★★★★☆ After the large-scale brutality of political horror film New Order, Mexican provocateur Michel Franco returns with a low-key study in deceptive behaviour and enigmatic motives. Tim Roth headlines as a man attempting to escape his past and present, while on holiday with loved ones at a resort in Acapulco.
★★★☆☆ The Sadness is a nasty and thoroughly unpleasant survival horror film set in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, directed by Canadian first-timer Rob Jabbaz. Warning: this movie is not for the faint-hearted and requires a strong tolerance for depictions of brutality and sexual violence on screen.
★★★★☆ Lucile Hadžihalilović doesn’t make many films, Earwig being her third in almost twenty years. Yet in just three works (her previous being 2004’s Innocence and 2015’s Evolution), she has established herself as a filmmaker of uncompromising vision, the weird stories she tells focused on childhood, with strong elements of body horror.
★★★★☆ Fabrice Du Welz’s sixth film Inexorable continues to explore his fascination with troubled souls. Here, it’s a young woman on a mission to destroy an author and his upper-class wife, for reasons which are kept tantalisingly opaque.
★★★★☆ From celebrated South Korean filmmaker Na Hong-Jin, The Medium is an occult shocker set in an isolated village in northern Thailand. A tropical (and therefore suitably febrile) take on the demonic possession and found-footage sub-genres, its creepy theatrics build to a freaky climax.
★★★★★ In Rose Plays Julie, the latest from dynamic duo Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, a child of adoption studying veterinary medicine decides to seek out her biological mother and father. Her journey of discovery and resolution in holding her […]
★★★☆☆ Sion Sono’s debut film in the English language is an East-meets-West genre medley centred on the hero monomyth, and crucially the samurai movie’s influence on both the modern western and post-apocalyptic actioner. Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage gets to do his […]
★★☆☆☆ Emmerdale actor Dominic Brunt moonlights as a horror filmmaker. Evie, his fourth time on bullhorn duties, co-directed with Jamie Lundy, is based on the Celtic and Norse myth of the selkie, a derivative of the better-known mermaid. For Brunt, Evie is both […]
★★★★☆ The Retaliators is a rock ‘n’ roll ride into the freaky side of vengeance. Bridget Smith and Samuel Gonzalez Jr’s bloody thriller transgressively argues for violence as a rejuvenating force, a great problem-solver, and eye-for-an-eye revenge being a righteous act. […]
★★★★☆ A middle-aged woman, released from a psychiatric facility, moves into a block of flats. Settling in and finding her feet again, one night she begins to hear a thumping sound. Nobody else hears it. Is she going mad or […]
★★★★☆ Amber Sealey’s chamber piece dramatises a series of 1980s prison interviews undertaken by pioneer FBI profiler, Bill Hagmaier, with Ted Bundy. The resulting film shines a light, as best it can, into the darkest place known to humankind: the mind of […]
★★★★☆ Hungary, in the aftermath of the First World War. Travelling photographer Tomas (Victor Klem), is drawn into a frightening supernatural mystery, occurring in a remote peasant village. Armed with his trusty camera and primitive recording equipment, the former soldier […]
