Borley Rectory: The Awakening (UK 2025: Dir Steven M. Smith) This is Smith's third film based around events at Borley Rectory, reputedly 'the most haunted house in England'. His first, 2019's
The Haunting of Borley Rectory, was set in 1944 and his second,
The Ghosts of Borley Rectory filmed two years later, located the action in 1937.
For his third Borley opus Smith goes back further; initially to 1888 and then, for the majority of the movie, 12 years later. For this is a prequel to the oft told Rectory story of the nun's ghost, which so interested ghost hunter Harry Price when he investigated the haunting many years later.
The Rev Harry Bull (Julian Glover, yes that Julian Glover) lies dying in Borley Rectory. While he reassures his family that there are no ghosts at the Rectory he gifts his son Henry (Corneille Dion Williams) a box which will, he confides mysteriously, keep the family safe.
Twelve years later Henry is now rector, residing at Borley with his mother Constance (Patsy Kensit, yes that...ok I'll stop doing that now) and his four sisters. Constance is stricken with visions of a nun being attacked by a priest and takes to her bed, where she's attended by a nurse (former alt comedian Helen Lederer) and is visited by the ghost of her mother (Vicki 'Allo'Allo, Virgin Witch Michelle). Uncle Somerset (Smith regular Mark Wingett) arrives to provide support; a concerned Henry, fearing supernatural shenanigans and rapidly questioning his faith, summons the Reverend Shaw (Simon Philips) for a second opinion and a solution to the haunting.
BR: TA is co-produced by genre stalwart Louisa Warren, and it's possible that her presence has tempered some of Smith's rough round the edges approach to filmmaking; some care has been expended on this one, including an impressive location (Ingatestone Hall in Essex), a very The Woman in Black feel (all period costumes and candlelight) and some good performances. There are even some impressive jump scares although the spooks are perhaps a little more regularly visible that I'd have liked. I've not been a fan of most of Smith's previous movies, but BR: TA is classy and occasionally scary.
A version of this review was first published on the Bloody Flicks site.
Rumpelstiltskin (UK 2025: Dir Andy Edwards) Edwards is yet another UK contributor to the Twisted Child Universe (TCU) which has, in recent years, seen a plethora of to be honest rather average movies providing a horror twist on popular children's stories.
As one of those stories 'Rumpelstiltskin' is a shoo in for a horror film director; the original story by The Brothers Grimm is already pretty grotesque, and I can do no better than borrow the (AI generated) IMDb plot description to sum it up: "Miller lies about daughter's gold-spinning ability. Imp helps her impress King. She promises imp her future child for continued aid. When payment comes due, imp strikes deal with devil."
Edwards's movie is for the most part a reasonably faithful adaptation of the story with a number of more contemporary adornments. The tale's miller (Mark Cook) peddles his wayward daughter Evalina (Hannah Baxter-Eve) to the nasty king (Colin Malone), a chap prone to mounting the heads of his ex wives on poles. The miller's boast that his daughter can spin gold from straw ("I don't even know how to fucking spin", she concludes once isolated in the tower) comes to pass courtesy of an imp (Joss Carter) who pays her a visit and grants her wish in return for a kiss and, later, a gawk at her naked body.
Evalina's success at straw to gold wins her the hand of the king and, as queen, she gives birth; sadly she's promised her first born to Rumpelstiltskin as her side of the bargain, although had hoped to avoid pregnancy by consuming nettle tea. The imp's request for the infant can be voided if Evalina successfully guesses his name.
Edwards cloaks (pun intended) this low budget but modestly sumptuous yarn in various Game of Thrones stylings, with some dynastic squabbling and Rumpelstiltskin (whose makeup suggests an homage to the 1995 film of the same name) reporting directly to a figure named the Demon King of the Shadow Forest. Evalina is pleasantly feisty, and the script maintains a rather cheeky tone ("So she's a witch", concludes the king at one point, "I've married worse"). Rumpelstiltskin is, much like the director's previous TCU entry Cinderella's Revenge, a lot more fun that the drearier Mickey Mouse/Popeye end of the Universe, with some impressive photography and a wheezing, clunking dungeon synth score from the appropriately named 'Disgusting Cathedral' adding to the movie's quality.
Manor of Darkness (UK 2025: Dir Blake Ridder) There are two handy approaches for the 'fantastic' filmmaker looking to do something intriguing on a low budget. The first is the 'multiverse' concept, the second is the timeloop plot device; in Shanghai born Ridder's first released feature - also, staggeringly, the prolific director's 72nd film - he's gone for the second option.
Four disparate souls come together with crime on their minds. Brother and sister Chris (Louis James) and Laura (Kim Spearman) are at odds over the care of their mother; meanwhile Chris's girlfriend Lisa (Sarah Alexandra Marks), what with her tough upbringing and visions of herself covered in blood, has her own problems. Oh and there's Andy (Rui Shang), handy with a camera and trying to make some money for a custody battle, who the others have seen in pickpocket action.
Chris hatches a plan for some easy money. Inside a country manor used by a gang of thieves to stash their loot, most of the booty has been recovered following a raid; but not all. And in a freak coincidence the owner of the house has invited Chris and his chums to film inside, providing the perfect opportunity to liberate the remaining swag. But a visit to the basement unveils a large box which, when opened, triggers a sequence of events which lock the group in a perpetual live/die/live cycle.
Quite why all this happens is rather baffling, and there's a point about two thirds through the movie where the repetition starts to grate. What Ridder fails to do is unpick the onion skin layers of the story so that the audience understands what's happening; it's just a confusing mess, not helped by some rather lacklustre performances and misplaced attempts at humour. I can't fault Ridder for trying something that's a little different to most haunted house movies, but overall this is a misfire.
Snake Creek (UK 2025: Dir Charlie Steeds) Charlie's back! Mr Steeds, Bristol's answer to Roger Corman, strikes again, this time choosing something more reptilian than his usual cluster of monsters and werewolves.
Unlike other British directors, who may base their movies in the US but never venture further than a youth hostel in deepest Hampshire, Steeds is the real deal, authentically locating some of his American themed features in the US of A; in this case Georgia.
Snake Creek has four ex schoolmates travelling to a location deep in the Chattahoochee woods for a little R&R time. Headed by the exuberant Patrick (Paul Ogletree), the quartet stock up at a local general store, run by rum old Woody (Scot Scurlock) who issues the usual warnings about taking care in the forest. These would seem to be worth heeding based on the pinned posters highlighting a missing local girl, Willow (Faith McCoy), who we’ve already seen alive, covered in leaves and surrounded by rotting corpses, deep in the forest.
And the source of all this concern? Gwendoline, a 29ft snake, who slithers around the forest looking for human meat, and who just so happens to have discovered the four campers, protected by Woody and his inbred cohort.
Filmed back to back with Southern Nightmare, a slice of gothic that features pretty much the same cast, Steeds is on a one man mission to being the spirit of grindhouse to a new generation of moviegoers. The problem here is that while Snake Creek looks the part (Steeds as cinematographer has a keen eye for the outdoors) and sounds great via Simone Cilio’s strident score, this is basically four grown men being menaced by a snake puppet, albeit one designed by LA based SFX talent Eric Yoder. One does rather wonder why Charlie went all that way to make something so, well, silly?
But then when you consider that director Tom Gormican has just completed a big budget snake movie (Anaconda) there’s clearly some mileage in the slinky reptile as an object of fright, so why shouldn’t Steeds give us his own lower budget version? Snake Creek is big on characterisation and rural detail, but somewhat lighter on scares; it’s still worth a look though.
A version of this review was first published on the Bloody Flicks site.
Boarhog (UK 2025: Dir Craig Quinn) There's something weird going down on the streets of Manchester. Well a version of Manchester named Sounder City, and a fictional district: Villemomble (which is also a real suburb of Paris, but we're definitely not
there).
A series of disappearances in the area have got the local population a bit twitchy. At the local hospital, the vaguely despotic Dr Adam Brecknell (Reece Ryan) hides his real self behind a cloak of supportive respectability, seducing the staff and being emotionally (and physically) abusive to his girlfriend Laura (Beverley Rendelle).
The country appears to be in some form of hostility with Russia (although conspiracy theorist tags of 'World War III' are dismissed by the Government). Neverthless a decision has been made to return serving troops back to the UK. One of these is Benji (Quinn) whose PTSD is, bluntly, through the roof; as well as being incredibly antisocial he's also plagued with visions of snout nosed witches.
When Brecknell is caught on site by hospital manager Claire (Nicola Mayers), meting out violence to hospital worker Laura, he's dismissed on the spot. Jobless and angry, he's kidnapped by an odd trio who make him an offer he can't refuse; and before we know it, 'Boarhog' is born.
After a while it gets increasingly difficult to follow events (there's a curse in there somewhere and those witches are back), partly because the sound quality of the film is pretty patchy, and there's a regional mumblecore effect going on dialogue wise too. But it doesn't matter; Boarhog is endlessly inventive, cheap as chips with some very impressive practical FX and a revenge tragedy kill count. Quinn is a witty chap in interview, and there's obviously some intelligence at work here (the script is surprisingly good for this sort of thing). If you can get past the DIY approach there's a lot to like, and honestly I'd rather watch something like this than an empty $10m snoozefest any day.
Mundane (UK 2025: Dir Ignacio Maiso) More suburban tension, this time set outside London. Mundane (Astrid Olofsson) is a young woman whose blog on everyday life starts attracting attention. Oh she's also a cyborg, but she tries to keep that fact to herself. Her adoptive mother (Nicola Wright) wishes that Mundane wouldn't call her Kathy, and the cyborg's boyfriend James (David Stock) has left her because he wants children and she can't have any (although she has faked two pregnancies, which ostensibly looks cruel on her part). Mundane's father/inventor Thomas (Paul Dewdney), previously estranged from the cyborg, comes back into her life.
Mundane's single friend appears to be Victoria (Daisy Porter) although this relationship appears to be tested when she admits that she has started going out with James; Mundane remains unphased.
A literary agent, Clare (Christina Ashford) is interested in marketing Mundane's blog, supported by Clare's wealthy manager Mark (Neil Ovenell), but is concerned when the cyborg outs herself online, having previously been happy to hide in plain sight. This disclosure triggers a succession of events that has consequences for all.
'Consequences' is a pretty strong word to describe the impact of anything in
Mundane, directed by Maiso at a snail's pace (I had previously reviewed his 2021 movie
Them and didn't get on with that either).
Mundane has that drained colour look and 'small head in big picture' framing adored by directors like Roy Andersson; it's beautifully photographed by Pierluigi Rossi, and Fernando Gimeno's score is straight out of a Wes Anderson movie. But despite its elegance and an appealing glacial performance by Olofsson in the title role, this is a rather empty film, initially intriguing but soon feeling like a short stretched to feature length.
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