The Woman in the Yard (USA 2025: Dir Jaume Collet-Serra)

Spanish director Collet-Serra has dipped his toes into the 'Fantastic' genre several times before, including his debut feature, 2005's House of Wax and 2009's Orphan (I'm still not sure that shark movies - in this case his The Shallows from 2016 - count as 'Fantastic' movies). For his latest outing he's sticking a whole foot in.

Danielle Deadwyler is Ramona, a woman injured in a car crash which killed her husband David (Russell Hornsby). Now a single parent with two kids, adolescent Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and young Annie (Estella Kahiha), Ramona is struggling. As well as the bills piling up, the family live on a remote farm which David bought as a 'fixer upper' opportunity as is pretty much falling apart. The wrecked car in which David died stands outside the house covered in tarpaulin, for reasons that aren't immediately clear.

Tensions run high from the beginning, particularly between Taylor and his mum; a power outage means that not only is her son unable to play video games, but the single mobile phone in the house is out of charge, so there's no prospect of finding out when the electricity is coming back on.

Into this rather tense setup comes a strange and unwanted addition; as the title of the movie sets out abundantly clearly, there's a woman in the yard, dressed in black and sitting on a wrought iron chair facing away from the house. When questioned, Ramona is unable to get much sense out of her, but recoils at the sight of blood on the odd visitor's hands. Taylor, always keen to assume 'man of the house' status in his father's absence, suggests a more direct approach, particularly when it seems that the woman, still seated, is getting nearer the house.

With this rather M. Night Shyamalan setup in place, the spookiness starts; family tensions spill over, secrets are revealed and Ramona must face a difficult decision. It's at this point that most critics seem to have written the movie off as 'silly' and 'confusing'. I would agree with the last word, but grief and guilt make the world confusing for anyone who finds themselves in those states. It's definitely not 'silly' though; the closest comparison, in feel rather than detail, was Adrian Lyne's 1990 movie Jacob's Ladder.

The Woman in the Yard is by no means a perfect film - it veers from one mood to another alarmingly quickly - if the expected effect was to unseat the audience, then the director succeeded. I'm not sure if the whole thing wasn't just a little too oblique to be really satisfying (and the central 'woman in the yard' premise didn't really work for me), but I applauded the wonkiness of it and the refusal to play by accepted narrative rules. 

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #22: Reviews of Daytime Nightmare (UK 2020), Expiry (UK 2021), Manhunt: Kill or Be Killed (UK 2021), The Censor (UK 2021), Deadly Nightshade (UK 2021) and Shunner (UK 2021)

Daytime Nightmare (UK 2020: Dir Katrina Grey) Grey plays Lucy, a teacher (although we never see her in that profession) who has aspirations to act. She signs on for an acting class where she's immediately attracted to fellow thesp in waiting Chris (Alexander Winters).

Home is a large house she shares with the rather taciturn Sara (Christiana Chaiwanna), a woman who seems somewhat unsupportive of her housemate's ambitions. As Lucy progresses in class, enjoying the camaraderie of her colleagues and inspired by her teacher, Mr Shaw (Jonathan Sampson), Sara is increasingly frozen out of her friend's life.

Increasingly mistrustful of her housemate, Lucy, who we learn has a history of schizophrenia in her family, experiences a downturn in her mental health, first through headaches and later nightmarish visions of friends and family trying to kill her. Lucy's life spins out of control, but is it all in her head, or are external forces out to harm her?

Apparently based on an actual experience with a stalker, Daytime Nightmare, written, produced and directed by Grey with musical assistance from her husband Randy Kalsi (who also has a bit part as a cab driver), is, as you would expect, intensely personal; at times it feels like we're intruding in a particularly gruelling therapy session. The problem is that, apart from Lucy's outbursts and her visions, everything else in the film is so understated that things progress quite flatly. It's ironic that, as a group of actors, Grey's company vary in their skills; there's no real compelling performance here, possibly to help the director stand out in her own.

To be honest, apart from the sometimes rather nightmarish visions, this is only marginally a 'Fantastic' film; shot in 2020 but released in the UK a year later. It looks lovely though, although the Thai locations are perhaps not expected, and it's certainly an at times uncomfortable watch.

Expiry (UK 2021: Dir Tom Gatley) Gatley's only feature to date is a disquieting, arid sci fi drama which nods to The Handmaid's Tale in its story of one possible near future.

Jamie (Richard Miltiadis) and Sophie (Sarah-Louise Tyler), a married couple are, when we meet them, having trouble conceiving a child. The stress associated with this situation is compounded by a time limit placed on the union by unseen bureaucracy. The future in which Jamie and Sophie live places strict temporal boundaries on marriages which are incompatible; couples are bonded by bracelets which turn red once a marriage has reached its sell by date (five years). In the normal course of events (well, normal in relation to events in the film) both partners would be free to pursue other, more fruitful relationships.

But Jamie and Sophie are different. Their lives operate outside of the convention of this sort of marriage; they love each other and are keen to bypass the state's writing off of their union. But there's a complication; Sophie is a 'foreigner' from the western states, and an end to the marriage means that she will be returned there.

Expiry has some rather damning things to say about state intervention, the increasing isolation of society and the condition of marriage seen as something purely transactional. Jamie and Sophie both regularly attend (separate) therapy sessions, but in each case the therapist is a computer; just one more untrustworthy institution. Sofia's job in a restaurant is blighted by her fellow waitress, the wife of the owner, who pours scorn on her status; Sofia is to all intents and purposes a refugee, a successful marriage her only chance at establishing an acceptable identity.

There is, thankfully, a redemptive solution, but it's a cold. glacial journey to get there. Expiry boldly fails to rush its story which can make it a slightly soporific watch, and there's a sense of ennui over the whole thing, not helped by the bleak urban landscape which is the couple's home. But it's great low budget filmmaking, full of ideas; a shame that Gatley hasn't followed this up with another feature.

Manhunt: Kill or Be Killed (UK 2021: Dir Darren J. Power) This short just inches in to the NWotBFF requirements (which states that, for inclusion, films have to be at least 20 minutes) and is, according to the title screen, a proof of concept for a bigger project, as yet unfilmed, called 'Manhunt; Follow the White Rabbit'.

Don't let the hockey mask in the poster fool you; this isn't some Friday the 13th fan film. But the premise is simple: Conard (sp?), played by Mark Sears, and his girlfriend Roxanne (genre favourite Tiffany-Ellen Robinson) are getting it on. Later Conard wakes up, having been knocked out, and Roxanne is missing. He's instructed by a remote voice to load a video cassette (appropriately marked 'play me') into a VCR, where he sees footage of two masked men with Roxanne.

The control voice issues a simple instruction; if Conard wants to see Roxanne again, he must murder some people. If he fails he'll die; the 'kill or be killed' of the title. Which for the second half of the 20 minute short he does, using various implements including, but not limited to a plastic bag and a hammer, despatching various guys in masks. The murders over, Conard moves to get Roxanne back, but the big cheese, Bishop Howser (Howy Bratherton) has other ideas. 

You can watch Manhunt: Kill or Be Killed here.

The Censor (UK 2021: Dir Guerrilla Metropolitana) Welcome to the 'esoteric' part of the round up. Subheaded 'A British Horror Tale of Real Politics and Social Moral Code', Guerilla Metropolitana's work is "influenced by expressionism, neo-realism, surrealism, pop-art, erotica, underground and other styles".

Against a background of riots and civil unrest, Sir Philip Reginald Tangen III (Metropolitana) is President of the National Film Censorship Association, responsible for safeguarding the nation's morals. The author of a new Obscenity Act, following the activities of one Graham Bright MP back in the 1980s (the politician who led the fight back against the so called Video Nasties), he has identified at least 32 movie titles which he wants to ban.

But Tangen has another life; we see him proposition a young man on a skateboard (also the director), drug and, off camera but captured through sound and visuals of naked men, serially abuse him. And this guy is not the first; he is the 34th young man to have gone missing, the assumption being that Tangen is responsible for, as the caption suggests, these acts of 'Exoletus'. But it looks like The Censor's latest victim might also be his last.

Although only 44 minutes long, The Censor is true cinema as art. Choral music and strange sounds (created by 'Monoxide', Metropolitana's previous band) provide the aural backdrop to a succession of harsh, filtered visuals, exposing the scummy outskirts of a city. Hard to follow these images might be, but they have a rancid power. The horror here is concerned with power and manipulation.

You can watch The Censor here

Deadly Nightshade (UK 2021: Dir Benjamin Rider) And the esoteric offerings in this round up continue. So did you ever have a moment where your world went all pear shaped and you found you were actually the subject of a TV show? No, me neither, but that's the predicament in which Victoria (Suzie Houlihan) finds herself when she gets back to her flat in Brixton, hoping to be whisked away on a romantic weekend with boyfriend Marcus (Matthew Laird). Instead she finds a stranger at home in the shape of Adam (Christopher Blackburn), supposedly a friend of Marcus's, who has been given permission to stay at the apartment while the couple are away. Adam wants her to listen to some tapes; firstly of an obscure band and later a recording of an exorcism.

The return of Marcus, complete with bloodied hand, takes things a step further; apparently he witnessed a car accident and rescued one of the vehicle's occupants. Shaken up, he retires to bed; Victoria then experiences a series of visions which are only the beginning of her nightmare weekend.

Described as a 'mostly improvised feature film', Deadly Nightshade has some good, at times vaguely Lynchian ideas, with a big thank you to 1998's The Truman Show, but squanders them with a confusing setup and flat characters. The TV/game framing is well mounted for what must have been a COVID limited production, but the presence of the ubiquitous Eric Roberts, as a dog collared expert on the supernatural, adds nothing to an already messy project. Well done for getting the thing together at all in the midst of a pandemic, but there's little to take away from this film besides a mild sense of confusion.

Shunner (UK 2021: Dir Michael Fenton Crenshaw) You want more esoterica? Walk this way. The third instalment of the director's 'Left Hand' trilogy, commencing with 2017's The Left Hand Path and then 2020's The House of the Laughing Cuckoo Clocks, Shunner is a no more or less difficult watch than the previous two films.

Set in the liminal spaces of the Essex coast and countryside, several extended scenes tell a loose story of ritual and magick: a dirty old man tries to seduce a passing woman who may in reality be a decomposed body, which he attacks and beheads; the same dirty old man puts on a pair of black gloves and has sex with a blow up doll in a grimy concrete shelter, but is shamed by a distant voice (he will eventually be stabbed in the forest by a pair of witches for stealing an amulet); a very odd convenience shop sells tarot cards, a blood tipped stake, masks and religious artefacts.

All of this is clearly heavily symbolic and rather baffling. Sound and vision are stretched and mutated, and characters from other trilogy instalments here re-appear. Some probably not rights cleared music - in particular by David Last House on the Left Hess - plays awkwardly against the odd goings on. Crenshaw is a filmmaker of some considerable experience; his features are willfully obscure but never boring. But they sure are headscratchy.

You can watch Shunner here.

Screamboat (USA 2025: Dir Steven LaMorte)

The Staten Island ferry is a New York institution dating back to the 1920s, connecting the island to Manhattan. As a free service it's used by a wide cross section of the population, something Steven LaMorte exploits in his latest fright flick.

Rushing to catch a late night crossing, a disparate group of people board the boat, from sleepy drunks to mothers and kids keen to get home; occupants also include lonesome down on her luck designer Selena (Allison Pittel) and a rowdy group of social media obsessed party girls, out to celebrate the birthday of one of their own.

But there's another less visible occupant of the vessel; a discarded stowaway who wakes from a decades long slumber, his rest disrupted by a ferry maintenance team who become the first victims of an orgy of death; it's Steamboat Willie (David Howard Thornton), a pint size mutated mouse with a very familiar laugh! For Screamboat, if you've not guessed yet, is a sort of reboot of the famous 1928 animated short of the same name, which launched the 'career' of Mickey Mouse.

In order for Willie to carry out his campaign of violence it's essential that the boat be isolated, which LaMorte achieves via a tried and tested disaster movie plot device; the ferry, detained in port because of tricky weather conditions which have cancelled all other services, is ill advisedly given permission to set off due to a combination of an impatient and overtime fatigued captain and a benevolent service operator.

Not done with the disaster movie cliches, grumpy Selena gets a sort of meet cute with ferry employee Pete (Jesse Posey), and practical EMT staffer Amber (Amy Schumacher) is onhand as the slightly older character with medical expertise who keeps a clear head when all around is mayhem; and she's in for a busy night, as is Selena, to whom Willie shows an immediate attachment, his first glimpse of the girl haloed in an imagined ring of human hearts. 

LaMorte takes a little time to offer some wider societal observations as well. As the danger rises, and despite the boat's passengers being a real New York mix of ethnicities and genders, the most espoused view about the reasons behind the mayhem seems to be 'terrorists'. The Statue of Liberty comes in for a bit of a bashing too, One of the ferry passengers, presumably returning from a costume party dressed as Lady Liberty, leaves the head of the ensemble lying discarded on the floor. And in another scene, as the ferry passes the Statue, the view is obscured by a passing boat piled high with trash.

But the star of the show is Willie himself. His backstory, involving uncle Walt and peddling the myth about the supposed disaffection between creator and created, is beautifully delivered via some fine animation work from Christian Cordella and Tahnee Gehm.

Screamboat's shtick is that Willie (who cannot be named as M*ckey for similar copyright reasons as LaMorte encountered in being unable to title the creature of his previous fright flick, The Mean One, as the Gr*nch) may only be waist high, but has all the manic, creatively deadly energy of the Terrifier franchise's Art the Clown, Thornton's previous and arguably most famous role. Personally I found the violence in those movies just a little too over the top (and yes, I'm aware that was the intention), but here Willie's acts of mayhem feel like the more elegant set pieces of 1980s slice 'n' dice movies, complete with superb practical effects (they're also in the spirit of the original shenanigans in Steamboat Willie). Announcing his arrival by whistling 'Steamboat Bill' (from the original short film, but here taking on a more creepy aspect), there's even a scene, recreated from the animated short, where little Willie takes the vessel's helm, but here he's only able to reach it by standing on the body of one of his victims.

The hurried appropriation of newly-in-the-public-domain fictional characters for horror movie subject matter has, admittedly, been a bit of a bumpy road (the 'Steamboat Willie' character entered the public domain on January 1, 2024, just one day before work started on Screamboat) but whereas previous adaptations (Winnie the Pooh, I'm looking at you) have failed through a combination of a lack of budget and, frankly, directorial talent, Screamboat succeeds because it's fast, furious and situationally very funny. As one of the characters in the movie comments, "everything gets recycled", but when it's done this well, all is forgiven.

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #21 SCI FI SPECIAL! Reviews of Star Warrior: The Legend of Aciris (UK 2021), Creatures (UK 2021), Phase (UK 2021), Settlers (UK/South Africa 2021), White Sky (UK 2021) and How to Survive the End of the World (UK 2021)

Star Warrior: The Legend of Aciris (UK 2021: Dir Mark Dowie) In a 2020 podcast Gateshead based director Dowie listed the two actors he'd most like to work with; Daniel Day Lewis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It will surprise hardly anybody that neither actor features in Mark's debut feature.

In fact most of the cast of Dowie's green screen sci fi saga seem to have been recruited for their ability to a) make the shooting dates and b) work for biscuits; clearly most of the film's £10K shooting budget was spent on special effects and costumes.

A slightly confusing story has the Aciris of the title (Philip Moon) abducted as a boy and delivered to a far away planet as a mining slave. He is eventually recruited into a gang of renegades keen to rescue their home planet from a group of power hungry aliens.

Dowie is clearly in thrall to the 'Star Wars' franchise; SW: THoA started off as a story which turned into a book, and it shows; the film's meagre running time is chock full of characters, all standing around talking and pointing at things they can't see. Despite the inventiveness on show in terms of the micro budget visuals, spending 70 or so minutes in the company of a group of actors who - sorry - generally can't act gets a bit wearing. This looks like it was a real labour of love to put together and, while it's not a one man show, Dowie features heavily in the end credits. The director has since branched out into the world of documentaries, covering subjects as diverse as witches, cats, Bigfoot and Jesus. Sadly not all in the same film.

Creatures (UK 2021: Dir Tony Jopia) Throughout the second decade of the 21st Century, Jopia carved himself a career as a director of low budget fright flicks like Deadtime (2012), Crying Wolf 3D (2015), Cute Little Buggers and Dawning of the Dead (both 2017). Creatures marked an end to that string of movies; a film described by the director as a “Gremlins meets Kill Bill meets Shaun of the Dead” mashup. A film described by me as... well read on.

A group of rather long in the tooth, boisterous (and casually racist) university students, headed by their Astronomy teacher Mr Serling (Romain Barbey) have taken a coach trip out into the countryside to track a comet. They get more than they bargained for when a flying sheep's head hits the vehicle's window, and the group discover what looks like a crashed spacecraft. They also come across a small, furry creature who they name 'Mumpy'. But Mumpy isn't alone. A group of aliens, looking like they've strayed out of a Charles Band movie, are keen to retrieve the beast. They also have the power to kill and enslave humans, turning them into mindless zombies. What's left of the student party, following the alien attack, make it to a country house where, together with its occupants, they defend themselves against the attacking creatures from another world, and Japanese student Akane Ito (Rina Saito) saves the day.

Creatures improves significantly in its second half, although that's a relative term. Although competently filmed, this is an overlong movie which takes a thin premise and stretches it agonisingly. It's hard to know who Jopia was pitching this to; the cutesy Gremlins stuff is cut with various effing and jeffing, feeble class comedy and an uneasy mix of practical and CGI gore. Worse is the racism. Akane's bursts of action are accompanied by, I kid you not, an 'oriental' musical theme as she throws martial arts shapes at the invaders. Things aren't helped by a puerile script with killer lines like "Excuse me, this isn't Brexit" when two characters argue and "your family has come to collect you", remarked to a Mexican student as the aliens appear. Pretty atrocious all round really.

Phase (UK 2021: Dir Richard Sandling) Writer and TV actor Sandling's only feature (if indeed you could call it that) is only nominally a 'Fantastic' film. Actually made in 2020 at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, his Zoom comedy takes us back the heady days of lockdown when most people went slightly gaga and social connection took a nose dive.

Richie (Sandling) talks to his bemused parents (dad is comedian Steven Frost) who haven't quite got the hang of the whole isolation thing. He has regular chats with an actor girlfriend who, as a self confessed 'Furlough Merlot' fan currently on Universal Credit, seems quite content to do naff all while living at her parents' house. Richie also has a rather messy on off relationship with his real girlfriend; oh and in his online therapy sessions he fesses up that there is a parallel Richie in his bedroom. Things turn weird when a conspiracy theory mate starts to make a bit of sense; are the aliens taking over?

Phase is saved from tedium - it's nearly 90 minutes of Zoom windows with little happening - by some very funny performances, including a social media person who makes the Nathan Barley character tolerable, and some terrible on line poetry - plus you get a (rather good) song from Sandling in his dark wave Synthemesc guise. 

Settlers (UK/South Africa 2021: Dir Wyatt Rockefeller) Not to be confused with the famous antacid tablet (that's ‘Setlers’ anyway), this is the first feature from the impressively named Wyatt Rockefeller, whose other claims to fame is that he worked on President Obama’s first Presidential campaign; oh and he's descended from those Rockefellas.

Reza (Jonny Lee Miller), his wife Ilsa (Sofia Boutella) and their daughter Remy (Brooklynn Prince, later Nell Tiger Free), together with a squat robot named ‘Steve’ and a litter of pigs, live on a farmstead in a remote part of Mars – actually it’s all pretty remote. There’s a suggestion that Earth has declined at some point in the past, forcing its population to leave the planet. Things are pretty hard and Remy is fiercely protected from the outside by her parents; a position justified when the family wake up one morning to find a single word 'Leave' painted on their windows in what could be blood.

The arrival of an armed stranger called Jerry (Ismael Cruz Cordova) on the scene rapidly disrupts the family setup; Reza is killed, and the interloper claims that the site in which mother and daughter are living once belonged to him, demanding ownership. An uneasy alliance develops between the three of them, which eventually turns into tragedy.

Settlers is, on the surface, a homesteading Western in space (well specifically on Mars). It’s at times a tough watch; the claustrophobic atmosphere and small cast keep things frighteningly self-contained. There are no Planet of the Apes type reveals or M. Night Shyamalan twists, and the only explanation offered in the movie is around people’s ability to breathe freely on the planet.

The film is perhaps too tonally one dimensional to fully engage, and slightly overlong too (the middle section drags a bit). However it’s sumptuously filmed, with the South African desert standing in for the Red Planet, and both actors playing Remy are terrific in their roles. 

White Sky (UK 2021: Dir Adam Wilson) Wilson's second feature, after 2020's Crawl to Me Darling, is a sci-fi movie which follows the tried and tested formula of a lot of genre TV; frontload all your effects  - the good stuff - and then fill the rest with human drama.

Sisters Sienna (Makenna Guyler) and Hailey (Natalie Martins) leave on a camping weekend with Hailey's boyfriend Josh (Jordan Mcfarlane); Sienna is a drug addict in recovery, and her sister hopes that the break will be good for her rehab.

Pretty much as soon as they arrive they witness a large spacecraft hovering over the city they have just left, which deposits large amounts of some form of white powder on the population. The trio are set upon by zombie like humans - called The Altered -  their state due to to the white powder which surrounds them as they attack. Sienna and friends are also overcome by an unknown force and wake up, confused, some time later.

Keen to remain safe, they run into Liam (Ade Dimberline), a resourceful chap who has some knowledge of the aliens' activity, if not their overall goal. But Liam shows a different side when it transpires that he's involved in drugs, reigniting Sienna's addiction; and then Josh starts showing signs of infection.

Although overlong - at nearly one hour and three quarters - and jettisoning most of the sci fi elements pretty quickly, this four hander is certainly not without interest. Nothing is explained, leaving the quartet of survivors rather purposeless, and their gradual breakdown feels genuine. Strongly acted and filmed against a stunning forest backdrop, White Sky is a different beast to his former movie, but Wilson's depiction of humans at war with each other remains a constant in his films. 

How to Survive the End of the World (UK 2021: Dir James Wilsher) Every so often a film critic gets their dream; to discover and write about a movie which no one else seems to have latched onto, and is worthy of praise. HoStEofW is such a film.

Max (Jake William Francis) and Liz (Lily Streames) are a couple having one of those awkward 'is it over?' relationship conversations in a Lincoln cafe when Max is distracted by the sight of people running for their life on the street outside.

Yes, as the film's title suggests, it's the end of the world; an alien invasion has laid waste to cities across the world. Not that you see any of this of course; this is low budget filmmaking.

One week later and Max and Liz, now handily armed with machine guns, are thrown together as survivors, and have decided to venture to Max's uncle George (John Newell), a resourceful scientist turned farmer. The problem is that he lives in St. Ives in Cornwall; a trip of around 340 miles. Along the route they encounter a few survivors, in the form of the rather stoned Irish Rick (Elliot Bigden) who lives in Bristol, and later three members of a branch of the British army, led by the increasingly insecure Captain Thomas (Martin Caroll). But when they finally make it to Uncle George's they find that he has captured one of the invaders and is giving his scientific curiosity full rein.

Wilsher's film tells us a couple of things; firstly, just because the world as we know it has come to an end, it doesn't mean that your relationship problems are suddenly over. Max and Liz continue to bicker; it's clear that she's still in love, whereas Max is avoiding the issue. This rather bizarre setup continues until the director shows his hand with the arrival of the army guys; in a tense stand off Max decides that the only way to have them confirm their true military credentials is by them singing the seldom heard second verse of the National Anthem, a task only achieved by the soldiers pooling their collective recall. This is the second lesson of the film; that there can be comedy in tragedy. Wisher doesn't play his movie completely for laughs, although a chance meeting en route with Max's ditzy first girlfriend, Becca (Rebecca Ward) takes us pretty near. In fact it's this uneasy mix of tones which really makes HtStEofW stand out. 

At nearly an hour and three quarters, with a small cast and very little going on for the most part (although congratulations to Stewart Cope for some nifty final reel F/X), this movie shouldn't work; but I loved it. It's mournful, occasionally tragic and ultimately uplifting. Francis and Streames are a great (non) couple, and the intelligent script, great support cast and sympathetic soundtrack made this a real find.

You can watch How to Survive the End of the World here. Please do.

Time Travel is Dangerous! (UK 2024: Dir Chris Reading)

Reading's first feature was the ambitious 2017 movie sci-fi adventure Somnus; eight years later he's returned to the genre with something very different.

Ruth and Megan jointly own 'Cha Cha Cha', a vintage shop in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill. They have significantly improved the quality of stock for sale by coming across a discarded time machine (a sort of fairground bumper car with extra wires attached) which they use to visit - and plunder from - various periods of history, from Neolithic Britain to the Napoleonic battles and the American Civil War.

Their activities draw the attention of Martin Onions (Guy Henry), chairman of the local science society (a sort of gathering of failed inventors), who forbids them from using the machine because of its potential space/time side effects. It was originally developed by two other members of the society, Ralph Sheldrake (Brian Bovell) and Valerie Lancaster (Sophie Thompson) who, with their cantankerous computer assistant 'Botty' (Johnny Vegas), co-hosted a popular TV science show back in the 1980s, 'The Future Today'. But the machine malfunctioned, and Ralph inexpertly disposed of it; which is where Ruth and Megan came in. 

Short of money, pressurised for rent by their horrible landlord (Simon Killick) and contrary to Martin's direction, the shop owners resume their time travelling activities. But things go wrong during one of the trips and Megan is thrown into another dimension; it's left for the science society and Ruth to work together to retrieve the shop owner.

The reason for recounting some of the plot of the movie so blandly is to explain the context. For Ruth Syratt and Megan Stevenson both lead the movie. But they're actually the owners of 'Cha Cha Cha', which is a real shop in Muswell Hill. That the pair, as non actors, make such engaging and funny leads is amazing in itself. That the film in which they act is a hilarious, inventive sci fi comedy makes TTiD! a real find.

In the same way that Ruth and Megan plunder history, Chris Reading borrows influences to give his feature a familiar feel. An explanatory voice over by Stephen Fry is reminiscent of Peter Jones's narration in the TV version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Event Horizon gets a look in too. Ruth and Megan are complemented by a host of British comedy stalwarts; as well as the aforementioned Henry, Bovell, Thompson and Vegas, other familiar faces include Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Jane Horrocks, Mark Heap and Brian Blessed as the voice of a plant creature called Gavin the Octopus.

The special effects, although sparsely used, are incredibly effective for a film of, I'm assuming, slender budget, which remarkably also contains a number of lavish 'scenes from history'. There's a sumptuous score by Simon Porter which sneaks in several cinematic nods, including Alien, within its themes. While the pace can occasionally lag a little, and there's arguably too much quirk for it to be completely satisfying, TTiD! is a fabulous romp and I guarantee the first time you'll see owners of a second hand shop fronting a mainstream  - or indeed any - movie.

Time Travel is Dangerous! opens in UK cinemas on 28 March 2025.

New Films Round Up #15: Reviews of From the Shadows (USA 2022), The North Witch (USA 2024), The Baby in the Basket (UK 2025), Heretics (USA 2024), Its Name Was Mormo (Cyprus 2024) and The Hangman (USA 2024)

It's been five years since I last did one of these new film round up things, and I'm grateful to the kind folks at High Fliers films for providing the screeners for the movies below.

From the Shadows (USA 2022: Dir Mike Sargent) A lot's happened in the world since Sargent's first feature, Personals, was released back in 1999. The key influencer for the setup of his sophomore movie was clearly the pandemic, which forced film directors to be increasingly resourceful when putting projects together.

Sargent had clearly been taking notes from Rob Savage's 2020 Zoom horror flick Host when considering From the Shadows, and four years on from the filming strictures of COVID, his multi screen approach looks rather quaint now that the movie has finally got a UK release. But hold off lest ye dismiss this one; there's some good stuff to come. 

In the aftermath of a massive explosion at the mansion base of the mysterious Hidden Wisdom cult - a group of people purportedly involved with ancient worship, witchcraft and Satanism - only five of the cult members manage to escape, with their leader Dr Joseph Cawl (Bruce Davison, Suitable Flesh) apparently perishing in the flames. Cawl's sidekick, Dr Leonard Bertram (Keith David, The Thing, They Live) had previously disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Along comes celebrity sceptic and debunker Dr Amara Rowan (Selena Anduze, Doctor Sleep) whose many books have established her as an expert on demystifying the supernatural. Rowan has decided to group the cult survivors together online to try to get to the bottom of Hidden Wisdom and find out how and why they managed to make it out alive, while the Dr's appointed sidekick, Peter (Jim Thalman) provides tech support and visual documentation services.

The five all had a history of some form of anxiety which Cawl successfully treated: there's Tina (Claire Mack), 'comedian' Keith (Max MacKenzie); gothy Denise (Ester Jiron); Henry (Ian Whitt); and star pupil Zoe (Briana Femia) who was Cawl's research coordinator. As the interviews progress they provide more information about the work of the cult and how Cawl, who formerly ran an 'Alternative Archeology' course, discovered ancient symbols on old artefacts, their application being the key to unlocking powerful alpha waves that, in isolation, could alter reality.

Doubtful as ever, Dr Rowan gets a powerful little online demonstration from the five, still in tune with their developed powers, which effectively re-arranges her bookshelves; it also more worryingly, projects something into her world, a force that Peter recognises, courtesy of his Choctaw grandmother, as the 'soul eater' of legend.

On the face of it, From the Shadows is a by the numbers tech supernatural feature which shouldn't have much going for it, the majority of the movie comprising Rowan and the Hidden Wisdom five all appearing on separate screens...talking. But, there's a kind of Nigel Kneale thing going on here, with the gradual amassing of knowledge making things stranger and stranger, as the incredulous Dr's scepticism is increasingly tested. 

Sargent's movie doesn't stint on the bloodshed  - and practical FX - but is wise enough to build up some tension before those scenes are unleashed, and (again like Savage's movie) each of the five has enough time to build their story so you get to care about them more than most films of this ilk. Add to this a brooding electronic score by Alan Howarth and you have a movie which, on the surface, looks like a Syfy channel programmer, but is in reality a well scripted and tense movie with some ingenious twists and turns.

The North Witch (USA 2024: Dir Bruce Wemple) The first of two Wemple directed films in this round up, here we have Madison (Anna Shields, who also wrote this), who's just been kicked out of her houseshare. She calls her friend Gemma (Jessy Holtermann) who can't help as she's about to go on a four day hiking trip with some girlfriends in the Canadian woods. 

Madison tags along, not knowing that the group have a purpose for their jaunt; to track down a missing house in the Barren Lands (an actual Canadian location). Said house vanished in 1963 and has only re-appeared, Brigadoon like, on a handful of occasions. People entering the house have emerged unrecognisable; and crazy.

The girls arrive at the site matching the co-ordinates provided by witnesses, but no house. They decide to camp overnight; a bad idea as a massive storm rips up their tents and causes untold human damage. Seemingly the only survivor, and with her leg badly injured, Madison makes it to a nearby abandoned house. The following day she finds the head of the party Alice (Ameerah Briggs) lying almost dead, her limbs at unnatural angles. Frightened and starving, there's relief when another of the girls, Talia (Kaitlyn Lunardi) also turns up, unscathed. But if Madison thought her troubles were over, they're just beginning.

Most of the rest of the movie becomes a series or self-harm/torture sequences where the viewer becomes increasingly unsure as to what's real and what's in Madison's head. They're disturbing to watch (Wemple goes in for that trick of building noise in a scene and cutting to silence - a lot) but there's a law of diminishing returns when you realise that the whole thing goes nowhere fast and starts to become, well, a bit silly, despite some very committed performances from Shields and Lunardi.

There's an end coda where the filmmakers issue come kind of written apology that anything which has appeared out of focus or glitchy was due to forces unknown, which seems like a rather feeble cover up if you ask me. Ultimately a rather pointless and unnecessarily nasty exercise.

The Baby in the Basket (UK 2024: Dir Andy Crane, Nathan Shepka) British offerings to the altar of the 'Nunsploitation' movie are few and far between. 2023's ok Consecration and Scott Jeffreys' Bad Nun movies are recent examples, not to mention Aislinn Clarke's excellent 2018 movie The Devil's Doorway, but now along comes Crane and Shepka to give us a good old four-to-the-floor convent based horror flick.

Set in a Scottish nunnery, St Augustine's, in 1944, a small group of novices, presided over by the eccentric Mother Superior (Maryam d’Abo), quietly go about their business (apart from the threat of a local wolf). They comprise sisters Valerie (Elle O’Hara), prone to the bottle, Eleanor (Michaela Longden), Lucy (Lisa Riesner) and Agnes (Amber Doig-Thorne). Their practical needs are supported by two caretakers, war scarred Amos (Paul Barber) and lusty Daniel (co-director and writer Shepka), a young man for whom employment among a group of young women yields constant temptation. 

Their devotions are disturbed by the arrival of, as the title explains, a baby left at the door of the nunnery in a basket. But this is no innocent foundling; rather it's the devil himself in childlike form. The Mother Superior forms a protective bond around the infant, while Agnes divines its demonic nature and is incarcerated for her beliefs. As the evil one casts its net within the nunnery, no-one is safe.

TBitB takes a little time to get going, but when at full steam it's a great low budget exploitation movie, with a cast giving it their all. There's naked nuns dancing in the moonlight (ok just one, but still...), a rather fetching demonic baby rendered, pleasingly, without CGI, and a superb location in which to film the devilish shenanigans (St. Conan's Kirk in Loch Awe, Scotland). I could have done without the relentless soundtrack - honestly sometimes silence is equally effective - but this is very entertaining stuff. Also interesting to know that both 'Flickering Myth' and 'Nerdly' film sites were involved in the production. 

Heretics (USA 2024: Dir Jose Prendes) Amazingly although The Asylum - the bargain basement company behind this found footage feature - have been banging them out for nearly thirty years now, this is only their second FF movie.

A group of rather generic people who claim to be students but are far older head out to the woods for an end of term beer and frolics bash. They all get to announce themselves on camera but despite this they quickly become forgettable, perhaps with the exception of religious Eva (Neeley Dayan), whose pastor father John (Eric Roberts) is seen in an opening shot giving a present to his daughter; so we already have a challenge to the FF format in that we don't know who is filming this sequence.

Anyway, manipulative Mary (Anna DeRusso), who has already engineered some gossip suggesting that group member Gregg (Scott Mazzapica) is cheating on his girlfriend Sarah (Sara Kamine) with Jessica (Shelby Wright), suggests lightening the mood she created by the whole bunch spending the night in the reputedly haunted Simmons House. Various stories of murder and mayhem are attached to the now empty residence, and previous attempts at overnight occupation have resulted in, well, death.

After accessing the house there's the usual amount of walking around (of course now everybody has smart phones which means that there is multiple filming happening) before the 'teens' gradually get offed by shadowy figures who reveal themselves as cultists in thrall to an ancient demon called Lilith.

Unlike many of the found footage offerings in recent years, Heretics is slightly different in that a) the threat is seen and explained and b) there is no context to the footage we see, apart from a snowy screen at the start and end and written messages about praising Lilith. It might be a load of old hokum, but Heretics does at least deliver on its mayhem, even if you can guess the 'why' almost from the outset.

Its Name Was Mormo (Cyprus 2024: Dir Mark Andrew Bowers) Bowers sort of plays himself in this 'family affair' found footage movie. Along with his real life Colombian partner Marcela Cardenas (as Marcela) and their daughter Mia, also playing herself (not forgetting their puppy Romeo), the family are shown in their Cyprus villa going about their business (things kick off with Marcela discovering she's pregnant). 

A visit to a local abandoned building seems to be the start of the bad things, when they discover what looks like a mass of human bones and a box containing skulls, which they rather unwisely bring back home. This is tied in with the Greek legend of Mormo, who exacts revenge on the family for stealing the artifacts (something not explained in the film).

Both parents start to feel watched around the home, to the extent that they fit a series of cameras around the villa to record anything that happens. Marcela's paranoia increases in line with the changing feel of their gaff, particularly in that little Mia seems to be a focus for all the weirdness.

Of course we know that the whole thing doesn't end well as the footage we're seeing has been obtained following the family's disappearance. And on the face of it, ITWM is found footage by the numbers, a sub genre that many thought had bitten the dust years ago. But Bowers' movie, featuring his own family, as opposed to a party of annoying twenty somethings, adds a frisson of terror that most examples of this sort of thing just don't have. All the usual FF WTF moments are present and correct, but the terrorised family kind of make you forget that.

Bowers has dressed this one up with a whole backstory, perhaps in homage to the movie that started it all in 1999, and which you can read about here. There's even a book. Well a guy's got to eat.

The Hangman (USA 2024: Dir Bruce Wemple) Wemple's second feature in this round up proves no better than the first. It's a wordy, confusing movie about an ancient, regenerating demon which spends a lot of time going absolutely nowhere (the film, not the demon, although...).

"There are at least seven known gateways to hell across the world. One of them is in the mountains of West Virginia," states the movie's opening blurb. (sidebar: reader, I've been to the mountains of West Virginia and I can attest to this.) Into this gateway arrives Leon (LeJon Woods) and his son Jesse (Mar Cellus, no really) on a camping trip, a bonding exercise to resolve tensions between the two regarding the murder of Jesse's mum and Leon's inability to have prevented it. But the morning after setting up their tents, Jesse has disappeared and dad's car has been tampered with.

Setting out to find the missing boy, Leon encounters backwoods racists, drug addicts and human traffickers; but that's not the meat of the story. Jesse's disappearance is linked to a cult, worshipping the ancient deity of Baal, a group dependent on human sacrifice to prolong their life via a murderous  - and barely glimpsed - entity named 'The Hangman' (I'll leave you to work out the method of killing here). As soon as Leon discovers this fact - which takes a long time - he realises that he and Jesse are in a whole heap of trouble.

The Hangman could have been a good, if generic film, but pacing and plotting are poor and Mr Woods, on whom the whole movie pivots dramatically, doesn't really have the chops to pull it off. This felt like a film that was a goer in the planning but lucked out in the execution.

The Rule of Jenny Pen (New Zealand 2024: Dir James Ashcroft)

Ashcroft's debut feature, 2021's visceral Coming Home in the Dark was a bleak thriller rooted in abuse within a boys' reform school in rural New Zealand. That movie was based on a short story written by Owen Marshall, and Ashcroft returns to Marshall's work as source material for his latest film, which also features an institution; in this case a nursing home.

Geoffrey Rush plays Stefan Mortensen, a judge who, when we first meet him, suffers a massive stroke while in court and is admitted, unable to walk, to the Royal Pine Mews Care Home. He thinks he's a paying guest just spending a few weeks until he's back on his feet (pardon the pun) but one look at his condition, and that of his fellow 'guests', strongly suggests that this is his last accommodation.

As a judge Mortensen was used to wielding power and morality (his opening sentencing of a serial paedophile extended to holding the guy's mother equally culpable). At the care home that power is removed; he's just another patient. But surveying the residents (whose number includes one - slightly cliched - woman with dementia, hoping for a visit, and rescue, from a family that haven't visited her in years) he espies an ostensibly robust figure in the shape of Dave Crealy (John Lithgow); employee turned home resident, his hand permanently attached to a dementia doll, Jenny Pen, which Crealy uses, in an ironic twist, to mete out justice within the care home.

Crealy's freedom of the establishment (he retains his all access passkey) and the seeming inability of the staff to do anything about his more outré behaviour - their reasoning being that, like all the residents he pays for his care and is thus immune from censure - recalls memories of Jimmy Sa*ile, and indeed Lithgow is so unctuous, nasty and, well, pernicious, that this comparison isn't far off the mark. Only Mortensen seems able to see through Crealy's plan for dominance via the judgements of Jenny Pen, but it's his word against the authorities.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is, make no mistake, a difficult watch. Anyone with any experience of visiting residential homes will feel that Ashcroft's created atmosphere of sadness and approaching death is perfectly captured. But beyond this the war between Crealy and Mortensen has elements of the darkest wit, with some unexpectedly surreal touches; Lithgow and Rush are, of course, perfectly cast, the former at times truly frightening. "I hope I die before I get old," sang The Who's Roger Daltrey (in his youth) and watching The Rule of Jenny Pen you'll feel the same way.  

The Rule of Jenny Pen plays in UK and Ireland cinemas 14 March 2025, from Vertigo Releasing.