In the Month of Madness 2023: A Nightmare on Letterboxd
7 / ?
Based off Long Weekend alone I was left wishing that Colin Eggleston had directed a *lot* more films.
Even more so after Cassandra, too. This is a self-contained slasher that doesn't rely on our killer picking off randos but rather focusing on those who have had a direct connection to their life. It relies a lot more on psychology and a lot less on stabbing, and I'd…
In the Month of Madness 2023: A Nightmare on Letterboxd
6 / ?
In many ways, M3GAN is just a straight-out Child's Play rip-off and it is completely unashamed about it.
The thing is that most of the Chucky films were really good fun and so is this. I am glad I watched it a few months clear of the scrum surrounding its release and the memes and the inevitable discourse because I reckon the over-exposure might have dulled this…
In the Month of Madness 2023: A Nightmare on Letterboxd
5 / ?
There's a character called Nurse Gladys in this and I am struggling to hold back from an Open All Hours reference that precisely one person reading this will get.
For the most part this is quite a middling slasher that's too sedate and not stupid enough for its own good. But once it decamps from being a sorority horror to a mall one then it improves greatly,…
In the Month of Madness 2023: A Nightmare on Letterboxd
4 / ?
We all love October and the festival of horror that ensues. But for me, there's always one downside to it and that's Shudder.
Inevitably I will blunder my way into watching a couple or more of their originals and they're almost unfailingly piss-poor. I don't know how many years they've been going now but surely by this point it would be reasonable to expect that they would…
In the Month of Madness 2023: A Nightmare on Letterboxd
3 / ?
This is my third time watching Pulse now. I was really keen to rewatch it because in the six years since I last watched it, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has become one of my favourite directors. I felt like going into it with a stronger grip on his style and way of approaching genre might make it work better.
It did. To a degree. I appreciated his…
In the Month of Madness 2023: A Nightmare on Letterboxd
2 / ?
My experiences with Hong Kong horror have told me that I should expect absolutely nothing to make any sense and for me to be lost after about 10 minutes.
I was starting to wonder if it was purely a lost in translation thing or cultural ignorance on my part. Maybe there's still a lot of that at play but Encounter of the Spooky Kind didn't really lose…
In the Month of Madness 2023: A Nightmare on Letterboxd
1 / ?
Here we go (yet) again!
So what is she? She's not quite a zombie and she's not quite a vampire. A zompire!
I actually really like that Jean Rollin doesn't commit to exactly what kind of undead creature Françoise Blanchard is. It's surprising to this day that so few directors actually think out of the box on this subject. Even when they're perceived to be doing that,…
I've got a lot of time for Fares Fares as an actor, he always brings quality to the table, and it looks as though he's poised to do the same as a director, too.
His debut is an excellent hostage thriller that seems uncommitted to doing all of the things that are expected of it, and is confident enough to also produce a quiet and thoughtful ending that flies in the face of what you usually get with these sorts…
I just think films like #Manhole come about when some cunt is walking down the street and sees something and wonders if there's ever been a film about someone getting trapped in or on it.
What this film proves conclusively is that there's a reason that nobody's made a film about someone falling down a manhole before, and that's because it would be fucking shit. What makes it worse is that director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri knows he's got nothing to work…
James Mason was so charming and adaptable that he never really seemed miscast in anything.
For a while, I thought he was the wrong person for a womanising navy commander, bored with life serving in the Admiralty. But then he sets up camp on an island as he goes ahead with pulling off his ruse and he came into his own.
Overall though, A Touch of Larceny is a little too light and lacking in any narrative urgency to work…
Michael Shannon AND Shea Whigham? It was bound to have happened at least once!
I've never been a fan of Joel Schumacher and I actually think he was pretty shit with the occasional exception. I'd say Tigerland is the best film I've seen from him to date and I'm not sure it's terribly close. It's a bit of a shame that this seems to be mostly passed off as a clone of the first half of Full Metal Jacket, but…
William Friedkin's passing a short while ago led to one of the few times recently that social media has really put itself in a good light.
It was genuinely heartening to see such a blanket of appreciation and warmth towards Friedkin and his career, both on Twitter and Letterboxd. Of course, it was a shame it had to happen under such sad circumstances but even so it was extremely touching to see people relating their thoughts on his work and…