Christopher Smith is a modern-day horror maestro. From his feature debut “Creep” through “Severance” and “Black Death,” with forays into other genres, he has demonstrated his ability to make effective genre films. The Banishing is a very fine horror: A slow burn, drip feed delivery of menace and dread that also explores issues of repression…
Relic could be reductively described as “Hereditary” meets “Dark Water” with traces of “The Babadook.” The last reference might be due to this being a dour Australian horror involving an old-style house and maternal issues, but it’s a fine connection, nonetheless. While it also features small and sinister objects as well as strained family relationships,…
How many readers and cinema aficionados have a strained relationship with their parents? Maybe a there’s a neglecting mother to be ashamed of? Or how about daddy issues stemming from some form of abuse? Well . . . the animated horror story, To Your Last Death, introduces viewers to four siblings, all of them seriously…
What we find scary will vary enormously. For some it’s the supernatural, for others the psychological. We may be revolted by physical suffering or horrified by social oppression. The Owners is a film that capitalizes on multiple registers of fear to create an unsettling space, both within the framework of the film and more widely,…
“My mother died when I was seven years old — car accident. I saw it two months before it happened.” — Jimmy, “Volition” Writer/director Tony Dean Smith introduces us to Jimmy (Adrian Glynn McMorran, “Warcraft”), a small-time criminal blessed with supernatural clairvoyance. Jimmy foresees fragments of his future as a series of acid flashbacks —…
The Rental is a film that offers many generic elements. It combines aspects of horror and thriller, and within those we find features of the surveillance and home invasion sub-genres, and also the well-worn slasher. The characters are combinations of private, professional and political concepts, and the clashes between these form much of the drama…
The mission brief to Ghosts of War is simple: Five American soldiers must defend a chateau in 1944 Normandy, that, as luck would have it, is apparently haunted. Sadly, however, this trope-laden plot is the only pillar of stability in an incomprehensible mess of a film, which burns like a ragged bullet-wound to the stomach….
