Martyn Conterio
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FrightFest 2016: Red Christmas review
★★★☆☆ On the colour wheel, Craig Anderson’s Red Christmas is more Bob Clark’s Black Christmas than Michael Curtiz’s White Christmas. While it’s tempting to bring them together as a Yuletide triptych, a ‘Three Colours Christmas’ triple-bill (Krzysztof Kieślowski missed a trick with that one), Anderson’s comic slasher doesn’t quite earn its wings as a potential…
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FrightFest 2016: The Love Witch review
★★★★☆ Anna Biller’s The Love Witch is a movie aesthetes of kitsch will embrace with open arms. Not that the film’s distinct look is mere window-dressing or getting by on camp charm alone. A political work of true authorship if ever there was one, Biller not only directed, she wrote the screenplay, she’s the film’s…
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FrightFest 2016: My Father, Die review
★★★★☆ Revenge is a dish best served over several courses in Sean Brosnan’s brutal redneck noir tale My Father, Die. Full of Old Testament values and punishing degradation, it pits a father and son against each other in skirmishes that go well beyond traditional family rows into the realm of pure Freudian nightmare. Brosnan dedicates…
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FrightFest 2016: Another Evil review
★★★★☆ Ghosts from Our Past: Both Figuratively and Literally, the title of a controversial book co-authored by Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) and Abbey Yates (Melissa McCarthy), in Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters, serves as a handy description of Carson Mell’s superb horror comedy, Another Evil. Vacationing at his mountain cabin property, Dan (an abstract painter) and his…
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FrightFest 2016: Abattoir review
★★★☆☆ Home is where the Abattoir is, in Darren Lynn Bousman’s film noir chiller. Swapping torture porn frolics – he helmed several sequels in the Saw franchise – for a more subdued approach, his latest work, arguably his strongest yet, is pitched as a ghost story with a nightmare twist. Based on an unpublished graphic…
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FrightFest 2016: Programme highlights
FrightFest 2016, the UK’s premier horror film festival, runs over the forthcoming August Bank Holiday weekend. With over sixty movies set to screen, plus their short films showcase, Andy Nyman’s very popular quiz and several industry-related talks and events, FrightFest continues to expand its brand and deliver a varied selection of titles from across the…
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Film Review: Cell
★★★☆☆ John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson should make a thing of appearing in Stephen King adaptations together. This, their second rodeo, isn’t in the same league as 2007’s underrated 1408, but it gives the tired zombie survival horror subgenre a much-needed recharge and does more than enough to entertain as B-movie fun. The expression…
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Film Review: The Shallows
★★★☆☆ The monster is always a metaphor. Life, death, loss, grief, fears, desires. In Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows, the extravagantly proportioned great white shark relentlessly stalking surfer-meal Nancy (Blake Lively) represents the raw power that is the grieving process. Heading down old Mexico way to visit a secluded beauty spot, where Nancy’s deceased mum chillaxed…
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Film Review: The Killing$ of Tony Blair
★★☆☆☆ A documentary fronted by George Galloway, who narrates The Killing$ of Tony Blair as if he’s recounting a horror story around a campfire, must be taken with a grain of salt. A bitter Labour party reject, who has his own form currying the favours of dictators and obfuscation, Galloway’s re-emergence as a voice in…
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Film Review: The Conjuring 2
★★★★★ Based on one of the most famous poltergeist cases in the annals of paranormal investigation, The Conjuring 2 takes real-life ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) off to the outer rim of suburban London. From 1977 to 1979, a council house on a quiet street in Enfield was said to…