Scary Christmas Round up of New Holiday themed Horror Movies 2024: Reviews of You Are Not Me (Spain 2023), Carnage for Christmas (Australia 2024), He Sees You When You're Sleeping (UK 2024), Santastein (USA 2023), Silent Bite (USA 2024) and Granny Krampus (UK 2024)

Apart from 2022, DEoL has been bringing you a round up of scary Christmas movies every year since 2018 (links to all the posts are at the bottom of this one). So here's my 2024 Christmas present to you. 

You are Not Me aka Tú no eres yo (Spain 2023: Dir Marisa Crespo, Moisés Romera) Christmas is a time for families, so what better thing for Aitana (Roser Tapias), her wife Gabi (Yapoena Silva) and their adopted son to do on Christmas Eve than play surprise visit to Aitana’s parents.

But when the family arrive, they don’t quite get the welcome Aitana was hoping for. Apart from her brother Saúl (Jorge Motos), who is disabled due to a degenerative muscular disease, the rest of her folks give them a rather cool reception. This might have something to do with their having taken in a Romanian refugee, Nadia (Anna Kurikka) to whom mum and dad have transferred their attentions.

Relegated to a dismal tower bedroom because Nadia has been given Aitana’s room (and clothes), the new arrivals try as best they can to enjoy the pre Christmas celebrations. But Aitana is right not to trust the family cuckoo in the nest; there’s something sinister behind Nadia’s presence.

Seasoned horror fans will have guessed where this one’s heading the moment the rather overfamiliar friends of Aitana’s parents show up, but the pleasure of You Are Not Me is the slow slide from wonky domestic drama to something way darker.

This is Crespo and Romera’s first foray into horror and they’ve handled it really well. While events might take a familiar turn, the whole thing is well acted to the point that you can kind of overlook when characters do daft things in the name of plot progression. Silva’s role – and her overall passivity – remain decidedly undercooked, but this is a minor grumble. You Are Not Me is a competent, well put together horror/drama. 

Carnage for Christmas (Australia 2024: Dir Alice Maio Mackay) Small town Australian life generally gets short shrift when depicted in movies. And Carnage for Christmas, described as a 'Transgender Holiday Film', is no exception. Trans woman Lola (Jeremy Moineau) has acquired a reputation running a popular true crime podcast, her interest in the subject stemming from some expert sleuthing in her home town which resulted in the discovery of the last victim of a killer dubbed The Toy Maker.

Lola's return to the small town of Purdan for Christmas brings little joy; the townspeople were hostile to her coming out, and Lola's reception among the menfolk of the place suggests that nothing has changed.

She is therefore shocked to find that her real friends have remained supportive and, between them, formed a solid community of tolerance; there's even a gay bar, whose customers include a former teacher of Lola's, now a drag queen.

But something else is going on in Purdan. A killer is stalking the streets, their modus operandi seeming to revive memories of The Toy Maker. And the authorities, investigating the crimes, can only wonder whether these murders and the arrival of Lola are connected.

While there's nothing ostensibly new in this small town slasher, MacKay's zippy direction and some great ensemble playing keep it cliche free. Yes the cops are useless, and the ocker townsmen uniformly atrocious, but it's the crowd around Lola that make the movie, together with a literate script that keeps it camp but not over the top, and a dayglo production that gives the whole thing a Christmassy feel (much needed in the arid Australian climate of the season).

He Sees You When You're Sleeping (UK 2024: Dir Charlie Steeds) In the past Charlie Steeds has been vocal about being influenced by horror movies from the 1980s, particularly US slashers, so it's perhaps only fitting that he should one day film his own locationally authentic homage. In partnership with Tom Molloy's Trick Candle Productions (Molloy has a small part in the movie) and some other business concerns, Steeds has managed to mount a production that, like his previous film Night Harvest, was filmed entirely in the US, eschewing the usual problems with UK projects pretending (and usually failing) to convince audiences that they were filmed Stateside, when in reality being located in Blighty.

Steeds regular David Lenik, who also wrote the script for this, plays Chester Van Buren, returning to his childhood home of Copper Grove 17 years after a killer in a Santa Claus outfit broke into the place and murdered his parents back in 1963, Chester being a young boy at the time.

He's accompanied by his not-all-that-she-seems girlfriend Afton (Nellie Spackman) and his anxiety on returning to the place that he inherited is not helped by it now being occupied by sitting tenants Aunt Marion (Caroline Williams), sarcastic Burke (Cedric Gegel) and his partner Melody (Natalie Veater). There's some comfort in knowing that his parents' killer, one Henry Bates, has been captured and locked up for life (and also that his childhood sweetheart Eden (Peyton Michelle Edwards) still lives in the area) but if Chester felt that all he had to contend with over the holidays was bickering relatives, he didn't count on the bodies piling up once again while the rest of the family hatch a plan to deprive him of his true inheritance.

Steeds is perhaps a better creator of mood than sharp characterisation, hence his reliance on things being rather bitchy and over the top. As Melody at one point exclaims, the year being 1980 means that JR's just been shot in Dallas, the world has lost a Beatle and an ex actor has been elected as President; crazy times indeed, matched by the soap operaesque infighting and plot hatching of the house's occupants.

A mix of US talent (Williams as the mouthy Marion is probably the best thing in this) mixes with a smattering of UK cast members including Lenik and Nicholas Vince as his psychiatrist, making the project feel US authentic. Steeds as ever makes a great DoP and if the pacing sometimes slows a little, there's a cracking axe wielding final reel in true slasher stylee.

Santastein (USA 2023: Dir Manuel Camilion, Benjamin Edelman) As a young inquisitive boy Max Causey and his geeky friend Paige are keen to solve the mystery of Santa Claus by trapping him in the act of leaving presents and photographing him. The problem is, the plan backfires and Mr Claus ends up dead - by accident.

The death has huge ramifications; basically Christmas is cancelled, misery abounds and the joy of the holiday fades into memory. But 12 years later Max (Jared Korotkin) and Paige (Ophelia Rivera) are now precocious science students; Paige has found a way to bring life to a formerly dead rat and, unbeknownst to her, Max has nicked the principle and is stealing bodies from the local morgues - the portlier the better - to assemble...Santastein! But the resurrected corpse shares little of Mr Claus's bonhomie and before long is leaving a trail of death and destruction across town.

There's a lot of different themes milling about in this one and none of them really come off. The whole 'Christmas is cancelled' idea remains largely unexplored, and there's rather more time than necessary devoted to a party held by unpopular student Mikayla (Kaylie Heyner) which is an excuse for 'comedy' hi jinks. The directors do manage a more exciting final reel (pretty good for an obviously small budget) and the resurrection sequence conjures up a definite 1980s vibe (complemented by a great retro score by Austin Hammonds). It's ok but arguably needed to be a little more manic and tightened up, a great idea that somewhat fails in execution.

Advent aka The Krampus Calendar (UK 2024: Dir Airell Anthony Hayes) Hayes has clearly got a bit of a thing about Christmas; his last completed feature was Werewolf Santa (2023) and titles 'Satan's Grotto', 'Vampire Santa' and 'Zombie Santa' are coming down the production chute as I type.

The resolutely low budget/DIY Advent 'stars' Bulgarian Rasina Pavlova as American Hayley, whose interests and academic background have concentrated on urban legends. Hayley becomes fixated on the Krampus Calendar, a fiendish version of the traditional one where each of the December windows offers up a challenge, the 'prize' being that once completed the devil takes your soul.

Now you and I would politely refuse the challenge, but curious Hayley pays five hundred smackers for such a calendar and, via her YouTube channel, documents the opening of the calendar one day and one challenge at a time, the camera being wielded by friend Charlie (Cian Lorcan) while her drunk father Joe (Corey Peterson), still in mourning following the death of Hayley's mother, casts a doleful figure. The resultant footage, beginning rather benignly but building to successively sinister challenges as the Calendar doors are opened, is commented on by an acquaintance of Hayley and fellow academic Richard Hill (Nicholas Vince again); Hill gets to fill in the blanks on the history of the Calendar, while in true M R James style, the curious Hayley pays the price for her dabbling.

Advent is very rough around the edges; there are spelling mistakes in the captions and the 'mixed media' approach of animation and 'found footage' camerawork doesn't really work. But it's good to see a movie maintaining its dystopian chops right through to the end, and the gloomy suburban backdrop makes a satisfyingly prosaic setting for the weird events onscreen.

Silent Bite (Canada 2024: Dir Taylor Martin) Martin's debut feature, following a string of inventive short films, pulls bits from 30 Days of Night, From Dusk Till Dawn and Near Dark, but still manages to be sprightly and watchable.

The 'Santa Hat' gang, so named because they're all dressed up in (oh you fill in the blanks) have liberated a cool $1 million in a bank heist, and are now laying low at a motel. The obliging manager, Colin (Paul Whitney) keeps mum about them hiding out, but he's got his own problems; namely his ability to repay a gambling debt to the local heavies. Oh and he's also shielding a nest of female vampires elsewhere in the establishment.

The bank robbers, all using seasonal aliases, are headed by a pair of Brits; Father Christmas (Simon Phillips) and his sidekick Snowman, so named because of his chemical obsessions rather than his love of the season (Michael Swatton). In true Die Hard heist tradition, the gang includes a young tech wizard, Prancer (Luke Avoledo), whose function is to set up surveillance to help them remain undetected until their wing man, Rudolph (Dan Molson), turns up with the getaway car.

But the vampire girls. a 'family' under the tutelage of Mother (Sayla de Goede) become restless. Fed up with teasing a captive local, Genie (Camille Blott) who they plan on turning, they venture out to meet the boys. A showdown is inevitable, but will the 'Santa Hat' gang be able to escape?

As mentioned, Silent Bite doesn't have much original going on, but it has the advantage of real snow, a cosy provincial location (the Jolly Roger Inn outside Toronto which, the credits inform us, also provided the cast and crew catering) and some lively characterisation. It plays a bit fast and loose with the mythology (vampire death by silver spoon anyone?) but the comic book approach works well and it has a less tacked on holiday feel than some other seasonal fright flicks I could mention.

Granny Krampus (UK 2024: Dir Jack E. Bell) "This what Christmas is all about - one big happy family!" says Granny Carla (Adie Mueller) in a statement which couldn't be further from the truth. The family in question - or what's left of them - comprise orphaned sisters Lea (Jodie Bennet) and Ashley (Poppy Castleton) who pay a Christmas visit to Gran, who lives in a big house with only her mute, zombie like brother Robert (Peter Trott) for company.

The girls know little about Carla, who seemed estranged from their late parents, and the unhappy air is made worse with the arrival of Carla's son Charlie (Mark Rush) and his socially awkward son Daniel (Tom Marchant). Cousin Charlotte (Claudia Adlam) was also due to attend, but decided to stay away; permanently, as it happens, as she's the first victim of Krampus aka Frau Perchta (Jeanne de Rougemont), a creature who haunts the family, picking them off one by one to fulfill an ancient curse.

This is the second 'Krampus' film funded by Rebecca Matthews's company Proportion Productions, which she started back in 2017 with the equally prolific Scott Jeffrey; it's a creature that seems to obsess low budget filmmakers, which is possibly down to the fact that you only need a fright mask and a Santa suit to create your monster. In Granny Krampus we don't get a full view of the creature until the movie's last half hour; director Bell teases with a full hour of drawn out chat which only emphasises the poor script and indifferent acting (although Marchant's grumpy teen is rather authentic). The Christmas mood is limited to a few bits of tinsel (the exterior scenes look like they were shot in summer; one cast member even wears shorts) and the whole thing is pretty awful until the last twenty minutes or so when the horror elements are (finally) introduced.

2023 Christmas round up

2021 Christmas round up

2020 Christmas round up

2019 Christmas round up

2018 Christmas round up

The Contestant (UK 2023: Dir Clair Titley)

Like many UK TV viewers, my first exposure to the direction in which extreme televisual 'entertainment' was headed occurred via Clive James. Clips from the Japanese show Za Gaman (retitled Endurance for western audiences) were regularly shown on his 1980s TV show Clive James on Television. The scenes depicted featured teams of people being subjected to various unpleasant and degrading tasks for the delectation of the viewing public; little did we know that, thirty years later, the old immorality would become the new morality when I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! arrived on UK TV in 2002, with some of the tasks in that show modelled on those in Za Gaman.

In 1998 a new programme debuted on Japanese TV; Susunu! Denpa Shōnen (translated as "Do not proceed! Crazy youth"). Running for four seasons, each with a slightly different emphasis, the format concentrated not on teams but a single person, and Clair Titley's astonishing documentary focuses on the 'lucky' contestant in the show's first season (Hamatsu Tomoaki, better known as Nasubi), entitled 'Denpa Shōnen teki Kenshō Seikatsu' ('Denpa Shōnen's Prize Life').

The show's basic setup featured Nasubi, chosen from a group of young (male) hopefuls, taken to an anonymous room equipped with little except for a rack of magazines and a telephone, stripped, and obliged to, as the show's title suggested, exist solely on the winnings produced from entering competitions in the mags. Nasubi is told that he will be filmed throughout his ordeal with the results unlikely to be aired; a lie, as the intention of the show was to build up an increasing viewer fanbase by broadcasting carefully edited footage of the contestant's stay in the room and his progress towards his goal of generating 1 million yen's worth of prizes.

This essentially cruel scenario is made worse by the privations in which Nasubi lived. Naked, his privacy covered only by an aubergine emoji (Nasubi's name, after his long face, literally means 'aubergine' and, apparently, was the origin for the social media vegetable/dick thing), the increasingly emaciated man is literally forced to stay alive by entering competitions that, if successful, will deliver food and other comforts. The sight of Nasubi forced to try and eat wet dog food (disgusting) and the dry version (better, but it's all relative) is as painful as his own mental downward spiral, carefully edited to make the guy appear zany rather than, as was the case, troubled and sometimes suicidal.

The person behind the show, producer Toshio Tsuchiya, is one of a number of people interviewed for the documentary, along with Nasubi himself, his mother Kazuko, and Juliet Hindell, a BBC journalist resident in Japan who covered the story; the latter provides the impartial but politely aghast response surely felt by most of those viewing this. Tsuchiya emerges as an unrepentant, confident figure, proud of his groundbreaking TV show. His mother comes across as concerned but helpless; there's little information about whether any interventions were staged to stop the misery - some human rights issues are highlighted - although the producer's wry smile in recollections suggests some very well worded contracts had been signed.

That Nasubi achieved his ¥1,000,000 was a miracle (and there is some - little - humour to be experienced in the bizarre array of those prizes cluttering up his tiny room); but the series picked up a massive following as it unfolded, meaning that Tsuchiya had the incentive to keep it going. Nasubi, expecting release, is transported to Korea to replay the whole game (without knowing a word of Korean, which he had to learn in order to compete) and then back to the studio for an ignominious final reveal. 

The post gameshow salvation for Nasubi, his subsequent recuperation of spirit and amazing charity work (to which Tsuchiya financially contributed, apparently), is both a fitting tribute to a man still very much with us, as much as a constant reminder of his resilience. Was Susunu! Denpa Shōnen, as the documentary gently suggests, the making of a rather awkward young man who had potential but had underachieved in life? Possibly, but the cultural and personal cost of the journey cannot be underestimated, despite The Contestant ultimately emerging as a life affirming film.

The Contestant opens in UK cinemas on 29 November.

Good Gourd, it's Pumpkinhead! A look back at the franchise.

As the hallowed month of Spooktober approaches, and as I'll be spending those 31 days reviewing 2024 movies that I've not yet caught up with, I thought I'd get a bit ahead of myself with a look back at the four films that comprise the Pumpkinhead franchise.

Pumpkinhead (USA 1988: Dir Stan Winston) Winston’s directorial debut acquired a reputation as a bit of an exercise of style over substance; it's actually one of the best creature features of the 1980s. Originally titled ‘Vengeance: The Demon’, it was inspired by a poem written by Ed Justin which can be heard chanted by a group of country kids during the movie. You can read the full poem here.

Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen, enjoying one of many genre roles post being cast in 1986’s Aliens) is a simple chap, scratching a living, widowed with a young son Billy (Matthew Hurley). When a group of young people rock up, intent on partying and biking, Ed is wary. Leaving Billy alone while he runs an errand, the little boy is fatally injured in a motorcycle accident, the rider being a wrong ‘un who, with a previous charge hanging over him, is keen not to hand himself over to the authorities.

Ed, riven with grief, visits an old woman, Haggis (Florence Schauffler) who has knowledge of the dark forces; namely the ability to conjure up a vengeance demon (the ‘Pumpkinhead’ of the title). Ed has prior knowledge of the beast’s power; as a young boy he witnessed the demon tearing apart a victim.

While the partying bikers hole up in a house, scared out of their wits, Ed carries out the old woman’s request; an exchange of blood between him, his dead son and a strange dirt covered homunculus he digs up, on request, in a pumpkin patch. The spell cast, the dug up body assumes the size of a horned creature; but the price of vengeance is pain, as Ed, psychically connected to Pumpkinhead, acutely feels the impact of each of the demon’s kills, as it seeks out and despatches all those responsible for Billy’s death, directly or indirectly. The creature is basically a riff on the legend of the Golem, a revenge being from Jewish folklore.

Pumpkinhead revels in its backwoods setting, all dappled moonlight and moody reds and oranges. And the demon itself is, for the time, an impressive feat of prosthetics, hydraulics and, in the shape of Tom Woodruff Jr, a big guy in a suit (the movie would open the doors for Woodruff’s subsequent career both in front of and behind the camera).

For a film based on a rather brief poem, it’s perhaps no surprise that Pumpkinhead isn’t plot or character heavy (although Henriksen’s haunted Ed is suitably tortured and believable). As pointed out by others, the psychic link between Ed and the creature is never fully explored, and this would have given the film an added level of involvement. But overall Pumpkinhead succeeds because of its general sketchiness of vision, and an open ended final shot made it more susceptible for a sequel (or series of sequels; read on).

In 1993 Pumpkinhead appeared in two issues of the comic book series "Pumpkinhead: The Rites of Exorcism" published by Dark Horse Comics. A third issue was originally going to include the appearance of a winged version of the creature, but it was never officially released.

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (USA 1994: Dir Jeff Burr) It took six years to recognise the potential of a Pumpkinhead franchise but sadly the first one was the only instalment that got theatrical distribution. PII was a direct to video effort and while its budget was obviously a fraction of the original, storywise the first sequel made an effort to give audiences something to grab onto, however odd.

A 1950s flashback (in B&W obvs) shows a deformed young boy, Tommy (J.P. Manoux), looked after by an old woman, being harassed and then killed by a group of nasty college boys. We move to the present day, now in full colour, with a policeman, Sean Braddock (Andrew Hellraiser Robinson) and his wife returning to a job in his home town of Ferren Woods, handily relocating his daughter Jenny (Amy Dolenz, Micky’s daughter) away from a heap of trouble in their previous city.

No sooner has he arrived than Jenny falls in with the town bad boys, all of them children of the group of guys that murdered Tommy, some of whom now, somewhat predictably, have positions of power in Ferren Woods. Looking for kicks, Danny and the gang come across the cottage where Tommy’s guardian, Miss Osie (French actress Lilyan Chauvin, no Haggis character in this one) lives and discover she’s been planning to bring back the dead. Stealing the witchy accoutrements the kids dig up a patch of land and pour stolen blood on it, but bottle it before they can see that the spell has been successful: Pumpkinhead has risen again! However this time it’s actually a monster/human hybrid, half Tommy, half Pumpkinhead (PumpkinTommy then), the result of a union between the monster and a human.

PumpkinTommy stalks the land, first despatching those who caused Tommy’s death, then their kids, to complete his vengeance; only Braddock, whose connection with Tommy reaches back into their childhoods, has the ability to put an end to the mayhem.

Silly though it clearly is, PII moves at a pretty good pace and doesn’t stint on the gore once PumpkinTommy comes back to life. As a guy in a suit, Mark McCracken as the monster lacks the sheer heft of Stan Winston’s original, but judicious upshooting and editing covers the deficiencies pretty well. In keeping with the times, PumpkinTommy’s POV shots have a distinctly Predator feel about them, and there are cameos from scream queen Linnea Quigley and, taking a break from being Jason Vorhees, Kane Hodder, to keep things interesting. Dumb but fun.

One year after the release of the movie, a first person shooter computer game 'Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge' was developed by American studio BAP Interactive. With a storyline loosely based on the film, the game was poorly received and has been criticised as a "Doom rip-off".

Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes (United Kingdom/Romania 2006: Dir Jake West) If one detected a tonal shift between the first Pumpkinhead movie and PII, then this one goes all the way. Filmed in Romania, with Romanian technical staff and actors, mixed with UK cast members with American accents and some authentic US ones, directed by a British guy; yep, it’s a right old mix.

Filmed for the Sci Fi channel (hence Pumpkinhead turning up in the first five minutes of the movie, a company requirement) this feels like one of the later 'Hellraiser' sequels, with its tentative nod to the original (in fact one of the effects team on this one, British born Gary J Tunnicliffe, wrote and directed the most recent addition to that franchise, Hellraiser: Judgment). 

So here we have the town’s doctor, Doc Fraser (Doug Bradley, another Hellraiser connection) who, in addition to his usual services, offers a lucrative organ harvesting sideline. The resulting dumped bodies, deposited by Bunt (Douglas Roberts), a survivor character from the first movie, are chucked into the local swamp. This activity is witnessed by a passing hiker who also ends up dead but not before being picked up by Molly Sue Allen (Tess Panzer) who alerts the police. Sadly the uncovering of the bodies also reveals the corpse of Molly Sue’s own child; she swears vengeance on all those involved in the deaths, and visits local witch Haggis (the character, not the actor, returning from the first movie; here she's played by Lynne Verrall) who resurrects Pumpkinhead.

The creature isn’t much different from the suited chap in PII – here played by two actors; well three if you include Lance Henriksen, persuaded to return to the role of Ed Harley and who turns out to be the beast in human form. It’s a relatively bloodless affair, befitting its made for TV status, rather heavy on the expository chat; it probably shouldn’t have included some flashbacks from the first two movies as they look much better than this one. I’ve always been of the opinion that Jake West is a far better documentary maker than feature film director, and sadly this film didn’t change my mind. A bit of a slog, then.

Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud (United Kingdom/Romania 2007: Dir Michael Hurst) Filmed in Romania back to back with the last entry in the franchise, this is in all ways a much better movie than the last one.

A long term feud has taken place between two families, the McCoys and the Hatfields, which often spills over into brawls, in true Montague and Capulet style. Our Romeo and Juliet here are Jodie Hartfield (Scottish actor Amy Manson), who is secretly seeing Ricky McCoy (English actor Bradley Taylor); on one of their evening trysts Ricky’s sister Sara (US actor Maria Roman) plays lookout, but to little effect: two of the McCoy clan intervene, and in the process Sara hits her head and dies. Ricky finds Sara’s body and, furious for vengeance, visits the witch Haggis (Lynne Verrall, reprising her role). Warning Ricky about the consequences, Haggis summons Pumpkinhead from his grave, and the slaughter of the Hatfields begins. As the bodies pile high, Jodie is powerless to stop the slaughter; until she realises that the creature and her boyfriend are connected.

Despite the fact that half the cast are either Romanians playing mid Westerners, or UK actors with southern accents, P4 hangs together pretty well. For a made for TV movie it’s pretty gory; entrails spill, heads are detached, a guy saws off his own leg, and the claret flows. This time the CGI has largely been ditched, so while P-head is just a guy in a suit (well guys – Bob Gunter and Mike J. Regan again – who also donned the suit in the last movie), he’s sufficiently vicious and flexible; a long way from the creature vision in the original. 

Best of all, Lance Henriksen returns, a sort of ghostlike figure floating around the set, dispensing Hallmark card style advice like “we are what we do”, causing cast members to consider their actions even if they don’t ultimately listen to him. P4 is probably the best of the three sequels; the Romanian woods don’t really convince as American ones and the buildings feel very un-townlike, but it’s quite tense and unhampered by an unnecessarily complicated story. 

However, the fact that there have been no P-head sequels since 2007 indicate that this vegetable may have exceeded its sell by date. The last I heard was a 2021 story regarding Paramount Players (who had recently rejuvenated the Paranormal Activity franchise and were behind Orphan: First Kill), in which Pumpkinhead was one of a number of intellectual properties being worked up by the company. Nothing has been heard of this since though. 

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2024 #3: Reviews of The Moor (UK 2023), Starve Acre (UK 2023), The Deadly Swarm (UK 2024), The Jack in the Box Rises (UK 2024), The Beast Within (UK 2024) and Ouija Castle (UK 2024)

The Moor (UK 2023: Dir Chris Cronin) Back in 1996, during a so called ‘Summer of Fear’ in a northern town (so named because of a rash of disappearances of young people causing the townsfolk to become overly protective of their sons and daughters) little Claire eggs on her young friend Danny to distract a shopkeeper while she secretly nicks sweets. But the jape goes wrong when Danny is mysteriously snatched, joining the ranks of the missing. And dead.

25 years later Claire (Sophia La Porta), now an entertainment podcaster, still harbours guilt, particularly when it appears that the man jailed for the crimes is set for release. She is approached by Danny’s father Bill (David Edward Robertson) to use her communication skills to help keep alive the search for the little boy’s body and the man responsible in prison; perhaps preying on that guilt he ropes in Claire, alongside psychic friend Alex (Mark Peachey) and Alex’s equally spiritually gifted daughter Eleanor (Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips), to comb the moors, which he believes is Danny’s resting place. But as the wild terrain begins to exert an eerie hold on the group, and Bill’s obsessiveness increases, Claire begins to feel that something more than human could be behind the mystery.

Chris Cronin’s debut feature isn’t afraid to take things slow; for most of its running time, The Moor is a prolonged but beautifully acted study in grief and the need to achieve closure in the face of the most horrific emotional suffering. Only in the film’s last third do the supernatural elements really introduce themselves, but the director handles this transition seamlessly; he may save his most shocking reveal until the film’s closing moments, but the sense of dread he builds up means that The Moor’s climax is both alarming and, strangely, satisfying.

La Porta and Robertson excel in their roles; the former a woman existing via a defining life moment in her past which dictates her present, and the latter consumed with the need to find both justice and solace. There’s a nagging sense of history throughout the movie; Bill’s search recalls the desperation of the family of Moors Murders victim Keith Bennett to find the location of his burial. As such an accusation of insensitivity could be levelled at the filmmakers, but The Moor is a considered and affecting film which strikes a powerful and horrifying balance between the human and the supernatural.

A version of this review was previously published on the Bloody Flicks site.

Starve Acre (UK 2023: Dir Daniel Kokotajlo) Kokotajlo's debut feature, 2017's stunning Apostasy, dealt with a crisis of faith facing a Jehovah's Witness mother. Faith of a very different kind is at the heart of his latest film.

Richard (Matt Smith), a teacher and archeologist, and his partner Juliette (Morfydd Clark) live in rural seclusion, at some point in the early 1970s (the time period is never specified beyond the visual clues of car registrations). Their young son is a troubled soul; as the film opens he has blinded a horse - recalling the character of Alan Strang in Peter Shaffer's 'Equus' - and his sleep talk is full of references to a character called Jack. Richard is concerned that his child may have learned this by listening too much to the folklore ramblings of his neighbour, Gordon (Sean Glider) and possibly Gordon's otherwordly wife (Melanie Kilburn).

One day when Richard is at work in the slightly stuffy school where he teaches, Juliette experiences something overwhelming when outside; in a possibly unrelated tragedy (although everything in Starve Acre is connected) at the same time her son dies, unaccountably. The death drives a wedge between the two parents; Richard seeks solace in archeological digs, uncovering and bringing home the skeleton of a large hare, whereas Juliette seeks the comfort of her practical sister Harrie (Erin Richards).

Richard's discovery of journals kept by his father Neil, entitled 'Starve Acre' and containing details of ceremonies in which Richard thinks he was forced to participate when younger, brings about something miraculous. Quite how much of what follows is the result of genuine magick or the mental state of two deeply traumatised people is never made clear; but Richard and Juliette find a way to heal their wounds and celebrate the cycle of existence.

It's a bold move for Kokotajlo to venture down the road of f*lk horror, and his movie can't help conjure up (no pun intended) memories of Ben Wheatley's In the Earth from 2021, Mark Jenkin's 2022 movie Enys Men, and also 1970s genre TV, specifically the 'Baby' episode from Nigel Kneale's Beasts TV plays all the way back in 1976. And indeed so familiar are the cultural signposts here - woodcuts, scenes of rural desolation, scratchy soundtrack (from Matthew Herbert) - that the film threatens to become overfamiliar very quickly. But it's saved from that fate by superb performances from Smith and Clark as the couple who lose everything but learn to recover their love, and the sheer level of care lavished by the director in creating a hermetically sealed world which may increasingly seem unhinged but remains totally plausible to those involved. It's a haunting little bit of cinema and I liked it a lot.

The Deadly Swarm (UK 2024: Dir David Gregory) Vampire flies, anyone? Yep, you read that right. On the surface Gregory's latest is yet another of those painful home grown horror movies with inept acting, youth hostel location doubling as country house setting and pitiful CGI. And while The Deadly Swarm has all those, it does at least attempt to recapture the fun of squishy 1980s monster flicks.

Four hapless twenty somethings - and for a change not a faux American accent between them, as is usual with these things - sign up to be human guinea pigs in a flu cure test. They are invited to the home/laboratory of Dr Holger Feldman (Richard Kovacs, whose insane performance not so much chews the scenery as devours it). The doc is cagey about the experiments; and rightly so. He's actually been breeding a 'Dracula fly', an insect so old it was responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs; it also may hold the cure for the disease which killed his wife and has now infected his son.

It's not long before the unsuspecting twenty somethings are having to battle swarms of CGI flies - make that murderous CGI flies - and the ever enlarging queen of the swarm gets to do battle with the Doc, who's slowly turning into a fly himself.

This is about as good as it sounds, but Gregory's creature feature is a little gorier than usual, so even if you're struggling to make sense of what you're watching, you can at least enjoy some reasonably well mounted splattery set pieces. But overall, Mr Gregory, I'm afraid your flies are undone.

The Jack in the Box Rises (UK 2024: Dir Lawrence Fowler) Now I quite liked Fowler's first two entries in his 'Jack in the Box' franchise, but for the most part this is just awful.

A shifty bloke called Harvey (Derek Nelson) wants to get hold of the Jack in the Box, so he sends Raven (Isabella Colby Browne), only survivor of a previous and ill starred recovery expedition, to go in and retrieve it. She's been chosen in part for her survival skills, but also that the estate, Rosewood Manor, where the JitB is hidden, has now been converted into an all girl's school; and Raven is all girl.

So for most of the movie we have Raven interacting with a bunch of bitchy classmates, while dealing with the school's hard as nails head honcho Principal Hinch (Lisa Antrobus); Hinch's best line, when describing conditions in her place of education, is to encourage her pupils not to think of the school as a prison because “in prison you’re allowed visitors”.

For those unfamiliar with the previous JitB films, when the Jack - the powerful demon whose full name is Jackestamara - is released from his box he must claim six victims, after which he grants the person who released him a wish. We learn a lot of this from a book found at the school, hand drawn but not proof read (a section is titled 'Encarceration of the Demon'). Things improve slightly when the Jack is released from his prison, but not that much; like all franchises, their success lives and dies by the ability to bring something new to a formula we've seen a few times before, and sadly there's nothing here to grab the attention. 

I do like it that these are productions of Fowler Media which seems to be the whole Fowler family employed in various duties; hats off to them, there aren't many families who could manage that. But come on, if you're going to go to the effort of adding to the canon of the independent British horror film, please have a good script, fleshed out characters and, oh yeah; pacing. 

The Beast Within (UK 2024: Dir Alexander J. Farrell) 10-year-old Willow (Caoilinn Springall from Stopmotion) lives an unusual life; a sickly child, relying on regular oxygen from a cannister she carries around with her, Willow shares her home with her mother Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings), grandfather Waylon (James Cosmo)...and her often absent father, Noah (Kit Harington). When dad's home he's more often than not locked in his room, or bundled in the back of a van.

Willow experiences the dysfunctional operation of the household through young innocent eyes, struggling to understand why her mother is protective of Noah but at the same time keen to escape, particularly around the time of the full moon; Waylon meanwhile remains barely tolerant of Noah's behaviour. Things continue in this way until an intervention from Willow's father provides the details of his family history and brings matters to a fiery conclusion.

Ultimately little is what it seems in The Beast Within, and there's a fairytale quality to the film which renders the events somewhat dreamlike and oblique. 'There are two wolves inside of us...they are always at war' states the proverb at the movie's beginning, setting out its metaphoric take on the traditional werewolf story. In the final analysis, despite some solid acting (particularly from Springall as the child whose eyes provide the window to the sights onscreen), Farrell's movie is more impressive visually than narratively; relationships between family members remain muddy and unresolved, and the film's USP - the conflation of lycanthropy with the unpredictability of a violent man within the household, becomes overlaboured.

The Beast Within is released on digital platforms from 19 August.

Ouija Castle (UK 2024: Dir Louisa Warren) Of the five features released this year by the prolific Ms Warren, two have been 'fantastic' films and both - this one and Cinderella's Curse - are horrific riffs on well known fairy tales.

The genesis of the oddly named Ouija Castle (ok there's a Ouija board and a sort of castle in the movie but huh?) is the story of Sleeping Beaty, but that's just the jumping off point for some very dark shenanigans.

Princess Thalia, whose claim to royalty has failed following the death of her father, is a pure soul in love with the dashing Prince Edison. But Edison's mother, Queen Primrose, cannot agree to the match and would prefer her son to marry Sofia, who has better prospects; Sofia's mother Velma, a particularly odious person desperate for power, has a ouija board seemingly made out of human skin, which when played conjures a demon, Zazid, who does her bidding.

Velma, keen for her daughter to marry, thus securing her own future, causes Thalia to prick herself with a strong sleeping potion that keeps her out of the way, while also impregnating her courtesy of the awful family doctor, Leland. But the sleeping potion doesn't last, and eight months after it was administered, Thalia regains consciousness, finds out that Primrose has been murdered, and plans her revenge against the whole bally lot of them.

Like Cinderella's Curse, this film shows a considerable step up in Warren's filmmaking and, like its companion movie, also increases the bloodletting and overall carnage. Ouija Castle features baby boiling, a scalping, a face being ripped off, and various other grisly touches; concluding with, as does CC, a bloody party/revenge finale (both films sharing the same location, south London's Rivoli Ballroom). At over 90 minutes there are moments where the movie drags a little, but Ouija Castle revels in its nastiness and high body count. Warren is getting better and better at this.

Kneecap (Ireland 2024: Dir Rich Peppiatt)

For anyone thinking that Ireland has become a quiet place after 'The Troubles', think again. The setting of Kneecap may look like the 1970s, but it's actually West Belfast in 2019. Arló Ó Cairealláin (Michael Fassbender), an IRA sympathiser, decides to do a runner when his activities draw the attention of the powers that be. Faking his death, he leaves behind his wife Dolores (Simone Kirby) who gradually falls into depression, and two young sons, played by Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and Naoise Ó Cairealláin.

Neither lad is set for a career of academic excellence, but two things which they do well are selling (and taking) drugs, and having a penchant for writing lyrics, controversially in the Irish language (the film's legislative background is the formation of, and opposition to, what would eventually become the Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022). 

When local music teacher and part time DJ JJ Ó Dochartaigh (who is brought in to interpret for the authorities when Liam refuses to speak English) comes across the pair's notebook, full of Irish Gaelic verse which he can convert into raps over his beats (and help his agenda to spread the word - literally - about the use of the indigenous tongue and counter British imperialism), an unlikely alliance between the three begins. The straight laced teacher, reborn as DJ Próvai (the name derives from the Provo mask he's forced to wear onstage to avoid being recognised) is thrown into a world of new experiences, chemical and musical.

Meanwhile the police, in the stern form of Josie Walker's hard nosed Detective Ellis (also, awkwardly, the mother of Liam's Protestant girlfriend, a relationship that brings its own problems), pursues her relentless enquiries as to the real story behind Ó Cairealláin's disappearance: as the trio, who name themselves 'Kneecap' after the popular skill used by the police for extracting confessions, rise to bigger heights.

The obvious jumping off point for an appreciation of Kneecap is Danny Boyle's 1996 movie Trainspotting, but I'm sure that Peppiatt would tell me to fuck off as that movie is nearly thirty years old. But in its use of fantasy sequences, candid scenes of drug use (or 'misuse' as the BBFC description would have it) and scattergun editorial approach I think the comparison still holds. Kneecap uses splitscreen, ruthless and anarchic editing and, in a scene which made me laugh out loud, claymation to replicate a Ketamine wigout. The three members of 'Kneecap' aka Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara and DJ Próvai all play themselves and there's a lot to like about their rudimentary performances and natural humour.

At times the scrappiness threatens to be the film's defining feature and there's a certain episodic quality to Kneecap which occasionally gets in the way of telling the story. But overall this is a riot of a film and Kneecap's music, unknown to this writer and, I suspect, a lot of the viewing audience, carries the whole thing through to its middle finger flipping end. It may be a drug fuelled musical rags to (sort of) riches story, but at its heart Kneecap is something a lot fiercer.

Kneecap is released in UK cinemas on 23 August.

Sleep aka Jam (South Korea 2023: Dir Jason Yu)

In Yu's clever and impeccably acted debut feature, successful actor Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) and his heavily pregnant estate agent wife Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) live happily in their small apartment, eagerly awaiting their new bundle of joy.

Their life becomes disrupted when Hyun-su begins showing signs of sleep disturbance, deeply scratching his face during the night, the wounds resulting in him losing the acting role to which he aspired. Added to this their downstairs neighbour, somewhat bafflingly, complains about excess noise from the couple's flat.

Hyun-Su's symptoms get worse; Soo-jin wakes up one night to find her somnambulous husband eating raw meat, eggs and fish straight from the fridge, narrowly stopping him throwing himself out of the window. Even more horrifyingly, one morning she finds their cute little Pomeranian dog in the freezer.

While her husband seeks a medical solution for his condition, which is diagnosed as REM sleep behaviour disorder - and medicated accordingly - things don't seem to be improving. On the advice of her mother, and concerned about the potential safety of their now just born baby, Soo-jin consults a shaman, and from there a supernatural element creeps into proceedings; the battle for Hyun-Su's recovery - and indeed soul - has begun.

The genius of Sleep is its transformation from light comedy to domestic drama to, well, something a lot darker, achieved effortlessly and, for the most part, in the confines of the couple's modest apartment. Much of the credit for this is due to the perfect casting of Sun-kyun and Yu-mi; this is, essentially, a two hander requiring, by the end, a massive suspension of disbelief, which the pair effortlessly manage.

This is also a film which, in quite an extreme way, details the way in which cracks can appear in otherwise sound relationships. In other dramas the tensions here would arise from, perhaps, the change wrought by the arrival of a new baby. Sleep turns this on its head by those changes coming from an existing member of the household. Words contained on a plaque on the couple's wall remind them that, as a married couple, they are able to face problems together; but when the problem is outside of their control, watching their attempts to adhere to the message are both tragic and, on occasion, darkly humorous.

Yu's previous experience includes AD work on Bong Joon Ho's excellent 2017 movie Okja, and there's something of that director's humanity amid the fantastic - and of finding comedy in situations rather than dialogue - at work here. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next.

Sleep is in UK cinemas from 12 July.

In A Violent Nature (Canada 2024: Dir Chris Nash)

The slasher genre continues to throw up examples of movies which show there's still life blood left in a format which has basically been following the same template for decades. The Terrifier franchise, the third instalment of which is due in cinemas this year, and the evergreen Scream movies - six entries in and counting - are living proof that there's still an audience - indeed a new generation - for masked killers.

But here comes Canadian Chris Nash with his debut feature, which has taken the genre in a rather different direction. On the surface the template remains unbroken; a group of young people in the woods, looking to party, get picked off one by one by a powerful, unstoppable human monster. 

But In a Violent Nature, from its obscure title to its whole mis en scene, turns the familiar on its head. The teen victims are in this case entirely background characters; IaVN front and centres its killer in a way that hasn't been attempted since Scott Glosserman's underrated 2006 movie Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

When we first meet the slasher in question, Johnny (Ry Barrett), he's rising from a woodland grave, his corpse previously kept in place by a locket which is draped over the struts of a fire tower, under which his body is contained. When the locket is purloined by one of the kids (and I'll let you watch the movie to find out why the piece of jewellery is important) Johnny is free to roam - and kill.

If you ever spent any time wondering what Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers did in the scenes when they weren't on screen in those seminal 1980s movies, IaVN kind of answers it, 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' style (Tom Stoppard's 1966 play which foregrounds two minor characters in 'Hamlet'). We spend a lot of time, POV style, with the camera behind our killer as he trudges through the undergrowth, seeking out people to kill, a lonely furrow which is, amusingly, only sometimes purposeful. 

And those kills, when they come, are generally of the mind boggling, practical Terrifier type variety (in fact their extremity, bordering on the ludicrous, is possibly the only sour note in the whole thing). Far more effective, in my eyes, is a scene where Johnny disappears into a wide lake with one of the kids swimming, almost off camera, on the far side. There's an agonising delay while we wait for the inevitable; little is shown but the sheer oddness of the sequence makes it much more unsettling than the overt stuff.

Props also to the extended final girl section, almost an anticlimax, which ratchets up the tension, letting the viewer's mind do the work, and questioning our expectations about what we expect from a film like this.

IaVN has been reviewed as an arthouse horror movie, and while that's not an unfair comment, it shouldn't be dismissed by those naturally turned off by the concept of el*vated horror. Beautifully shot in academy ratio, containing the tension and the POV nature of the footage, the film eschews the traditional fright flick soundtrack usual for this sort of thing, letting nature and the sound of the woods provide the audio. Johnny's quest is slow, relentless and claustrophobic; the fact that the town authorities are aware of the threat, but powerless to do much about it, makes the film more powerful. Excellent stuff.

In a Violent Nature is released in UK cinemas on 12 July.