Film, Horror

Botched

4 Sep 2008

An inept jewel thief (Stephen Dorff) is given one last chance by Russian Mafiosa with a heist from an apartment block. Our robber and his Russian cohorts inevitably screw up, and are the pursued, along with an eccentric group of hostages, through a…

Eden Lake

4 Sep 2008

For obvious reasons, youth violence has become a favourite theme of British horror films recently. It’s strange that this trend seems to be going from strength to strength as none of the films, from Thomas Clay’s 2005 shocker The Great Ecstasy of Robert…

The Strangers

21 Aug 2008

THRILLER/HORROR Even in 2008, sleeper hits (low budget, low forecast films that become box office hits) still happen. Take writer-director Bryan Bertino’s taut thriller The Strangers which cost ten million dollars to make (a paltry amount in today’s…

Spotlight on: Horrors

4 Aug 2008

Like the living dead, horror movies may not be popular with everyone, but there are enough shock and gore fans out there to ensure that they're continually being resurrected. Generally speaking, you need to look beyond Hollywood for innovations in the…

Bloodbath at the House of Death

17 Jul 2008

HORROR COMEDY (15) 88min (Nucleus DVD retail) Out of print for over 20 years, Kenny Everett’s one and only feature film has been unearthed. This horror spoof features a group of monks bumping off anyone who dares enter Headstone Manor, and stars…

The Cellar Door

17 Jul 2008

THRILLER (18) 86min (Revolver DVD retail/rental) This is an interestingly shot, tense and to the point thriller, which belies its opening sequence in which a girl is sadistically tortured in the familiar tradition of Hostel or Saw to become a…

The Graveyard

17 Jul 2008

HORROR THE GRAVEYARD (18) 83min (Revolver DVD retail/rental) Michael Hurst’s horror film by numbers harks back very ineffectively to the three-decade-old genre conventions of Friday the 13th and Halloween. A prologue depicts a group of college…

The new X-Files film

17 Jul 2008

The new X-Files film continued to be shrouded in mystery last week, with all the actors publically refusing to reveal the plot. Billy Connolly will star as Father Joe alongside David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s Mulder and Scully, in the…

The Graveyard

3 Jul 2008

HORROR (18) 83min (Revolver DVD rental/retail) Michael Hurst’s horror-by-numbers film harks back very ineffectively to the three decade old genre conventions of Friday The 13th and Halloween without evoking the slightest hint of the atmosphere. In…

The Mist

3 Jul 2008

HORROR/SCI-FI (15) 126min After The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, writer/director Frank Darabont continues his one-man championing of the Stephen King estate with an adaptation of novella The Mist. After a thunderstorm in an isolated rural…

Shiver (Eskalofrio)

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Isidro Ortiz, Spain) 91min Once again Spain is proving to be a breeding ground for newly discovered horror talent. Isidro Ortiz puts in his most satisfying feature yet as paranoia and the old staple of something lurking in the woods are brought into…

Teeth

19 Jun 2008

HORROR/COMEDY (18) 93min Vagina dentata is the Latin name for a vagina with teeth, a primal fear which crops up in a number of different cultures and philosophies, now emerging at the centre of this teen flick written and directed by Mitchell…

The Ruins

19 Jun 2008

HORROR (18) 90min From Hostel to Paradise Lost, there are obvious political reasons for the current glut of horror films featuring groups of American teenagers holidaying abroad who get picked off one-by-one by mysterious forces. But even Marshall…

Prom Night

5 Jun 2008

HORROR REMAKE (15) 87min With its extended disco dancing sequence and an uncomfortably serious role for Naked Gun star Leslie Nielsen, the 1980 slasher flick Prom Night hardly merits rediscovery. And yet somehow telly hack director Nelson McCormick…

Doomsday

8 May 2008

HORROR/ADVENTURE (18) 108min In Neil Marshall’s derivative, dystopian fantasy, Scotland 50 years on is a no-man’s land ravaged by disease, cut off from England by a rebuilt Hadrian’s Wall, and presided over by streetwise gangs of cannibals driving…

Hammer on the web

8 May 2008

The internet has irrevocably changed the way we consume media. ‘Instant’ has become standard and even institutions like the BBC have taken to OnDemand in a big way. Access to downloadable films old and new is increasing and, of course, piracy and…

Interview - Steve Barker

8 May 2008

Steve Barker, the 37-year-old, Blackpool born director of new Scottish horror Outpost is in an affable mood. Self-effacing, charming and just a little bit geeky Barker (pictured, right) has succeeded where so many have failed. Outpost is a pared down…

Outpost

8 May 2008

HORROR (18) 89min Beefy mercenary DC (Ray Stevenson) has just made a bad decision. He’s taken a job from shadowy businessman Hunt (Julian Wadham). DC and his band of professional soldiers have to get Hunt into an abandoned bunker in an Eastern…

P2 - An interview with Wes Bentley

24 Apr 2008

Wes Bentley was just 21 when he played Ricky Fitts in American Beauty. It turned him into an overnight star. He was nominated for a BAFTA and fêted as the heir to Tom Cruise. The world was his oyster. Plastic bags could have been named after him. Then…

Dead by Dawn

24 Apr 2008

Scotland’s oldest, biggest and best international horror film festival opens its doors again for gore aficionados everywhere. This year’s programme will be topped and tailed by Scottish-themed horrors. Doomsday (pictured), Neil Dog Soldiers Marshall’s…

DVD Round-Up

24 Apr 2008

Horror has to be one of the most prolific genres, particularly on the direct to DVD market, so as per usual there’s plenty to get through this issue. For the true aficionado Mother of Tears (Optimum) ••• (pictured) is the sequel you’ve been waiting 28…

European premiere of zombie thriller in Dumfries

24 Apr 2008

Surprise hit horror flick Outpost will find its way to Dumfries next week, for its European premiere. The zombie thriller about Nazi soldiers who come back from the dead has been picked up by Sony Pictures for £1.2m. Movie producers Arabella Croft…

P2

24 Apr 2008

HORROR (18) 97min P2 is another example of the bait-and-switch technique by which successful horror directors try and use their name as a brand to facilitate side-projects, in this case, a generic woman-in-peril melodrama set in a deserted parking…

The Eye

24 Apr 2008

HORROR (15) 96min Jessica Alba stars as a blind concert violinist who becomes haunted by terrifying supernatural visions once a corneal transplant restores her sight in yet another Asian horror remake, this time inspired by the 2002 film directed by…

Thirty Days of Night

24 Apr 2008

HORROR (18) 113 min (Icon Home Entertainment) While comparisons to Katherine Bigelow’s classic Near Dark might be a little exaggerated there are certainly some nicely built moments in David Slade’s vampire flick based on Ben Templesmith and Steve…

Botched

10 Apr 2008

COMEDY/CRIME/HORROR (15) 94min If characters explode like tomatoes in microwaves, you’re probably witnessing the continuing rise of British splat-core comedy horror that’s had as many hits (Shaun of the Dead, Severance) as misses (The Cottage), the…

[REC]

10 Apr 2008

HORROR (18) 85 min Pan’s Labyrinth and The Orphanage have proved that Spain is a hotbed of horror talent whose filmmakers can strike a chord overseas. [REC] easily joins these ranks (it already has an American remake, Quarantine, scheduled). Yet…

Playlist - free online horror movies

27 Mar 2008

Do you like scary movies? Fancy watching one on the internet? Beware! The shaky camcorder techniques of video pirates can make the latest Hollywood blockbuster look as scrambled as Cloverfield. So, rather than pick a fight with the copyright-lawman, why…

Funny Games US

27 Mar 2008

HORROR/THRILLER (18) 111min The conventional thinking about shot-for-shot remakes is why bother? We only need cast our minds back to the furore surrounding what many thought to be the sacrilegious and pointless remake of Psycho by Gus Van Sant.

One Missed Call

27 Mar 2008

HORROR/MYSTERY (15) 86min Actors Shannyn Sossamon (Wristcutters: A Love Story, The Holiday) and Edward Burns (Confidence, The Brothers McMullen) might have hoped that appearing in a remake of a Miike Takeshi 2003 J-Horror would give their stalling…

Welcome to the Jungle

27 Mar 2008

HORROR (18) 78min (Optimum DVD rental/retail) A kind of cannibal version of The Blair Witch Project, this low-budget outing follows four characters into New Guinea as they pursue the trail taken many years before by Michael Rockefeller, the heir to…

Redacted

13 Mar 2008

WAR/HORROR (15) 90min Could the war in Iraq be the first conflict to be lost, not at home or abroad, but on the internet? That’s the proposition featured in Brian De Palma’s Redacted, a disturbing account of how the war on terror has been ‘You…

The Cottage

13 Mar 2008

COMEDY/HORROR (18) 91min The art of the horror comedy is in juxtaposing terror with humour until both are intensified into hysteria. Good examples of the genre include John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 and Wes…

The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

13 Mar 2008

HORROR/MYSTERY (15) 105min It’s only March but you’re unlikely to see a better ghost story at the cinema this year than The Orphanage. First-time director Juan Antonio Bayona has obviously taken great inspiration from his producer Guillermo del Toro…

Diary of the Dead

28 Feb 2008

HORROR (18) 94min Having expanded his ‘living dead’ trilogy to a tetra-logy with the relatively high budget, studio-produced Land of the Dead, modern horror movie master George A Romero goes back-to-basics – and his own beginnings – with his fifth…

Ghost Game

28 Feb 2008

HORROR (15) 100min (Showbox/Cine-Asia DVD retail/rental) While the recent glut of J-horror shares similar imagery and folklore, this Thai entry is more Big Brother-meets-The Evil Dead as 11 young gameshow contestants are sent to a haunted prison camp…

Teenage Hooker Became A Killing Machine

28 Feb 2008

SCI-FI/HORROR (18) 60min (Third Window DVD rental/retail) This low budget Korean entry is certainly an oddity, and has to garner bonus points as one of the most garishly outrageous film titles in many a year. The teenage hooker of the title is hacked…

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

14 Feb 2008

HORROR (18) 90min Here’s a welcome example of that all too rare thing in American horror movies: a teen slasher that’s actually very good. The simple answer to that conundrum is that appearances can be deceptive: Mandy Lane isn’t simply a teen slasher…

Black Water

14 Feb 2008

THRILLER/HORROR (15) 90min This low budget Australian creature feature is probably inspired by the true story of a saltwater crocodile attack in the Northern Territory. Written and directed by newcomers David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki, Black Water…

KM31

14 Feb 2008

HORROR (15) 102min (Yume DVD retail/rental) Some critics were quick to liken this assured Spanish language chiller to Japanese horror films such as Ju-on: The Grudge. Young Mexican writer-director Rigoberto Castaneda’s debut does share the creepy…

Masters of Horror Series 2: Volume 2

14 Feb 2008

HORROR (18) 360min (Anchor Bay DVD rental/retail) It’s a concept that should have horror fans rubbing their hands with fiendish glee. Masters of Horror gathers iconic horror directors from through the years (previous instalments have included John…

The Black Cat

14 Feb 2008

HORROR (18) 92min (Shameless Screen Entertainment DVD retail) Patrick Magee leads as lugubrious medium (shaped more like a large) living in an English village, engaged in some occult jiggery pokery, the purpose of which never becomes clear. It’s a…

Waz

14 Feb 2008

THRILLER/HORROR (18) 104min Marketed as a member of the Se7en school of psychological thriller, the gory realities of WAZ’s serial killer chase premise put it closer to the iniquitous barbarism presented by James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s Saw…

Cloverfield

(15) 84min

31 Jan 2008

Nobody knows how to spin out a yarn like Lost creator JJ Abrams, but even at a short running time, his shaky-cam disaster horror flick Cloverfield turns out to be all spin and no substance. Essentially a marketing concept in search of a movie…

Day Watch: Director's Cut - DVD review

Fantasy/horror

31 Jan 2008

The second instalment in director Timur Bekmambetov’s Russian fantasy horror trilogy (based on the books of Segei Lukyanenko) focuses on a murky world where vampires, wizards and demons are locked in the eternal battle of good vs evil. The truce is once…

I Know Who Killed Me - DVD review

Thrilller/horror

31 Jan 2008

Direct to DVD and topping this year’s Razzie’s with nine nominations, the latest Lindsay Lohan vehicle doesn’t have a great pedigree. While it’s far from a cinematic masterpiece it doesn’t quite deserve all the flack it’s been attracting. Lohan plays…

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (Extreme Edition) - DVD review

Horror

31 Jan 2008

‘Direct to DVD’ is the kiss of death in most genres, but as any self-respecting horror-phile knows, it can offer bizarre and twisted gems that would never find a cinema audience. Wrong Turn 2 fits nicely into this natural habitat. A group of wannabe…

Aliens Vs Predator – Requiem

17 Jan 2008

SCI-FI/HORROR (15) 86min In the ongoing saga of a faceless corporation which creates a monster it doesn’t know how to handle, there are obvious parallels between the universe featured in the Alien films and Fox’s treatment of the franchise itself.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

17 Jan 2008

MUSICAL/HORROR (18) 116min Stephen Sondheim’s landmark 1979 Broadway musical has now been given the Tim Burton treatment. The director’s favourite actor, Johnny Depp, ditches the cutesy mannerisms he brought to Edward Scissorhands and Pirates of…

Bride Of Re-Animator

4 Jan 2008

HORROR (18) 92min (Tartan rental/retail) Quite whether Brian Yuzna’s sequel to the black comic gorefest that was Re-Animator carries all the earlier film’s exuberant ickiness is a moot point, but there is, once again, a certain gusto which propels…

The Funhouse

4 Jan 2008

HORROR (15) 96min (Arrow DVD rental/retail) Originally released between his scary telly version of Salem’s Lot and the cursed Poltergeist, Tobe Hooper’s extras-free 1981 take on the teens-in-peril sub-genre takes so long to build up to very little…

Planet Terror

15 Nov 2007

Cut loose from its Grindhouse packaging Robert Sin City Rodriguez’s freaky, apocalyptic horror film is undoubtedly the baddest, nastiest and least well behaved child to come out of that divorce. But in this case that’s a very good thing. When an…

Brain Damage

15 Nov 2007

Brain Damage is surely the masterpiece in Frank Henenlotter’s limited but bloody career (though he does have a film called Bad Biology currently in post-production). Henenlotter made his name with the lurid Basket Case, before moving on to Frankenhooker…

DVD Roundup

15 Nov 2007

‘No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees/No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds!’ That’s how English poet and humourist Thomas Hood chose to describe the month of November. There is some of Hood’s cheeky sense of observation in John Waters: This…

Shrooms

15 Nov 2007

(18) 84min Paddy I Went Down Breathnach’s ‘kids in the woods’ horror movie digs the rich genre furrow that runs from Evil Dead through Blair Witch Project to Wrong Turn. But here’s the twist – everyone’s off their faces, tripping on magic…

Halloween

18 Oct 2007

HORROR (18) 109min Halloween is the latest entry in the current goldrush to remake the 70s horror cannon. And if anyone can do justice to Carpenter’s slasher classic you’d think it would be Rob Zombie. Surely the most flamboyant and passionate…

Black Sheep

4 Oct 2007

It was only a matter of time before an enterprising New Zealand filmmaker made a horror movie about sheep. It’s surprising it’s taken this long for one to reach the big screen, and more surprising still, given the inherent low horror factor of lamb…

Day Watch

4 Oct 2007

Timur Bekmambetov’s 2004 fantasy Night Watch was grounded in dank layers of impenetrable local mysticism, made palatable by flashes of Matrix-style spectacle. A trilogy was as inevitable with Twilight Watch currently in pre-production and this…

Remake bandwagon rumbles hideously onwards, crushes The Brood

4 Oct 2007

The latest horror movie to capture Hollywood’s increasingly unimaginative eye would appear to be David Cronenberg’s The Brood. Not content with destroying Hallowe’en and thrusting a utterly pointless Friday the 13th rehash into our slack jawed faces…

Death Proof

20 Sep 2007

HORROR/ACTION (18) 113min Like the best roller-coasters, Death Proof takes an eternity to get moving, but once in top gear, Quentin Tarantino’s thriller will leave you hanging on tighter than poor Zoe Bell, who clings grimly to a speeding car’s…

Friday the 13th Pt 1297

20 Sep 2007

The word on the Hollywood street is that next summer is going to see something of an industry strike – you know the ones where nobody makes movies in case the rest of the preening egotists get annoyed with them. One of the consequences of this little…

Hatchet

20 Sep 2007

HORROR/COMEDY (18) 85min Although the tagline – ‘it’s not a remake, it’s not a sequel and it’s not based on a Japanese one’ – suggests Hatchet is an original horror movie, it’s far from that. It is, as a second tagline more accurately describes this…

The Red Shoes

20 Sep 2007

HORROR (15) 103mins (Tartan Asia Extreme) Based loosely on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, and the Powell and Pressburger film of the same name, this Korean psychological horror flick’s biggest inspiration is perhaps the likes of The…

1408

(15) 105min

23 Aug 2007

Mikael 'Derailed Håfström'’s mild chiller is pretty much a one-man horror vehicle for John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a world-weary writer who makes his living from staying in supposedly haunted locations and describing his experiences. After a mysterious…

Fragile

(15) 97min

16 Aug 2007

HORROR You wouldn’t think Calista Flockhart would be the first name on most casting directors’ wishlists for a creepy UK horror film. Do you really want Ally McBeal wandering round your carefully constructed haunted hospital? And, while you can never…

The Hamiltons

(18) 84min

16 Aug 2007

HORROR When you realise that The Hamiltons is helmed by directorial duo The Butcher Brothers (aka Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) you realise you’re in for a gruesome treat. They’ve given the serial a subtle twist that turns it on its head, and for…

Jess Weixler

9 Aug 2007

Jess Weixler is so all-American she looks like she’s jumped straight out of a photograph of high school cheerleaders. Her long blond hair and blue eyes make her the archetypal American beauty – just like all those Britney Spears wannabes lusted after by…

Also Released

2 Jul 2007

Die Hard 4.0 (15) 128min, 3 Stars Renegade cop and one man destroyer of municipal property John McClane (Bruce Willis) steps up to the plate one more time. Older, but not much wiser this time out, he has to contend with a bunch of über geek terrorists.

DVD - Ghost Ship

2 Jul 2007

HORROR In this genial, seaworthy but fright-lite low budget British horror film from 1952, a couple purchase an old steam boat with the intention of turning it into a luxury love nest only to find the crate has a history akin to that of the Marie…

The Beast Must Die

DVD

19 Jun 2007

HORROR Made in 1974, this British monster movie produced by Hammer-alike outfit Amicus attempted to bridge the transatlantic divide by capitalising on the post-Shaft blaxploitation craze and casting handsome African-American actor Calvin Lockhart in…

Shutter

19 Jun 2007

HORROR In lieu of a forthcoming US remake, this half arsed 2004 Thai ghost story is getting an overdue and limited release. Driving home after getting drunk with a few of his old friends, photographer Tun (Ananda Everingham) and his girlfriend…

Paradise Lost

21 May 2007

HORROR Having already flopped under the title Turistas in the US last November, John Stockwell’s limp lettuce of a thriller finally emerges in the UK as little more than a smudged photocopy of Eli Roth’s Hostel. It’s not Slovenia but Brazil that…

28 Weeks Later . . .

7 May 2007

As voracious as their flesh-eating antagonists, zombie movies can’t help coming back for more until a franchise has been picked clean. In order to maintain some semblance of fine dining from their 2003 sleeper hit 28 Days Later . . . director Danny…

The Breed

(15) 87min

23 Apr 2007

HORROR ‘Give my best to Cujo!’ yells Nikki (Michelle Rodriguez) as she torches the secret research facility where she’s been trapped by a pack of savage hounds. Yes, it’s another mongrel killer-dog movie (see also Man’s Best Friend, Rottweiler and…

The Reaping

(15) 96min

11 Apr 2007

HORROR What the hell is Hilary Swank playing at? This glossy, but in all other ways substandard supernatural chiller is the kind of by-the-numbers chick horror flick that Sandra Bullock churns out periodically, not what you’d expect a two-time Oscar…

DVD - Masters Of Horror Series 1: Volume 2

Masters Of Horror Series 1: Volume 2

26 Mar 2007

HORROR SHORTS After the reasonable standard of the first set of these made-for-TV horror shorts, this second batch comes as something of a disappointment, particularly given some of the names involved. Perhaps the best of them, Larry Cohen’s Pick Me…

DVD - See No Evil

See No Evil

26 Mar 2007

HORROR This rank imitation of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th and the orgy of weaker variations made since, pulls few punches with its gore content but is as predictable as a film can be that’s called See No Evil and features a…

The Messengers

(15) 91min

26 Mar 2007

HORROR Asian filmmaking is the strongest theme in modern horror. Sleeper hit Ringu irrefutably changed the landscape and made US execs sit up and take notice. Here the Pang brothers (Danny and the wonderfully named Oxide) are the latest victims wooed…

Glasgow Film Festival - horror movies

Day of the dead

31 Jan 2007

The all-day marathon is a right of passage for any horrorphile; a chance to wallow in the garish glory of the most extreme cinematic genres. For the second year, GFF features FrightFest in association with Zone Horror.

Them

(15) 78min

15 Jan 2007

HORROR A young French couple living in an old mansion 30 kilometres outside of Bucharest are woken one dark night by the sounds of intruders. Thereafter, a game of cat and mouse commences as the man and woman creep around their labyrinthine home…

Heirloom, The - DVD review

The Heirloom

3 Jan 2007

HORROR In this polished haunted house movie, an architect returns from the UK to take up his inheritance: a huge but dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of Taipei. At first his girlfriend and friends can’t get enough of the house, with its high…

Masters of Horror Series 1: Volume

(18) 1684min (Anchor Bay UK DVD retail/rental)

27 Nov 2006

HORROR Whenever a compendium of horror films comes along, you know you’re in for a mixed bag. Even the old Amicus portmanteaus tended to contain at least one duff entry. These new one-hour films from some of the supposed greatest directors working in…

Nun and the Devil, The - DVD review

The Nun and the Devil

13 Nov 2006

HORROR/SOFT CORE PORN The nun movie pretty much became a genre of its own in the 70s, with The Devils, Flavia, Killer Nun and Behind Convent Walls among the ‘nun-sploitation’ movies that got into the habit. The genre’s reputation as a titillating way…

Requiem

(12A) 92min

13 Nov 2006

DRAMA/HORROR One year on from the release of The Exorcism of Emily Rose - the risible US exploitation horror which expropriated the real life story of German girl Anneliese Michel, comes German film Requiem, an infinitely more interesting look at the…

Ultimate Hammer Box Set, The - DVD review

The Ultimate Hammer Box Set

17 Oct 2006

HORROR That the words ‘Hammer’ and ‘horror’ are synonymous is testament to the British production company’s significance in cinema history and to the enduring appeal of the films it produced. Although Hammer Film Productions Ltd had been making films…

Grudge 2, The

The Grudge 2

12 Oct 2006

HORROR With four Japanese Ju-On: The Grudge films under his belt, a fifth in the works and now a pair of US remakes to his name, writer-director Takashi Shimizu has rung a lucrative career out of his simple idea of a malign ghost that haunts one…

Countess Dracula

(18) 93min (Network DVD retail)

2 Oct 2006

HORROR Having sunk her fangs into the heaving flesh of Kate O’Mara and other voluptuous beauties in the 1970 Hammer hit The Vampire Lovers, Polish scream queen Ingrid Pitt was immediately cast in another softcore horror. Drafted in to replace Diana…

Three ... Extremes

(18) 121min (Tartan DVD retail)

4 Sep 2006

HORROR This 2004 anthology of Asian horror allows three directors from across the continent to showcase their capacity for creating extreme content. The wonderfully named Fruit Chan weighs in with the queasy Dumplings, which has since been expanded…