Martyn Conterio
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Film Review: The Endless
★★★★☆ Since their debut feature, 2012’s Resolution, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have emerged as two of American indie cinema’s most inventive genre filmmakers, doing things on very modest budgets that Hollywood typically spends millions on. H.P. Lovecraft, as past movies have so thoroughly demonstrated, is a hard nut to crack when it comes to…
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Film Review: Strangled
★★★☆☆ There’s a killer on the loose in smalltown Hungary. The sicko is abducting young women, strangling them and having it off with their corpses. Árpád Sopsits’ psycho-thriller Strangled is flawed, but still a gripping film with handsome production values. The theme of monstrous deviancy in a time of socialist conformity is a fascinating one.…
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#LFF 2017: Let the Corpses Tan review
★★★★☆ Moving away from the febrile world of 1970s Italian horror to that decade’s Euro crime dramas, Belgium-based duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have crafted yet another deliriously frenetic, blood-soaked homage to cult cinema of yesteryear.Working from a pulp fiction novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, Let the Corpses Tan drops the audience…
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#LFF 2017: Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse review
★★★★☆ The hills are alive with the sound of Satan in Lukas Feigelfeld’s outstanding debut feature. Set in 15th century Austria, high in the Alps, the film details the mental disintegration of a twentysomething milkmaid who lives alone in a cabin in the woods.Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse will most likely be pegged as this year’s…
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Film Review: Ghost Stories
★★★★☆ The League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman rework their Olivier-nominated Ghost Stories for the screen, delivering an insidiously spooky homage to Hammer horror, Tigon terror and the portmanteaus of Amicus. Professor Phillip Goodman (Nyman) is a ghostbuster working for a television show called Psychic Cheats. He’s a bit like the UK’s answer to…
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FrightFest 2017: Tragedy Girls review
★★★☆☆ You know the slasher-movie drill. Two high-school students are parked on a country lane at night. The windows have steamed up. Busy necking, the boy and girl suddenly hear a noise outside. The boy gets out of the car, goaded by the girl, who questions his masculinity.Soon enough, his young face meets a masked…
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FrightFest 2017: Jackals review
★★☆☆☆ Kevin Greutert’s latest thriller sees a family up against a deranged cult. Set over the course of a few hours on a dark night, Jackals is an atmospheric horror movie from the director of the best Saw series (XI) and the criminally underrated Jessabelle.Set in the 1980s and supposedly based on a true story,…
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FrightFest 2017: Attack of the Adult Babies review
★★★☆☆ Dominic Brunt’s third directorial feature is a political satire intent on causing a stink. A tale of human greed and demented obsession with money, Attack of the Adult Babies has a lot to get off its chest and it’s abundantly clear which political parties it’s targeting.Somewhere in Yorkshire, a cabal of white middle-aged, porcine…
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FrightFest 2017: Victor Crowley review
★★★★☆ Kept under wraps for two years as a top-secret production, Adam Green’s Hatchet series redux Victor Crowley is a splatter movie joy. Both reboot and sequel directly connected to events in Hatchet III, Victor Crowley hits the horror movie sweet spot like an axe to the face. There’s something beautiful in the simplicity of…
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FrightFest 2017: Mayhem review
★★★☆☆ Joe Lynch’s grisly corporate satire Mayhem follows a young lawyer’s mission to confront the company CEO that screwed him over. The lawyer (Steven Yuen) and everyone in the building has been infected with a virus known as ID7, which increases rage levels to deadly effect.Mayhem is a populist tale of striking back against corrupt…