NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020 #16: Reviews of They Came from the Sky, I Saw Them (UK 2020), Paranormal Activity: Origin of Toby (UK 2020), Unfriended: Proxy (UK 2020), Tawn-19 (UK 2020), Sacrilege (UK 2020) and Crawl to me Darling (UK 2020)

They Came from the Sky, I Saw Them (UK 2020: Dir Matt Shaw) An amiable but daft short (running at 46 minutes) this low low budget sci fi movie is stuffed with ideas and slightly surreal rudeness.

Illicit couple Donna (Dani Thompson) and Rudy (Shaw) have both made a pact to tell their respective partners that their relationships are over, but haven't delivered; complications ensue when Donna tells Rudy she's pregnant. As they ponder their next steps they're taken over by visiting aliens.

Back home at their respective domiciles, Rudy lives in a weird 1950s black and white setup with his stay at home wife Diane (Maria Lee Metherington) who has her own bit on the side, Caleb (Jonathan Butcher). Donna on the other hand has to contend with her thuggish husband Steve (Rod Glenn), who has tied her to a chair to extract a confession. But Rudy and Donna's alien selves soon show themselves, much to the surprise of their still human partners.

There's a definite Plan 9 From Outer Space feel to this, complete with Criswell style narrator (Justin Park), man in black (Ben John Jewell), inappropriate policemen, terrible sets and dodgy effects. I'm also guessing that Shaw is a big fan of the surrealistic humour of The Young Ones. Silly dialogue, comedy rumpy pumpy scenes and some genuinely funny moments (a Tarantino interlude and brilliant mock rock opera finale) make this a very entertaining three quarters of an hour, and shows what can be done with lots of imagination and a game cast. Excellent. 

Paranormal Activity: Origin of Toby (UK 2020: Dir Matthew Landford) The second of three of Landford's short films released onto the internet in 2020, PA:OoT's setup has a young guy (Edward Hudec), left alone in his parents' house shortly after a robbery occurs, and deciding to install CCTV around the home for additional protection and personal safety. His friends think that the increased surveillance might be unhealthy for his already jittery state of mind, but how wrong they are; the house is definitely haunted.

Taking its cue from the series of films of the same name, PA:OoT tells its story largely from the assemblage of camera and phone footage, both night and day modes (of course), as the ghost ramps up the frights, from pushing the guy out of bed, to a series of increasingly loud knocks and, ultimately, a physical manifestation. The spirit also has the ability to move the cameras and mess with its time codes, at one point spelling out 'TO:BY' and thus giving itself a name. 

OK none of this treads any particularly new ground, but the camerawork is very good, creating a real sense of tension. Effective use is made of the toggling between day and night cameras and there's some eerie creaks and groans sound design from Mick Powell. 30 minutes is all that's needed to deliver the scares required, easily besting the likes of similar bigger budgeted productions.

You can watch PA:OoT on YouTube here.

Unfriended: Proxy (UK 2020: Dir Matthew Landford) Somebody on imDb asked whether U:P was an 'Unfriended Fan-Made movie?' and the answer, from one of the cast who uploaded the thing, was a resounding 'No.' But that hasn't stopped that site's users from thinking that this is some kind of low low budget sequel to Unfriended, which it most certainly isn't, even though it draws inspiration from that franchise.

Sammy (Sam Grant) and Ed (Edward Hudec) have a Zoom chat about nothing in particular, just two friends shooting the breeze about food, chores and technology (Sam has a new HD webcam, possibly to compensate breaking up with his girlfriend). An unknown user joins the chat, messaging "You have something...I want back." The 'something' is the webcam, which Sam actually stole, and the anonymous person begins to play deadly games with the pair of them.

U:P feels like a dry run for the infinitely better Zoom, also filmed in 2020. The problem is that, for most of the film's 24 minutes, it's just one guy reading a load of messages on screen. There's some good use of sound, and the idea of structuring a fright flick, even at this length, online takes some doing. But unlike Zoom, which also modelled itself on Unfriended, this feels like an exercise which should have just been kept between friends.

You can watch Unfriended: Proxy on YouTube here.

Tawn-19 (UK 2020: Dir Tim Bryn Smith) Devised by the Actors Workshop Online, Tawn-19 has 94 characters, all filmed on their own equipment under lockdown conditions, and is quite a feat of editing to make such a coherent, watchable (and prescient) hour of sharp satire.

News Alley is a successful TV news network reporting on the development of a virus sweeping the world. Top epidemiologist and all round pisshead Everett Pickering (Matthew Thomason) lets slip to the viewing public that Tawn-19 is actually a man made virus. Leaked footage of Professor Reznor Strong (Jade Moore) played on the channel confirms that she's been a prisoner working on the virus, which has been designed to wipe out most of the world's population. 

The Infoclash website, run and subscribed to by conspiracy theorists, is being stealthily but successfully taken over by anti vax reporter Pandora Kerez (Claire Waterall); she siezes on the disclosure to spread further disinformation; principally about the possibility that the two developed vaccines, one authorised and one sold by the crooked Gabe Carbon (Joe Kirton), could contain mirochips. As the vaccines head towards the rollout date, conspiracy piles on consipracy, and Kerez's real motives are revealed.

OK so this can feel like an hour of extracts from actor demo reels, and at times the story becomes almost too dense to navigate: but Tawn-19's biggest selling point isn't the fact that the directors and editors have managed to put together something eminently watchable, it's that so many of the events in the October 2020 released film, depicted satirically, have actually come to pass (witness the recent anti everything marches in major cities and the rise of increasingly unhinged conspiracy theories). The film may only marginally fit into the 'fantastic films' category, but it's a spirited project and its truthful depiction of the spread of conspiracy is sadly the least 'fantastic' thing about it.

You can watch Tawn-19 on YouTube here.

Sacrilege (UK 2020: Dir David Creed) A host of British horror regulars join the cast of this unoriginal but nevertheless enjoyable folk horror romp.

Keen to escape the city, and her violent ex-boyfriend just released from prison, Kayla (Tamaryn Payne), her sister Stacey (Naomi Willow), Kayla's ex Tricia (Emily Wyatt, Sensation) and bar owning friend Blake (Sian Abrahams) decide to spend a weekend in the country. As befits city girls out of their element there's the usual whining about lack of wi-fi and pisstaking of the local handyman (Rory Wilton, An English Haunting). On the way to the cottage they also pick up local guy Vinnie (Jon Glasgow) who tells them that the annual solstice festival is due to take place in the village.

The girls re-connect over a stash of weed found in an outhouse and a lot of booze. Vinnie turns up and takes them to the festival, which is a bit of a low rent event, involving some villagers with twigs in their hair and daubed faces praying to a budget wicker man figure (in this case a mythical goddess). The leader of the event, Father Saxon, (Ian Champion), assisted by Miss March (Emma Spurgin Hussey, The Curse of Hobbes House, A Werewolf in England), asks the girls to write down the things that they most fear - responses include dogs, bugs and, in self absorbed Stacey's case, getting old - before they lose themselves in wild dancing and strong liquor. Miss Marsh warns two of them to get out while they can.

The morning after - and following Blake's late night swim where she's bothered by a dog that seems to vanish instantly - the girls blame their collective wooziness on the previous evening's partying, but when Stacey has visions of herself as an old woman, and Tricia imagines herself covered in bugs, it looks like their worst fears have become real; the women have been marked by the goddess, and it's only a matter of time before they meet their ends.

"Who's ready for a weekend they'll never forget?" asks Blake, somewhat innacurately as far as the viewer is concerned, as the girls set off in her yellow van, nicknamed 'Sunny D,' for their doomed getaway. Blake has a flare gun in the glove compartment, which you know will come in useful later; it's that kind of movie. It's atmospherically shot in and around the Forest of Dean, with some well mounted sequences of horror, but despite its rather racy storyline - a group of girls on a hedonistic weekend, with two of the cast sexually reuniting after a period apart - it's a surprisingly chaste film. But at least the girls who want to have fun don't need blokes to do it, or ultimately to save themselves.

Crawl to Me Darling (UK 2020: Dir Adam Wilson) If the title of Wilson's debut feature sounds like a prime piece of pure exploitation, well you couldn't be more wrong. In fact CtMD is rather indefinable, which I like in a movie.

Millie (Makenna Guyler, The Curse of Hobbes House, Vampire Virus) has been on a date with a guy - whose face we don't see - who has turned rather threatening. She's so worried she phones the police; she's shaken up but otherwise unhurt, and feels silly for calling them. 

Some time later she wakes up, tied to chair, facing a man with a muslin mask over his face (Scott Whatley), who could well be last night's date from hell. In calm, measured tones, he just wants her to be nice to him, feeding her lines which, if she doesn't get right, trigger a succession of electric shocks through her body.

The man clearly wants her to be his, although seemingly not sexually. He feeds her a sedative through a tube, which Millie manages to stop entering her body by twisting it between her feet. Faking sleep, she lets the man wash her, but is surprised to hear that they're not alone. A third voice belongs to Zoe (Isabele Harnandez), a witting, indeed willing participant in the man's plans, who has been a previous partner of the man, only to see his affections transferred to Millie.

And so develops this very strange and at times frustratingly inconclusive three hander psycho-drama, in which the trio set up a kind of weird home together, the long term aim being some kind of perverse wedded bliss; little happens, but it's all incredibly tense, aided and abetted by a terrifying electronic score from brothers Sam and Owen Roberts, and some very imprssive performances by Guyler, Whatley (who both co-produced with Wilson) and Hernandez. Supposedly an allegory about power, control and relationships, it borders on the surreal in its delivery; I liked it but didn't love it, but it's certainly a bold bit of film making.

Threshold (USA 2020: Dir Powell Robinson, Patrick Robert Young)

Threshold is a part improvised film, shot on two iPhones with a crew of 3 over a twelve day period. No, come back! Threshold is really good; a funny, occasionally unsettling and deeply affecting movie.

Virginia (Madison West) is in trouble. Her history of drug abuse has made her vulnerable, and following a phone call her brother, primary school teacher Leo (Joey Millin), makes the drive across state to her home. Worried that she is using again, Virginia tells her brother that she’s clean, the result of participating in a programme organised by a cult; part of this ritual has involved a strange body transference which has taken place between her and another male cult member. Virginia quit the group but inexplicably she can now feel everything the other member can feel and vice versa. She begs Leo to drive across country to find the guy so she can get her life back.

Leo remains unconvinced but agrees to help Virginia with the proviso that if it’s all hogwash she’ll check herself into rehab. Threshold follows the pair across America, in Leo’s beaten-up car, on a bizarre journey to rescue his sister’s soul.

A few strange scenes aside, Threshold is essentially a 75 minute sibling road trip. West and Millin do a superb job of convincing the audience that they are related, and the movie’s success lies in the re-connection that occurs onscreen between the formerly estranged pair. You really enjoy being in their company, which helps make the weirder bits of the movie seem a lot more plausible; it helps that both are relatively unknown actors. 

The film is not without issues; scenes shot at a layover in an Air BnB with a Ouija board and an unwelcome guest feel intrusive and irrelevant, but that’s largely because we’re having so much fun watching Virginia and Leo riff off each other than anything else feels like interference. And if you don't dig the chemistry between West and Millin there's not much here for you; but I defy you to fall into that category.

Fear not, fright fans, oddness arrives by the end of the movie, and is all the more effective because it’s applied sparingly. Threshold is a winning film that I’ve seen twice now, and could happily sit through twice more. 

Threshold debuts on the Arrow channel from 3 May.

A version of this review was originally published on www.bloody-flicks.co.uk 

Forget Everything and Run (USA 2021: Dir Geoff Reisner, Jason Tobias)

Although Reisner and Tobias's debut feature sets its stall out as a post apocalypse zombie thriller, for much of its running time Forget Everything And Run (aka F.E.A.R.) is basically a contemporary (horse free) western with a family drama at its heart.

In true B movie style (ie using text crawl to describe events there isn’t the budget to depict) a viral sickness has spread across the country, forcing the military to build a wall to cut off the infected. Many families have fled to the snowy north to safety, the cold having a detrimental effect on the largely absent zombies, and the film focuses on one family, the Allisters, as they struggle to stay alive. 

The family are mum and dad, Josephine and Ethan (Marci Miller and co-director Tobias) and their kids Josh and his older sister Mia (Danny Ruiz and Cece Kelly). A series of flashbacks, from Josephine and Ethan meeting, to scenes depicting the family in happier, pre-pandemic times, contrast with the tired figures of mum and dad trying to protect the children; Mia has become infected and lies upstairs on a makeshift life support system in the Allisters’ squalid hideout, but the parents hope to find a cure.

The fragile life of survival carved out by the family comes under threat when a group of weaponed up looters attack them, and a tense stand off develops between the two parties. A captured military guy discloses that a corrective serum exists and that the infection is man-made; the quest is on to recover the drug and for the Allisters to stay alive.

While there are some intense performances on display which elevate the film above its flat made for TV look (like something the Syfy channel might serve up), particularly Ruiz as frightened son Josh and Susan Moore Harmon as the cantankerous looter Desiree, this is otherwise thin stuff that promises more than it offers; “They won’t stay dead” suggests the poster tagline, but the undead really only crop up briefly at the beginning and end of the movie. Otherwise this is best seen as an intense human drama, and the crises they face (a wall and a pandemic) suggest that some political points are being offered up as well, if not particularly subtly.

Signature Entertainment releases Forget Everything And Run on Digital Platforms from 26th April

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #2: Reviews of A Little More Flesh II (UK 2021), The Burning Baby (UK 2020), Archive (UK 2020), The Owners (UK 2020), The Curse of Hobbes House (UK 2020) and Cupid (UK 2020)

A Little More Flesh II (UK 2020: Dir Sam Ashurst) Ashurst's last movie, the first A Little More Flesh, comprised a sleazy director's commentary for a fictitious film, 'God's Lonely Woman'. The star of that film (played by Elf Lyons) and co-star are subjected to a series of indignities, leading to a bloody and ignominious end for the man behind the camera.

A Little More Flesh II opens with Ashurst asking Lyons if she'd like to work with him again. "Just...fuck off," she responds. In the second instalment of this rather unusual and at times disturbing franchise Ashurst himself becomes the director both behind and in front of the lens, and he has a new production concept, borne out of pandemic restrictions. He has asked two people, the actor Harley (Harley Dee) and a poet Sean (Sean Mahoney), to separately record ten minutes of improvised footage at home every week and provide a voice over, which he will edit into a feature. Both participants are initially unsure but go along with it for the experience.

Harley's footage, shown to us alongside Sean's, shows her applying makeup, lying in the bath and later praticising yoga on the rooftop of her apartment. Sam confides to Sean that he thinks Harley's videos are thinly disguised come ons, which Sean clearly thinks are the musings of a fantasist; he eventually quits the project because of this. Harley is predictably shocked when Sam makes the same suggestion to her, but her protestations are cut short, as he invokes the small print in her contract. With Sean departed, Sam changes the rules of the game and begins to exploit Harley, filming her in a number of short movies for various unseen clients, and his demands become more and more disturbing.

A Little More Flesh II, its title alone an absurd take on exploitation movies, asks a number of questions of its viewing audience: why are you watching?; why are you continuing to watch when you know that the director is exploiting his cast?; are you any better than the clients paying to watch the acts that Harley is put through (the more excessive pixellated out, possibly unless we pay towards an 'onlyfans' account)? Ashurst placing himself in the centre of this, rather than deflecting the tawdriness onto a third person director character as he did in the first film, is a brave move, and he has no problems convincing us just what an odious person his alter ego is; that Dee and Mahoney co-wrote is rather a relief, and all three should be congratulated for turning a very simple - and cheap - set up into something truly threatening.

A Little More Flesh II is not yet available to stream or buy. Meanwhile in the last part of the film the introduction of Laren Ashley Carter (from Jugface (2013) and 2019's Darlin') signposts her involvement in 'ALMF III' - well good luck to her with that.

The Burning Baby (UK 2020: Dir Paul Kindersley) Paul Kindersley's third feature, which may or may not form a cinematic triptych with his previous films Das Spiel der Hoffnung (2016) and The Image (2018), is a sumptuous, surreal fairytale redolent of arthouse productions of the 1980s.

The plot is slender; this is all about the visuals and themes. Somwhere in a magic-realist land (The Burning Baby was filmed on location on the Scottish island of Eilean Shona, where JM Barrie wrote much of 'Peter Pan') an abusive mother (Jenny Runacre) keeps her adult son as a baby (Nick Patrick), aided by her two sadistic 'ugly sister' siblings (Kindersley and performance artist/dancer Kitty Ray Harper Fedorec). The close-knit family's intense world is disrupted when a quintet of free-living woods-folk are invited into their home for baby’s 'second' birthday. The two worlds clash with dramatic results when an alluring stranger upsets the group dynamics, exposing their difficulties in communicating verbally and emotionally, leading to murder and the continuation of a cycle of abuse.

The Burning Baby is filmed almost as a series of tableaux, and much of the dialogue feels improvised. The atmosphere is increasingly intense as the family dynamic is tested by the interference of the seemingly more worldy wise wood folk (apparently the cast and crew lived and worked together for the duration of the shoot), one of whom (Ellie Pole) 'successfully' courts and marries baby, triggering the (Greek) tregedic events that follow. All this would be too strange if not for the superb cinematography of Oscar Oldershaw, who manages to humanise the grotesque and lyrically capture the remote beauty of the Scottish locations. As the production notes suggest, the film 'is a surreal fantasy that investigates our relationship to landscape, identity, family, sexuality and death.' It's an impressive, often jarring work that recalls Derek Jarman as much as Jane Arden. Strange and beautiful, I really liked it. 

The Burning Baby currently remains unreleased. It is hoped to arrange a big screen premiere later in 2021.

Archive (UK 2020: Dir Gavin Rothery) In the mid 21st Century, George Almore (Theo James) is a robotics engineer who has invented, among other things, a self driving car. He's one of those hi tech guys who revels in nostalgia; he has a Bang and Olufsen music centre, on which he listens to old records, and a car from around 80 years previously is parked outside. 

Home is a former industrial facility deep in the snowy forests of Japan, where the engineer works on a project to develop increasingly sophisticated and sentient AI. He's in regular contact with his wife Jules (Stacy Martin) via video link; the only odd thing about this is that she died several years previously. In Archive's world, technology allows the dead to live on through up to 200 hours of analogue communication with the deceased, to pass on messages, tie up loose ends etc (an idea given a more supernatural spin in Hayden J. Weal's 2020 movie Dead). 

George's two robots, versions 1 and 2 of the same model, have attained increasing 'human years' intellectual activity. J2 in particular can reason, has dreams and fusses after George, a sort of father figure to them (reminiscent of Bruce Dern looking after the droids in 1972's Silent Rinning).  His experiments are conducted under the watchful eye of his supervisor, Simone (Rhona Mhitra). But George has a secret from the rest of the world; he's hacked in to the secure feed from his dead wife and re-routed it to inhabit a third robot, his most sophisticated model yet, with both the body and mind of Jules.

Archive successfully melds an austere but impressive mis en scene with a very human take on the Frankenstein story; Jules's death is so tragic and unexpected that he is unable to move on, and the development of his robots creates a family around him that are all connected with his late wife. This may be Rothery's first feature - he was creative consultant on Duncan Jones's Moon (2009) - but he gets the balance of style and substance just right. I'm guessing he also saw a few episodes of HBO's Westworld for tips too, and the snowy backdrop (with Hungary standing in for Japan) is very effective.

If the final scenes of the film gave us a surprise ending we maybe didn't need, I'm prepared to overlook that. Archive is controlled, haunting, sad and superbly rendered, with a cool as ice score by Academy Award-winning composer Steven Price. Strongly recommended.

The Owners (UK 2020: Dir Julius Berg) Based on the 2011 French graphic novel 'Une Nuit de Pleine Lune', which translates as 'Night of the Full Moon' (created by legendary comic artist Hermann Huppen and writer Yves H), Berg's feature debut has three local lads breaking into the house of a country doctor. The trio, Terry (Andrew Ellis), ringleader Gaz (Jake Curran) and Nathan (Ian Kenny), have been tipped off by Terry's mum (who cleans at the doctor's house) that there's a safe in the basement. With Terry's on off girlfriend Mary (Maisie Williams) also involved, against her better judgement, the break in reveals little of value and a safe which can't be unlocked. So the group decide to wait for the doctor and his wife to return. Once arrived Richard (Sylvester McCoy) and Ellen Huggins (Rita Tushingham) are tied up and tortured to reveal the whereabouts of their valuables. But when a tussle between the group gets out of hand, with Terry stabbed by Gaz, the young criminals are about to have the tables turned on them.

While home invasion movies are a bit de rigeur these days (Don't Breathe from 2016 and 2018's Breaking In, for example), The Owners provides a neat spin on the set up by having two older middle class characters facing off against the working class burglars; I'm sure I'm not spoiling anything if I mention that McCoy and Tushigham - both excellent, by the way - have more than a few tricks up their sleeve, from the psychological manipulation of the young people to the house modifications that trap their victims. The gore is brief but occasionally shocking; most of the violence here is of the mental variety. The fact that a group of local kids would try to rob someone in their village without being recognised (and despite the stockings over their faces they fail) underlines the stupidity of their plan, and it's fun watching the oldies get the upper hand again and again.

The Curse of Hobbes House (UK 2020: Dir Juliane Block) Block's sixth feature kicks off with a bit of made up history (delivered in portentous narrative tones) about the tyrant king Dormant who kills the owner of a house - called Hobbes - and takes over occupancy, only to have the undead hordes rise against him courtesy of Hobbes's witchcraft. We're then quickly plunged into the modern world, and meet Dormant's descendants.

Specifically we're introduced to Jane Dormant (Mhairi Calvey), who's a bit down on her luck, reduced to sleeping on her clapped out car and being fired from her bar job. So when she gets a call telling her that her Aunt Alexandra (Emma Spurgin Hussey) has died, she feels she has nothing to lose when summoned to a will reading at Hobbes House. 

Once there, she meets Syrian groundskeeper Naser (Waleed Elgadi) who immediately arouses suspicion because a) he's the only one who was around when Alexandra died (by shooting herself) and b) he was recently added to Auntie's will as a beneficiary. Also at the reading is Jane's half sister, social media queen Jennifer (Makenna Guyler) and her awful Tory (and therefore bound to be trouble) boyfriend Nigel Thatcher (Kevin Leslie).

Will executor Euridyce Saul (Jo Price) is keen to kick things off, but the reading is interrupted by a flare up between the two half sisters. Before you know it Saul is dead (skewered on a pair of antlers following an accidental fall), but fear not because she's soon back, angry as hell with glowing blue eyes, joining the legions of the undead as they collectively sense a challenge to the house of Hobbes and must kill all the interlopers.

While The Curse of Hobbes House looks very good, is well cast and benefits from some very good perfromances, it's probably best seen as some allegory around class and race (although the handling of the Naser character, who surprise surprise suffers at the hands of Nigel, is rather clumsy) rather than a straightforward horror film, because believe me in this it doesn't succeed. There's a slight fairy tale aspect to the story (there's a big moral payoff at the end) which would probably make it more suitable for a YA audience. Best line: "There was something uncanny about her" says Jane at one point, observing the recently re-animated will executor; oh and the movie scores extra points where the half sisters escape on a tandem, laughing. Bizarre and silly.

Cupid (UK 2020: Dir Scott Jeffrey) The creative triumvirate (and yes I know that two of them aren't men) of Scott Jeffrey, Rebecca Matthews/Hirani and Louisa Warren have been responsible for some rather bold UK filmmaking projects over the past few years. Many of their movies revolve around curses or an ancient revenge, and Cupid is no exception.

Technically this movie was made in 2020 (and released in the USA that year) but has only had a physical UK release this year. Like The Curse of Hobbes House this starts with a bit of history, but unlike that film this tells the story of Cupid, son of Venus and Mars, and his relationship with Psyche. But the spin on the story is that there was no happy ending, Cupid died, killed by a poison arrow primed by mum, descended to hell thereafter to be summoned by those affected by abuses of love.

With that out of the way, we're in modern day UK leading up to Valentine's Day; well, a version of the UK full of people with fake American accents (about 70% of which are successful, but I still don't know why filmmakers do this). We get an immediate taste of how Cupid, now a kind of winged demon, doles out his punishment. A distressed woman confesses to her father that she summoned Cupid because of the way he treated her mother. The creature arrives, plucks out dad's heart and impales his daughter on an arrow.

At the local high school, it's a hotbed of jealousy and rivalry, principally between two students; goth lite Faye (Georgina Jane) and uber bitch Elise (the always dependable Sarah T. Cohen here at her Mean Girls best). Mr Jones (Michael Owusu) is the lucky teacher who gets to deal with the girls; unfortunately Faye has a crush on him. Elise exploits this, nicking Mr J's phone and sending fake texts to Faye inviting her to meet him and asking for some suggestive photos, a request which she obliges.

Thinking that Mr Jones is sweet on her, a fake meet up is organised, and when Faye turns up to see him after school, kissing him in the mistaken belief that he's been sending the messages, both realise what has happened; and Elise is there to film the whole thing and show it to the class. Faye, incensed, goes home and opens her book of spells (seems she has some Wiccan in her) at the page that contains the summoning spell for Cupid. Asked what she wants Cupid to do about the school and anyone in it, she replies "I want it destroyed."

Sadly the budget doesn't allow for the scenes of catastrophe that the above setup suggests, and the mayhem is restricted to a few stray arrows in the face and infected limbs as a result of the poison. The 'Cupid' creature is actually quite effective with his emaciated look and empty eye sockets, and the shots of him descending from the heavens rather eerie. Look, this won't be to everyone's tastes, but I like what Jeffrey does with the subject matter, and he gets some good performances from his cast, especially Cohen, who improves with each role.

I Blame Society (USA 2020: Dir Gillian Wallace Horvat)

"I guess the best way to make life like a movie is to film it." So states Gillian Wallace Horvat, playing a version of herself in this arch life-imitates-art-imitates-life feature debut mockumentary. 'Gillian' (Horvat) is a struggling filmmaker, finding out the hard way that the movie business is still largely a man's world; an extended scene featuring her in the office of two douchebag producers who want to make films about womens' experiences but have already written the scripts clearly demonstrates what she's up against.

And then men closer to her in life aren't any great shakes either: her obnoxious film editor boyfriend Keith (Keith Poulson) who is, shall we say, less than supportive of her ambitions and calls her "my little psychopath"; and her slightly better but still wishy washy friend Chase (Chase Williamson) whose girlfriend she thinks is so obnoxious that she'd like to kill her, a confession that causes a rift between the two of them.

And it's this thought that crystallises into the revival of a planned but unfulfilled project that she feels can be realised without male interference. Called the 'I, Murderer' project, it casts Gillian in the central role of initially idealised, later actual killer and documenter, and her first victim is Chase, although his death is much less pre-meditated than later victims. Gillian warms to her subject matter, staging deaths and writing often hilarious 'goodbye' notes in the style she thinks her victims would use. As the police start to see a connection between the deaths, although mistakenly ascribing them to a male killer, Gillian finds her personal and stylistic feet. "What are you?" she is asked. "I'm a strong female lead," she replies.

The layers which operate here are a dizzying mesh of truth and fiction. Horvat, whose background is in oftern idiosyncratic short films, has a career which echoes Gillian's, and it's pretty clear that the director's experiences in a male dominated industry have driven her story. I Blame Society is as darkly funny as you like (starting with its very knowing title), and while on occasion scenes layer meta-ness and cineaste tendencies which almost threaten to strangle the narrative (a description of Gillian as like a "weird Frances Ha" is pretty spot on), the second half is a wild and sometimes pretty shocking ride.

This year's rather more lavish Promising Young Woman offers a sort of higher class counterpoint to this movie; Gillian is the more awkward younger sister of that movie's Cassandra character and, like Cassandra, uses sex to achieve her aims, but very much on her terms. But Horvat's film is a more raw, urgent and up close and personal experience, and she pulls off the difficult act of having a pretty unlikeable central character who you end up rooting for all the way.

I Blame Society will be released by Blue Finch Film Releasing on Digital Download from 19 April.

For the Sake of Vicious (Canada 2020: Dir Gabriel Carrer, Reese Eveneshen)

When nurse Romina (an excellent visceral performance from Lora Burke) returns home, with nothing on her mind but preparing to celebrate Halloween with her young son, she doesn't bank on finding a just breathing body in the living room. Said body is, she works out, her landlord Alan (Colin Paradine); also in the house is the guy who laid him out, Chris (Nick Smyth). He wants Alan kept alive so he can extract a confession from him about raping Chris's daughter; and Romina's connection to this is that she was the nurse on duty when his daughter was brought into hospital.

From its early scenes, with Alan tied up in a chair, Chris trying to force the truth (or his version of the truth) out of him and Romina stuck in the middle, things slowly escalate when Alan manages to phone for help. He's clearly a shady landlord, whatever else he may or may not have done, for the assistance summoned is very much of the hired thug variety (all wearing fright masks, because it's Halloween) and also includes a biker gang called, appropriately enough, 'The Skull Splitters.'

But, and somewhat confusingly, the assembled assistants he summons have their own beef with Alan, and pretty soon the whole house is turned into a makshift battleground, with kitchen and bathroom equipment (including shower curtain and cistern lid) being utilised for weapons, in a free for all fight to the death.

From its faux Grindhouse title onwards, For the Sake of Vicious seems little more than a well directed exercise in choreographed and increasingly over the top violence, soundtracked by a very Carpenter/Howarth-esque synth score by Carrer under the 'Foxgrndr' monicker. Narratively there's little else going on other than the description above (apart from a couple of flashback scenes), which really only serves to get a bunch of people into one (domestic) location for an extended pitched battle. There's more than a streak of dark humour to this, of course; the deployment of any and every household item, from kitchenware to flat screen TV to the aforementioned WC components (there are guns available but they're not always the weapon of choice) acquires a kind of slapstick intensity, and there's a bizarre moment of kitchen carnage camaraderie when Romina, using a half bottle of vodka to disinfect one of her wounds, takes a swig and then offers it to Alan.

For the Sake of Vicious is definitely a movie to see with a crowd; it's the kind of Festival pleaser that doesn't ask that much of its audience but ramps up the pace satisfyingly and delivers enough gruesome set pieces - and an up for it final girl (or woman in this case) - to tick all the right boxes.

For the Sake of Vicious will be released on DVD and digital platforms from 19 April.

Portal aka Doors (USA 2021: Dir Saman Kesh, Jeff Desom and Dugan O'Neal)

The genesis of this film came from a 2019 movie called Portals, created by Chris White, which told the story of the arrival of alien entities on earth via four separate but interconnected stories, all by different directors. That movie adopted a fairly straightforward sci fi approach and, apparently, wasn't a great success.

So White started again, with the same basic format and a different set of directors, and two years later came up with Doors, a version of the same story, but with a rather different approach. For its UK release Doors has been retitled Portal (singular not plural this time). OK, so now we're all caught up.

In the three stories comprising the movie the first, 'Day 01 Lockdown', deals, as its title would suggest, with the arrival of strange alien monoliths all over the world. The 'lockdown' of the title also focuses on a group of schoolkids in detention, who are literally locked in when their supervising teacher goes to check what's happening and doesn't return. One of the kids, the trans student Ash (Kathy Khanh), starts to receive messages from a shimmering portal that has appeared in the corridor outside their classroom (a subtle but ingenious effect achieved by close up photography of magnet agitated iron filings). The kids tune into a radio broadcast that fleshes out what's going on; the portals -  or 'doors'  - have appeared worldwide and are gradually absorbing the planet's citizens.

The second story, 'Knockers,' is set 15 days after the alien arrival; the term refers to groups of people who volunteer to step through the doors to investigate what's on the other side. Three intrepid scientists, Becky (Lina Esco), Vince (Josh Peck) and Pat (director O'Neal), are preparing to venture into a portal that sits over a house; once in, they have twelve minutes to explore and leave, otherwise they risk developing permanent 'door psychosis'. But their visit demonstrates that not only is the alien being sentient, it has the power to control memory too.

The final story is 'Lamaj'. Set 101 days into alien occupation, Jamal (Kyp Malone), a man living alone in the forest, has found a door and has conducted successful experiments to communicate with it via a rickety electronic setup. He invites his friend Kathy (Kristina Lear) over to share the experience but she brings her hapless friend Leo (Bira Vanara), who tips off the authorities, with tragic consequences.

Apart from the framing theme, each of the stories are very different in tone, but share a more languid, blissed out feel than the previous movie (I can't help thinking that Denis Villenneuve's 2016 alien encounter movie Arrival may have been an influence). The segments are interspersed with shots of abandoned cities, and a talk radio DJ, Martin Midnight (David Hemphill), fills in the blanks narratively.

Apart from a rather brash end segment, which I could have done without (and the rather odd interstitials whose function seems to be the translation of the alien voices for the audience), I really liked this somewhat abstract approach to the alien invasion theme, and the three stories show, subtly, the development of earth's occupation. Granted there probably wasn't a lot of budget on the table, but here the truism that 'necessity is the mother of invention' is very much in evidence. Pretty good.

Signature Entertainment releases Portal on Digital Platforms and DVD from 19th April.

Supermarket Sweep #21: Reviews of Abigail Haunting (USA 2020), The Last House (USA 2019), Skin Collector (USA 2012), Crone Wood (Ireland 2016), The Odds (USA 2018) and You're Not Alone (USA 2020)

So as the 'Sweep' moves into its 21st edition, there are still plenty of rich pickings available on the supermarket shelves if your tastes run to the dark and dangerous, although one chain in particular seems to be flying the flag for horror these days (I can't name it for reasons of commercial competition, but let's just describe it as an anagram of  'daAs.' Anyway, here are six more offerings from the company who also bring you baked beans and tea bags:

Abigail Haunting (USA 2020: Dir Kelly Schwarze) Young Katie (Chelsea Jurkiewicz) rolls out of Reno with a fitstful of cash courtesy of a robbery and a murder rap thanks to the bullet she's just fired into the body of her abusive ex-boyfriend.

Seeking to hide out, she hot foots it to her foster mum's trailer house on the edge of what looks like the Nevada desert. But Marge (Brenda Daly) has gone downhill since Katie last saw her, and sits in a chair all day watching TV. Stashing both the gun and loot safely away, Katie quickly reconnects with former boyfriend, now single dad Brian (Austin Callazo) and his son Gavin (Zander Garcia). 

Brian looks like he's happy to pick up where things left off, but Katie is understandably rather jumpy. She's jumpier still when strange things start happening around the trailer, including someone mussing with her stuff and, more worryingly, Marge getting attacked, strangled by an unseen pair of hands. Marge's kindly neighbour Walter (Michael Monteiro) offers Katie a warning: "nothing good ever came out of this place," he counsels, and when Katie finds a skull in the garage, and witnesses the ghost of a tortured woman, she begins to see his point.

Abigail Haunting has a slight Stir of Echoes (1999) feel, with blue collar communities encountering the supernatural. Bit Schwarze's movie never seems to decide whether it wants to be down at heel urban drama or fright fest, and therefore fails to fully deliver on either side. It certainly has a lot of dowdy atmosphere, and Jurkiewicz is effective as the troubled Katie, but the final reel rush to explain everything away, and the explanation itself, feels overfamiliar and drab. The movie is best when it's subtle and unsettling, which it achieves excellently in its early stages. 

The Last House aka Cry for the Bad Man USA 2019: Dir Sam Farmer) More small town entertainment, with Camille Keaton (who had recently cameoed the same year in one of the many sequels to the 1978 original, I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu) starring as Marsha Kane. 

Seems everyone wants the widow Kane to take some money and leave the family home following her husband's death; even the local police are in with old man MacMohan, whose sons are exerting pressure for Marsha to move out, including pinning a contract to the front porch with a knife. But the lady's not for moving, much to the chagrin of her daughter Helen (Karen Konzen). "This is my house," she says, giving her daughter a quick one across the chops, and her intransigence gives an indication of what's to come: well that and the endless shots of Ms Keaton tooling up for the night ahead.

There really isn't very much to this beyond the setup described. Marsha hunkers down with an arsenal at her disposal, and the bad guys steal into the house to get what they think is theirs. One guy gets his entire hand blown off, shouts a bit then continues like nothing's happened. There's some tension in the stand off (well sit down off actually) between Marsha and the brothers, and it's tightly shot, effectively covering up for the lack of budget. At a slim one hour and fourteen minutes it knows exactly how to stay its welcome, but unless you're a Camille Keaton completist I can't really recommend this.

Skin Collector aka Shiver (USA 2012: Dir Julian Richards) Quite why this 2012 movie is being passed off as a new release I'm not sure, but Julian Richards' films are generally worth seeing (I really liked his last feature, 2018's Reborn), even if his output can be rather uneven.

A killer is stalking Portland, Oregon, who calls himself 'the Griffin' and whose MO includes taking parts of women's bodies and having sex with them post mortem. Detectives Delgado and Burdine (Casper van Dien and Rae Dawn Chong respectively) are tasked with catching him. Quite slowly as it happens.

Into the story steps Wendy Allen (Danielle Harris, who we last saw looking rather out of place in last year's Redwood Massacre: Annihilation). Wendy's having trouble asking her boss for a raise, but that's about to be the least of her problems, as 'the Griffin' is about to make her his next victim. Plucky Wendy stabs him in the leg and makes her escape, but the killer develops a fascination with the one that got away and begins his creepy stalking, and entrapping, of his new quarry, leading to a succession of scenes where's she's caught, escapes and gets caught again.

Skin Collector is, sadly, truly abyssmal. At nearly ten years old, I'm hopeful that mysoginistic rubbish like this would not get green lit these days. It doesn't help that the killer is a man of manners who appreciates women (he just has a funny way of showing it), which is supposed to make him extra creepy but instead just becomes cartoonish; a redemptive ending doesn't cancel out the poor taste of including a serial shooting scene in an enclosed space either. Apart from the subject matter, there's just no style, tension or characterisation to fall back on (the killer driving past the school where he was once bullied and having flashbacks is the nearest we come to gaining any insight into his psychosis - yes it's that bad). It's just empty, unpalatable nonsense.

Crone Wood (Ireland 2016: Dir Mark Sheridan) First time feature director Sheridan is a brave chap to make their debut a 'found footage' movie. Was that still a thing even four years ago? Well that's what we have here, anyways. Danny (Ed Murphy) and Hailey (Elva Trill) are out on a first date and getting on like a house on fire. They don't want it to end, and the fun never stops as the couple use Danny's video camera to film each other. 

Hailey makes the rather rash suggestion that they should go camping - in November - prompting a trip to a shop for useful things like, you know, a tent. Hailey, clearly full of good ideas,  thinks that travelling to out of the way Crone Wood, a place associated with a coven of witches, would be a good idea. The place has since been renamed but for locals it's still a spooky area. Danny's all for sticking to the paths, but Hailey wants to go rogue. She's from round these parts apparently so knows what she's doing. 

On the first night their bickering and occasional lovemaking is interrupted by a creepy looking guy with a mask. Giving chase, they lose him, but also mislay their tent. Seeking help at a nearby house, occupied by a group of women, they're welcomed in until help arrives. But strangely Hailey seems to know them. 

Crone Wood is a movie of two halves; the first being the standard lost in the woods story, with Danny and Hailey taking it in turns to assume the lead, but both getting nowhere. The second half moves into folk horror territory and it's here that the FF format starts to strain at the edges. There's a point beyond which the utilisation of a stand alone camera - apart from filming events for the audience - seems totally pointless. It's a different kind of fourth wall which, once broken, ruins the illusion.

Sheridan's movie is ambitious for the resources on hand but doesn't really break new ground, and at nearly an hour and half is simply too drawn out to sustain any tension. Not awful then, but a little unnecessary, and it's been done better before by more skilled directors.

The Odds (USA 2018: Dir Bob Giordano) A 2018 movie only now getting a UK DVD release, the premise of The Odds is pretty simple: at twenty undisclosed locations around the world, a game is being played simultaneously, involving six rounds of personal endurance. The winner will be the last person standing who doesn't either quit or die; the prize money of one million dollars is the lure, and various unseen people bet on the outcome.

The unnamed 'Player' in the room (Abbi Butler) has literally nowhere else to go. Her daughter has been taken away from her, apparently for being an unfit mother, and she wants the prize money to make things right between the two of them. The only other person in the sealed room is the 'Game Master' (James J. Fuertes) whose role is to mentor the Player and administer the punishments required in each round (from putting one foot in a box full of rats to nailing screws to the other one); he's done this fourteen times before and has, we assume, never been successful at producing a winner. 

The first test is for the Player to hold her hand over a lighted candle until three players drop out. The rounds progress in degress of cruelty but the woman remains resolute. A kind of weird master/servant relationship develops between the two of them; the Player has to administer some of the tortures to herself, and the Games Master acts as a kind of trainer/suitor. But gradually the Player realises that things may not be as they seem; and then it's time for Russian Roulette.

Anyone expecting classic over the top tort*re p*orn from my description will be disappointed; I was, but not for that reason, as it's a sub genre that does nothing for me. The Odds has some wider pronouncements to make about the relationship between men and women and human endurance, with the two main characters signifying an eternal struggle. And while the developing caustic relationship between the Player and the Games Master is well done for much of the film, the problem is that the movie runs out of steam with an extra half an hour to go and becomes, literally, a battle of the sexes.

Butler's turn as the slightly older, care worn but defiant heroine of the piece recalls Betty Gilpin's bravura performance in 2020's The Hunt, but where that film was rather sly and subversive about its politics, this movie remains po faced throughout, and therefore very one dimensional. To paraphrase slightly, The Odds was not in my favour.

You're Not Alone (USA 2020: Dir Eduardo Rodriguez) 

When Emma (Katia Winter) is bequeathed her former martial home following the death of estranged husband Patrick, she also gets custody of daughter Isla (Leya Catlett), who's previously been living with her grandmother. Emma has clearly seen some tough times and has a suicide attempt under her belt (grandma calls her an 'unfit mother' and she was asked not to attend Patrick's funeral) but she has support from gothy sister Ashley (Emmy James) and old flame local guy Mark (Zach Avery). But strange things begin to happen in the house: Isla sees someone in the house's upstairs window; a photo of Patrick flies off the wall; and Emma's online therapy session gets cutoff mid way through.

Emma installs CCTV for protection, and attempts to re-bond with her daughter despite her continuing fragile mental health. But when people start disappearing, starting with Ashley and nosy neighbour Mrs Willis (Lane Bradbury), she becomes convinced that there is something in the house.

Filmed in 2016 under the title of 'Unwanted' (ahem) but shelved for the next four years, watching You're Not Alone it's not difficult to see why. To be honest it's no worse than a hundred other 'woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown' movies where the explanation for events is more prosaic than supernatural, but my goodness rarely have I seen a film that wants to have its cake and eat it so much in the audience hoodwinking stakes. First we're given to believe that the incidents in the house are of a ghostly nature (some of them happen without any possible human agency; what else are we expected to believe?) then it looks like one of the distinctly human characters is in the frame, then they get despatched, the real killer being someone we've barely seen! Bodies go undiscovered, almost forgotten about, and Emma's last reel final girl performance is stretched to incredulity by the amount of times she is stabbed, but still manages to get on her feet. "Nightmarish" states the quote on the cover art; yes, but for all the wrong reasons.

Sensation (UK 2021: Dir Martin Grof) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021

Remember Spooks? That BBC TV series which was so low budgeted that it necessitated actors sitting around in glamorous looking locations (mainly offices and boardrooms) talking emphatically about things the programme makers couldn't actually afford to show? Well stylistically and narratively Grof's second feature pulls off the same trick, while mining a whole host of cinematic influences too.

Lowly postman (and violin virtuoso, but we'll get to that later) Andrew Cooper (Eugene Simon) knows little about his past, and decides to share his DNA to check whether he has other relatives and/or siblings. The test results work their way into the hands of a secretive organisation headed up by the colourful and more than slightly eccentric Dr Marinus (Alastair G. Cumming) who, telling the young lad that there is something special about him, introduces Andrew to a country house research facility where he can learn more about himself. At the facility he meets other young people who are similarly gifted in different ways. Andrew's room comes complete with a violin and he confesses that he has learned to play to a high standard by copying videos; he also faces off henchman Ernesto (Alex Reid, surely a Dave Prowse for nos jours) who he manages to beat off: I mean up. So Andrew's clearly a young chap of some gifts.

The group are in the care of the rather robotic Nadia (Emily Wyatt) and May (Jennifer Martin), the former who was adopted by the Russians following the death of her parents. Marinus's grandfather was in league with the Nazis and the Doctor has continued his relative's research into the enhancement of sensory receptors among conjoined twins, which heighten sensitivity in each of the subjects being studied within the facility. But the more Andrew finds out the less he (and the audience) understand; no-one there can be trusted, and he starts to doubt everything he sees and hears.

There are so many plotlines that fizzle out in Sensation that even after multiple viewings (I didn't but I'm making a point here) you'd be hard pressed to make head from tail about what's going on here. I suspect that some hard decisions had to be made editing the thing in post; the movie includes a final reel, surprisingly gloomy plot flip that piles on the WTFery, which may just have been a compromise to wrap the whole thing up but just makes everything we've seen before look a bit daft.

On the plus side the film makes great use of its London locations including the newly modernised financial district (although if the plushness of Andrew's north London gaff is to believed, the Post Office must have improved its salary package in recent years), recalling Geoffrey Sax's 2006 teen-friendly London romp Stormbreaker, if a lot less exciting.

Somewhere in the midst of this rather silly and portentous movie there's a three part TV series for the YA crowd struggling to get out; at least the plot would get a chance to breathe in that format. But Sensation is just a handsome looking mess, with variable acting by people who could probably have done better given more rounded characters. Disappointing.

Sensation will be available on Digital Download from 16th April

A nostalgia for an age yet to come - RIP the Civic Centre, London Borough of Hounslow (1976 - 2021)

Taking a break from the films for a moment for a bit of personal history.

How nostalgic is it possible to get about a building, albeit a (relatively) modern one? The Civic Centre of the London Borough of Hounslow, designed by the Council's Borough Architect George Trevett, was built in 1975, opened in March 1976, and existed for just over 44 years. That's not a great innings for a project which, at the time, officially cost £4.9 million (although I heard rumours of a much higher figure, something approaching double that). Contrast this with the former Town Hall, which was built in the 1880s and demolished around a hundred years later, ironically to make way for a hideous and largely unwanted shopping centre.

Its construction aimed to be the final piece in a jigsaw that united three distinct Council areas into one London borough via a 1965 Act of Parliament. The Act recognised the need to centralise decision making and eliminate waste created by 'local' local government. Unfortunately 10 years is a long time in politics, and the opening of the Civic Centre coincided with central Government beginning its policy of reducing the public funding of local authorities; the building became a potential white elephant almost as soon as the staff had moved in.

I started work there on 6 November 1978, aged 17, and despite the often mundane nature of the business going on inside, the building never failed to amaze me (the pictures accompanying this post don't really do it justice). Its orange and brown mid century modern stylings (much of the original interior design had been imported; the rumour ran that the company who provided the materials went bust, so the borough was forced from the outset to make building repairs from other sources, leading to the cohesion of the original look being quickly lost) captured my teenage imagination in a unique way: I felt that I was working on the set of a Gerry Anderson TV series. 

If you're around my age (very late fifties) you'll recall the familiar lament of my generation that we thought we'd be living in an episode of The Jetsons by now, all aerial living and labour saving devices. Well the Civic Centre didn't exactly fulfil the dream, but it did recall the already-out-of-date-but-still-strangely-futuristic look created by Tony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer for the interiors of Kubrick's 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that had left a lasting impression on me when I saw it in the ABC Hounslow aged 8.

The Civic Centre was my first permanent place of work; the open plan nature meant that I was suddenly thrust into occupying an office with over a hundred people. The building was designed as four interconnected pavillions on two floors, each serviced by a rest area - complete with resident tea lady - and with a restaurant, games room, bank and (this was to be my downfall) bar on the premises. I cannot describe what it was like to, effectively, move straight from the classroom - no University for me - to this adult environment. 

It was my first time watching adults argue in front of me (something my parents never did), occasionally throw punches, and of course get drunk; sometimes at their desk. I fell in love there, did a lot of stupid things (walking into the Borough Valuer's office after a lunchtime drinking session and commenting to him that the building plan on his desk looked "a bit crap if you ask me" being one of them), and, eventually, became ground down with the relentless tediousness of office life.

But if the future of the Civic Centre had started looking bleak in the mid 1970s, by the early 2000s (long after I left in 1992) the writing was on the wall. Trevett's dream was a part empty shell; successive years (decades) of Government cutbacks had created a revolution in the way that local government, formerly a rather wasteful institution, now provided complex services pretty efficiently with around half its original staff. The building in which they worked was now much less important than forty years previously; a positive thing, but also one which left the Civic Centre woefully underoccupied, expensive to run, and arguably an embarassment rather than a flagship. 

The postscript to this is that the remaining Council staff moved out to smaller, more eco-friendly premises nearby and as of January this year, the demolition teams had moved in to pull down the Civic Centre and, in its place, build luxury flats.  I'm not going to pass judgment on whether those places will be given to those in housing need or sold to make profits for developers, although a look around at the rest of London indicates the latter.

Whatever happens, the physical erasure of a place where I spent 14 years working will always be a sad thing, but luckily my memory can help me out here. All I have to do is close my eyes and, like the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's 'The Shining,' the building comes alive all over again. 

Rest in peace you weird and wonderful monolith.

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020 #15: Reviews of Scopophobia (UK 2020), Zoom (UK 2020), Bite Night (UK 2020), Russian Submarine (UK 2020), Eve (UK 2019) and Dune Drifter (UK 2020)

Scopophobia (UK 2020: Dir Ben Smith) Scopophobia is, apparently, defined as an excessive fear of being stared at. Clocking in at getting on for two hours, this viewer spent an awful lot of time staring at the screen waiting for something to happen. For Scopophobia is nothing if not a langorous watch.

A group of school age filmmakers are preparing to make a feature film, working title 'Among the Woods', in a nearby forest area. One of their number, Nick, goes missing; meanwhile one of the others, Inaam (Inaam Barwani) receives a mysterious package containing warning notes. As filming progresses, a mysterious knife wielding figure is seen in the woods, wearing a mask. Inaam begins to lose track of time, and some of the cast/crew (it's a small production) end up waking up in the open air. They realise that the film's script itself might be cursed, and causing the events affecting them; but the truth is even stranger than that.

Scopophobia as a project has ambitions way beyond the skills of those behind and in front of the camera, and its arse numbing length does it no favours. But underneath the zero budget look of the thing, and the variable acting skills on display, it's clear that some work has gone into the story, and there are elements within the film - the time shift scenes, the coded messages received, and the meta film-within-a film moments etc - that are genuinely intriuging. Unfortunately there's a lack of clarity in the storytelling, particularly towards the end, when the film attempts to draw its loose ends together: shorter and punchier would definitely have been better. Smith is clearly still learning his art, and there's just enough here to suggest that some attention should be paid to his next feature.

You can watch Scopophobia here.

Zoom aka Catering (UK 2020: Dir Matthew Landford) This 36 minute short starts with a Zoom conversation between three friends, Miles (Alex Brook), Roddy (Samuel Grant) and Sigmund (Harvey Smith). They're bored and have used up all their usual diversions like role play and card games. Randomly searching they come across a Twitter account belonging to 'joel8946'. They decide to access his account and, before long, they're thrown into a nightmare, where their new host warns them that they shouldn't have joined and rejoins the call even after being kicked out.

First to be threatened is Roddy's little brother, who Roddy thinks is safe downstairs. But is he? Next the omnipresent host forces his callers to admit a series of misdemeanours, the very least of which is Sigmund's confession that he once ate Roddy's goldfish. Failure to disclose their secrets will result in them being removed.

While Zoom undoubtedly borrows from Rob Savage's game changing Host (the "how did you get onto the call?" question and the subsonic rumbling announcing the presence of the sinister Joel), Brook, Grant and Smith are very convincing as three wisecracking friends whose camaraderie very swiftly breaks down in the face of a mysterious threat. Landford has made a number of short films which will be covered in this strand, and can be watched on YouTube. Recommended.

You can watch Zoom here. 

Bite Night (UK 2020: Dir Maria Lee Metheringham) There are a lot of indepedent horror films made these days whose creators talk about trying to capture a 1980s vibe. Very often (and often poorly) this is realised by a brooding synth score and a broadly colourful lighting design. Metheringham's follow up to 2018's Pumpkins doesn't aim for such a feel in its design but Bite Night conjours up memories of numerous daft 'kids-mixing-with succubii' movies of that decade in its execution.

At a nightclub a three woman band play to an enthusiastic audience; they are Zuzanna (Metheringham), Katarina (Martha Niklas) and Valice (Rachel Brownstein). Tonight, courtesy of a number of tickets randomly inserted into balloons, six lucky fans will be given the chance to accompany the girls back to their house for an exclusive after party.

The six, who include preppy Ebeneizer (George Walker) and feisty Tash (Marcella Edgecombe-Craig), get ferried by limo to the cottage, aka the 'House of Valice', where they're invited to freshen up in their allocated rooms. There's an increasingly predatory sense that the girls have something in mind for their guests apart from wall to wall partying; Valice takes a shine to Tash and seduces her, while punky Axel (Ryan Jay-James) finds one of Katarina's dresses and puts it on. Later, everyone meets in the dining room, and the girls announce their culinary inclinations by serving up a severed head and dipping a stick of celery into the blood. But just as the three girls turn all vampy/cannibal-y, there's another more terrifying figure who starts to take over the guests. Who will survive?

I use the word 'scrappy' quite a lot to describe a form of filmmaking which is rough round the edges, well intentioned but slimly budgeted; and Bite Night ticks all three of these boxes. The movie feels like it might at any point get a lot more raunchy than it does, but the cast are all good value and, considering that not much happens, things move at a fair clip. Of particular note are the songs performed by the girls (sung by the three actresses) written by 'Great Northern Hotel' and the film's incidental score by Leigh 'Scratch' Fenlon and Jerry de Borg, and some enthusiastic performances by Edgecombe-Craig and Brownstein, who have fun with the frequently camp dialogue. Bite Night's story is 'to be continued...' according to the end credits. Well ok then.

Russian Submarine (UK 2020: Dir Tommi Sorsa) This 50 minute featurette, shot in Bournemouth, opens with a Biblical quote. There isn't a reason for this and it's no more illuminating than the rest of the film.

What I think is happening is that, in a 2009 prologue, a group of young men (and one woman) hold a drinking party in a house (the name of which - the game not the house - is 'Russian Submarine', hence the title) and all die of alcohol poisoning.

Moving to the present day, a young couple rent the house, only to be haunted by the ghost of the last member standing from the original group. To deal with the unwanted supernatural visitation they bring in a team of ghostbusters, complete with resident psychic, who quickly realise that to engage with the spirits at a meaningful level they too have to play the 'Russian Submarine' game. Oh and as well as the ghost there's also an evil jester/clown character called Cletus, a figure whose spiritual ancestry may date from the medieval period of history.

I would recommend that Russian Submarine is best watched with the viewer imbibing the same amout of alcohol as the cast; you won't understand it any better but it may feel like it's over quicker. This is a film that chooses to include outtake scenes both during the movie and after it. The cast all inexplicably have American accents (and to be fair some of these are well rendered) which sits rather oddly in the setting of a Bournemouth semi. Scenes are repeated endlessly and if there's a point to this it was totally lost on me. Look I'm sure this was a lot of fun to make - many of the cast look like they're on the verge of 'corpsing' most of the time - but it sure isn't to sit through, unless you're an 'in-on-the-joke' student presumably.

You can watch Russian Submarine here. 

Eve (UK 2019: Dir Rory Kindersley) This glossy, psychological thriller aims for Nicolas Winding Refn or maybe Daren Aronofsky in its intensity, but sadly falls short through a combination of unlikeable characters and opaque plotting.

Alex Beyer (American Christine Marzano sporting a pretty good Brit accent) is an actor no longer getting the parts she wants, after being out of the business for over a year (her mental health is clearly not great). Turned down for the role of 'Eve' in a film version of a play in which she was the lead, her day gets worse when, returning to her swish London mews house with photographer boyfriend Liam (Andrew Lee Potts) which he's let out in their absence, she discovers that someone has daubed blood all over the walls. The police suspect it might be a jealous fan (the pair don't exactly fall over themselves to find out).

Alex continues to obsess both about the loss of the role and the identity of the home defacer (CCTV footage shows a woman standing outside their front door; a possible suspect?). Meanwhile her agent despairs at what to do with her, and gets the opportunity to drop her from the books when Alex assaults the actor who got the 'Eve' part when they bump into each other at an audition.Alex's downward spiral continues apace, to the point where she's not only a danger to herself, but maybe to others as well.

Eve is one of those movies where everybody is horrible, so it's difficult to care less about any of the characters; probably the most sympathetic is Liam, but even he may be having an affair with a client. I'm getting a bit sick of 'crazy lady' scenarios, where the instability of the lead means that the audience can't trust whether what they're seeing is fantasy or reality. Kindersley's movie looks good, but it's empty as hell and ultimately inconsequential; all dressed up with nowhere to go, in fact.

Dune Drifter (UK 2020: Dir Marc Price) Price has come a a long way since his £45 budgeted 2003 feature debut, the intimate zombie in the suburbs movie Colin. But maybe not thematically, as his latest, a low budget sci fi drama, quickly focuses its story on a lone survivor of battle who has to face hazardous alien elements.

Adler (Phoebe Sparrow) is the gunner in a small two person spaceship, part of the Dune squadron, who enter an intergalactic fracas with a race called the Drekks on instructions to do little more than make up the numbers. But the opposition have the upper hand: ill-equipped for battle, one by one the squadron craft are picked off, with Adler and her ship's pilot Yaren (Daisy Aitkens) crash landing on an alien planet. Left on her own after Yaren dies from injuries sustained during the crash, and with the remainder of her fleet having abandoned her, assuming that she has perished, Adler's outlook, and indeed her life support duration, seem critical. But worse is to come; there's another crashed ship on the planet containing some armed Drekks, who stand between her and any hope of returning to earth.

Filmed in the inhospitable volcanic wastes of Iceland, Dune Drifter certainly manages to be bleak. Its stripped down story, with no character detail or extraneous plot information, gives us half an hour of not particularly convincing space battle, then dumps its human survivor in the middle of nowhere and throws things at her. There's some wry humour at work here - some gaseous attacking rocks seem to have strolled in from an episode of Star Trek and one of Adler's many adversities is a stray lock of hair in her eyes (which, being inside a pressurised helmet, she can do nothing about). This is a brave hour and a half and Dune Drifter remains watchable largely for Sparrow's convincing performance as the soldier who just wants to get home. It doesn't hold a candle to bigger budgeted space sagas (and will doubtless be criticised as a result of that unfair comparsion) but Dune Drifter is a watchable and at times tense sci fi flick.