fans of either this film or VanBebber in general you can up the score below by another point for two. Highly recommended for anyone who appreciates low-budget creativity and passion.

DEADBEAT AT DAWN (1988) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: JIM VAN BEBBER / STARRING: PAUL HARPER, JIM VAN BEBBER, MEGAN MURPHY, RIC WALKER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Elliot might be a miniature horse performing the goat run at Walter Whittick’s petting zoo, but that doesn’t stop him thinking big. You see, Whittick’s Witty Bitty Farm has a sideline in training reindeer, and with Santa Claus having fallen victim to a succession of last-minute retirements almost scuppering a number of Christmas deliveries, Elliot dreams of making it to the emergency reindeer trials where Walter is taking Elliot’s nemesis D.J. – son of Donner – in an attempt to secure a place on Santa’s team. Jennifer Westcott’s film isn’t remotely original (although it has nothing to do with any of the children’s books going by the same name), and might not be very expensive-looking either; the character movement, especially that involving the four-legged cast, is a little sketchy, and the modelling isn’t especially imaginative. But it’s far from being a write-off.

In the four-minute making-of featurette (the only extra feature included), Morena Baccarin describes the film as, ‘Really sweet, really cute and really funny,’ before going on to say, ‘I think there should be more material like this out in the world, especially right now’. And she rather has a point. Sure, there are plenty of other computer-generated kids’ pictures going through all the same motions, and really the question comes down to, ‘So is there room for one more?’ But the answer will always be ‘Yes’, as long as there’s enough jokes to keep the adults entertained – and there are; a couple of sub-plots involving the media and industrial streamlining, while not exactly inventive, at least show a little ambition beyond the most basic fundamentals – and enough thwarted ambition to keep the children engaged until the inevitable happy ending.

The opening act is a little heavy-handed, and huge signposts predict every setback and development along the way, but the cast is appealing and committed and that’s a big part of the battle. The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson is Elliot, but it’s his constant sidekick, a sarcastic but motivational Bowie-eyed goat called Hazel, who keeps things ticking over; similarly while Rob Tinkler’s farm-owner Walter is a somewhat two-dimensional ex-minor league baseball star whose career died after a case of the yips, it’s his romantic interest, an investigative journalist called Corkie (Baccarin) uncovering the scoop on Santa’s reindeer problems, who stops things getting boring. There are enough small touches – Hazel’s encounter with a tin can, for instance – to ensure this isn’t as by-the-numbers as it might have been.

This won’t bother the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks, then, but for a low-budget Canadian film it’s been picked up for US cinema distribution, and on home video over here it’ll doubtless keep many a child (and the occasional parent) entertained over the Christmas break.

Extras: making of

THE LITTLEST REINDEER / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: JENNIFER WESTCOTT / SCREENPLAY: JENNIFER WESTCOTT / STARRING: JOSH HUTCHERSON, SAMANTHA BEE, MARTIN SHORT, ROB TINKLER, MORENA BACCARIN, JEFF DUNHAM, JOHN CLEESE / RELEASE DATE: 29TH OCTOBER

Filmed in 2015, The Snarling – a low budget, lowbrow British werewolf horror/comedy – has been largely kept under wraps (apart from a select handful of festival outings) ever since. It now arrives on DVD and you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a bit of a stinker because… well, why wouldn’t it be? It turns out that The Snarling is actually a lot of fun; it’s ramshackle and shambolic, and it’s full of moments which will roll your eyes, jokes which haven’t seen the light of day since they fell out a Christmas cracker in 1973, and special effects which can best be described as cheap and cheerful. Yet the film has a commendable sense of self-awareness, plenty of scenes which will genuinely raise a chuckle or two and some enthusiastic performances from a cast list full of likeable ex-soap stars.

A remote village somewhere in the Midlands is chosen as the location for a tacky zombie movie starring diva-ish minor TV star Greg Lupeen (see what they did there?) who, as it turns out, is a doppelganger for local idiot Les Jervis (Saunders plays both roles). Les and his two pub chums secure roles as extras but an accident with a sausage (don’t ask) sends the hysterical Greg to hospital just as a couple of local bumbling cops come to the conclusion that Greg is responsible for a series of gruesome murders in the nearby countryside. Or is he?

There’s a lot wrong with The Snarling – the pace is a bit sluggish, there’s an irritating tendency for scenes to end on a word of dialogue picked up in the next scene, and it’s probably not as grisly as it should be (although that’s probably a budgetary issue). But it’s still strangely agreeable thanks to some hearty characterisation (Les and his mates are good comic value throughout) and the comedy rapport between the bumbling Detective Inspector (writer/director Raybould) and his dim-witted sidekick Haskins (Johnston). Many of the jokes creak and groan but most of them land fairly well even if they’re not especially big or clever. It’s hard not to raise a smile as the DI gazes at the dismembered remains of one of the nameless monster’s victims and mutters “I think we can rule out suicide”. Elsewhere the script is quite genre-savvy. One of the extras playing a zombie in the film-within-the-film is called Dawn, several scenes evoke An American Werewolf in London and even the classic Night of the Demon gets a nod.

The Snarling is shamelessly derivative but gets away with it because it’s made by people who are clearly having a good time and relishing some halfway decent comedy material. A sequel – featuring many of the same actors in the same roles and entitled The Last Twitch – is due next year. We’re not ashamed to say – don’t judge us – that we’re quite looking forward to it.

THE SNARLING / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: PABLO RAYBOULD / SCREENPLAY: PABLO RAYBOULD / STARRING: LAURENCE SAUNDERS, CHRIS SIMMONS, BEN MANNING, PABLO RAYBOULD, STE JOHNSTON,JOEL BECKET, JULIE PEASGOOD / RELEASE DATE: 29TH OCTOBER

Blissfully unaware until now that this is the sixth film in the Lake Placid franchise, this reviewer has no knowledge of the four films that sit between it and the somewhat more enjoyable first in the series. Given the law of diminishing returns, Lake Placid: Legacy may be scraping the bottom of a very knackered barrel, but there are still some minor pleasures to be had along the way.

A group of eco-warriors keen on exposing corporate corruption and environmental abuse break into a secluded area not shown on maps or found on GPS systems. As they travel to the small island where they expect to meet a former member, something large with very big teeth stalks them and, as they meet various gruesome ends at the jaws of the big mutated croc, it becomes clear that unlawful scientific experiments are the cause. Will anyone get out alive to warm the rest of the world?

Well, you certainly won’t be holding your breath for anywhere near as long as some of the characters have to as they swim away from the monstrous beast to wait for the answer to that one. For Lake Placid: Legacy is indeed a huge croc – cliched, unoriginal, lacking in any real tension or fear and, apart from one line of dialogue, seemingly unconnected to the film that spawned it.

Lake Placid was a lovely film, a knowing nod to the monster genre, happy to take the mickey whilst delivering some fun scares. As such, for all its hokeyness, it is fondly remembered by many. The characters were quirky, the acting great, the monster a hoot. But Legacy takes itself far too seriously. There’s nothing in the way of fun and, whilst the cast are committed and try hard to invest their roles with some credence, the writing provides only stereotypes for them (and the croc), to get their teeth into. At least the most annoying of these gets eaten early on. Some gravitas is provided by Joe Pantoliano, slumming it in TV movie hell a far cry from The Matrix, but he’s wasted in a role which doesn’t last long enough.

In fairness, there are some well mounted scenes and the odd delightfully gory moment, but the whole thing is let down by a, for the most part, massively unconvincing CGI creature. Besides, are we alone in thinking that crocodiles aren’t scary because they look like they are constantly smirking? Perhaps it read the script and knew what was coming.

Extras: none, mercifully.

LAKE PLACID: LEGACY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: DARRELL ROODT / SCREENPLAY: JONATHAN LLOYD WALTER / STARRING: KATHERINE BARRELL, TIM ROZON, SAI BENNETT / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It takes real swagger – or real stupidity – to end your ultra-low budget feature on a cliffhanger; fortunately for writer/director Joe Lujan, the second of his Immortal Wars trilogy is already in production; either he knew the sequel’s funding was in place, or he just got really lucky. There’s precious little about this first instalment, other than the lack of a satisfying resolution, to warrant a follow-up.

Basically Fantastic Four meets The Hunger Games, The Immortal Wars is set in a future where humankind has rounded up mutated Deviants – ‘Humans have blamed all the wrongs in the world to Deviants’ the website informs us – and now Dominion Harvey (Roberts) is using his Dominion Industries to televise fights to the death staged between the innocent abnormals, mostly conducted using cheap fist-fire effects, often in green or black. When (stage-name) ‘Trikalypse’ (Gerhardy) and ‘Iro’ (Kilgore) find themselves in adjacent cages, they hatch a plan – by ‘plan’ we mean ‘We’ll wait until we get paired up for a fight – if that happens – and then we’ll think of something’ – to overturn Dominion and free Deviant-kind from his tyranny.

There are many things you can forgive about movies made for pennies, if there’s enough creativity involved to paper over the cracks. When Tom Sizemore turns up for a single scene before disappearing from the picture altogether, you can forgive him for not bothering with the rest of the pay check after completing his first day’s work. When Eric Roberts appears only off-screen for the first half of the film, before then walking into a mid-shot during a moment of intense low drama, you can forgive him for not having been around to shoot those days and turning in a voice performance later.

But when a film is made up entirely of compromises, it gets rather wearing. All the daylight sequences include bizarre fire and shimmer opticals, and almost everything indoors is filmed in total darkness, punctuated only by neon lamps that try and give a futuristic feel. The fight scenes feature a host of ineffective in-camera Matrix-style slo-mo effects, and the acting varies between iffy and whiffy – and in the case of Roberts and Sizemore, probably sniffy too.

An end credit reads, ‘Based off the characters from the Ravage Reign Universe’, which says everything about the amount of thought that’s gone into this. And if the promotion proudly proclaims this is based on a comic book series, that’s squarely in the hope that potential viewers will see the words ‘comic book’ and expect a certain level of imagination. Turns out Lujan is responsible for the comic books as well as the films, plus a couple of ‘TV’ spin-offs too. That’s a lot of universe for one man. Too much.

THE IMMORTAL WARS / CERT: M (AUSTRALIA) / DIRECTOR: JOE LUJAN / SCREENPLAY: JOE LUJAN / STARRING: ERIC ROBERTS, TOM SIZEMORE, BILL OBERST Jr., SHAUN GERARDO, JACKIE GERHARDY, TAYLOR KILGORE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (AUSTRALIA)

It’s getting harder and harder to do something new with cinema formats. Found footage, in particular, seems to have been done to death but Erik Kristopher Myers’ latest film takes the oft-seen style and weaves in an intriguing and engrossing tale that proves there’s still some life left in the subgenre.

The film starts with the premise of a bunch of video tapes found in the basement of a house that show a pair of young film students attempting to make a documentary about a Baltimore folk legend Peeping Tom. The story goes that if you stare, unblinking, into a train tunnel for an hour until midnight, a malevolent character will appear and keep drawing closer with every subsequent blink. Budding director Gavin (Kallick) is adamant that the footage genuinely shows that the pair had indeed managed to catch Peeping Tom on camera and that something sinister has happened to them. He sets out to validate and compile the footage into his own movie, with a film crew shooting his progress.

On the surface, this could be just another found footage shocker. What Myers’ pseudo-documentary cleverly does is both use and subvert the tropes of the subgenre and present it as an effective film-within-a film package. Kellick is compelling as the wannabe filmmaker desperate to not only present the truth behind the videos he’s discovered but legitimise his own stalled career. By pointing out the limitations, styles and even the faults in many previous entries into the FF world, Myers’ film embraces an even greater meta approach than we’re used to.

When the focus shifts from the original footage to the descent and increasing passion of Gavin and the concerns of those around him, it becomes a powerful study of obsession rather than folklore with numerous surprising revelations.

If you think the subgenre is done and finished, Butterfly Kisses might change your mind as it’s head and shoulders above the rest.

BUTTERFLY KISSES / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ERIK KRISTOPHER MYERS / STARRING: RACHEL ARMIGER, REED DELISLE, SETH ADAM KALLICK / RELEASE DATE: TBC (UK), OCTOBER 23RD (US)

If you were eight years old in 1993, there’s a chance you’ll have fond memories of the three Prehysteria! films – and maybe those memories will carry you through the hokey dialogue, cheesy performances and contrived action. The first of these movies, being given its US Blu-ray bow courtesy of Full Moon Features, might have enough goofy charm to please the younger among the family, but the more discerning viewer is more likely to look at the cheap effects, the obvious plotting and the tacky acting and see something that looks like a relic of another age.

Arriving just a couple of months ahead of Jurassic Park, and no doubt hoping to steal a march on its coat-tails, Charles (Dollman vs. Demonic Toys) Band’s picture – made with his father Albert – tells the story of five frozen dinosaur eggs, stolen from a forbidden temple by a comically unscrupulous museum curator, which accidentally fall into the hands of a recently widowed farmer and his two children before being hatched by the family’s pet dog. Once Rico Sarno (Lee) realises what’s happened, he hires a couple of hoods to help him retrieve the born-adult but miniature (something to do with Darwinism, apparently, according to the ‘make it up as you go along’ script) dinosaurs, and much mayhem – and a little mirth, albeit the best of it probably unintentional – ensues.

From the opening moments where we see Sarno heading through the South American jungle with a native guide, the scene is set; not only does this sequence look like it was filmed in a garden centre, but Sarno’s horribly brash racism towards his escort is uncomfortable to watch, even as it’s supposed to be – and the Indiana Jones-style stunt as Sarno enters the temple is both clumsy and takes place on such a tiny set the actor barely fits inside; indeed the entrance wobbles as he brushes past. This is filmmaking of expediency rather than either professionalism or extemporisation.

The Taylor family fare a little better, with son Jerry (O’Brien) a twelve-year-old Elvis obsessive and his older sister Monica (Mills) wanting to spend school nights in the company of older boys (her boyfriend might be sixteen according to the script, but looks closer to thirty when we meet him – and is the single funniest thing about the film); if the relationships between the two kids and their now-single father lack any kind of tension, there’s a pleasant enough chemistry, added to when Sarno’s sympathetic employee Vicky (Morris), who has a thing for father Frank (Cullen), moves in.

It’s a nice enough transfer with some interesting extras (the Videozone ‘making of’ instalment looks like it was sourced from an off-air VHS recording), but boy, Prehysteria! hasn’t aged well.

Extras: trailer, commentary, Videozone episode

PREHYSTERIA! / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: ALBERT BAND, CHARLES BAND / SCREENPLAY: GREG SUDDETH, MARK GOLDSTEIN, MICHAEL DAVIS / STARRING: BRETT CULLEN, COLLEEN MORRIS, SAMANTHA MILLS, AUSTIN O’BRIEN, STEPHEN LEE / RELEASE DATE: 23rd OCTOBER

If you’re not yet convinced by the BBC’s current inclination to release Blu-ray HD editions of SD TV material recorded (often on videotape) in the 1970s and 1980s, it’s unlikely that this new 3-disc ‘special edition’ of the 1981 six-part Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV series will change your mind. The slipcover of the new release proudly proclaims “remastered and restored” but, in all honesty, you’re not likely to see much improvement in the picture quality from the long-available DVD release of the series, although the sound has been beefed up for those with real high-end hardware.

We’re not going to insult you by recapping the story of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy here; if you’re not familiar with Douglas Adams’ groundbreaking 1970s radio sci-fi comedy (and this subsequent TV serialisation) then you’ve really no business reading Starburst at all. The TV episodes are no better or worse than you might expect from a BBC sci-fi series from the early 1980s, especially one produced by a man best known as producer and occasional director of the long-running rolling-down-the-hill-in-a-tin-bath codgers comedy Last of the Summer Wine – you can’t help but wonder just how far out of his depth he was here. The visual effects are shonky but well-meant, the acting is brutally plummy, and the humour is unavoidably shot through with post-Python Oxbridge smart-arsery. But the ideas are great, and there are loads of them, Adams’ prodigious imagination throwing out concepts and gags which roll and bounce, shooting off in all directions before being replaced with something even wilder and more brain-boggling.

Hitch-Hiker’s is fine and dandy then, with the proviso that it’s approached as an under-budgeted period piece which was never really going to do justice to its creator’s vision. Is this new Blu-ray package worth your time and cash? The first two discs contain all the material from the 2002 DVD release. If you’re going to buy this new edition, you’ll be doing it for disc three which is full of previously unreleased material, the best of which is a lengthy reel of studio footage from the production which sees the cast relaxing, pulling faces and suffering for their art between and during takes, and the show’s admittedly excellent hand-drawn ‘Guide’ animation presented in HD. Everything else is a ragbag of often dodgy quality off-air recordings of old BBC TV shows (some of which see Adams excitedly demonstrating a thrilling new text computer game in 1985), pompous Robert Kee telling Adams he didn’t think his second Hitch-Hiker’s book was as good as the first, Marvin the Paranoid Android ‘performing’ his Top 52 hit single on Blue Peter, ten brief films largely taken from an ancient Adams interview, and several items from the recording of recent audio dramatisations which are little more than adverts for their commercial releases. The most recent piece is an appearance from Simon Jones on BBC’s Breakfast programme in 2012.

Despite its nicely-designed packaging and what can most generously be described as a minuscule improvement in visual quality, Hitch-Hiker’s on Blu-ray disappoints because there’s nothing new here at all, just a lot of old archive baggage exhumed and rammed onto the third disc. There’s nothing here you’ll need to see again. We’re equally ambivalent about the BBC’s Blu-ray releases of ‘classic’ Doctor Who, but at least those sets have some new features, interviews and FX sequences. There’s a whiff of the cash-in about the Hitch-Hiker’s set which, in the end, is only really going to appeal to completists who can’t live without seeing a 1980 clip of Douglas Adams on Nationwide and really aren’t too bothered that the TV show itself looks little better than it ever has.

THE HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: ALAN JW BELL / SCREENPLAY:  DOUGLAS ADAMS / STARRING: SIMON JONES, PETER JONES, DAVID DIXON, MARK WING-DAVEY, SANDRA DICKINSON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

There are a few good ideas floating around The Hatred. Not necessarily original ones, but the kind of building blocks it’s possible to make a decent movie out of if you have the right talent. The Hatred isn’t that movie. It starts promisingly and it’s nicely shot. But the script soon betrays its lack of ambition – or even thoroughness – and the performances are in need of much greater supervision. It’s a shame the writer and director couldn’t have met up to hammer out the finer points before production commenced.

Writer/director Michael G. Kehoe’s film starts in 1968 with a twenty minute-plus prologue; ex-Nazi relic hunter Samuel Sears (Divoff), a close aide to Hitler dealing in occult artefacts, is living as an Amish at an isolated farm, but when he and his teenage daughter quarrel about the amount of control he exerts over her, all hell breaks loose and two deaths result. Half a century later, a group of four young female students are about to go house- and baby-sitting for their professor at his newly-bought isolated country home, after he and his wife are called away to a conference on the day he was supposed to move in.

So, you know pretty much exactly what to expect, and the success of The Hatred depends entirely upon how successfully Kehoe develops the relationships between the girls and how plausible he makes them, and therefore how much we care about which will perish or survive, how effectively he sets up the scares – and how satisfyingly the explanations fit together. On this latter point, the ambiguity over whether it’s the father or the daughter – or indeed the relic – that’s beleaguering the teenagers seems fumbled at the death, and the haunting sequences follow the Conjuring example rather too closely and too arbitrarily to really be worthwhile – except in one very effective example. Which you can watch in the trailer.

It’s really down to the success of the actresses as the beleaguered, then. Kehoe tries to build an atmosphere by saving the full manifestation of his demons till close to the end (while throwing in a number of minor engagements rather sooner, defying his own logic), an approach that, along with some especially unwieldy and bogus-sounding dialogue, pretty much undermines the actors’ performances. Their camaraderie from the beginning feels forced, their Californian positivity misplaced and unnatural, and their reactions to the strange incidents unfolding entirely inexplicable. When one of the girls is almost drowned by invisible hands, they order pizza.

They’d probably all be more likeable in more confident hands, but The Hatred is so ill-considered and ineffectual, it is in the end rather more irritating and frustrating than it is remotely thrilling.

Extras: trailer

REVIEW: THE HATRED / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: MICHAEL G. KEHOE / SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL G. KEHOE / STARRING: SARAH DAVENPORT, ANDREW DIVOFF, DARBY WALKER, NINA SIEMASZKO, SHAE SMOLIK, GABRIELLE BOURNE, BAYLEY CORMAN, ALISHA WAINWRIGHT / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW