Review Category: Movie

Known for his post-apocalyptic and gritty work on The Hunger Games franchise, director Francis Lawrence has returned with his latest project, The Long Walk, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel (behind the pseudonym of Richard Bachman) of the same name.

With a script by JT Mollner (Strange Darling), the story has a simple premise. America is currently in a state of financial ruin, and every year, a military presence led by the Major (Mark Hamill) puts on a walk to help inspire a work ethic in a society that has seemingly become more hopeless than ever imagined. With 100 young contestants – who have all volunteered for the event – the goal is to maintain a speed of 4MPH or get shot. There is only one winner, who will receive a life-changing prize.

The Long Walk pulls you straight in with its intriguing focus on contestant #47, Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), just before he heads to the start of the walk. For a moment, everything seems like a video game, in the sense that none of the contestants feel like they are going to die doing this walk. A fake sense of community and friendship quickly forms between some of the walkers. However, when the first gunshot fires, The Long Walk steps into a relentlessly brutal pace that is unpredictable yet compelling to watch. The movie cements its tone from this point on, and it immerses the viewer into the horrific reality of this disturbing event.

With his work on The Hunger Games receiving critical acclaim, Francis Lawrence is the perfect choice for this narrative. He’s used to working with characters that must survive to the last person standing, whilst really getting into the core and background of the personalities on show. He achieved that great cinematic balance previously, and has certainly done it again here.

Alongside an incredible lead performance from Hoffman is a captivating display from David Jonsson as Peter McVries. Peter asks intense yet important questions, and brings out the best (or worst) in all those who walk beside him. After a career-changing performance in Alien: Romulus, Jonsson’s work in The Long Walk is additional proof of a promising career ahead. The dynamic between Raymond and Peter is nothing short of superb, the writing constantly shines through each actor, and as a viewer, you want more.

The film only gets better as it progresses; the more dire the situation, the more honesty it brings out within the characters. With a couple of plot twists along the way, and a kick-ass performance from Mark Hamill, the story arrives at a spot-on conclusion. The Long Walk is brutal and unforgiving in its execution, but you can’t help but watch such a unique idea that rewardingly digs down to the core of human nature, harshly pushed to its absolute limit.

THE LONG WALK is in cinemas from September 12th.

This new indie psychological horror is a difficult watch, and that’s clearly writer-director Martin Melnick’s intention from the outset. A low-budget, claustrophobic, dialogue-driven treatise on existential torment, Lilly Lives Alone is far from multiplex popcorn viewing. Melnick blends unnerving, spooky chills with an intense portrayal of the devastating personal impact of unimaginable grief.

Ten years on from the death of her young daughter, Lilly (Shannon Beeby) is still overwhelmed by an unprocessed sense of loss. Shunning connections from family and friends, Lilly is untethered and adrift, looking for solace in alcohol, pills and meaningless one-night pick-ups. Spending most of her time home alone, she is haunted by memories of her own dysfunctional childhood and ghostly apparitions that might be spectres reaching out to her or simply the hallucinations conjured up by her own addled mind.

Apart from the few glimpses of the outside world, the drama of Lilly Lives Alone unfolds in the gloomy and drab interiors of her home. Her isolation is broken only by the occasional visits of concerned workmates, intrusive neighbours (genre stalwart Jeffrey Combs on scene-stealing form), or her latest hook-up Jed (Ryan Jonze, who plays out of his depth rather adeptly). Given the subject matter and her centrality to the film, it’s a bold creative choice to make Lilly such an unsympathetic character. Audiences will feel empathy for Lilly’s plight, but her caustic, endlessly self-destructive behaviour towards others makes her difficult to like.

Even so, the emotional rawness of Beeby’s committed performance is both powerful and impactful. The supernatural elements of the story are ultimately peripheral to Melnick’s concern with matters of guilt and redemption, yet this remains a visceral and affecting viewing experience.

LILLY LIVES ALONE is available now on streaming platforms in the US. A UK release is coming soon.

Taking a unique approach for this feature documentary about the acclaimed and much-loved artist Graham Humphreys, director Chris Collier allows his subject to do most of the talking.

Aside from film clips and images, the whole thing almost exclusively takes place in Graham’s study, with the placement of the comfy chairs shifting to keep the visuals exciting. The ‘conversation’ of the title draws in several people who either have been important to Graham’s work or are close friends. This allows for a laid-back discussion on how he got into the business, his influences, and his techniques. Rather than having a proliferation of the same old talking heads, we get a deeper understanding of what makes Graham tick as well as what draws people into his world.

Plenty of people will relate to the things that sparked his passions. This writer started his horror journey in almost exactly the same way: Denis Gifford’s Pictorial History of Horror Movies and the BBC double-bills. Several of the people we see chat with the artist, such as Reece Shearsmith, reveal a similar origin for their love of the genre. There’s also the passion for punk rock, particularly the band The Damned, with whom Graham has been lucky enough to work several times. However, rather than bombard the viewer with facts and anecdotes, Collier’s technique brings the revelations to the fore organically.

There are moments of pause that suggest a self-consciousness on the part of the subject, as if he’s uneasy about being the focus of such attention. It comes across as endearing rather than awkward, though, as the conversational format makes the viewer feel as though they’re sat in the room with subjects, and the warmth of the chatter makes it less eavesdropping and more inclusive.

It’s a warmly engaging portrait of a man whose work has impressed us all for many years and has played a significant role in shaping the British horror fan’s love of the genre. From that first poster for The Evil Dead to the covers he’s provided for STARBURST, Graham’s work is synonymous with horror and instantly recognisable. He is, without doubt, our Drew Struzan and a national treasure.

 

CAPTURED SOULS: IN CONVERSATION WITH GRAHAM HUMPHREYS screened at FrightFest on August 24th.

Director Mercedes Bryce Morgan gives the middle finger to puritanism in this erotic thriller set on double entendre lake. Arriving at a glamorous country house on the titular Bone Lake, Diego (Marco Pigossi) and Sage (Maddie Hasson) are flabbergasted to find that it’s been double-booked by another couple. Enter the gorgeous, flirty and fancy-free Cin (Andra Nechita) and Will (Alex Roe), who propose that they all stay there together.

What starts off as a fun couples’ weekend takes a sinister turn when prudish Diego and Sage begin to butt heads with the more liberated Cin and Will. Already on edge due to the unspoken tension in their relationship, Diego and Sage become fractured by Cin’s attempts at seduction. Clearly, something is afoot here, and the creepy house with its secret rooms and buried secrets is just the start of it. What follows is perhaps more straight thriller than the erotic version as advertised, although fans of twisted mind games should enjoy what Morgan has in store for Diego and Sage. Think of a horny Speak No Evil by way of Barbarian, and you’ll find yourself in the general wheelhouse of Bone Lake.

While the story could have done more to subvert what seems to be happening, there are still plenty of shocks in store for the chaotic, gory endgame. Nechita and Roe have chemistry for days, while Hasson and Pigossi make for a more plausible (certainly plausibly repressed) couple. It’s almost a disappointment when the film takes a turn into more predictable stalk-and-slash territory, losing much of what made it so juicy in the first place.

Bone Lake isn’t as clever or subversive or even sexy as it thinks it is, but it has fun trying.

BONE LAKE premiered at UK FrightFest on August 24, 2025.

When his rich wife dies, Cheev (Thanavate Siriwattanagul) stands to take everything. Looking forward to starting his new life with mistress Rossukhon (Arachaporn Pokinpakorn), Cheev moves her into the luxury villa they’re about to inherit. There’s one small catch though – the property will only become Cheev’s once his wife’s body has spent 100 days with them both in the house, lying in state in an ornate glass coffin.

Blindsided by the truth about their living arrangement, Rossukhon is understandably freaked to be sharing the house with Cheev’s dead wife. As for the dearly departed Lunthom (Arachaporn Pokinpakorn), she’s not exactly resting in peace, and Rossukhon is soon tormented by ghostly visions of her spooky predecessor. Can Cheev convince Rossukhon to hold her nerve long enough to inherit the house? And what does either woman see in a deadbeat like Cheev anyway?

This Thai ghost story by director ​Vathanyu Ingkawiwat goes heavy on the melodrama, leaning into the tropes of the Pi Tai Hong subgenre. There are few true surprises in store, although the imagery is suitably ghastly (if you’re creeped out by the dark haired female ghost archetype, that is) especially as Lunthom’s ghost becomes more emboldened by Cheev and and his mistress rutting all over her home.

Far more appalling than anything Lunthorm does is the behaviour of Cheev, who acts exactly how you might expect a man named ‘Cheev’ to act. As flashbacks detail the collapse of his marriage and beginning of his affair with Rossukhon, the real monster of the piece is revealed. The mistress is no angel either, but one soon realises that Lunthorm would be better off haunting her wasteman husband instead.

Tomb Watcher is far from revolutionary cinema, but it possesses a certain soapy charm.

TOMB WATCHER premiered at UK FrightFest on August 24, 2025.

Three men wake up in the forest, strapped to the ground with no idea how they came to be there. Jules (Constantin Vidal) is suffering a curious pain in his back, and it’s only getting worse. With the arrival of Eve (Audrey Pirault) comes the revelation that they’re lying on a patch of rapidly growing bamboo shoots – shoots which will grow long enough to impale her helpless victims if they don’t act quickly.

The only way to ensure their freedom? To confess what happened to Eve’s missing sister, Iris (Sophie Maréchal). As the bamboo grows (a meter and 20 centimeters in 24 hours, to be precise) a series of flashbacks reveals what happened last night, and what Jules, Sam (Jimony Ekila) and Victor (Paul Deby) did to Iris. At the same time, a police investigation into a smashed-up bar threatens to lead two officers to Eve’s location and the men’s secret.

The English title of this French rape-revenge film makes certain promises, and these are mostly delivered upon, even if it does stray from course later in the game. There is bamboo, and someone does revenge. The real horror story, though, is men, and Bamboo Revenge is a chilling depiction of the predatory behaviour of males in spaces where women are just trying to live, exist and have a good time. In its most effective shot, Iris is groped by a group of handsy men as she attempts to crowd-surf, drawing a similarity between grabby male hands and the relentlessly growing bamboo beneath Jules, Sam and Victor.

These themes are darker than one might expect from something called Bamboo Revenge, and the film enters some upsetting places as the truth is revealed. Eschewing bamboo-related gore (of which there is surprisingly little), the film instead cultivates something much more insidious, and grounded in our own reality. The discomfort, ultimately, is the point.

BAMBOO REVENGE premiered at UK FrightFest on August 25, 2025.

You never quite know what to expect from a Joe Begos joint. After psychedelic druggie vampires, grizzled war veterans and a murderous robo-Santa, the director’s next trip is a whiskey-and-coke-fueled alien invasion film which pits two former best friends against an infestation of vicious Martians. Just to be clear, when we say whiskey and coke, we’re not talking about the cola.

One thing you can expect from a Joe Begos joint – lashings of gore and neon-tinged psychedelic imagery. In that respect, Jimmy and Stiggs goes harder than the director ever has before; an unabating assault of luminescent splatter and all-out ultraviolence. Following a disorienting take on alien abduction tropes, failed filmmaker Jimmy (Begos) is furious, and out for revenge. He hits up his former best friend and work partner Stiggs (Matt Mercer) for back-up, only to fall back into old habits when their animosity resurfaces. But with the aliens returning for round two, the men are thrown into a desperate fight for survival against the Martian plague… if they can stop fighting each other first, that is.

That’s roughly it, as far as plot goes. Jimmy and Stiggs is less Independence Day and more middle-aged men flinging rubber aliens about the place (and at each other) like gore-filled water balloons. There’s an Evil Dead–esque energy to its maddening attack on the senses, and the film’s delivery of carnage makes even Sam Raimi look subtle by the time the final acts of bloodletting are done.

That Jimmy and Stiggs manages to sustain 80 minutes of this is impressive, and many will find their patience tested by the relentlessness of just about everything Begos chooses to commit to. An anarchic, heavy metal gorefest, it’s a version of the splatter flick turned up to eleven. Jimmy and Stiggs isn’t just a lot – it’s the most. But then, what did you expect from a Joe Begos joint?

JIMMY AND STIGGS premiered at UK FrightFest on August 23, 2025.

 

 

A seven-year-old girl wakes up in a cornfield with a nasty gash on the head and missing one Winnie-the-Pooh wellington boot. This simple premise is the seedling from which Seth Daly’s The Rows is cross-bred, combining the brutal home (or field) invasion of The Strangers with the creepy supernatural scares of… well, what is a Moon Man supposed to be anyway?

Spread across three non-linear chapters, this glacial horror film follows Lucy’s (Brindisi Capri) fight for survival as she’s pursued by a gang of masked home invaders, each determined to silence the girl who saw too much. She’s not alone though, and Lucy is assisted in the fight by her trusty pooch (the goodest dog in a horror film since The Hills Have Eyes) and mysterious cornfield entity Moon Man (Douglas Fries). It’s a sparse narrative, and writer-director Daly chooses not to explain much more than that.

When it does go into detail, The Rows lets events unfold out of sequence, waiting until the second chapter to fill audiences in on who these men are (ish) and why they are there (again, ish). Unfortunately, as this second act doesn’t subvert anything we thought we knew from the first, precious little of value is learned – even if its takes on home invasion tropes are particularly jittersome. Capri weathers the ordeal like a champ, but the decision to have her barely react to anything only serves to make the film feel more cold and distant than it already is. Between the faceless killers and Lucy’s perpetual frown in a cornfield, it’s the dog who gives the film its best (or at least most emotive) performance.

Where The Rows does excel is in its gorgeous cinematography, with Corey Weintraub making the most of the claustrophobic cornfield setting. As night settles, Daly continually finds ways to wring fresh tension from Lucy’s situation, utilising all manner of farming equipment, stolen weapons and perhaps a few too many instances of Deus Ex Dog Rescue. And then there’s Moon Man, who briefly sends the film into Pan’s Labyrinth, but ultimately brings little to the narrative beyond an incredible creature design and another unexplained mystery. On the other hand, he brings an incredible creature design and another unexplained mystery to the narrative, so its hard to begrudge the film its most striking feature.

The Row’s kernels of brilliance make it all the more frustrating, obscuring a genuinely tense Cornfield Invasion movie behind something deliberately obtuse and alien.

THE ROWS premiered at UK FrightFest on August 25, 2025.

 

Horror films about influencers have proliferated in the last decade, spilling over into fictional worlds as our online spaces become infested with grifters, wannabe wellness coaches and those just out for a freebie. What Kurtis David Harder’s 2022 psychological horror Influencer asked was: does it matter how many followers you have if no-one notices when you disappear?

After being stranded on a desert island at the end of the last film, CW (Cassandra Naud) is back, and now settled down. Having taken up with Diane (Lisa Delamar), CW is loved-up and has put her murderous ways behind her. However, a chance encounter with influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) reignites the fire, and CW is set down a path which puts her on a collision course with old foe Madison (Emily Tennant). Determined to make CW face justice for what she did in Thailand, Madison is on her tail… even if it takes her all the way to picturesque Bali, Indonesia.

Harder’s sequel offers more from the same formula – more gore, more startling twists, more influencers. Swapping Thailand for Indonesia, it’s even more beautifully shot than the first film (itself no slouch), taking advantage of idyllic influencer vacation homes, wild parties and lush ocean view backdrops. With viewers (and Madison) onto CW’s game, Harder ups the ante, turning Influencers into a game of cat-and-mouse, with controversial male influencer Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell) and his girlfriend Ariana (Veronica Long) as collateral. Between its brutal takedown of Andrew Tate types and the increased violence (which includes the best fight scene of the year), it’s a more savage film than its predecessor. If Influencer was The Talented Mr. Ripley for the digital age, then Influencers is its American Psycho.

As CW, Naud is mesmerising, evoking sympathy, despicability and unknowability across the same performance, sealing CW’s position as one of the most complex villains of the past decade, and the best female horror character since The Descent‘s Juno. It helps that her victims are largely terrible, and it’s a delight to watch the doofus male influencer suffer. Harder’s character assassination of Jacob is more scathing than anything even CW can muster though, and another area where the sequel’s funnier, sharper script sings. It even has the self-awareness to make a “like the TV network?” joke in regards to CW, which is appreciated.

Influencers is a superior sequel in almost every way, repurposing everything which worked about the previous film while doubling down on the horror and thriller elements. It’s perhaps less psychologically resonant than its predecessor, but finds a renewed vibrancy in its attempts to stay relevant.

INFLUENCERS premiered at UK FrightFest on August 25, 2025.

Director Viljar Bøe was last at FrightFest with his 2022 film Good Boy, the disturbing tale of a woman who finds her new relationship third-wheeled by her boyfriend’s pet man-in-a-dog-suit, Frank. A queasy blend of psychological horror film and romantic drama, it emerged as perhaps the most unnerving film of that year’s ‘fest… even if it did screw the pooch with a predictable and cliched final act.

Above The Knee is a no-less challenging work, especially in its reluctance to bend to genre convention where, ultimately, Good Boy gave into it. The story of a man (Freddy Singh) who is convinced that his leg is not his own, it emerges as one of the most uniquely challenging films of this year’s FrightFest. Suffering visions of his own limb as a rotten, blackened piece of meat, Amir is determined to be rid, and much of the film follows the struggle to not give into temptation. Body Integrity Dysphoria, otherwise known as BID, is a very real, albeit rare disorder, and Amir finds a kindred spirit when he and girlfriend Kim (Julie Abrahamsen) watch a documentary on the subject.

Having spotted her on the documentary, Amir tracks down Rikke (Louise Waage Anda), a woman who identifies as blind. Together, they plot to be rid of their unwanted ‘afflictions’ – his leg and her eyesight – setting a course to become the people they always felt they were inside. But with Amir’s impatience only growing and Rikke’s presence proving a bad influence, he finds himself growing increasingly distant from his girlfriend and work. Only one thing will scratch his itch – lopping, hacking or even mashing the thing off at the knee.

It’s a grisly collision of David Cronenberg’s Crash and 127 Hours, made all the more disturbing for its naturalistic performances and unshowy cinematography. Like Bøe’s previous work, it’s an absurd premise, treated with clinical seriousness.

ABOVE THE KNEE premiered at UK FrightFest on August 25th, 2025.