HERE FOR BLOOD **** Canada 2022 Dir: Daniel Turres. 100 mins Likeable characters and energetic nods to vintage Sam Raimi / Peter Jackson splatter comedies keep this eager-to-please gore movie consistently engaging. Phoebe (Joelle Farrow) is working three jobs and studying for exams, while her pumped-up, pro wrestler boyfriend Tom (Shawn Roberts) earns just $20 a fight. She convinces him to swap her babysitter duties so she can revise – and his reluctant stand-in efforts happen to coincide with our cutaway glimpses of a barrel-chested, masked, leather-clad maniac. Pretty soon, not only is Tom looking after young Grace (Maya Misaljevic),…
Author: Steven West
MINORE **** Greece 2023 Dir: Konstantinos Koutsoliotas. 111 mins Konstantinos Koutsoliotas, who directed and co-wrote (with Elizabeth E. Schuch) this Athens-set mesh of Greek mythology and JAWS / John Carpenter-infused monster movie, has an extensive background in visual effects, having worked on blockbusters including GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and Guillermo Del Toro’s anthology series CABINET OF CURIOSITIES. His feature-films to date, notably THE FEAR OF LOOKING UP, displayed a fondness for cosmic horror and dark humour – and MINORE continues in that vein, albeit on a more ambitious level. It smartly takes its time getting to the creature feature stuff…
DOCTOR JEKYLL *** UK 2023 Dir: Joe Stephenson. 89 mins This revisionist take on the oft-adapted Robert Louis Stevenson classic immediately stirs those vulnerable neck hairs with the title and the legend “Hammer Presents” appearing onscreen in big, bright red letters, set to a suitably strident Blair Mowat score. Hammer Films, of course, have impressive history with the Stevenson tome, adapting it into Terence Fisher’s impressively grim but uncommercial THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1960) and, a decade later, the fascinating, dark-humoured gender-swapping DR. JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE (1971). Dan Kelly-Mulhern’s screenplay has a 21st century Dr. Nina Jekyll…
CALVAIRE (aka The Ordeal) **** Belgium / France / Luxembourg 2004 Dir: Fabrice Du Welz. 88 mins After being menaced by a horny, elderly fan in his dressing room, handsome young singer Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas), heading off to a Christmas gala, breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He takes refuge at an old inn ran by “Paul Bartel” (Jackie Berroyer in a standout role named after the director of EATING RAOUL), a former comedian fond of dwarf jokes. Lamenting the departure of his former wife, Bartel warns his unexpected guest not to go into the village – prefiguring…
TO FIRE YOU COME AT LAST **** UK / USA 2023 Dir: Sean Hogan. 45 mins Writer of (among others) the superb Midnight Movie monograph about DEATHLINE and ENGLAND’S SCREAMING and director of THE DEVIL’s BUSINESS, Sean Hogan continues his smart, imaginative revisions of vintage British horror with this highly effective homage to the chilly, scarring U.K. TV frighteners of the 1970s. Beautifully shot (almost entirely in monochrome) by Paul Goodwin and Jim Hinson, it’s an authentic evocation of the look, sound and casting of a typical GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS. On a windswept moor in the 17th century, nerves…