TIME ADDICTS ** Australia 2023 Dir: Sam Odlum. 92 mins Desperation, drugs and time travel paradoxes in the house force Denise and Johnny to battle the past the future and themselves in Sam Odlum’s Time Addicts. Dialogue and scene-chewing screechy voices abound in this Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966) by Mike Nichols crossed with a lovely horror comedy by Steve Miner called House (1985). The Mike Nichols film comparison surfaces since the main force in Time Addicts (2023) is bickering, swearing and looking comically tough. Denise (Freya Tingley) and Johnny (Charles Grounds) are drug buddies living in Melbourne. When…
Author: Terry Sherwood
TERROR AT RED WOLF INN ** USA 1972 Dir: Bud Townsend. 90 mins Some folk rave about 70’s and 80’s horror films. Some today want to bring back that look, the naïve feeling, the simple look of those productions. All well and good even when there were those video nasties to push the ideas to an extreme. Terror At Red Wolf Inn was produced by Michael Macready who would also give us the superior two Count Yorga films and directed by Bud Townsend. The film opens with a rather ridiculous wholesome Seventies love ballad that turns out to be a…
ANOTHER DAY TO LIVE THROUGH *** UK 2023 Dir: Peter Simmons. 81 mins Nordic Noir is huge in fiction and in film with the original and remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The icy landscape, the bleak buildings, the shadowy people with a lot going on behind the eyeballs that sometimes stay in their sockets. Not set in snow and ice Another Day To Live Through (2023) preaches a closed world of dysfunctional people with a lot going on who are trapped in a nightmarish isolation. The film opens with a naked bloodied woman Satu (Lene Kqiku) slowly…
FINAL SUMMER * USA 2023 Dir: John Isberg. 82 mins Oddly when watching the opening minutes of Final Summer (2023) I thought I was viewing just about every camp slasher film made with the scary story campfire sequence. Is this a homage to those eighties horror films which frankly are becoming clichés? Let’s redo what influenced us because we can’t think of anything else and it’s safe. Everything is here that many have seen before which for me could serve as an intro to those that have never seen a slasher film. The film plays much like a lot of…
NATATORIUM *** Iceland / Finland 2024 Dir: Helena Stefansdottir. 105 mins Writer/director Helena Stefansdottir’s Icelandic thriller and not a horror film Natatorium is the type of atmosphere where you just know that something is odd about the film world. People move about in the film in a direct almost ballet-type movement without unnecessary actions. There is something dark happening and you can’t sort it out, so you look and listen for clues. Young Lilja (Ilmur María Arnarsdóttir) dreams of being in a travelling performance group so she comes to stay at the home of her grandmother Áróra (Elin Petersdottir) and…