Prey (2022)
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Starring: Amber Midthunder, Dane DiLiegro, Dakota Beavers, Michelle Thrush, Julian Black Antelope, Stormee Kipp .USA. 1h 39m
Generally I never get sucked in by the hype for new movies, after all the hype train is designed to get bums on seats and money in pockets, you’ll be 10 seconds into the movie and realize you’ve been tricked again! touch! I think a lot of hype is blown up by kids who either haven’t seen the “original ” or previous movies who find everything all shiny and new, but these old eyes have seen this all before.. But despite this I went into Prey with an open mind and was ultimately pleasantly surprised but there was a mess to trawl through first.
Director: Ralph S Singleton Starring:David Andrews, Kelly Wolf, Stephen Macht, Andrew Divoff, Brad Dourif .USA. 1h 26m Writers : Stephen King( short story)
A lone night worker, sweating like a nun in a cucumber patch late at night, spends his time belting rats with old cans until something bigger and deadlier comes for him in the night. There’s more than a rat infestation within the old textile mill, and the horrifying secret is one of Stephen King’s rarer creature features, which probably translates better in book form but Ralph S Singleton does manage to capture the heat of the night in his gnashing adaptation of the story.
Sea fever, much like cabin fever strikes when everyone least’s expects it, sometimes it can be contained and only affects one person, other times it turns into group hysteria and it can be a struggle to figure out what’s real and not., but in Hardiman’s offbeat body horror, with ties to Celtic mythology, emerges a story that becomes a deep dive into our small part in the ecology of this watery planet.
Director: Dale Fabrigar Starring:Lance Henriksen, Dwyane Standridge, Frank Lammers, Giovannie Espiritu, Catherine Healy. USA. 1h 20m
What starts out as a lavish murder mystery on a train, soon turns into a bizarre nonsensical run through the forest from a devious gruesome monster, or something like that.
Director: Fred Olen Ray Starring:Buster Crabbe, Raymon Roberts, Linda Lewis, Georeg Kelsey. USA. 1h 27m
Mind bending retro sci fi horror, featuring gator eating alien zombies that lay siege on a quaint rural southern town where a journalist ends up in a dead end town that seems to be running out of gators only to stumbles on the story of a lifetime.
Director: Frederico Prosperi (as Fred Goodwin) Starring: J. Eddie Peck, Jill Schoelen, Jamie Farr, Bo Svenson .Italy/USA. 1h 37m
After the success of The Curse (1987), an indie effort to breathe cinematic life into the classic HP Lovecraft story The Color Out of Space. An Italian/American sequel, in name only manages to cobble together a strange blend of body horror and romance and in some respects it stands strong as a very strange orphan.
Director: Neil Jordan Starring: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Sam Riley, Caleb Landry-Jones .UK. 1h 58m
Every few years vampires find themselves reinvented and they refuse to remove their fangs from our necks. Jim Jarmusch swung back with Only Lovers Left Alive, a revival of the romantic mixed with his own take on the eternal blood sucking genre, and it’s been two decades since Interview with a Vampire, the film that made millions swoon…
Byzantium switches between modern day and yesteryear through dreamy sequences and guttural gore as Gemma Arterton, often dolled up in numerous sexy outfits, and her supposed daughter Saoise Ronan play vampires who after years of running from hunters, end up in a dead end seaside town. After shacking up with a timid hotelier, Daniel Mays, they set up their own brothel in his shabby establishment.
By the time the girls have settled into their new home, the authorities are taking an interest in them, but these agents have a good idea of the monsters lurking within the innocent faces and they are highly equipped to track down these undead wenches in order to make them more dead.
The strange unsettling drama will always been known as one of the new wave of modern neon movies, at times it sets itself among vibrant titles like Into the Void (20??), and yet there’s a creepy nostalgia when remote waterfalls turn into torrents of blood, but as the girls struggle through adversity in the 19th and 20th century, with and without corsets, the compelling story of power and hunger has a heavy feminist subtext that adds weight to the already fantastic adventure. The girls are very unique from other vampires, while they are super strong and have acute senses, but their tool of the trade is a retractable fingernail which they use to kill, with this slightly feline temperament and talons the movie oozes yet another feminine thread.
” I’m never merciful, and knowledge is a fatal thing.”
-Clara
The story often stops and starts, falling over its own timeline, the girls seem to spend a lot of time sandboxing, falling in love with sick boys, updating their fries, struggling with the school system and the bittersweet gothic backstory determines why the girls hate men so much. But with such a long play time it seems to take a long time to describe what we have already guessed, and yet we still don’t really know where they are intending to go.
Certainly one for those who like a bit of mysticism and pretty visuals as much as a compelling story but don’t expect to have too many memories of the film other than pretty visuals as it frustratingly loses its personality along the way.
Rating: 6/10
TLDR
Byzantium (2012) A pair of vampires start up a brothel in a local seaside town, while running from the authorities who are aware of their unique abilities. Dreamy Neon drama with a romantic gothic overtone to a new vision of feminism violence in stockings. pic.twitter.com/gTHRXWKVxf
— Admit 1 Film Addict (@admitonefilmadd) July 18, 2021
Related: Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Enter the Void (2009) Lists: Vampire romances Vol 1, Neon Cinema Spotlight: Sam Riley, Caleb Landry Jones
Director: Tobe Hopper, John Cardos
Starring:William Devane, Cathy Lee Crosby, Jacquelyn Hyde. USA. 1h 32m
This could have been a real contender as one of the more imaginative bold and vibrant sci-fi thrillers of the late 70’s but it fails on a few fronts which is a crying shame. The total of it’s dismal failures is all down to a ton of rewrites as the director duo of Tobe Hopper and John Cardos scramble around trying to wedge their classic into the shadow of the other highly successful sci-fi movies like Ridley Scott’s ALIEN (1979).
Director: Michael Wadleigh
Starring: Albert Finnery, Diane Venora, Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines, Tom Noonan, Peter Michael Goetz. USA. 1h 55m
Based on: Wolfen by Whitley Strieber
Director: Phillipe Mora Starring: Barry Otto, Max Fairchild, Imogen Annesley, Frank Thring, Michael Pate, Burnham Burnham, Barry Humphries. Australia . 1h 38m
Easily the most Australian of the Howling franchise and possibly the most Australian movie ever. If you’re a fan of the 80’s Australian Horror genre then you might just have a soft spot for this turd instalment in an iconic werewolf series. In saying that, if that’s not your into garish lit scenes, vulgar humor, vile body horror and ransom nun, commandos and Aboriginal spiritual warriors popping in at random points then this might be hard to get into. I do wholeheartedly agree that it’s not a brilliant made movie, it doesn’t really make sense, and is more comedy than horror, but is Howling 3 really that bad? A film so bad it didn’t even get a cinematic release in its home country?
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