Folk horror takes a turn for the psychedelic in Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England, the everyday tale of alchemists, magic mushrooms, magic and civil war. It starts off as a gritty if small scale drama set during the brutality of the English Civil War before slowly transforming into something altogether weirder and more unsettling. … Continue reading
Before the rise to prominence of Peter Jackson, New Zealand horror and fantasy films were not unheard of (there was Strange Behaviour (1981), Next of Kin (1982) and The Scarecrow (1982) to name but three) but they were thin on the ground and often difficult to see. Indeed the entire industry was somewhat overshadowed by … Continue reading
Ari Aster’s follow-up to the over-rated Hereditary (2018) is another bum-numbing trawl through familiar territory that isn’t nearly as innovative or clever as it’s often claimed to be. Like Hereditary it moves at its own stately pace, not in itself an issue though one would have hoped that by the end of its self-indulgent 147 … Continue reading
Original title: Noroi Often described as “found footage”, Kôji Shiraishi’s Noroi is actually a good example of the form’s close relative, the fake documentary. Taking the form of a compilation of video material recorded by a paranormal researcher, it charts the final days and weeks before his mysterious disappearance. Jin Muraki stars as Masafumi Kobayashi, … Continue reading
Also known as Arbor Demon, Patrick Rea’s Enclosure is an infuriating film that promises so much that it doesn’t quite deliver on. It has an intriguing premise and commendably doesn’t go where you might expect it to but its potential is never quite realised. It begins as if it’s going to be yet another Bigfoot … Continue reading
The horror anthology film enjoyed something a resurgence in the 2010s (The ABCS of Death and V/H/S franchises, The Theatre Bizarre (2011), Southbound (2015), Tales of Halloween (2015), XX (2017) et al). Holidays takes that intermittently popular genre trope, the holiday themed horror film, and manages to celebrate no fewer than seven of them in … Continue reading
John Jopson’s Terroir is the film that targets the horror fans/wine lovers demographic that surely no-one from either camp ever asked for. The title refers to the numerous environmental factors that can affect a crop and is an arcane aspect of wine making that, conveniently, sounds a but like “terror.” We learn all this through … Continue reading
