Review Category: Movie

Vincent (Fabrice Eboué, who also directed and co-wrote) takes pride in his work as a butcher, but their small business is struggling, particularly when they come under attack from militant vegans. While driving one day, he runs over one of the activists who vandalised their shop. His true crime-loving wife, Sophie (Marina Foïs), suggests cutting the corpse up and disposing of it in various locations. As the victim is on his chopping block, a stray ear falls at the feet of his pet dog, who promptly devours it, wanting more. The following day, Sophie accidentally serves some of the dead vegan as pork, and it becomes a hit in the village, everyone wants more. Could this be the thing that turn’s their luck around?

Eboué’s film is a sumptuous exercise in bad taste and that works to its advantage. The irreverent humour, never played goofily, is as welcome as a tasty morsel swimming in gravy. From the opening scene of Vincent massaging his meat – literally – we’re thrown into a serious carnivore world. The irony that vegan meat is addictive and succulent is amusing enough, but there are plenty more situations and commentary to provide the laughs. The film doesn’t shy away from showing gore but again, the humour is always present and hits the spot.

There’s also some fun rivalry between Vincent and Sophie and their friends, fellow butchers who use more factory-farmed produce but are doing rather well. Vincent’s passion for looking after his meat is admirable, even when his ‘supplier’ changes. At the heart of the story, however, is the lack of spark in Vincent and Sophie’s marriage and we find that a couple that slays together, stays together.

Some Like it Rare is a non-meat eater’s idea of extreme horror, and if you’re upset by the sight of meat being prepared, you should avoid it at all costs. For everyone else, this is a delicious treat.

Some Like it Rare is released on digital outlets from Signature Entertainment on March 21st.

Let’s get this straight, right from the off: The Spine of Night knocks it out of the park on all levels. Within the first moments, it grabs you by the [insert appropriate anatomical feature] and does not let go, instead tightening and tightening throughout its taut runtime.

Set in that pseudo-medieval hinterland of many a fantasy fable, The Spine of Night is a treatise on the confusion between the thirst for knowledge, the lust for power, and the conflagration of both. Perhaps Uncle Ben had seen an advance copy of the movie before uttering that famous epitaph. To say any more of the plot would yield spoilers, so we reiterate, just watch it.

That aforementioned lean runtime (about an hour and a half) is judged perfectly, leaving no fat on the bone, but plenty of gristle on the screen. The voice cast are phenomenal, nay, perhaps the best assemblage of voices but to animation in years – the headliners do what they do best, but it is perhaps the myriad other characters that populate the background that really cements them in the world they inhabit.

The backdrops are glorious, at times almost photo-realistic and the animation shines no brighter than when flinging viscera in the eyes of the viewer. Huge props go to Abigail Savage as the movie’s sound designer, few films have left us this queasy on the efforts of the sound team alone, each bone crunch and limb pull hitting the sickly-sweet spot.

The Spine of Night may well be the best animated adult fantasy we have seen in years. ‘Must-see’ is all too often bandied about these days, but in this instance, it’s crack on the money. Oh, yeah, did we mention, you really ought to see this?

The Spine of Night is available on Shudder from March 24th.

In British director Sam Walker’s entertainingly shlocky debut feature, three girls – Deidre (Lucy Martin), irritating social media obsessive, Charlotte (Chelsea Edge,  slightly more reserved and commendably internet-averse, and Heather (Sophie Vavasseur), somewhere vaguely in between the two extremes – head out into the Mohave desert for a girls’ weekend at Heather’s father’s luxury ranch. They also plan to take advantage of the clear Californian night sky to watch a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower.  During the shower, something strange and distinctly stinky crashes into the pool. The next morning the girls’ phones give up the ghost and they find themselves trapped in the middle of nowhere, having  –  perhaps rather foolishly – taken pity on the rather grim-looking creature that unfurls from the unexpected pool arrival.

The Seed has very little new to offer but it plays quite pleasantly with several genre staples –  surreptitious alien invasion and bodily possession and corruption – and ladles it with some oozy gore and slime to satisfy the demands of body horror gurus. Despite his undoubtedly tiny budget Walker has created something with a genuine cinematic sensibility (Malta stands in for California and gets away with it quite well) and the three girls (the only substantial speaking roles in the film) carry the weight of the narrative well and, despite the fact that the film tells us nothing about their lives outside this weekend, they feel quite well-rounded in a manner that’s inoffensive in a film with a  very specific and singular vision.  The creature itself is realised courtesy of a fairly unsophisticated puppet that’s never hugely convincing and yet it exerts a strange and baleful influence over the girls and is unusually effective because it doesn’t communicate with its victims and has clearly come to Earth with one specific purpose. Its lack of anything we might recognise as ‘intelligence’ is oddly disconcerting, a description equally applicable to The Seed itself, a film that punches well above its weight and delivers some decent, if familiar, sci-fi/horror thrills and a pleasingly gloomy final sequence.

The Seed is available now on Shudder