Hatching

Pahanhautoja | Finland/Sweden | 2022 | Directed by Hanna Bergholm

Logline: A young gymnast, with an overbearing mother, finds distraction with the discovery of a strange egg, that hatches and reveals the girl’s nemesis.

From the dark woods of Scandinavia comes this weird little horror tale. Like Thale and Border, a kind of perverse creature feature, one that takes a portrait of domestic dysfunction and churns it into a coming-of-age mutation. We’ve seen these kinds of nightmarish fables before, but filmmaker Hanna Bergholm (who provided the story) and screenwriter Ilja Ratsi add a fresh scent to a fetid hide.

Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) is twelve, on the precipice of adolescence. She is a budding gymnast, but struggles under the demands of her mother, who is obsessed with her role as an influencer via a vlog that focuses on their apparently average, but very happy family. Tinja’s father seemingly takes a backseat to parental duties, while her kid brother does his best to please. Everything appeared to be okay, but following a disturbing incident with a panicked crow inside the house, causing damage and disarray, and later Tinja walking in on her mother passionately kissing the repairman, Tinja seeks solace in the adjacent forest where she comes across a dying bird and its abandoned egg. She decides to nurture the egg secretly in her bedroom, and things quickly escalate into very strange territory.

The egg grows to enormous size (somehow the rest of the family never discover it) and eventually a creature emerges, a kind of hybrid crow-human. Initially it appears the creature is malevolent, but because Tinja acted as a surrogate mother, the creature sees her as friend, not foe. In fact, the creature has made a firm, supernatural bond with the young girl, and everything they experience is shared psychologically and physically.

While dominant mother and submissive father sub-plot weaves through the narrative, it is the journey of Tinja and her wayward pet she names Alli that provides the movie with its central story. Like David Lynch’s predilection for digging below the surface of what appears pleasant and normal to reveal a dark and hideous underbelly, Hatching depicts the ruinous nature of toxic parenting, the frustrations of stifled youth. This is a tale of duplicity and failure in various forms.

The performances are uniformly excellent, especially Solalinna, who has the difficult job of a dual role, but also Sophia Heikkilä, as the mother. Big props to Bergholm for opting to use animatronics instead of CGI for the creature effects. It brings much gravitas to the early creature scenes. The beast is genuinely repulsive, and yet, the terrific puppet work brings a powerful realism to the outlandish creation.

This is the stuff of fevered nightmares, the frightening changeling that threatens to consume everything, the once protective custody of family falling apart, of innocence being torn asunder as a manipulative monster reflection seizes control, and the psyche is under threat. Like bad dreams there’s an internal logic that operates outside of reality. Tinja’s family frequently seem to be absent or none-the-wiser, while she deals with her noisy nemesis upstairs in her bedroom, showing up just when is dramatically required. Yes, there is a poetic license hard at work within Hatching, bordering on the blackly comic and absurd.

The Europeans are always pushing the envelope in terms of what is thematically comfortable within genre films, and Hatching is no exception. Like Goodnight Mommy and Let the Right One In, Hatching takes the psychological darkness of horror and pushes it into the sunlight, the rays singeing its constraints, the claws scraping and tearing at the bright, clean surfaces. It’s a provocative and ambiguous work, yet one that is likely to appeal to a broad demographic, I look forward to where Bergholm goes next.

HATCHING opens Australia nationwide in select cinemas on Thursday May 26th.

Wrong Turn

US/Germany/UK | 2021 | Directed by Mike P. Nelson

Logline: A bunch of friends hiking on the Appalachian Trial run afoul of a community of people whose descendants have been hiding out in the mountainous forest for hundreds of years. 

Jen (Charlotte Vega), her boyfriend Darius (Adain Bradley), and their friends Milla (Emma Dumont), Adam (Dylan McTee), Luis (Adrian Favela), and Gary (Vardaan Arora) have hit the Appalachian Trial for a weekend trek. Darius suggests they step off the marked path and look for a ruined Federation fort that he seems confident of its location. Jen is reluctant (seemingly the only one with a modicum of common sense), but Darius sways her, and off they trudge into the thick wilderness. 

It isn’t long before they’re completely lost and fed up. To add injury to insult a massive log comes rolling down from higher up the bank causing the group to scatter like terrified rabbits. It seems the locals haven’t taken to fondly to these urban upstarts. There’ll be a lot more tears before bedtime. 

The original film from nearly twenty years ago was a well-made hillbilly slasher with some terrific special effects makeup courtesy of Stan Winston’s team, and a genuinely creepy atmosphere, a slick, but knowing tribute to those grimy 70s exploitation flicks. It was essentially a star vehicle for Eliza Dushku, who was big at the time, but the rest of the cast were solid, with memorable villain characters, Three Finger, Saw-Tooth, and One-Eye. 

Then a whole train-wreck of straight-to-DVD sequels and prequels poured out (five of them!) and the series was dragged deeper and deeper into the forest mire. Perhaps that’s why the idea of a reboot seemed like a good idea. The co-production even got the original screenwriter, Alan McElroy, back on board, and the movie is helmed by a foley artist turned director. 

This surprise reboot feels entirely unnecessary, and is tenuously related to the original, but I guess that’s what the prerogative of a “reboot” is. The new folk-horror angle is derivative at best, and risible - especially in the latter stages of the narrative - at worst. Taking several pages from Midsommar, this new version doesn’t feature any of the striking mutations of the original, instead a ridiculously clean-cut Bill Sage, with immaculate beard and hair, spouting some strange accent, is the patriarch of The Foundation, a cluster of families who decided to leave the ruinous state of America’s society on the edge of Civil War to live a self-sustainable and secretive existence in the dense confines of the Appalachian forest and have been hoarding wayward city slickers ever since.

So Jen and her friends end up rudely dissing the locals and aggressively disrupting the rural community and, subsequently, are brought to trial. Foundation law says they must be punished and/or assimilated into the community. Meanwhile Jen’s dad (Matthew Modine), who hasn’t heard from his daughter in two weeks, hits the road on a search and rescue mission. 

Wrong Turn (sub-titled The Foundation in some territories) isn’t badly made in terms of its production, but it holds none of the creepy charm of the original, and although brutal and gory in places, much of the actual violence occurs off-screen, relying instead on aftermath, which feels like a cop-out.

While the performances are fine, with Vega easily the stand-out, Modine and Sage must need the pay cheques. The script feels like an entire season condensed into a nearly two-hour running time, especially the second half. Alan McElroy has tried to make a more layered, thematically heavier narrative, but has failed. The turning of the tables is totally unconvincing. Almost overnight Jen becomes some kind of ruthless, emotionally-stunted warrior, choosing to kill her friends rather than rescue them. The ending is plain ridiculous, even succumbing to the cheeseball tactic of a daydream sequence just to provide alternate scenario thrills, the nightmare finally collapsing in on itself. There is even the setup for a sequel, with Jen’s boyfriend abandoned with The Foundation, so I’m sure Jen - in full mercenary mode - will take on the community in order to rescue him. But who cares? 

Yup, the chief problem with Wrong Turn is that it’s slick, but hollow, lacking character and extremity, that it offers nothing fresh, covers no new ground, hasn’t upped the ante, or pushed the boundaries, and only reinforces how other movies have done it better, including the original, which, in itself, was a conscious nod to past movies, but at least provided viewers with genuine thrills and palpable atmosphere, and a modicum of style. This Wrong Turn is definitely two steps backward. 

Black Water: Abyss

Australia/US | 2020 | Directed by Andrew Traucki

Logline: Five friends exploring a remote cave system in Northern Australia find themselves threatened by a large crocodile.

Aussie genre director Traucki returns to the murky waters where he made his name. We’re back in the Top End. Northern Australia to the rest of the world. Croc country. Where Traucki pitted a hapless few against some particularly ferocious mangrove swamp reptiles in Black Water (2007). Co-directed by Andrew Nerlich, who hasn’t gone on to direct another feature, his background in visual effects. Traucki, on the other hand, continued on his nature attacks journey with The Reef (shark), The Jungle (leopard), and now has come full circle with this loose sequel, tied together only by name, location, and beast. 

Eric (Luke Mitchell) and his girlfriend Jennifer (Jessica McNamee), and their friends Yolanda (Amali Golden) and partner Viktor (Benjamin Hoetjes) have arranged to go caving. They’ve enlisted the help of local guide Cash (Anthony J. Sharpe), who takes them deep into the bush to an unlisted cave entrance. Along the way he’s quizzed whether the two missing tourists have been found. They’re the ones we see in the movie’s prologue falling foul of the local crocodilian fauna. 

No cave map, missing tourists, and there’s a fast approaching storm, does little to deter the gung-ho crew. Red flags? Fuggeddaboudit. It’s down the hole they go, in search of elusive treasures, or maybe just a cool, exotic place to swim in. Well, they get some of what they bargained for. But Murphy’s Law lives down there too. In fact, everything you can think of that could go wrong, does. It’s that kind of bad hair day. 

Deadly croc flicks are a dime a dozen, and for every chomper there’s a gobbler. Black Water: Abyss doesn’t pull any punches, doesn’t hold any surprises, you’ve seen everything before, right down to the tawdry relationship subplot revealed in order to bolster survival mode. But what Traucki brings to the table is taut pacing and good camerawork, and he elicits solid performances from his good-looking cast. He also utilises the same excellent effect he featured in Black Water and The Reef: real footage of his deadly creatures in action, superbly edited with the actors, which heightens the realism, and gives the movie real kudos. 

The underground cave system is impressive too, and in particular the underwater footage, which not only tightens the sense of claustrophobia - and for those that are triggered by enclosed spaces, be warned! - but also creates a palpable sense of fear. Indeed, it is our intrepid, oh so foolish, cavers struggling with their rapidly deteriorating predicament that ramps up the anxiety levels.

After his impressive croc debut, and a solid great white followup, Traucki dropped the ball with his entirely disappointing jungle threat, and his confusing and underwhelming segment for The ABCs Of Death, but he’s returned with some bite, and it’s great to see. Black Water: Abyss is very much a movie to see on the big screen, so if you can, make the effort. 

Hell, I was hankering for more blood and gore, since Alexandre Aja’s Crawl gave me the taste for it, while fellow Oz Greg Mclean’s Rogue opted for more chomp and you miss it thrills and spills. Traucki’s approach is more like Rogue in that respect, it’s aiming for a broader demographic. I hope it does well, so maybe one day the director, still on his creature feature odyssey, might consider remaking Razorback. That’s my wish. 

Edmond

US | 2005 | Directed by Stuart Gordon

Logline: A frustrated white-collar married man descends into his own personal hell on the streets of New York City.

Edmond (William H. Macy) leaves his office job in a blue funk. An impulse decision leads him to having his Tarot cards read, and it’s not a pretty picture. “You don’t belong here,” warns the fortuneteller. Later, in his apartment, he cruelly dismisses his wife (Rebecca Pidgeon), and walks out on her, much to her shock and then disgust. At a bar he’s told by another suit (Joe Mantegna) that he needs to get laid, and so begins Edmond’s dark journey of fear and loathing.

Finding a sexual release proves more difficult than the barfly had suggested; he’s thrown out of a strip club, walks out of a peep show, and is refused at a brothel, all for protesting at the prices he’s expected to pay for instant gratification. Then he’s conned by a card shark on the street, and when he kicks up a fuss, the two men take him into an alleyway where they beat and rob him. Yup, Murphy’s Law rules.  

Finally he cracks when a pimp cajoles him and attempts to trick him out of the cash he’s just got from pawning his wedding ring (which he was intending to use back at the brothel. His violent eruption transforms him into something more base and animalistic, almost a Jekyll and Hyde syndrome at play. His retaliation on the Negro pimp seemingly empowers him. He chats up a diner waitress (Julia Stiles), and she sleeps with him and listens intently to his knife-brandishing, adrenalin-pumped, racist diatribes. 

Edmond is a kind of roving chamber piece – a sociopathic case study – loitering in the wilderness of the urban nightmare. Written by David Mamet, and based on an early play, it seems like odd fare for director Gordon, most famously known for his hell-for-leather adaptations of Lovecraft, but, in fact, Gordon began in theatre, and it was his Organic Theater staging of Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago that launched the playwright’s career. Gordon first saw Edmond performed in 1982 and had wanted to turn into a film for twenty years. 

The subject matter is more than a little difficult, ripe as ever, as we follow an angry, bigoted man toiling in his own misery, hatred and confusion. Xenophobia is one of the central themes, tackling racism and sexism, paranoia, anxiety, and despair. But buried deep is the search for self-love, for resignation and understanding. Bittersweet irony eventually comes to embrace Edmond, to show him the light of emancipation.  

Imagine Taxi Driver and After Hours, but without any of the cinematic verve, and this isn’t Mamet’s best work by a long shot, but it tackles the kind of portrayal many American filmmakers have shied away from in the past because the darkness is too oppressive. Gordon elicits excellent work from his cast, especially Macy who is in virtually every scene, and Stiles is terrific, but also Bokeem Woodbine as a prison cell mate, Denise Richards (b-girl hostess), Bai Ling (peep show performer), Mena Suvari (prostitute), and in even smaller roles, Debi Mazar as a brothel receptionist, George Wendt as pawn shop owner, Dylan Walsh as a detective, an hilarious turn from Jeffrey Combs as a camp, disgruntled, finger-lickin’ clerk, and not forgetting Mamet regulars Mantegna and Pidgeon. 

Edmond deals with its confronting themes of fear and desire with a pitch-black sense of humour, snaking in and around Macy’s foul-mouthed central performance, coiling and lurching like Mike Leigh’s Naked. It’s a dark, dark parable of angst, identity crisis, and a kind of perverted redemption. Not an easy pill to swallow, especially with Mamet’s penchant for stilted verbosity, but it’s definitely a portrait that needs re-assessing.  

A Serial Killer's Guide To Life

UK | 2019 | Directed by Staten Cousins-Roe

Logline: A wallflower, quietly desperate for direction, finds extreme self-help from a committed life coach. 

For his debut feature writer/director Staten Cousins Roe continues in the same darkly comic vein as his short This Way Out, but this time focusing on murderous intent, as opposed to assisted suicide. It’s a movie that satirises in the same dark fashion as Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, only less bloodily.

Lou (Katie Brayben) is living the drabbest of lives, having to care for her mother, whilst she spends whatever spare time she has wandering the equally drab coastal walks tuned into yet another self-help audiobook. She attends seminars as well, and it is here that she is “befriended” by Val (Poppy Roe), a life coach. 

Val wasn’t expecting Lou to swing by her pad, or maybe she was, but either which way, Lou is onboard Val’s determined wee quest to do away with as many of those god awful self help groups as possible. It’s serial killing as culling, killing in the name of personal success, and Val seems to have a handle on it. Lou is feckless, but she’ll come around. 

It soon becomes apparent that Val might not just be the realest of people, but the ride continues with Val in the driver’s seat and Lou accommodating the homicide, with only the slightest of concern. It it is also revealed early on that the itinerary is leading to the home of one Chuck Noah, the celebrity guru whom Lou idolises, and whom Val despises. 

It is Chuck (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) who provides a kind of narration to the movie, as his seven steps to becoming a fitter, healthier, wealthier you pieces-to-camera are used as chapter stops. He is a deeply arrogant, but oh so charismatic man, it makes perfect sense he would have it all sorted out. Hypcocrisy? Pffft! There’s no such thing in the professional world of self-help gurus. 

A Serial Killer’s Guide To Life is ruthless, but almost entirely bloodless, less concerned with showing the gory brutality of the killings, more interested in showing the underwhelmed reactions of its two protagonists. Or is that two antagonists? It’s a kind of Tyler Durden meets Jekyll and Hyde riff, and for the most part it works rather well, especially as the central performances are excellent. Brayben captures the awkwardness of her character with aplomb, while Roe (who is married to the director), is brilliantly deadpan as the mentor on a deadly mission, and Lloyd-Hughes’ smarmy delivery is pitch perfect. 

For those who dig their comedies black-as-midnight-on-a-moonless-night, especially macabre and twisted fare such as Sightseers and Alice Rowe’s Prevenge, but less vicious, then this is the movie for you. Inspiring and funny in all the wrong, oh-so-right ways.

A SERIAL KILLER'S GUIDE TO LIFE is released on iTunes and Digital HD from 13th January 2020  www.aserialkillersguidetolife.com

Rabid

Canada/UK | 2019 | Directed by Jen & Sylvia Soska

Logline: Following an accident that leaves her with horrific injuries a woman has experimental surgery that enhances her life experience, but also gives her an insatiable thirst for blood.  

Rose (Laura Vandervoort) is a wallflower seamstress working for Karl Lagerfeld-esque fashion design guru Gunter (Mackenzie Gray), who treats her poorly, as do the other employees, except model Chelsea (Hanneke Talbot) who’s a few sequins short of a full dress. Chelsea wants to bring Rose out of her shell, so sets her up, but Rose ends up humiliated, and in trying to flee she is involved in a horrendous motorcycle accident. 

Rose awakens in hospital with massive facial and abdominal injuries. She is inconsolable. She is given refuge at Chelsea’s pad, but she is desperate for a solution to her physical, psychological, and emotional suffering. She seeks out Dr. William Burroughs (yes, that’s right) at his advanced clinic (why on earth would a plastic surgery clinic have massive and grotesque paintings of mutated bodies adorning their walls?!) where he performs experimental stem-cell regenerative surgery. The results are radical. Rose is transformed into a creature even more beautiful and alive than she was before the accident. 

But Rose has become a beast inside, as a side effect of Burroughs’ work has left Rose with a deep-rooted hunger for human blood. Something is growing within her, and in her blackouts she succumbs to an animalistic savagery, a bloodlust she cannot control, for she is riddled with a disease that is highly contagious, a potentially apocalyptic contagion that we can only understand as some kind of super-rabies.  

For their third feature The Twisted Twins take on David Cronenberg’s 1977 second feature which starred adult star Marilyn Chambers. It’s not really a remake, more of a re-imagining, as it starts quite removed from Cronenberg’s story, and continues to veer further and further away from the original narrative, eventually culminating in an ending more akin to the absurd OTT stylistics of another contemporary body-horror director, Joe Begos, than the downbeat, nihilistic tone of Cronenberg’s. 

The Soska sisters have designed their version to reflect various elements of the contemporary social climate and the influence of popular and underground culture. Rose has low self-esteem and is subjected to ridicule, but after her appalling injuries are miraculously healed, she is transformed – transmogrified – into a kind of superhuman, certainly a superwoman; beautiful, glamorous, smart, powerful, successful. That’s not to say she didn’t have some of these qualities and abilities before her accident, but certainly the side effects of her medical treatment have enhanced her being, given her extra-ordinary strength and influence. 

The irony is that the most significant side effect is a parasitic growth within her that initiates a severe thirst for blood that leads to catastrophic consequences. This growth begins in Rose’s mouth, sprouting from her gums, and later erupts from her armpit, like some kind of hideous eel-tendril. But the mutation – a perverse trans-humanism – is never properly explained, seemingly out of nowhere. 

It is this mutation sub-plot and subsequent bizarre denouement that confuses and threatens to scuttle what has been a surprisingly plausible horror-thriller in terms of narrative. Yes, okay it is far-fetched, but it’s presented in a realistic way. Rabid could’ve been a more frightening and powerful horror movie if it had stuck more closely to Cronenberg’s suggested apocalypse - and one which he continued with in wider scope with Shivers. As it is, and similarly to the sisters’ previous movie, American Mary, Rabid is a horror that begins and develops in compelling fashion, but loses its way and is ultimately undone in its third act. 

Rabid screens as part of Australia’s Monster Fest, Friday, November 1st, 7pm, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, and Perth. Click here for venue details and the complete program. 

The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)

US | 2011 | Directed by Tom Six

Logline: Inspired by a fictional character, a very disturbed and lonely man fantasizes of creating a 12-person centipede. 

To say that The Human Centipede II is an acquired taste is like mentioning the anchovy and corned beef pizza is a little on the salty side. Dutch writer/director Tom Six warned audiences who had savoured The Human Centipede that the sequel would make the first movie look like My Little Pony. He was not too far from the truth. The “100% medically inaccurate” sequel reaches up from the drain as you stroll past, grabs you by the ankle, and pulls you down into the filthy, pitiful depths of hell where it writhes and squeals in its own bodily fluids with the kind of glee reserved only for the execrable evil. 

Beginning in meta-fashion the movie shows the last few minutes of The Human Centipede, but in black and white. The credits for the movie begin rolling and the camera pulls back to reveal that it’s being watched on a computer screen. The person watching is London loner Martin (Laurence R. Harvey); our gross and grotesque antagonist who will lead us into the depths of his (nightmare) fantasy. He is a short, obese man with bulging eyes and a small mouth who works as an underground parking attendant, and lives in squalor with his abusive, desperate mother (Vivien Bridson). It’s a pathetic and ugly existence, soon to its nadir. 

Martin is obsessed (and that’s putting it mildly) with The Human Centipede. He has a scrapbook on the cult horror movie, and he watches it over and over, poring over the detail, fingering his wet lips as he ogles the poor victims. He becomes aroused, but due to years of sexual abuse by his father he can only find gratification through pain, and so he jerks off with sandpaper wrapped around his penis. He’s distracted by a commotion on the surveillance cameras; it’s time to put his burgeoning and hideous plan into action.

Martin is compelled to take the concept and work of Heiter, the deranged surgeon from the first movie, and push the boundary. Martin will make a full sequence. Not three people, not four, not five, but twelve people stitched together arse-to-mouth; a complete human centipede, a mutant pet to keep his ferocious real pet centipede company, perhaps. Martin abducts twelve men and women, including a pregnant one, Rachel (Katherine Templar), and, as fate would have it, his dream centipede head: Miss Ashlynn Yennie herself, one of the stars from the first movie. He rents a dilapidated warehouse space and begins his lengthy opus of fleshy degradation. 

Tom Six is a brave man. I admire his tenacity. There are few horror directors bold enough to throw all caution to the wind and make a movie that takes no moral prisoners, makes no ethical concessions, and embraces all the sexual perversity and appalling repulsion required for such a movie as The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence). 

The first movie was concerned with Dr. Heiter’s narcissistic fascination with his own conceptual handiwork. It was all “100% medically accurate”. The sequel states clearly that the first movie was pure fiction, and the real nightmare is what you’re now witnessing in grimy high contrast black and white. But more disturbing than the sheer body horror - and there is much of that! - is the sexual aberration that exudes from the movie. Martin is a confounded carnal monster. He craves to get off over his creation, and he does. Using barbed wire, and poor unfortunate Kim (Emma Lock), human centipede #10. It’s an irreparably disturbing and sickening scene. The board of censors banned the movie in the UK and it was cut in Australia and America. The UK decision was appealed (Six defending his movie by stating, “Aren’t horror movies meant to be horrific?”), and the movie was re-submitted. It was slapped with an 18 restriction, but only after around thirty cuts were made, and more than two minutes were excised. 

Six has made a potent and powerful nightmare movie, as expressionistic and uncompromising as A Serbian Film, as wickedly vile and well made. Imagine Eraserhead fused with Tetsuo fused with Man Bites Dog and maybe you’ll appreciate the movie’s singular vision. Not a lot of dialogue, and a sustained tone of unbridled ghastliness that embraces the movie like the savage clutches of Martin’s pet centipede. The realist approach seemingly heightens the surrealism of it all. James Edward Barker’s soundscape is brilliant, and the central performance of Laurence R. Harvey is disquietingly inspired. I take my hat off to Ashlynn Yennie for biting the bullet, so to speak, and returning to the nightmare for more degradation. 

There is also a very, very dark element of comedy that rears its head occasionally. Six made a decision during the editing process to release the movie in monochrome, and included the original colour version for the boxset release. Call me disgusting, but Six’s deliberate inclusion of very subtle colour in the black and white version made me chortle (then gag). The monochrome palette certainly intensifies the movie’s grim tone, but those spurts of brown are the scatological icing on the cake.

The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) will definitely offend some viewers, there’s no doubt about that. Consider yourself warned! But for the hardened horrorphile, it’s revolting and rewarding in darkly perfect measure. 

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

Netherlands | 2009 | Directed by Tom Six

Logline: A deranged surgeon kidnaps and mutilates a trio of tourists in order to create a human centipede for his perverse pleasure. 

Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) are two 20-something American tourists looking for a good time in Germany. They’re not the brightest sparks, but they don’t deserve the hell they’re going to. En route to a out of town club they become lost, and then strike out with a flat tire. They wander aimlessly through the woods and stumble upon the isolated home of one Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), a retired surgeon who has recently laid his “3-dog” to rest at the edge of the manicured lawn.

The doctor’s expertise at conjoined twins detachment is now being used for reverse purposes. With consummate skill he incapacitates the two young women and they wake to find themselves strapped to hospital beds in the doctor’s underground surgery. An earlier abduction is done away with, as he is no longer suitable. In his place a young Japanese man, Katsuro (Akihiro Kutamura) is procured. Now the doctor can begin the operation, but not before briefing his “patients” on what exactly he has planned for them with white board diagrams and verbal explanation. It’s going to far from pretty. 

This post-modern Prometheus is poised to configure the ultimate pet: a conjoined three-person creature with one mouth and one elongated digestive tract, by cutting, peeling, grafting, stitching and sealing the second and third mouths to the first and second anuses. Where did writer/director Tom Six come up with such an atrocity?! Apparently inspiration rose from a joke he made to friends that a child molester should have their mouth sewn to the arsehole of a very fat truck driver. That and Pasolini’s Salo.

Ten years on and The Human Centipede is still a strong and repugnant delight, working as a creeping thriller, then sliding into visceral horror, yet somehow there’s a comedy black as midnight on a moonless night sniggering in the corner. It’s an expertly engineered nightmare that creates deep empathy for the poor hapless victims. As the situation begins to spiral out of control one wonders how on earth the movie can end, but Tom Six does the premise justice, in disturbingly nihilistic fashion.

The movie is well-paced, yet suitably gruelling in places. There’s an unusual elegance to the mise-en-scene, exuding a European sensibility, the creeping camerawork, a starkness and minimalism in the production design. The performances are excellent, with Dieter Laser’s rogue doctor a real piece of work; a truly sinister-looking man, tall and thin, with a face like a lizard, smelling oozing pus and licking blood off the stairs, armed with a hypodermic and a scalpel and a crazed glint in his oily eye (his full name Josef Heiter is a reference to Nazi surgeon Mengele).  

Yes, The Human Centipede is sick and twisted and well-made. Imagine a Troma movie directed by Werner Herzog. If you can. Not for all tastes, but rewarding for those who can stomach its revolting centrepiece.

Harpoon

Canada | 2019 | Directed by Rob Grant

Logline: Three close friends find themselves stranded at sea and are forced to confront dark secrets and desperate measures in order to survive.

Richard (Christopher Gray) is a son of a wealthy asshole, and young Dick hasn’t fallen far from the tree. Jonah (Munro Chambers) is his best buddy, and has spent much of the friendship feeling rather thankless. Sasha (Emily Tyra) is Richard’s girlfriend. She’s a feisty type, and divides her time playing lover and mediator. Her role will play a pivotal part in this triangle. 

Things get off to a rocky start. Richard is furious. He’s angry a lot of the time. Now he’s pissed off with Jonah, believing that his pal has screwed him over by screwing his girlfriend, so he pummels the hell out of the poor bastard, until Sasha sorts him out with further information. Richard needs to make amends, so he invites them onto his father’s cruiser for a relaxing day on the deep blue sea, where he can use his brand new harpoon – er, spear gun – a birthday gift from Jonah and Sasha. 

It gets to the pointy end rather quickly, and one stupid decision leads to another, especially after many beers and gin & tonics. Richard’s back to his usual sociopathic self, and Jonah’s once again on the receiving end. Sasha is in the middle, and before you can say “Jonathon Livingston Seagull” there’s blood, blood everywhere, and all the boards did shrink. 

Rob Grant has fashioned a career with small, independently-produced genre twists, focusing on micro-budget concept-heavy, dialogue driven chamber pieces, such as Mon Ami and Desolate. His latest is very reminiscent of Polanski’s first feature, Knife on the Water, in terms of dynamics, combined with some of the nasty shenanigans of Donkey Punch. It’s a three-hander, set almost entirely aboard a pleasure boat, but there’s little pleasure to be had for these schmucks.

Grant’s screenplay (with help from Mike Kovac) pitches and rolls, revealing more and more about each character as they stumble over and into each other, trying to retain some semblance of power and keep at least one ace up their sleeve. It’s all ludicrous, but you take it with several grains of sea salt. Richard is mostly the obnoxious one, Jonah is mostly pathetic, and Sasha is somewhere in between. Which makes it hard to feel any real empathy for any of them. But, thankfully Grant pushes the b-movie trappings as far as they’ll go, shoving them all hard into the corners, and squeezing every bit of blood. And there’s plenty of that. 

In fact, it’s not often I gag in horror movies, but I found myself genuinely revolted in a scene that involves a seagull. Well played Grant, well played. Excellent special effects makeup work is employed from designer Rob Trainor, with a real rip-doozy near the end of the movie. Also strong is the score from Michelle Osis. Performances are okay – including bone dry-witted narration from Brett Gelman – and they keep each other afloat, but there’s no acting prizes here. This is a beer and sailor sandwich - cheddar and raw onion - flick, the more beer you consume, the tastier the sandwich gets. Jump onboard.

HARPOON is now available on the ARROW VIDEO CHANNEL (and also Amazon Prime and Apple TV)

Itsy Bitsy

US | 2019 | Directed by Micah Gallo

Logline: A single mother, with her two kids, takes a job looking after a disabled collector of exotic artefacts, including one housing the deadly entity of an ancient legend that escapes and terrorises them all. 

Having made a career as an executive producer for a visual effects and digital intermediate company catering for low-budget genre flicks Micah Gallo has ventured out and spent several years making his debut feature, which he co-wrote with Jason Albino and Bryan Dick. It’s an old-fashioned creature feature, that kind of which isn’t made much any more, certainly not made with a serious tone, and using practical effects. For the most part Itsy Bitsy works rather well. 

Kara (Elizabeth Roberts) is a single mum, who has worked as a nurse, but was fired due to her addiction to pills. She’s moved from the city with her two children, young teen Jesse (Arman Darbo) and kid sister Cambria (Chloe Perrin). There is deep tragedy in the family’s past, an accident that haunts Kara, that she tries to bury with her self-medication. A contract job as a private nurse in the countryside might just be the perfect antidote. 

Her new patient, Walter (Bruce Davison), is a collector of exotic and rare artefacts, much of it from the Dark Continent. An African man, Ahkeeba (Treva Etienne), makes an unannounced arrival, bearing a large clay egg inscribed with arcane hieroglyphics. He demands a ritualistic exchange, but Walter refuses. The egg is compromised, and reveals its true cargo: Maa-Kalaratri, the Dark Mother, who once lived in the darkness between the stars, then went on a deadly rampage on her home turf, despite the sacrifices made to her. 

Now she is loose in an American home. She’s a massive, malevolent arachnid and she weaves a deadly web. 

Whilst the atmosphere and special effects are impressive, Itsy Bitsy is hampered in the first half of the movie by too much focus on the sub-plot of Kara’s strained relationship with Jesse, who is none too happy with her decision making and past behaviour, depicted through fragmented flashback. Roberts and Davison’s performances are okay, nothing special, but the young daughter’s acting is weak, as are the other support roles. So the movie has to rely on the power of its villain, the aforementioned big black eight-legged freak. 

Gallo’s background in visual effects meant he was able to garner the talents of a bunch of skilled technicians and puppeteers to bring to life this most horrifying of monsters. Indeed, if you are an arachnophobe, like me, you will find the hairs on your back bristling, your skin crawling, especially during the movie’s third act; the final twenty minutes makes up for the previously sluggish pace.

What Itsy Bitsy lacks in the acting and scripting departments makes up for in edge-of-your-seat spider horror action. We really don’t care about the drug problem when there’s a giant spider lurking in the house, but we do want mum to come to the rescue! Gallo definitely has an eye for mise-en-scene, and there are some great shots and sounds of the spider throughout the movie, nestled, hiding, crawling, oozing spider gunk, baring its terrifying fangs, even some inventive spider-cam. Oh, and though the deaths are few, the gore and blood effects are excellent.

It might have a cutesy title (referencing the archaic nursery rhyme), but check the terrific trailer - which was first released two years ago, as the movie has been in post-production hell - that’ll hook you in. Crowdsourcing apparently got the movie over the finish line, and Gallo is a name to watch. A short post-credits scene suggests an altogether more frightening scenario for a possible sequel. If that eventuates, I hope Gallo delivers a better screenplay, and elicits more believable performances, his vision demands it. 

ITSY BITSY will be available on Sky Store, iTunes and UK digital platforms from 14th October.

Digital Platforms include: Sky Store, iTunes, Xbox, Sony PS, Google Play, Amazon and Virgin Movies.

The Lodge

UK | 2019 | Directed by Severin Fiala & Veronica Franz

Logline: A soon-to-be stepmom is snowed in with her fiancé's two children at a remote holiday house, and while tension mounts between the trio, strange and frightening events take place.

There’s no denying the talent Severin Fiala and Veronica Franz have at creating atmosphere, intrigue, and suspense, as their debut feature, Goodnight Mommy, oozed it, and their follow-up feature literally drips with it. The Lodge is drenched in an ominous vibe, right from the start. This dread is sustained through much of the movie, so it’s a shame when the screenplay falls apart during the movie’s last third.

Richard (Richard Armitage) is preparing for his kids to meet properly with his fiancée, Grace (Riley Keogh). His separated wife, Laura (Alicia Silverstone), arrives with teenage Aidan (Jaeden Lieberher) and younger sister Mia (Lia McHugh), and Richard drops the divorce bombshell on her. She takes it rather badly. As do the children. Grace feels the animosity. Richard tries hard, and arranges for the four of them to spend Christmas in a remote rural lodge, surrounded by luscious snow and adjacent to a beautiful frozen lake. What could go wrong? 

Aidan and Mia have done a wee background check on Grace, and discover that as a 12-year-old she was the subject of their father’s research for a book about her parents’ religious death cult, and was the sole survivor of. There’s definitely something not quite right with Grace, which only intensifies the tension between her and the kids. Grace is taking medication and she seems very nice, so maybe everything will be hunky dory. 

Richard has work commitments, and although wary, Grace convinces him that she and the kids will be fine for a couple of days, so he leaves them to drive back to the city. 

Now it’s the perfect time for things to get weird. Which they do. 

Unlike other directing duos, who are either siblings or married couples, Fiala and Franz have slightly more unusual connection. Franz is married to Austrian agent provocateur Ulrich Siedl, and Fiala is his nephew. No doubt the dark and troublesome films of Siedl have influenced Fiala and Franz as directors. The Lodge is co-written between them and Serio Casci. 

The story starts off on great promise, a really terrific first quarter, with the audience recovering from a shocking scene during the prologue, and with the knowledge of Grace’s childhood trauma lurking in the background, the anticipation of what may follow is palpable. Is The lodge somehow connected to the original abode of Grace’s cult? Is Richard as screwed up as his fiancée? Surely a grown man studying the history of a very disturbed young girl, and then choosing to marry her can’t be all that right in the head. 

Grace tries her darnedest to earn Aidan and Mia’s trust and acceptance. She’s well-adjusted. As long as she takes her pills. 

You’d think, knowing what the kids have gleaned from the video they secretly viewed on their father’s computer, they’d be wise enough not to poke and prod a sleeping dog. This is where The Lodge falls on its face, and stumbles around, trying to get back on its feet. There’s really no way the kids would do what they do. All semblance of believability is thrown out the window into the cold, hard snow. 

I was so enjoying the movie, especially Riley Keogh’s performance. The retro look of the movie is terrific, utilising a lot of wide angle shots, and a clever use of miniatures - the camera inside a toy house in the city home that seemingly mirrors The Lodge. The score is also excellent, with its rumbling bottom end. 

The Lodge could’ve ended up one of the best horror movies of the year, if Fiala, Franz and Casci hadn’t opted for such a preposterously-plotted extension of jeopardy. I was fully prepared for the narrative to tie in to Grace’s frightening childhood in a more succinct and powerful way, a la The Shining, but that arc was abandoned for a “twist” that was implausible at best and risible at worst. A decision that scuttled the movie. 

Girl On The Third Floor

US | 2019 | Directed by Travis Stevens

Logline: A husband with a dodgy past is renovating a house with an even dodgier history in preparation for his wife and imminent baby only to have the house turn his life upside-down. 

Director Travis Stevens is a successful producer, with some twenty-six titles since 2009. His production company has been involved in some of my favourite genre flicks of the past ten years, in particular Cheap Thrills and Starry Eyes, and also the documentary Jodoroswky’s Dune. This is his first feature as a director and screenwriter, using a story by Paul Johnstone and Ben Parker. It’s a small, but dense movie, set almost entirely inside a cramped and dilapidated mansion in Frankfurt Illinois, with only a few central roles, and it’s soaked in a rich vintage atmosphere. 

Don (Philip Brooks) arrives with his dog at a run-down suburban Victorian-era home he’s bought with his wife and immediately cracks open a beer. His wife Liz (Trieste Kelly Dunn) has remained back in the city, pregnant and concerned her husband has fallen off the wagon, waiting for him to complete the required renovations. He’s got his mate Milo (Travis Delgado) due in a day or so to assist, but shortly after arriving Don finds icky sticky weirdness in the walls and even grosser stuff on the floor. 

The local pastor (Karen Woditsch) also pays Don a visit, letting him know the house has a dark history of having its way with its occupants. Then spunky next-door neighbour, Sarah (Sarah Brooks), saunters into play, and Don just can’t help himself. Later Liz Facetimes Don, keeping him on his toes, spying an empty bottle on a mantlepiece, and then she thinks she sees a mysterious figure glide past in the background. Don assures Liz everything is hunky dory. He’s aware there’s something unusual about the house, but he has no idea of what the house is capable of, what it’s already been up to, and what it intends to reveal and pervert. 

Right from the start Girl On The Third Floor oozes style; the opening montage and the full-tilt Gothic font for the title credits, the sound design is especially effective, and the edging, creeping, prowling camerawork and cinematography really gives the movie a distinct Euro retro vibe. These are the elements that make the movie memorable, along with some excellent practical effects and gore gags, in particular one involving a rogue marble and a Stanley knife. 

But where Girl On The Third Floor is let down - and this is a major gripe - is the casting of former wrestler and mixed martial arts champion Phil Brooks, known to sports fans as CM Punk. Brooks has the chiseled looks and cartoon facial expressions that Bruce Campbell made a career from, but he can’t act his way out of a paper bag (not that Campbell is a great actor, but you get my drift). Brooks is more wooden than a log, whilst the other Brooks, of the feminine persuasion, works wonders on the alluring front, but she doesn’t possess the menacing chops to deliver what’s required as the movie moves into third act. 

Indeed, it’s the third act that suffers, as the surrealism is ramped up, and in all due respect, there are some great moments, but the narrative focus frays between characters and the obscure symbolism - all that oozing mucus (semen??) and Lovecraftian filth - that occupies much of the movie’s first half becomes less relevant, almost a red herring. While the creepy and grotesque “nymph” with the toothy grin that stretches from chin to crown becomes, essentially, a non-event. 

These scripting and casting issues aside, the nightmarish mise-en-scene is solid, and some of the horror imagery was terrific, especially the eye peering up through the bathroom sinkhole - that was an absolute doozy. With a stronger script and a more convincing lead Girl On The Third Floor may have ended up one of my faves for the year. Dems da breaks. But hey, I look forward to Travis Stevens’ next horror.

Girl On The Third Floor screens as part of the Sydney Underground Film Festival, Friday, September 13th, 8.30pm, The Factory, Marrickville. For more information and tickets click here.

FrightFest 2019 - reviews in brief

A Good Woman Is Hard To Find 

Director Abner Pastoll, plowing a tight script from Ronan Blaney, has cultivated a fine noir-esque tale of an Irish single mother’s inexorable entanglement with the local gangster stronghold. Sarah (Sarah Bolger) is a recently widowed young mother to two children, one of whom is an elective mute since witnessing his father’s brutal slaying. A lowlife drug dealer, Tito (Andrew Simpson), on the run with stolen drugs and cash, invades her home, which in turn forces Sarah to seize the opportunity and seek bloody retribution. 

Superbly written and directed, with stand-out performances from Bolger and Simpson, A Good Woman is Hard to Find doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, instead playing the tropes with consummate skill and still bringing a fresh edge. With Scorsese-calibre violence, and a taut level of suspense, there hasn’t been a crime drama/thriller flick this confident, resonant, and dark since Dead Man’s Shoes. 

It’s one of those small, character-driven films that within minutes of watching you can confidently sign off on. Definitely one of my faves for the year. 

Cut Off

When forensic pathologist Paul Herzfeld (Moritz Bleibtrau) discovers a capsule in the head of a heavily mutilated corpse, containing a tiny scroll with a phone number and single word: the name of his daughter, he is thrust into a nerve-racking quest to track clues and rescue his daughter who is being held prisoner as part of an elaborately masterminded act of revenge. Along for the ride is a hapless student and a gormless sycophant, both of which could jeopardise his daughter’s safety.

A slick German crime thriller with a strong horror streak (the original title, Abgeschnitten, translates as “Isolated”), this gruesome dance macabre plays like a European Mystery of the Week, but with added shock factor. It’s the cast and direction that really carries this movie, and the high production values give it serious chutzpah, along with swift pacing, exciting set-pieces, and a dark sense of humour. 

I can smell an English-language version already being given the green light in Hollywood. It’s the new Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Make sure you see the original first! 

Extracurricular 

A clutch of good-looking Canadian high school students, Miriam (Brittany Raymond), Derek (Keenan Tracy), Ian (Spencer MacPherson), and Jenny (Brittany Teo), are more than a little ambitious. They have their hands full with academic work, but find time to kill total strangers, getting their kicks from the elaborate planning and execution. It’s dirty work, but these high achievers like getting their mitts grubby, then washing them clean and admiring their handiwork. It’s all filthy fun, until a plan goes pear-shaped.

Like a cross between The Strangers and The Craft this murderous thriller does a great job at taking a far-fetched premise and running with it, providing solid, believable performances, and some genuinely suspenseful scenes, with a third act that ups the crazy ante, and pushes the thriller factor into horror territory, spiralling into a surprisingly nihilistic ending. 

These kinds of teenagers-run-amuck thrillers are a dime a dozen, but Extracurricular is a cut well-above. No doubt we’ll be seeing more of these actors, and especially this director. 

The Wretched  

Teenager Ben (John-Paul Howard) is trying to adjust to a broken arm and a summer living with dad (Jamison Jones), who has recently split from his mum and is now dating another woman. Meanwhile there’s romantic interest and embarrassment involving Ben’s work colleague Mallory (Piper Curda). But the serious distraction is courtesy the weird behaviour from the next door neighbours, especially rock chick wifey Abbie (Zarah Mahler) who’d been messing around with a dead deer she’d felled at the start of the movie. 

This is an old school style of witch from the woods creature feature. Imagine Fright Night meets Rear Window. The directing duo, Pierce Brothers, have fashioned an affectionate nod to the classic horror movies of the 80s, without the corniness. It’s a lean, entertaining ride, with some great practical effects and seriously creepy witchiness (all wide crazy eyes and creaking contorted limbs), especially as the witch itself hides within the “shell” of its victims and uses the body as it’s own. 

The Wretched could’ve fallen prey to the pitfalls that hound so many previous movies of similar ilk, it’s a testament to the directors who’ve balanced all the elements, with plenty of nods, but still keeping an original vibe. 

Bullets of Justice

There’s crazy and wild, and then there’s just plain fucking nuts. This post-apocalyptic action horror hybrid from the depths of Eastern Europe is deep trash like nothing you’ve seen before. Bulgarian director Valeri Milev helmed the last of the cheap straight-to-video instalments of the Wrong Turn franchise, and is working here with a budget half that size, and he makes every last cent count. It’s all in the mix; sex and violence with awesome practical effects and ropey-as-fuck CGI, but it works a sleazy treat, once you’ve climatized.

The premise and backstory is as fried as eggs. During WWIII the US government’s secret genetic project “Army Bacon” created human-pig super soldiers. Now these “Muzzles” are farming humans as fodder. Rob Justice (Timur Turisbekov, who co-wrote the batshit insane script with Milev), ex-bounty hunter, is a guerrilla soldier working for the underground resistance. His combat partner is great in bed, but he fantasizes of another, sexier butt. And then there’s his moustachioed sister, Raksha (Doroteya Toleva) who constantly demands his attention. 

Ultra-violent, stupendously silly, outrageously lurid, Bullets of Justice demands your attention, grabs you by the short and curlies, and slaps your hard ass into the middle of next week, perfect grindhouse cartoon fuel for the late night beer and blunts crowd. 

The Dark Red

Director Dan Bush is best known as one of the two directors who made the excellent apocalyptic-horror The Signal from 2007 (not to be confused with the science fiction mystery movie of the same name from 2014). Bush has co-written, with Conal Byrne (one of the co-stars), a kind of chamber nightmare piece about a woman, Sybil (April Billingsley), committed to a psychiatric ward, who insists her newborn child was stolen by an evil sect to harvest the baby’s supernatural blood. Sybil is being questioned by Dr. Deluce (Kelsey Scott), and the narrative alternates between their sessions and Sybil’s apparent flashbacks, as she relates how she met David (Byrne) and became pregnant. 

The Dark Red has a premise that reminds me of the early Stephen King novels. It unfolds like a mystery thriller disguised as a drama, with a spine of horror that bubbles beneath the surface, but never fully erupts. Budgetary limitations are evident, but Bush elicits a strong, solid performance from Billinsgley, and she carries the movie.

This is the kind of story that could have worked well as a pilot to a TV series; following the mother’s ongoing plight as she hunts those responsible, grapples with the supernatural, and tries to unearth the dark (red) truth. 

Kindred Spirits

Sadie (Caitlin Stasey) has turned up at her sister Chloe’s place and immediately bonds with moody teenage daughter Nicole (Sasha Frolova, who is surely Scarlett Johansson’s long lost sister!). Sadie’s befriending of Nicole has such a pronounced effect that the aunt begins to behave like a petulant teenager herself. Chloe (Thora Birch) realises there is something very wrong, but, of course, she realises this too late.

Working from a lacklustre script by Chris Sivertson, director Lucky McKee has fashioned a Single White Female in a small town, and does his best with the material, but the movie’s darkest most horrifying scene feels like it’s been played for laughs, which really damages the movie. Ex-pat Aussie Stasey has great screen charisma, and it’s essentially her movie, which she relishes, but cult fave Birch isn’t really given much to chew on, and neither is indie darling Macon Blair, who plays Chloe’s lover, Alex. 

I really wanted to like Kindred Spirits more. There was a lot of potential for a truly terrifying tale. McKee has yet to make another movie as strong as his debut, May, nearly twenty years ago. 

The Furies

Kayla (Airlie Dodds) and her friend Maddie (Ebony Vagulans) are chewing the fat and spraying graffiti when they are kidnapped by unknown assailants. They awake from a druggy haze, lying in coffin-like boxes in a vast, but thin forest, separated from each other. Like various other poor girls, they are being hunted by grunting men in animal masks, brandishing deadly weapons. Each girl has had a camera surgically implanted, and each killer has a camera in their mask. This is a hi-tech VR game for the rich and twisted.

Aussie writer/director Tony D’Aquino’s debut feature is a loose re-imagining of The Most Dangerous Game, first filmed in 1932 and remade numerous times. It’s a modern take, (Hostel is another big influence), but it’s also deliberately retro-styled so that it feels like an 80s stalk and slash flick, complete with overbearing score. Watching the movie feels like one long deja vu. It’s a swift, stretched-out ride, slickly shot and edited, wearing its visceral thrills as flare. Gore gags are the star of this beast (there’s an axe-to-face doozy worth the price of admission), but as a scare fest it’s hollow and anaemic.

Dodds, who has mostly shorts and TV credits, deserves big things, and no doubt D’Aquino will make a name for himself, but for us hardened horrorphiles The Furies is all just blood and thunder. A cool, title-as-logo, and fancy practical effects just doesn’t cut the mustard. 

In Fabric

UK | 2018 | Directed by Peter Strickland

Logline: A haunted dress ruins the lives of several people who purloin it in the hope it brings them love. 

Writer/director Strickland fancies himself a bit of an old-school auteur, and with his fourth feature he descends unabashedly into the realm of Argento-esque weirdness, which he flirted with on his second feature Berberian Sound Studio. His love of deep Euro-trashy aesthetics verges on fetishistic. Pushing the boundaries, then pulling them back again. In Fabric is his most ardent and unhinged movie yet. 

Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a divorcée single mum trying to cope with her young adult son bringing his lovers-with-attitude home, such as Gwen (Gwendoline Christie). Sheila is not having much luck in the dating game herself. She decides to spruce herself up and purchases a garment from a popular 1950s-styled haute couture clothing store during its busy winter sales period. 

Indeed Dentley & Soper’s Miss Luckmoore (Strickland regular Fatma Mohamed) seems to have stepped right of Dario Argento’s Inferno, a kind of corseted head witch who speaks in a highly stylized retail culture vernacular, and is most heavy with her powers of persuasion. 

Before Sheila can say, “Chiffon, silk and satin, double dream, diamond-wrapped, purpose embroidered, body sensual” she is entranced, and the dagger neckline dress is at one with her. So much so, when she takes the dress off it leaves a nasty scar-like rash on her upper breast, as if to say, “How very dare you!”

But the rash is only the start of her troubles. This malevolent artery red number wants more than just a figure-hugging curve to cling to, and there’ll be scarlet tears before bedtime. 

Like some kind of strange bad dream In Fabric weaves a psychosexual spell. Part supernatural horror-thriller, part darkened comedy of manners, part soft erotic excursion - with one sticky scene involving Miss Luckmoore and the storeowner Mr. Lundy (Richard Bremmer) that seems spurted straight from a Borowczyk indulgence! 

It’s a hybrid that is bizarre and tantalizing, but doesn’t reward in the ways one anticipates. Instead the dress makes it way through several other unsuspecting victims - more captivating, candlelight glances and canapé conversations - and instead of the suspense and tension being ratcheted up, it begins to dissipate, leaving the fiery climax a little undercooked. Perhaps In Fabric might have worked more effectively as a shorter, sharper segment within an anthology. 

But it’s such an idiosyncratic oneirodynia that one can’t help but feel impressed by the movie’s saturated, feverish vibe, highlighted by the resonant electronic score from Cavern of Anti-Matter, and the charismatic performances from the key cast, especially Mohamed, who steals every scene she’s in, but nice work from Hayley Squires as another caught “in fabric”.

I feel Strickland is moving steadily toward a truly brilliant movie, but he’s not quite there yet. 

The Nightingale

Australia/Canada/US | 2018 | Directed by Jennifer Kent

Logline: A young Irish woman, working in an Australian penal colony, experiences great trauma at the hands of a British Officer and subsequently sets out an arduous revenge mission. 

It is 1825 on the Australian island known as Van Diemen’s Land (which would become the state of Tasmania some thirty years later). It is the country’s primary penal colony. Clare (Aisling Franciosi) is a young Irish convict under the parole supervision of British Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), who is brown nosing for a promotion. He wields his power over Clare with brutality and humiliation, raping her in his office, after she sings for his men. 

Clare has been allowed to marry an Irish convict, Aidan (Michael Sheasby), and they dwell in a tiny cabin with their infant baby, but she wants out, having served more than enough time. She lies to her husband about the assault, but Aidan senses her fear, and he is determined to set them both free. Aidan drunkenly confronts the Lieutenant which results in Hawkins being severely reprimanded by his superior, and in his anger the officer and two of his cronies, Ruse (Damon Herriman) and Jago (Harry Greenwood) storm Clare and Aidan’s cabin where sickening, murderous hell is unleashed. 

In the horrific aftermath Clare, left for dead, is blinded by abject grief, desperation and rage. With just her husband’s horse and musket, she enlists a reluctant young Aboriginal tracker, Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), to help her pursue the Lieutenant and his men, who have set off through the dense bush on a journey to the next township. 

In the traditional modern horror world The Nightingale would fit into the sub-genre known as the rape-revenge flick, but Jennifer Kent’s follow-up to The Babadook is not a traditional horror movie, more of a drama with thriller aspirations, that is steeped in the black water of horror. This is the kind of contemporary take on a genre movie some critics would add the word “elevated” to, trying to shine a lofty ray of respectability into the coal black darkness at its core. But, the truth of the matter is, The Nightingale is, essentially, a horror movie in a historical setting. It is the nightmare journey Clare undertakes, pulling hapless Billy into her injured fold, as she grapples with hatred and retribution. 

Kent has said she was compelled to make the movie as a response to the frequent violence she was seeing on the news. She felt the ghastly truths about Australia’s colonial past, in particular the rampant misogyny and racism, needed to be illustrated, and as such she wrote a fictional tale embedded with these horrendous details. She describes The Nightingale as a movie about love and compassion, and that if the film was just about violence she wouldn’t have made it. 

I feel Kent is being somewhat disingenuous, especially as the movie indulges in its depiction of horror, and eventually languishes in it. The movie is undoubtedly a study of violence and hatred. Any love and compassion is buried deep, almost out of reach. Clare’s mission is a two hour journey of misery and despair, grim as coffin nails, bleak as an Arctic winter, with hope a candle in the cold hard wind. 

Clare eventually abandons her husband’s weapon - but not before she demolishes one of the soldier’s faces with repeated blows from the musket’s butt - and takes on a fragile, ruined sense of resignation, but by that stage her accomplice, Billy, has been psychologically damaged, pushed to the same edge of the abyss. To further the tragedy it is Billy who will complete her mission, at mortal cost. 

Kent has elicited a powerful performance from Franciosi in the lead role. The rest of the cast are solid, although I wasn’t entirely convinced with Gunumbarr, in his acting debut. The curious choice of shooting in the old-fashioned standard (or Academy) ratio (1.33:1) creates both a sense of claustrophobia, but, combined with the accents, costumes, and muted cinematography, I was reminded of the New Zealand docudrama television series of the late 70s, The Governor. This was probably not intended, but it gave the movie an unshakeable theatricality. 

The inherent nihilism and revenge premise of The Nightingale paints a picture that would work very well with the suspense structure of a more traditional horror movie, but Kent doesn’t want to be recognised as a director of horror. Instead she depicts the atrocity of sexual violence and systematic annihilation of the indigenous people as a reminder of where we’ve come from, and the real dark truth is that little has changed. 

Kent’s intention feels confused. The movie is ill-paced, the narrative drifting, meandering along, and then seemingly rushing toward a climax that fails to deliver properly what the audience will be demanding, especially considering what they’ve been subjected to. It sets up a potentially explosive climax, only to stumble toward its denouement and finally collapsing in a heap. Shifting Clare’s story to Billy’s in the final act fails as we’ve not been given enough back story to Billy to warrant his decision to embrace Clare’s fading vengeance. 

Kent could’ve made a truly powerful horror movie, one covered in the dark blood of rage, resonant in the kind of wholly retributive way the most memorable rape-revenge movies are, but instead The Nightingale becomes a harrowing ordeal without justice properly served, without the dramatic climax it demands. There’s no real hope in that. There’s certainly no satisfaction.

The Nightingale screens as part of the 66th Sydney Film Festival, Sunday 16th June, 6.15pm (Dendy Newtown).

Depraved

US | 2019 | Directed by Larry Fessenden

Logline: A disillusioned field surgeon has constructed a new man from body parts and a brain, only to find his creation is suffering from existential angst and loneliness. 

Larry Fessenden is a younger, contemporary Roger Corman, having produced more than sixty features in the last twenty years, acted in over a hundred movies, and directed twenty-three. He’s also shot and cut a number of them as well. He’s regarded highly in the independent genre community. I haven’t seen many of them, but his latest is being touted as his best work yet. 

Depraved takes its inspiration from Mary Shelley’s classic version of “Prometheus”, a mere mortal who defies the Gods, creating life from clay, and giving it fire. The story of Frankenstein has been adapted for the big screen more times than almost any other (apart from Dracula). So what does Fessenden bring to the operating table that makes his version stand out? 

It’s a modest production, as all of Fessenden’s flicks are, with budget limitations obvious, in terms of location shooting and special effects. The performances are pretty good, nothing amazing. The best spot of acting comes from Addison Timlin, in a tiny role as a blonde stranger in a bar. It’s a shame Fessenden didn’t give her a bigger role, as her scene is one of the movie’s highlights.

Depraved begins with young Alex (Owen Campbell) and his girlfriend Lucy (Chloë Levine) discussing their relationship, and the prospect of moving in together. It’s part of the gentrification of Brooklyn, but they are still in an industrial area. Alex leaves, frustrated, and runs foul of a hooded mugger who does him in at the pointy end of a knife. 

Alex awakens in a makeshift laboratory. But he’s not the same man. He’s a stitched together creation of Henry (David Call), an ex-military field surgeon, who has discovered a way of bringing back the dead by way of a DIY medicine. This medical project is being funded by the opportunistic Polidori (Joshua Leonard), who is running a wee bit rogue from his pharmaceutical company. Henry has named his re-booted human Adam (Alex Breaux), and he feeds him a steady diet of pills to keep him functioning and in check. He’s assisted by med school colleague Liz (Ana Kayne). 

After Polidori takes Adam out for some night time action (bar, strip joint, nightclub), the physically, psychologically and emotionally scarred patient begins to yearn for more than just the sound of his doctor calling his name. Just as Frankenstein’s creature yearned for a companion, Adam is plagued by the memories of Lucy. But he’s like autistic child, he needs contact supervision.

It’s by no means the first time Shelley’s story has been given a contemporary setting, but Fessenden’s interpretation has an immediacy, both in its down-trodden urban locations and its modern bureaucracy. There’s corruption afoot and jealousy abounds. It’s not long before Adam is at large (cue: Shelley, get it?) and doctor and benefactor are at odds with each other. 

Depraved suffers from being too long, as it drags in the middle. But the last third is where things become really interesting as Henry and Liz plan to derail the runaway train, and Polidori attempts to gain a higher, more secure footing in the company. Production values and performances aside, Depraved delivers an interesting meander down an alternate path in the cautionary fable world of the Modern Prometheus. 

Depraved screens at the 66th Sydney Film Festival, Monday 1oth June, 8.15pm (Dendy Newtown)

Us

US | 2019 | Directed by Jordan Peele

Logline: A middle-class family, vacationing at their lakeside retreat, are inexplicably terrorised by a family of doppelgängers. 

Probably the most anticipated horror feature since Fede Alvarez’ re-booted Evil Dead, Jordan Peele’s hotly anticipated follow-up to Get Out is a movie far more entrenched in nightmare logic than his blackly comic thriller debut (sorry, pun unintended). This is a movie that is almost critic-proof, a movie that has managed the enviable feat of becoming the biggest box office opener for a horror movie in cinema history. Indeed, in terms of critical and commercial stats Peele has hit one clean out of the park and into the parking lot. 

The Wilson family, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), husband Gave (Winston Duke), adolescent daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and her kid brother Jason (Evan Alex), are taking a much-earned break in Santa Cruz. They have friends, the Tyler family, next door, and Gave has splashed out on a speedboat for the family to enjoy on the lake. There’s the beach too, although Adelaide is reticent to visit the seaside, as it reminds her of a terrifying incident from her youth, a sequence which provides the move with it’s very unsettling prologue. 

It’s 1986 and Adelaide is with her folks on the boardwalk, at the fair attractions, and while her mother goes to the toilet and her father is distracted the young girl wanders off down onto the sand, and then into the Hall of Mirrors where she backs into a girl who looks and dresses the same as her. Identical. 

This opening sequence provides the movie with much of adult Adelaide’s paranoia and anxiety. She fears something is coming to a head, as the clues are all around her. She fears for her own safety, that her family are in danger. Then they see a family standing in their driveway, staring silently. The family look similar; an imposing father, a slim mother, a girl, and a younger boy. What do they want? Gabe is confident he can deal with the situation. 

But it all goes horribly awry. 

There’s no denying Peele is a very talented filmmaker. Us is a very well made movie, and it sports a sensational central performance - a dual one, to be precise -  from Lupita Nyong’o. The rest of the cast are very good too, most notably the young Joseph girl, and also Madison Curry, who plays Adelaide in the prologue. Peele has the Scorsese Midas touch in casting. 

Peele has said how he has always been a fan of horror movies, and wanted to make his own, but found comedy a much easier route for the earlier part of his career. Certainly comedic elements have made their way into both his features, more so in Get Out, and less so in Us, although there are a couple of scenes in Us where the comedic tone felt a little too obvious, as if suddenly we’d slipped into a sketch from his television show Key & Peele. 

I wondered also if Us would’ve worked better as a segment in his upcoming re-boot of classic horror/fantasy/science fiction, The Twilight Zone. As original as the concept is for Us, certainly the sub-text and the last act of the movie, but much of it felt very conventional, essentially a home invasion-cum-slasher flick. And not a a very scary one either. 

The Wilson doppelgängers aren’t very menacing, neither are the Tyler ones. They’re more amusing, in a grotesque kind of way. Why are they super-strong? Why did Pluto have a mask and scarred face and act like a dog? How on earth did they have such an elaborate underground existence, so close to the surface, and yet were undiscovered for so long? 

I hate the term “elevated horror”, and yet Us engages this pretentious, oh-so-clever socio-political metaphor for the current United States climate. The mechanics of an effective horror movie have been left on the wayside. We are left with a series of set-pieces that don’t really gel together into a cohesive, albeit nightmarish horror movie. I’m all for nightmare logic, but when it’s depicted with such an obvious sense of realism, then it needs to follow through. Much of the second half felt contrived, the whole scene with the fire and Jason’s abduction was plain silly.

The ending was an anti-climax. Yes, I’ll admit, a little spooky, but by that stage, I had lost interest in the mother’s plight. What had started out as a very promising creep-fest, steadily underwhelmed me as a horror movie. The trailer promised something a lot more like a weird Fulci-esque oneirodynia, but, despite its strangeness, and being drenched in symbolism, its commentary was self-conscious and obscure. Get Out delivers a much more effective and sustained nightmare.

Pet Sematary

US | 2019 | Directed by Ken Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer

Logline: A family moves into a new rural home and discover an ancient curse lurks in the adjacent woods which insidiously overwhelms them. 

Stephen King has gone on record as saying that his 1983 novel Pet Sematary is the only book of his own that has genuinely scared. I’ll second that dark emotion, and say that it is definitely one of my favourite of the author’s, and I rate it amongst his creepiest, most unsettling tales of horror. The first movie adaptation, made by Mary Lambert, was scripted by King himself, and was fairly faithful to his novel. It’s been thirty years since I saw it, but from memory, I thought it was okay. I’m not sure how well it would hold up today. 

I was very excited when I learned that the directors of one of my favourite horror movies of the past ten years, Starry Eyes, were on board a fresh adaptation of the novel. This one had a screen story by Matt Greenberg (who has been involved in a few other King adaptations over the years) and screenplay by Jeff Buhler (who adapted Clive Barker’s The Midnight Meat Train). I was convinced these were the guys to deliver an vibrant and terrifying new vision of one King’s best horror stories. 

Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) relocates his family, wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz), young daughter Ellie (Jeté Lawrence) and toddler Gage, to beautiful, wooded (not far from Derry, as a road sign tells us, in a sly nod to King’s It). Their neighbour is Jud (John Lithgow), a widower who knows a thing or two about the area. 

The family settle in, including their furry Maine Coon, Church. But Dr. Creed has a harrowing experience at the university medical centre where he works, when a severely injured man is brought in from a nearby car accident and promptly dies in Creed’s arms. Creed is not so much shaken by the man’s death, as his wounds were horrendous, but more so because the man’s ghost appears before Creed and warns him of a dark future. Creed is an atheist, so, you can imagine his concern. 

Kölsch and Widmyer set up the movie well, and the performances are solid. Then the first major change from the novel occurs, when tragedy strikes the family, in full force. I can appreciate this radical twist to the narrative, by having Ellie as the child returned from the grave, as she is able to converse with Louis and it allows her to behave and interact in ways that a two-year-old simply couldn’t or wouldn’t. However, the original novel and adaptation’s abject grotesquerie of having a very young child armed with a scalpel, on a murderous spree is a macabre image that cannot be improved upon. Perhaps in the post-Chucky world we live in the writers and producers felt it would appear blackly comical? But then why did they come up with such a risible ending for the movie?? I’ll come back to that. 

The production values are high, and, as I mentioned, the acting is strong, with Clarke, Seimetz, Lithgow, and Lawrence, all delivering solid work. The score provides suitable punctuation also, but I felt the whole movie was playing it all very safe, very Hollywoody. I wasn’t entirely sold on the folk-horror element. It felt half-assed, almost token. There was nothing to wow me about any of it. I wasn’t creeped out, as I assumed I would be. Even the violence, with the exception of the heel slice - but we were all expecting that one, and would’ve been very disappointed had they not used it. 

The very ending, and the lead-up to the ending, is where the story takes a radical departure from the novel. I’m sure your average audiences, who haven’t read the book, and probably haven’t seen the original adaptation, will find little to fault the movie, as it delivers all the “right” spooks. But why did the opt for such a tonal shift for the ending? The screenwriter could’ve really driven the nail into the coffin by having them douse the car in kerosine and light it up. 

Pet Sematary is the kind of horror movie which wasn’t bad, but it disappointed me greatly. High expectations can do terrible things, I know. I feel the urge to re-read King’s novel. That makes me feel better.

Possum

UK | 2018 | Directed by Matthew Holness

Logline: After returning to his childhood home, a disgraced children's puppeteer is forced to confront his wicked stepfather and the secrets that have tortured his entire life.

All the oppressive atmosphere and grim and grimy tone won’t help you if you’re stuck with a narrative that is chasing its own paranoid tale. There’s only so much mood and unctuous characterisation one can stomach before the stench becomes unbearable, or the monotony sends you to sleep. Possum pushes the boundaries, and not in the best way. 

Possum is the feature debut from one of the two creators behind Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, the cult fantasy-horror-black comedy television show, also an actor. Apparently based on his own short story Holness has written an intensely dark tale of one man’s reluctant revisitation to the home and landscape of his youth, where something dreadful too place.

Philip (Sean Harris) used to be the puppeteer of a large grotesque arachnid. He still has the hideous thing stuffed inside a duffel bag, which he takes everywhere with him. Philip has so much of his own horrendous baggage that it has affected his entire physique. He walks stiffly, his face contorted, his arm holding the bag at length, as if it carries some kind of disease. 

After exchanging awkward looks with a teenage school boy on the train Philip makes his way across the desolate countryside to his boyhood home. It’s seemingly derelict, or at least currently empty. But no, Philip’s father, Maurice (Alun Armstrong), is there, seated at the kitchen table, rolling his own cigarettes, staring with a filthy gaze. There is no love lost here. 

Philip has returned to do away with his once prized possession. The puppet spider must be destroyed. Providing Philip has the courage to do it. He has many demons scratching away inside him, and his father has even more diabolical ones awaiting release. Before Philip can deal with the nightmare of reality, he must battle with the nightmare of his tortured mind, and its own un-reality. He scours the bogs, streams, and woods, looking for the best places to get rid of his duffel bag’s contents. 

This happens over and over and over. Philip’s “little possum” does not want to go quietly, certainly doesn’t want to vanish without a trace. Philip’s elusive guilt and heavy angst is threatening to consume him. But what’s the truth? Where’s the truth?

Possum would’ve made a terrific horror short. Philip is obviously mentally and emotionally disturbed. The movie’s narrative, using a circular, repetitive structure (insanity is often described as re-doing the same exact task over and over and over, but expecting a different result) is what provides the film with it’s atmospheric intensity, especially combined with the excellent score, courtesy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. But it is too drawn out to work effectively as a feature. 

I’m reminded of the 1993 film Clean, Shaven, directed by Lodge Kerrigan, and starring Peter Greene. Another study of identity, violence, and the collapse of one’s mental health. Clean, Shaven is around 75 minutes long. It too is very demanding, and too long. They’d make a good - albeit gruelling - double feature for those prepared to go the distance. 

Harris and Armstrong give amazing performances, but they’re hard ones to tolerate. The ending, although disquieting, isn’t nearly as wrenching as it could, or should have been. To have endured all of Philip’s rage-driven meandering and squandering and Maurice’s unctuous, tar-stained existence for that long, one really needs a kick-arse horror denouement, and, for all intensive purposes, Possum goes all possum on us. 

The House That Jack Built

Denmark/France/Germany/Sweden/Belgium | 2018 | Directed by Lars Von Trier

Logline: Traces the select murders of a serial killer over twelve years as he justifies his psychopathic behaviour.

The Enfant Terrible of arthouse cinema returns with his twisted “celebration” that life is evil and soulless. It’s another dark “epic”, clocking in at two-and-a-half-hours long, and features Matt Dillon as Jack, an engineer, longing to be an architect, yet distracted by his duplicity as a serial killer. It’s a protracted journey into darkness, punctuated by a coal black sense of humour, and stitched together by Jack’s ongoing conversations with Verge (Bruno Ganz) about art and philosophy. 

Jack relates five incidents that occur over a twelve year period, beginning somewhere in the late 60s/early 70s. Each one focusing on the murder of either a stranger, or a relationship partner. Jack is a smart fellow, but he is afflicted with OCD, particularly cleanliness. He muses over the links between his own childhood, the history and depiction of art, and his increasingly careless desire to brutally kill. It is his own version of The Tiger and the Lamb, and yet his killing in the contemporary world feels like an anachronism. 

Von Trier has fashioned a difficult, confronting, but strangely compelling fusion of several of his earlier films, whilst also bringing to mind several cult movies dealing with serial and spree killers; Funny Games, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and Man Bites Dog. Jack explains to Verge how his compulsion to murder is like the hungry shadow that waxes and wanes as a man walks from one street lamp to another, the umbra stretching forward then fading, as a new one extends out behind him, shrinking until it is directly under him, dark and intense, and the hunger is at its most ferocious. 

David Bowie’s “Fame” is used on several occasions, to mark Jack’s itch for recognition in suitably ironic fashion. He photographs a double killing as a macabre still life, sends a picture into the local newspaper, signed as Mr. Sophistication, and smiles in satisfaction when the photo is published. Later, Jack elaborates to Verge about how the putrefaction of the human body in death is similar to the cultivation of dessert one, in particular, freezing the grapes, dehydration, and, his favourite, the noble rot. Verge finds Jack’s analogies crass. 

“Shall I show you the way to the next whisky bar?,” offers Verge, leading Jack down through the circles of Hell. Jack has finally constructed his house, albeit of unusual materials. The law is at arm’s reach, it’s time to surrender to one’s infernal destiny. 

Lars Von Trier hasn’t come close to the masterful emotional journey of Breaking The Waves, nor the succinct experimental brilliance of The Five Obstructions, or the apocalyptic musing and beauty of Melancholia. His latest existential meander is overlong (could easily have been 45 minutes shorter) and suffers, once again, from self-indulgence. But there is dark gold in the corners of Jack’s nightmare abode, some terrific performances, notably Dillon, also Uma Thurman, Riley Keough, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, and Sofie Gråbøl. Aided by Manuel Alberto Claro’s cinematography - part cinema verité, part lush tableaux, Von Trier constructs some stunning, painterly images.

The House That Jack Built is demanding and not for the faint-hearted; in particular, two scenes of mutilation (duck lovers beware!) will make the most hardened horrorphile wince. But for those willing to go the distance, Lars Von Trier’s searing study of serial killer tick-tockings will reward. When one stares into the abyss, sometimes it stares back and winks.