Surprisingly dull supernatural thriller starring a couple of big names, refuses to make a splash despite having the makings of a depressingly creepy horror but it’s just too long winded and lacking on many fronts which is a shame as usually the cast shine above others.
Continue reading Backtrack (2015)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.
Continue reading 21 Days (2014)At times it’s easy to forget that Personal Shopper is a horror movie. If you’re into something which burns slow but delivers a whack at the end then this might feel like it’s let you down, but there is a huge revelation at the end but it might not be what you were expecting. At times it’s mundane and even dull, but Assatas’ genius technique is to force the viewer to not to see what’s coming so when something does stand out it has a larger impact. It’s not hard to connect Kirsten Stewart to keywords such as “Blank” and at times it’s a perfect emotion for the film that deals all too honestly with grief, alienation and death.
Continue reading Personal Shopper (2016)This Indie ghost sleuthing found footage horror plays out like a version of Most Haunted, with some hints of Grave Encounters (2013) and Devils Familiar (2020) running through, just sadly not the good bits! All the amazing ideas of a mysterious house being a portal to a Lovecraftian void created by a cult, is washed away with too much banter and not enough on screen action. but it’s a tangible tale and I’m sure if you like any Ghost Hunting TV show then you’ll get a kick out of it.
Continue reading A Warning to the Curious (2013)This collection of unrelated creepy tales seems to have been a for runner for the popular V/H/S series (despite them being released in the same year) This Japanese collection just feels like a raw pre runner to the more polished American effort, but as per usual the raw unabridged versions always have that curious edge to them, and like time and time before, Japan finds a new way to creep out the cinematic world.
A team has painstakingly recovered and viewed a number of home\hand made movies accidentally capturing spooky events, but they don’t leave it there, they track down the stories behind each video trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.
It has an incredibly Japanese approach, each movie has a text intro and a warning before each gory moment giving faint at heart viewer a chance to skip the worst moments, (imagine doing that for the Serbian Film (2010). it would twice as long) and the spooky events are typically Japanese also, floating screaming heads, cursed grave sites and the only country with a pass to have white clad long haired spirits aka yūrei, and uses them sparingly, instead the emphasis is on making this look like a genuine investigation and raw footage, with candid interviews, phone research and multiple lines of enquiry.
It’s never really detailed why they are producing the anthology,other than to show off their hard work. The film’s themselves look really on point, apart from a few really bad effects here and there, the authenticity of the video’s are a highlight, either they were filmed on vintage devices or the touch up is out of this world.
The stories range from a fishing trip with an extra ghostly passenger, and in more complex stories elaborate rituals are performed in the woods awakening screaming heads and after all of the night’s shenanigans there’s a nasty twist in the end of the story, but the kicker for most audiences is a particular gory story involving a pregnant woman who owes money to a violence sado sexiual yakusa boss, the opening story is an emotional kicker involving the ghost of a homeless girl seeks help from beyond the grave, it’s sad and moving as well as creepy and has a touch of Lake Mungo (2008) about it. Overall the Tokyo Videos of Horror is never really all that frighteningly scary, as it just feels so surreal, but you might want to check your playback during the day from now on.
Luckily there’s a series of films to watch now and much like the Yami Shibai series there are good and bad collections but all have that very unique Japanese strangeness about them. Probably something more attuned and welcomed by the found footage fans than the average horror collector but overall something that just has to be experienced to be fully understood.
Rating: 5/10
Related: V/H/S (2012), Lake Mungo (2008),McPherson Tapes (1989)
Lists: Found Footage Anthologies
Every now and again a movie creeps along as it reminds us what horror is really about, touching on sensitive subjects and delivering shocks, scares and a creeping dread which lingers long after the movie. One of these precious gems hasn’t arrived for a few years but somehow, coming straight from leftfield, a rom com director has re written the step by step guide on how to fuck with an audience and it’s done with a cool calm style in this occult horror nightmare. Continue reading Anything For Jackson (2020)
There a lot of question marks hanging over the heads of everyone involved in DeShon Hardy’s paranormal horror that follows a curious Pastor, Jonathan Stokes (Kaufman), when his fellow clergymen Bishop Taylor (Bendich) is on his deathbed, he reveals an interesting concept that the spirits that are released during an exorcism simply follow the priest back to their church and wait to follow their parishioners home to haunt them and thus spread like an occult disease. Continue reading Dwellers The Curse of Pastor Stokes (2020)
There comes a time in a person’s life when they have to think about how they wish to be buried, cremated, sent off, returned to their ancestors! This is usually a somber time but one where someone’s true beliefs in the after life and their burial must be honored and treated with utmost respect.
What comes after the burial is sometimes utter turmoil for the family who are often more concerned with the family wealth, but the sparks begin to fly with this prestigious Nigerian family before their patriarch, The Loin, is in the ground and things only get hotter. Continue reading Against The Wish (2020)
The general trends with World War II movies is to punch your audience right in the gut with the violence and depression of the war. With all the progressions of cinema they all translate in more effect ways of demonstrating the darkest side of human nature and the brutal fight for freedom, but this isn’t the only way to portray the horrors of this dark chapter, since the was there have been numerous ghost stories written about lost soldiers, everlasting love and the occult nature of the “the enemies” of righteous civilisation. But is Deathwatch the new ghostly war story we need?
Bassett’s track record includes an array of action movies all tinged with the macabre, but Bassett is versatile in his approach with the lavish fantasy Solomon Kane filled with magic myth and monsters, and Wilderness, a group of wayward chavs verses a mystery slasher while stranded on a secluded island, he’s not a man who liked to be pinned down with a specialty apart from directing engaging movies. Continue reading Deathwatch (2002)
Warlock Moon is a stange low budget horror that has all the right intentions to be a twisted occult driven grindhouse thriller but it just doesn’t quite reach those dizzying heights, but still remains a hot favourite with a select few enthusiasts.
William Herbert’s confident homemade horror involved a lot of favours and dedication, but that’s what a lot of b movies are all about, making the most of what you can and creatively bending rules on public filming, it also helps to have a cast who are flexible and are fully dedicated to project, in this case, Edna MacAfee wasn’t allowed to wear makeup to enhance her old woman look and Walters and Spano were able to ad lib most of their scenes together which runs natural as they were a couple at the time. Continue reading Warlock Moon (1973)
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