Review Category: Movie

by Martin Unsworth

Following up the superb Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes could have been a big ask for director Junta Yamaguchi and writer Makoto Ueda. With River, they have taken a similar concept but taken it in different directions.

Mikoto (Riko Fujitani) works at a Japanese Inn in Kibune, Kyoto. Returning to work after a break where she was gazing at the flowing river at the side of the building, she’s surprised that she suddenly turns up back where she started two minutes later. Even more alarming is everybody else is having the same thing happen. And they’re aware of it and remember that it’s happening and what they’ve done in the previous moments. Panic sets in before they all have to work together to make sense of all the looping.

Using a similar narrative twist may be considered lazy, but Yamaguchi’s film is unique enough to make it worthwhile. Indeed, thanks to the charming characters, Fujitani in particular, who are given a chance to grow with the progression of the looped two minutes, a rich narrative is able to be spun rather than mere repetition. When you know what’s going to happen, how much are you able to change it? It’s an interesting concept, and an added bit of romance and an even bigger surprise twist in the final act make it worth the while. There’s plenty of humour within the madness, too (“Does this mean we get paid more?”), and the characters slowly come to realise the value of time. Each loop is played as one continuous shot, the camera frantically following Mikoto as she attends to the guests in the inn and then later to her own needs. If you’ve ever felt your life is a repeating treadmill each day, be thankful it’s not every 120 seconds.

River had its UK premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 26th. 

by Joel Harley

The home invasion thriller gets a shocking subversion in Raymond Wood’s Faceless After Dark. Jaded eyes may roll when a stalker in a clown mask turns up at the home of actress Bowie (Jenna Kanell, co-writing with Todd Jacobs), looking to re-enact the atrocities of her most famous movie. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Wood’s violent revenge fantasy has more on its mind than old slasher movie cliches and damsel-in-distress tropes.

And, after being tied up and abused all over the place in Terrifier, who better to unpack that legacy than Kanell? Playing a character who has herself risen to fame battling an edgelord horror clown, Kanell delivers a blistering performance, raging against the world and the creeps and abusers who reside within it. It’s a scream of fury, echoing Promising Young Woman and Brea Grant’s Lucky in its relevance and feminist energy.

Wood, Kanell and Jacobs channel this sense of fury into a deviously unpredictable work – one brimming with punk vigour and vinegar. Faceless After Dark is angry, and rightfully so.

Faceless After Dark had its world premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th, 2023

by Joel Harley

A serial killer stalks the streets of New York, raping straight white men to death. We will leave you to wrestle with your own sensibilities as to whether this is appropriate fodder for a comedy-horror film in 2023. Meanwhile, the rest of the film is about podcasters and stand-up comedians, which should give viewers an idea about what sort of tone to expect here.

Director Onur Turkel (Catfight, Scenes From an Empty Church) returns with this slasher satire, following various subcultures within modern America as they attempt to come to terms with the ramifications of the killer and his crimes. On one level, it challenges the reaction to rape when perpetrated against the cisgender male (“No one cares!” goes the film’s tagline). On another, it’s a cheap punchline designed to shock and offend. Turkel keeps the tone so light that it’s hard to take any of this seriously, even if there is a behemoth serial killer stomping around, doing you-know-what to you-know-who.

As with his bone-crunchingly plausible fight sequences in Catfight, so Turkel brings the goods with a striking kill sequence set on a New York train. When it mimics ’70s and ’80s slasher cinema, the film is at its most on-point. Turkel’s vision of the city feels authentically grimy and dangerous, reminiscent of Maniac Cop and The New York Ripper. And then it cuts to a gang of podcasters snarking about rape, spoiling any sense of atmosphere.

There is some amusement to be had – particularly when Turkel himself is onscreen, playing a butt-sex-fascinated liberal – but it quickly wears out its welcome. The serial killer element is lost amidst endless scenes of podcasters podcasting and affected liberals bickering at dinner parties and in their bedrooms. From the endless #MeToo jokes to the umpteenth bum sex joke, the comedy element of this comedy-horror quickly wears thin. At best, it’s gratingly smug; at worst, it becomes a South Park-esque exercise in all-sides-suck-ism.

Poundcake had its international premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th, 2023.

by Joel Harley

They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky; they’re altogether ooky… they’re the Adams family, and they’re back with this macabre story of roaming circus performers carving a bloody path through depression-era America.

As they did with 2021’s Hellbender, family unit John Adams, Toby Poser, and their daughter Zelda direct, write and star in this quietly weird horror film. Maggie (Poser) and Seven (John Adams) travel among a collective of carnival performers with daughter Eve (Zelda Adams). Between grotesque performances, they conduct their bloody side hustle – murdering the lost and disreputable souls they happen to meet on the road. Mum Maggie’s murderous temper sits ill-at-ease with dad Seven’s more reasonable nature… and his habit of passing out at the sight of blood. Between them, they rage against the dying of the industry and their own increasing irrelevance.

The film’s chilly distance from its unsettling (if decidedly low-budget) gore-making puts this arthouse horrorshow more in the leagues of Yorgos Lanthimov than Rob Zombie. It’s cheap but borrows a sense of scale and majesty from the grand American countryside – feeling more epic than some of the performances and grungy cinematography might suggest. In the same breath, black blood and rubbery disembodied limbs pack a surprising heft, thanks to the drained colours and canny use of shadows.

The arthouse of it all allows the Adams family to get away with a lack of structure and a generally unmoored narrative, giving very little sense that this is building towards anything besides more weirdness. But then, why should conformity be the ultimate destination? Where The Devil Roams certainly won’t be to all tastes, but to those with a taste for the bleak and the bizarre, it makes for haunting, uniquely unsettling viewing. A meandering journey, but not by any means an uninteresting one.

Where The Devil Roams had its European premier at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th, 2023

by Martin Unsworth

Brooke (Agnes Albright) and Tanner (Andrew Bailes) are out enjoying their pastime of photographing abandoned places. They enter one enormous place, ignoring the comments from their friend CJ (Caito Aase) that it could be full of mould (we’re British, so will use our spelling!) or worse. Tanner even has an instant allergy reaction when they get in. They find out the hard way that they’re not alone, as an agitated vagrant (Jeremy Holm) thinks they’re “here for him”. Things settle, but Brooke is triggered when the man calls her by a name only her father used. This brings up disturbing memories of his suicide and her subsequent trauma.

Using the hallucinogenic reactions of the titular mould present in the building, writer/director John Pata explores how family tragedy has a genuine impact on later life, even if it’s been buried. There are flashback scenes from Brooke’s past that twist into disturbing nightmares. The urban exploring aspect is handled impressively, with the cinematography of Robert Patrick Stern making the most of the eerie, rotting buildings. Brooke and Tanner’s fear increases as the infection of the mould grabs hold of them, and all the actors excel at portraying the terror that they perceive around them. A moment with a trio of scarecrows is particularly creepy. A thunderstorm turns it into an abstract ‘old dark house’ picture.

At the heart of the film is Brooke’s past and her guilt at what happened, the crumbling, decaying building echoing her fragile mind, soured by a tragic event. It relies less on traditional jump scares and wins at being an effective, ominous, and ultimately explosive psychological piece.

Black Mold had its international premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th.

by Martin Unsworth

A hipster couple, Cass (Emily Sweet) and Gav (Bradford Thomas), are travelling around Belgrade and, at Cass’ suggestion, gate-crash a wedding party. Gav is filming things on his Super 8 camera (from which we see occasional footage), and although it’s awkward, they get through it. The next day, a creepy, one-eyed guy, Ivan (Bruno Veljanovski) strikes up a conversation with Cass. He’s imposing but seems friendly enough, and the pair will find him turn up in several places where they are, even on the train on which they’re travelling. He convinces them to come with him to an abandoned munition factory where his father worked. As Gav is put under Ivan’s spell, Cass becomes more suspicious. This is valid, as they find out when they meet the family…

Veljanovski’s character (who introduces himself as Saint Peter) is so sketchy no sane person would interact with him except to remove themselves from his presence politely, but we’ve all met that one person who won’t take no for an answer, and he’s completely believable as that guy.

Looking at Austin Jennings’ feature debut, you’d think it could be set, even made, in the ‘70s. From the fonts of the titles, the use of the Super 8 camera and other old formats onscreen or from being shot on 16mm, the retro look is there. It’s only the modern tech that’s there that snaps us back to the modern day. This is a vision of Serbia that travel guides won’t show you, and like any societal underbelly, it’s not a pretty sight. It’s unfair to comment on where the story goes so as not to spoil things, but rest assured; it’s nasty and unexpected.

Eight Eyes is a nightmarish psychodrama that’ll make you think twice about booking that holiday.

Eight Eyes had its international premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th.

by Martin Unsworth

With films such as The Ring and The Grudge, a new subgenre emerged from Japan. It often involved everyday people encountering ghosts or curses from a malevolent past. We’re all used to the tropes and now we can understand the origins of what came before the films we know and their importance thanks to this engrossing documentary from Sarah Appleton (The Found Footage Phenomenon) and Jasper Sharp (Behind the Pink Curtain).

The pair have curated a fascinating array of talent to tell the story. Takako Fuji (The Grudge), Rie Ino’o (Sadako in Ringu), Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse), and Takashi Shimizu (Ju-On: The Grudge) are able to give some valuable insight into how the movement touched on serious societal issues and became a worldwide success, prompting western remakes and a legion of fans. There are plenty of bespoke creepy visuals made for the documentary that could fit in any of the classic films with ease.

With plenty of commentary from the filmmakers and experts, The J-Horror Virus could be the final word on the films and their place in both Japanese society and the Western world.

The J-Horror Virus had its world premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th

by Martin Unsworth

Growing up with a conflict of cultural identity, Samidha (Megan Suri) is trying to fit in at school. She’s drifted away from her once-close friend, another Indian-American girl, Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), who’s taken to behaving very oddly and carrying an old, dirty Mason jar. At home, Samidha’s mother wants her to adhere to her Indian heritage, but despite trying to please her, the teen is struggling with tradition. Her teacher, Joyce (Betty Gabriel), notices she’s having a few issues and offers to help, but even more troubling is Tamira, who claims to have a demon trapped in her ever-present jar.

Bishal Dutta, director and co-writer (alongside Ashish Mehta), weaves Hindi culture with familiar American horror movie tropes, presenting the characters with broad strokes while allowing them to remain grounded and relatable. Themes of integration, depression, and teenage angst are laid on particularly heavy but handled well and fittingly. It’s incredibly refreshing to see a different demonic entity represented rather than the ones usually attributed to Christian beliefs, and Dutta should be applauded for not bowing to convention and Hollywood. Mainstream horror fans will find plenty to enjoy here, with the requisite jump scares and impressive set pieces.

The social commentary and Hindu representation and lore keep It Lives Inside from becoming just another teen horror film and deserves a wider audience.

It Lives Inside had its european premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th and will be in UK Cinemas from September 22nd.

by James Hanton

Chinese director Liu Jian’s animated, punk stoner comedy is a slow burner in (mostly) the best senses of the word. Leaning heavily as it does on nihilism and apathy laced amidst the comedy, drama, and transformation that characterise the story, Art College 1994 demands the kind of patience you would have to show if trying to become the next great artist. What starts off as a story of arguably petty (if admittedly quite funny) revenge evolves into something more complex, balancing a fine line between appreciating and breaking from overruling traditions. 

Focusing on a group of art college students in 1990s China, which is becoming increasingly proliferated by Western culture and entertainment, the students muse over art and philosophy while dealing with being on the verge of adulthood. Central to Art College 1994 is the question of what is and is not art, who makes it, and who values it. Since it is animated in such a realistic manner, directly mimicking the appearances and conventions of live-action everyday life, the presentation of Jian’s film directly and intelligently involves itself in the storyline’s main conundrum.

Featuring star turns from a number of acclaimed Chinese stars and directors, Art College 1994 is on the surface a film for the creatives. More than that however, it is for anybody who has ever questioned where their life is going or indeed if it needs to go anywhere at all, and for those who temper their intellectual intrigue with a dry, wit-inducing stoicism. Jian’s movie is hardly a mass crowd-pleaser, but is set in its own way to become a coveted underground classic.