NIGHT OF THE HUNTED

Holed up inside a remote gas station in the dead of night, social media manager Alice (Camille Rowe) falls prey to a sociopathic sniper with a massive chip on his shoulder and an even bigger mouth than that.

Trapped between the aisles with only cans of Spam and a growing pile of dead bodies for company, Alice kills time conversing with the killer via walkie-talkie. Between futile escape attempts, the pair trade ideological debate, the highlights of which you’ll recognise from Trump rallies, Fox News, and the darker recesses of social media.

Thankfully, director Franck Khalfoun’s nihilistic thriller (based on a Spanish film from 2015) is more than just Phone Booth with updated buzzwords vomited all over the screenplay. While the battle of the ideologies is real – and may turn off the more politically disaffected – it’s backed up by well-staged action, a smart use of the setting, and a pervasive sense of claustrophobia.

If the sniper’s yapping gets tiresome after a while, violent diversion comes from the unsuspecting cannon fodder who are unfortunate enough to stumble onto this bullet-ridden battleground. Meanwhile, Rowe gives a phenomenal performance as the killer’s would-be victim, while Stasa Stanic does great things from the other end of the sniper’s scope, believably inhabiting the role of MAGA nut/anti-vaxxer/war veteran/gun nut and managing to deliver the unhinged rants at hand with charisma.

This is well-trodden ground to anyone who has been paying attention to the state of the nation since, oh-say, January 2017 (and going back even earlier than that to Sandy Hook and subsequent national tragedies), but this well-aimed thriller still finds plenty to say.

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NIGHT OF THE HUNTED is out in UK Cinemas and Shudder from October 20th, 2023

THE OTHERS (2001) [Blu-ray]

The Others

There’s a fascinating insight included in one of the extras in the new Blu-ray release of The Others, 2001’s supernatural thriller with a killer twist ending starring Nicole Kidman. As the production was about to begin, The Sixth Sense was released to film festivals, and the word about a supernatural thriller with a killer twist ending began to take hold with some force. For a while, it looked like The Others may not get made at all. Fortunately, the decision to go ahead with The Others was a very good one indeed, its $17m budget garnering a worldwide box office of over $210m.

Just after the war in 1945, a lonely, isolated woman awaiting the return of her husband, living in Jersey with her photosensitive children in an old, dark, rambling family home, starts to believe that her house is haunted. When new servants arrive, strange episodes escalate. Is the family going mad, or are other unexplained things happening?

In his first English language film, writer, director, and even score composer Alejandro Amenábar certainly had a very clear vision of what he wanted The Others to be and, crucially, what it should not be. With influences such as The Haunting, Turn of the Screw, and The Innocents permeating the pace and atmosphere of the film, The Others isn’t about fast-paced action or jump scares. It’s a slow-burn character study where fear comes from the reactions of the characters finding terror in the shadows and from the slow reveal of what is actually going on.

Central to all of this is the great performance from Kidman, a total contrast to the role she had just completed filming in Moulin Rouge. She’s ice cold at first, harsh, controlling, desperate not to fall apart as she grieves a probably lost husband. And a life she could have had. It’s a star-making turn. Of course, much of the success of The Others lies in its revealing finale, but a surprise ending is nothing unless everything that comes before adds up, and here, just as in The Sixth Sense, the shocker makes you want to watch the whole thing again knowing what you now know.

With its very specific look and lighting, The Others doesn’t benefit a huge amount from this 4K upgrade. It’s a great-looking film anyway. However, new interviews with Kidman, Amenábar (why isn’t he a huge director now?), co-star Christopher Eccleston and producer Fernando Bovaira provide great background and reveal a genuine pride in the finished film. Interviews from previous releases are included, as is a short documentary about the music composed for the film and a slightly dull look at some of the film’s green screen effects.

The extras knock a star off what is a five-star film.

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THE OTHERS is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD.

 

DREAM SCENARIO

Writer/director Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario stars Nicolas Cage as Paul Matthews, a frustrated writer/ professor who, for no apparent reason, starts appearing in people’s dreams. As the phenomenon becomes more widespread, Paul finds himself trending, and our reluctant hero attempts to utilise his new-found fame to kick-start a writing career.

Kristoffer Borgli blends biting satire with surreal comedy into a warped flight of fancy, which burgeons into a noggin-bothering nightmare when the dreams turn bad and Paul’s life falls apart. Topped with a career-best performance from Cage, whose whining, cranky angst makes him at times both lovable and loathsome, Dream Scenario is a tantalising near masterpiece in its melding of multiple genres with flecks of Woody Allen, Charlie Kaufman, and Paul Verhoeven throughout.

Painfully funny family drama bleeds seamlessly into fantasy/horror, enriched with subtexts, themes and social commentary about cancel culture before going paradoxically sci-fi at the end. Subplots involving Paul being plagiarised by a colleague, seduced by a PA and prostituted into advertising by a soapy publicity manager (Michael Cera), all add to the A24/Ari Aster produced cacophony; for Dream Scenario subverts, bamboozles, deviates, then defies expectation while being beautifully batshit with a knack to constantly captivate.

Despite a slightly elongated narrative (it could’ve been a tighter 90 minutes, and maybe a masterpiece), Borgli’s second feature, after 2022’s Sick of Myself, is an exquisitely twisted, face-achingly funny and explosive visual delight, laced with warmth, wry irony and surprising frights. With so many mid-budget movies being shunted onto streaming platforms, it’s a blessing to see this trippy, cerebral cortex-kneading treat beam with such brilliance on the big screen.

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DREAM SCENARIO opens in UK cinemas on November 10th

 

THREE BLIND MICE

Three Blind Mice (2023)

Horror films based on fairy tales, nursery rhymes and children’s stories are enjoying something of a renaissance at present. Movies like Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey are able to appropriate characters and settings from a fully formed fictional world. The producers of Three Blind Mice have only a six-line stanza to work with. That might be quite challenging if they were interested in bringing that short story to the screen. But they’re not. Which means that you’ll await the arrival of a knife-wielding farmer’s wife in vain.

Addict-in-denial Abi is forced to join her family on a rural retreat. All attention is focused on getting Abi clean, which means that the arrival of three grotesque creatures initially goes unnoticed. Part human, part vicious vermin, these animalistic killers cannot see but hunt their prey by sound and smell. As the night unfolds, more of Abi’s nearest and dearest succumb to the rapacious rodents, and there’s every chance that no one will escape the deadly mouse trap.

The design of the murderous mice’s latex masks and the physicality of the three actors underneath their mouse attire are the film’s selling points. The ‘meeces’ who tear people into pieces do make good baddies. There’s no shortage of gushing blood, either. But writer David Malcolm and director Pierre B fail to build in anything like a coherent mythology. Swarms of CGI “mini mice” do the story no favours, nor does the inclusion of a single refrain of the rhyme at the film’s midpoint. Kudos to May Kelly (Abi), who screams herself hoarse as her character’s miseries multiply. But her commitment is not enough to stop Three Blind Mice from feeling pretty cheesy.

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THREE BLIND MICE is released on streaming platforms and DVD in the US on October 17th, 2023

15 CAMERAS

15 Cameras

Voyeurism and domestic surveillance remain popular sources of inspiration for indie horror filmmakers. 15 Cameras, the latest entry in what’s currently a trilogy, mixes in elements of both genres with the motifs of two others: the ‘hider in the house’ and the serial slasher. That kind of mash-up clearly gives writer PJ McCabe and director Danny Madden a lot of source material to work with. But the result is a pretty tasteless blend of the four ingredients.

Young couple Cam and Sky are delighted by the purchase of their new duplex home. To help with costs, the pair will rent out the ground floor. As they refurb the residence, they discover security cameras throughout the building. Cam then uncovers a hidden CCTV control centre, from which he plans to spy on the two young women he persuades Sky to rent to. Cam’s scheme is soon upended when he realises that the deranged, murderous landlord who installed this system might be planning a homecoming to retrieve trophies and exact retribution.

There’s no need to have seen either 13 Cameras or 14 Cameras to make sense of the storyline of this latest instalment. Cam’s comeuppance is inevitable from the outset, as are the home invasion and the bloody knifings that accompany the film’s closing act. But it’s difficult to work out what McCabe and Madden are trying to say – if anything – about actions that would put Cam on the sex offenders’ register. His voyeurism is framed as a kind of lecherous ‘prank’, with which the viewer is made complicit. For a film all about observation, that’s a pretty big thing to lose sight of.

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15 CAMERAS is released on streaming platforms in the US on October 15th, 2023

PET SEMATERY: BLOODLINES

Pet Sematary Bloodlines

Taking place in 1969, years before the original story, this prequel sees a young Jud Crandall – played by Jackson White, who’ll grow up to be Fred Gwynne or John Lithgow, depending on which version you prefer – who’s set to leave Ludlow to join the Peace Corps. This doesn’t go down well with some of the locals, particularly Bill (David Duchovny), whose son Timmy (Jack Mulhern) has served in Vietnam. Timmy is due back after being honourably discharged, Bill tells him scornfully. In reality, Timmy was killed in action, and Bill has buried his son in the infamous graveyard.

On the road out of town with his girlfriend, Norma (Natalie Alyn Lind), a huge bird smashes into Jud’s windscreen, and they come across Bill’s dog, which looks a little off. They take it over to Bill’s and see Timmy, who isn’t the friend that Jud remembers. To make things worse, the dog attacks Norma, ripping a hole in her arm. It soon becomes clear that strange things are afoot in the cursed town, and the curiously misspelt cemetery is to blame.

Despite the best efforts from Duchovny and White (and the addition of the legendary Pam Grier, Samantha Mathis, and E.T.’s Henry Thomas), this prequel never really hits strong enough to justify its existence. That said, there are enough shocks and jump-scares to entertain the undemanding horror fan.

This is the directorial debut of Lindsay Anderson Beer (co-writing with Jeff Buhler), who does her best to weave a tale that brings points about the early colonialists and the Vietnam War into play amongst the usual morality tale of tampering with death while staying as true to the original themes and the book’s tale of Timmy Baterman as possible. The biggest problem lies in that it’s an unnecessary prequel, arguably made to cash in on the ever-growing remake/franchise crowd. Beer would be better served with an original property, but then there’s sadly no money in that, is there?

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Stream Pet Sematary: Bloodlines now on Paramount+. Try it FREE!

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER

For a franchise fraught with flawed yet fascinating prequels/sequels (The Exorcist III; Dominion), wonky weirdness, mishandled madness (Exorcist II: The Heretic), mind-numbing mediocrity (Exorcist: The Beginning) and multiple versions, it has all been often, oddly interesting. Now, producer Jason Blum and writer/director David Gordon Green’s attempt to do justice to William Peter Blatty’s novel and William Friedkin’s original film with side-step sequel/franchise reboot, The Exorcist: Believer, but tragically flub it right up.

Peter Satler and Gordon Green’s script starts strong in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where a holidaying couple, pregnant with their first child, are injured in an earthquake. The story picks up thirteen years later in Percy, Georgia with single father Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) and his daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett). When Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) are found in a farmhouse, after missing for three days, the girls start showing signs suggesting they might be possessed. Victor and Katherine’s parents seek help outside the medical profession when doctors are confounded, so contact exorcism expert Chris MacNeill (Ellen Burstyn) for advice.

An intriguing first half boasts nifty plot turns, unique locales, and subtle hat-tips to the original, but The Exorcist: Believer deteriorates into bunkum when genre chestnuts, drudge dialogue, and marred drama/horror resound like ill-conceived DTV trite, doing away with what came before it. Some jump-scares strike and the cast do their best, but The Exorcist: Believer feels too by-the-numbers, and does a major disservice to the original by coddling a key plot point. While this may not be the most irrefutably turgid Exorcist film, it all too often feels like it, and is certainly the most squandered and monotonous.

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THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER opens in cinemas on October 6th

THE WAIT [Fantastic Fest 2023]

the wait

Javier Gutiérrez (Rings) returns to his Spanish roots with this rural shocker that takes its time to burrow into your head before unleashing a surreal and nightmarish finale.

Set in the ‘70s, Eladio (Victor Clavijo) has taken a job as a groundskeeper that will set him and his family up for the next few years. While planning an annual hunt, he reluctantly takes a bribe to increase the number of shooting stands. When tragedy strikes, his life becomes an increasingly living hell.

The Wait (La espera) is the sort of story that thrives from being in a foreign language. With the rugged expanse of the Spanish countryside as its backdrop, the tale gradually unwinds before us, moving from a heartbreaking family drama in the vein of Jean de Florette to a demented piece of folk horror. Clavijo is captivating as a good man who makes one wrong decision, albeit against his better judgement. The class system is part of the real horror here, too. The landowners and his acolytes visibly have a superiority over the much more moral menial worker, something that’s brought to a head in the shocking climax.

Miguel Ángel Mora’s cinematography makes the most of the rural landscape, and this creates a vivid contrast to Eladio’s grace-and-favour, basic home, which gets more oppressive and claustrophobic as events unfold. The nightmarish scenario he finds himself in is all the more believable, thanks to Clavijo’s impressive, relatable performance.

The Wait is a brooding, potent tale of calamity, loss, revenge, and class divides. It would do it a disservice to call it merely a horror film, as there is so much more here and plenty of food for thought.

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THE WAIT screened at Fantastic Fest 2023.

THE PRICE WE PAY

The latest from director Ryûhei Kitamura (Versus, The Midnight Meat Train), this grisly picture tracks the fallout from a pawn shop robbery gone awry. When one of their number is shot, and the getaway driver scarpers, Cody (Stephen Dorff), Alex (Emile Hirsch, morphing into Garth Marenghi with age) and Shane (Tanner Zagarino) are stranded. Taking a young woman (Gigi Zumbado) hostage, the gang steal her car and flees to the countryside. There, they hole up in an isolated farm cabin while they wait for extraction.

This, being a Ryûhei Kitamura movie, is the tip of the iceberg. Those who have seen Midnight Meat Train and No One Lives will be waiting on tenterhooks for the inevitable genre shift. Unlike his previous work, the seams are more obvious here – thanks, in part, to glaring similarities to From Dusk Till Dawn – but it is fun trying to predict where exactly all of this is headed.

Until then, it’s all character work and three fine performances from Dorff, Hirsch and Zumbado. While Hirsch’s buggy psychopath routine is a bit Dusk-Till-Dawn-Tarantino, he’s a lot of fun (and a better performer than Tarantino could ever hope to be), and plays nicely against the gruffer, stoic Dorff.

As best-laid plans fall apart and Kitamura goes off the chain, the full picture becomes known. To say more would be to spoil what Kitamura and screenwriter Christopher Jolley have in store. Suffice to say that those tuning in for extreme gore and visceral violence will not be disappointed.

This is a film of two halves – neither one particularly new or original, but both of them directed by the singular talent which is Ryûhei Kitamura.

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THE PRICE WE PAY is released digitally in the UK on October 16th, 2023,

END OF TERM

end of term trailer

There’s a common expression that you should suffer for your art. That’s the crux of Mat Menony’s debut feature that mixes a whodunit scenario with pseudo-avant-garde theories.

Melissa (Chelsea Edge) is being interrogated by a pair of police detectives (David Bamber and an underused Julie Graham) about the murder of an art critic (Ronald Pickup) at a gallery show. As Melissa tells her side of the story, more murders come to light, and things become even freakier.

Its set-up might mirror The Usual Suspects, but that’s where any comparisons end (particularly when it comes to quality). The setting of Borley (the students stay at ‘The Old Rectory’, but the real-world legend isn’t touched upon, although there may be a spectral presence of a former artist) is a nice touch, but the fact that all the students are so annoying makes us wish they’d get bumped off sooner. There’s a very Saw-esque BDSM torture chair built by one budding ‘artist’ that wouldn’t pass health and safety in any gallery, but the creator is surprised when there’s a casualty when someone sits in it, particularly with its ‘see no evil’ theme! Sadly, End of Term doesn’t delve deep enough into many of the characters’ artist theories beyond being lightly sketched. It’s perhaps a little too pedestrian for the casual horror fan, too.

There are some famous faces amongst the youngsters (as well as the already named stars, there’s a bored-looking Peter Davison, clearly just picking up a paycheck), and this raises the profile of the picture and arguably is the reason it’s getting a general release when better indie films are struggling to be seen.

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END OF TERM is out now on digital platforms.