Review Category: Movie

by Martin Unsworth

This mid-length short/mini-feature feels as though it’s a lost relic from the golden age of folk horror. Something half-remembered from a late-night showing on regional ITV. It’s written and directed by Sean Hogan, who has made a name for himself as the author of several books, including England’s Screaming. Like that novel, this is steeped in the love of the horror genre and British tradition, this time from the 17th century.

Squire Marlow (Mark Carlisle), his servant Pike (Richard Rowden), and two locals, Holt (Harry Roebuck) and the rather drunk Ransley (James Swanton) are carrying the coffin of the Squire’s son across the dark and unsafe path to the church. They are doing this at night to prepare for the next day’s funeral. As they walk, rumours and bitter tensions arise between the men, and things get out of hand.

Presented in immaculate monochrome (with just an effective splash of colour at the climax), To Fire You Come at Last is well shot by Paul Goodwin and Jim Hinson, particularly impressive since the majority takes place at night. As the simple drunkard Ransley, Swanton seems to be having a great time channelling the spirit of Seth Armstrong (ask your parents) and is definitely a highlight. The film is an ode to the M.R. James-style shorts we’d get at Christmas and is a great addition to the pantheon of British folk horror.

To Fire You Come at Last has its European premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 26th.

 

What links a gory sci-fi horror film, a TV documentary about a mysterious filmmaker and a news report on a spate of horrific murder-suicides? Aside from the identically cheap aesthetic and curiously wooden line deliveries, they all happen to be on tonight’s telly schedule.

An account of one night’s television broadcast in small-town America, Michael Hurst’s Transmission plays like a feature-length horror version of Rick and Morty’s Interdimensional Cable. Where that one was linked by the show’s voice talent and distinctive animation, Transmission does so less intentionally. It shares a low-fi aesthetic across its channels, whether it be a black-and-white sitcom, doofus puppets, or the actual news.

As the world’s first channel-flipping horror film, Transmission has novelty going for it, with an interesting throughline in the work of filmmaker Frank Ross (Vernon Wells, giving an enjoyably bristly performance through ‘interview’ footage) and the conspiracy behind his disappearance. Bookending this film, an unseen channel-hopper dips in and out of Ross’s final work – also called Transmission, and the core movie-inside-this-movie. Sure, it’s essentially just Event Horizon crossed with In the Mouth of Madness, but it’s also this unique anthology’s strongest work.

The idea is perhaps undermined by spending too long on each segment between channel hops, but better this than some channels, which only dilute the mood and (in the case of the raunchy ’80s teen comedy) irritate. In case you didn’t get the idea, talking heads continue to espouse Ross’s signature style – interlinked stories coming together with a shock twist at the end. Geddit?

While Transmission’s ambition is occasionally outstripped by its budget, the idea is uniquely engaging and should keep viewers hooked to the end.

Transmission had its world premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 26th, 2023

 

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