There’s nothing wrong with a film that ambiguously meanders a bit more than it needs to if it adds something to the characterization or overall experience the filmmakers are trying to sell. After rolling credits on Sasha Voronov’s “Mom, I Befriended Ghosts” though, it’s clear that it doesn’t always work when that ambiguous meandering is really all there was to […]
Christopher Alender’s “The Old Ways” is hands down one of the most well-made, refreshing, and genuinely disturbing possession films of recent years, in almost every imaginable way. The filmmakers manage to set the hooks in the viewer very early on with an interesting premise that’s highly engaging from the minute it begins due to masterful cinematography, a slew of great […]
Youssef Chebbi and Ismaël’s “Black Medusa” is a rape-revenge saga of sorts, following a “promising young Tunisian woman” named Nada who picks up drunk, horny scumbags nightly and agrees to come home with them where she drugs them before sexually defiling their bodies. It’s just as brutal as it sounds, even more so when you factor in the eerie black […]
Baptiste Drapeau’s “The Lodger” is a romantic horror film featuring one of the most captivating and haunting love triangles in cinematic history, that manages to feel like a romantic fantasy while remaining impressively grounded throughout it’s ninety-two minute runtime. A young nursing student named Julie is starting school in Bordeaux, France where she rents a room from a strange but […]
James Ashcroft’s “Coming Home In The Dark” is a stark, grounded, and harrowing exploration of the notion that being a complicitous bystander has consequences too. Over the course of this hour and a half runtime you’ll learn the disturbing motivations of the drifters as well as get a glimpse into their traumatic past, that just might be more connected to […]
There’s not enough urban legend horror in the vein of “Candyman” still being made these days, which makes Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s frightening and polished “Kandisha” feel like a much needed entry into the genre. The general method of summoning the spirit here is familiar: simply say Aicha Kandisha’s name five times after drawing a pentagram, and the jinn […]
Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma’s “Teddy” coming of age tale that’s really about the trials and tribulations of being a teenage boy, but cleverly framed around a rural French town dealing with a series of farm animal attacks that rumor has was a werewolf’s doing. The meat of the movie is a character-driven teen dramedy, but with an ominous turn of events […]
A very inventive and well-crafted debut from director Robert Woods, who has done some effects work on films prior to this, but decided to “go out to a farmhouse with some friends and see what we could put together” as he worded it in the intro. If this is what Robert can do with a few friends and a farmhouse, […]