Director: Mark Tonderai Starring: Omari Hardwick, Loretta Devine .USA. 1h 31m
18 years on from Ian Softleys powerful hoodoo thriller Skeleton Key (2005), the time and tested horror had graduated into Spell, which is a strange name for a rootworking movie but nonetheless no one will be surprised when the incantations, grimoire and ritual work is let loose. However this darkened story has closer ties with Misery (1990) and the Hills Have Eyes (1977/2005).
Director: Kathleen Behun Starring: Max Hambleton, Whitney Rose Pynn, Mickey River, Eduardo Roman .USA. 1h 29m
The haunted house trope will be one that will live with us forever. There’s just nothing more terrifying than having something unnatural and creepy happening in the place where you lay your head. Things are a bit different in Katheleen Behun’s Found Footage frolic. News of a house so haunted that no one can live in it for 21 days reaches a group of young kids with some wanderlust, belieivng that the tales are total bullshit they barricade themselves in for the long run.
Director: Edward Drake
Starring:Jonathan Lipnicki, Avery Konrad, Timothy V Murphy USA. 1h 30m
Coming of age is a difficult time for any young girl but it’s especially troubling for Chance in Drakes power struggle vampire film with a gritty power struggle a troubled hero and s touch of je ne sai qoir but it doesn’t go that extra mile to really set itself apart from all the other TV vampire movies but it’s still thoroughly enjoyable to watch family fireworks.
Opening with a family trying to control their wayward and violent teen daughter Chance (Konrad) they send her to live with her pious grandfather and extended family on a remote estate. Slowly the easily distracted teen uncovers a family secret and her only chance of survival comes from the dead and an assassin destined to end her family’s reign.
Director: Aaron KeelingAustin Keeling Starring: Cathy Barnett, Emily Goss, Taylor Bottles, Jim Korinke. USA. 1h 51m
There’s something provocative about a haunted house tale, many directors have used this eternal additional character to emphasise the dark natures within its occupants or at times it’s a portal into a darkness that we neer want to look into. And while there’s some admiration in what Aaron KeelingAustin Keeling as directors have achieved in the bitter ending, there’s a boring tropey slog to get to the good bits.
Director: Kevin Tenney
Starring:Patrick Kilpatrick, Chris Miller, Suzane Savoy, Dannt Mora. USA. 1h 25m
From a story that would be dissected for its cultural appropriation and questionable demonising, back in the late 80’s it was part of a movement of creepy Native American legend based horrors, from Wolfen (1980) to Scalps (1983)the idea of a spiritual bankhander from sacred lands, through wooden states, curses and the wendigo began to spring out of Hollywood and this is one of those low level leaks.
Director: Alan White
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Andrew Wholley, Joel Edgerton, Leah Vandenberg, Aaron Blabey, Marty Denniss. Australia. 1h 30m
When Barky (Denniss) returns home for his fathers funeral he thinks is safe from the pain and attempts to reunite with his brothers and find some closure however the mood isn’t quite what he expected, his presence sets off a keg of love, hate, resentment and frustrations. After two years of living away, the young 20-something has no regrets about leaving the grip of his fathers violent rages which are painfully detailed in flashbacks.
Director: Dom Rotheroe Starring: Bradley Cole, Brittany Ashwood, Angela Forrest, Oliver Lee. UK. 1h 25m
The allure behind Exhibit A is getting an insight in the raw details behind the case of a brutal family annihilation case. While Dom Rotheroe and curated a really authentic feeling found footage movie on an independant budget I feel that story is lacking a genuine USP. I personally felt cheated, thought I’d missed some fine detail, but after re watching the movie, I had to step back and look at it with fresh eyes, so often found footage relies on adding a touch of creepy paranormal or something sly and devious into the mix to make the voyeuristic audience shudder with fear and delight. Exhibit A doesn’t bend to those rules, and doesn’t really go anywhere into the deep waters of the typical Found Footage Horror, however if the systematic psychological breakdown of a middle england family is your thing then step in.
Director: M Night Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Ken Leung, Aaron Pierre, Emun Elliott, USA. 1h 48m
At first glance this was always going to be an awkward film for any director to make , after the great success of Sandcastles, the amazing graphic novel detailing the dark and immersive story of a group of strangers trapped on a beach, am night was the only person who probably is just crazy enough to take this on and to convert it for the Hollywood screen .
I had read the comic several years before when it first came out I have to buy a new copy as I had lost my original lent to it a dear friend who maybe one day will give it back to me, so now I have a fancy new version with extra insights from the author and cool little sticker that says it is being made into a movie. but for the life of me I couldn’t quite work out how he was going to translate this into a story for the big audience , but strangely he has come up with her intelligent and intriguing storyline which dips from the curious into conspiracy.
Director: Hlynur Pálmason Starring: Ingvar Sigurdsson, Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir, Sara Dogg Asgeirsdottir. Iceland. 1h 49m
It doesn’t take long to get a good grasp of the top talent in Iceland, not only does a majority of the movies released there really hit a nerve and the industry continues to release one banger after the next, but with such a tiny population you’re going to see a lot of repeat offenders and not surprisingly a lot of the more popular faces have buckets of incredible talent and some of those come together in this study of grief.
Director: David Cronenberg Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne .UK/Canada. 1h m
In the early 2000’s David Conenbergpacked away the New Flesh and made an intensely beautiful and fascinating account of Patrick’s McGraths novel. Even without the body horror and gore, psychotropic vibes and the paranoid surreal, Conenbergstill manages to disturb.
Starring Ralph Fiennes, as a deeply disturbed middle aged man, simply known as Spider. He’s just been released from a long term mental institution into a drab boarding house in London’s King Cross area. The tatty rooms and pealing wallpaper permeate a 1950’s atmosphere and isn’t the idea surroundings for recovery, however it’s here that Spider travels back to his childhood, spiraling back into the trauma as he remembers his obsessive belief that his father (Bryne) did away with his mother (Richardson) to start up a new life with a prostitute.
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