NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #24 - the final three: Reviews of Philia (UK 2021), Slammer (UK 2021) and Burns Night (UK 2021)

Philia (UK 2021: Dir Various) Welcome to the cinema of transgression as we meet a group of people who are clearly working through their own issues in a group therapy environment, tutored by a chap in a bow tie. He explains that the dictionary definition of 'Philia' is 'to love something that is connected to a sexual attraction to what is not normal'. Apparently it's the opposite of 'phobia'. So now you know.

What follows over the next 100 minutes is a series of short films that explore, in mostly abstract ways, a series of 'philias'. There's Mythophilia - the desire to have sex with a mythical beast; Astrophilia - an obsession with stars, planets and outer space; Dacryphilia & Hematolagnia - an obsession with tears and blood; Acarophilia - the love of scratching; Acousticophilia - arousal from music and sounds; Lactophilia - sexual pleasure from milk or sucking the female breast; Necrophilia - fairly self explanatory; and Pictophilia - deriving sexual pleasure from looking at pictures or watching porn.

Until the hour point most of the films only hint at something approaching narrative, and it's only with Lactophilia (featuring the ever-willing-to-go-there Martin Payne as a hammer wielding baby abductor) and the final Pictophilia that we're given a story. This is, I hope the filmmakers won't mind me commenting, unpleasant and soporific stuff. Made with the crudest of materials - during lockdown, natch - it's painfully slow and uneventful. But it is true to the spirit of experimental filmmaking and, to be frank, not everything has to be The Sound of Music, right?

Slammer (UK 2021: Dir Ted Byron Baybutt) Baybutt's debut feature was, according to the director, five years in the making, and filmed during the pandemic.

The sweeping story revolves around a scientist, Ann Waterman (Flora Montgomery), engaged in research for a company called Hansegret, aimed at the eradication of disease. At home she lives with, as she terms it, her 'agoraphobic architect' boyfriend John Howlett (James Atherton) in a rather fractious relationship, not helped by her grief over the recent death of her father, clearly quite a big noise in the same industry.

Ann's sudden disappearance triggers concern and the arrival of the police in the shape of Detective Russell (Josephine Melville) while John is comforted by Sophie (Victoria Emslie). 

But while Ann has departed the world as we know it, she's actually been incarcerated in a kind of future prison. Painfully, she's allowed to monitor everything that's happening on earth (including a growing closeness between John and Sophie) as unseen powers prepare her for the next phase of her life. Even stranger, a stiff backed politician named Mark (Samuel Clemens) is being lined up as next Prime Minister; but is he actually real?

Big pharma, cryptocurrency, conspiracy theories and political corruption all swim around in Slammer. The audience, meanwhile, is generally left clueless as to what is happening. I'm certainly up for a bit of oblique filmmaking, but the opaque nature of Slammer's narrative and the general lack of clarity and resolution - even in the last section which I feel the director hopes will explain things more than it actually does - makes the movie pretty hard work, although there's no denying Baybutt's ambition.

Maybe it was the length of time over which the film was developed, maybe it was the director being too close to the material for too long, but confusion only really works in a movie if you're going to give the audience the necessary keys to unlock the mystery within. Disappointing.

Burns Night (UK 2021: Dir Dean Hoff) The genesis of Burns Night stretches back over ten years, to two seasons of a web TV series, Caledonia, which in themselves were developed from a five book cycle of fantasy novels written by the Scottish born non-binary director, whose upbringing included a long spell drifting in America. 

And Scotland - specifically Glasgow - is the location for the whole Caledonia concept, involving Detective Inspector Leah Bishop, transferred to the city's Interpol office, and discovering that she's the only human in the building; her colleagues are all mythological creatures from Scottish folklore.

Burns Night is the adaptation of the third of these novels, which plunges us into a strange world of Leah, here played by Maria Jones. When Bishop's work partner Detective Inspector (and selkie) Dorian Grey (Alasdair Reavey) goes missing, she enlists the help of Robert Burns (Joshua Layden) to find him. And yes it's that Robert Burns, the famous (and dead) Scottish poet. Except he's now a vampire, turned centuries previously by the enigmatic Desdemona (Hoff); together they have 'lived' and hunted together down the years.

Burns Night also boasts a pair of lads who form part of the six mythical defenders of the city; a fluffy beast called Fludge who Leah finds under her bed and to whom she becomes attached; a laboratory whose staff includes a ghost lab assistant, Hazel (Nicole Donald); oh and Jesus (Neil MacKinnon). After about half an hour of this I really wished I'd read at least one of the source books to help me navigate the no budget bonkersness; it's not so much that it's hard to follow (actually it is) but that it's hard to hear, such is the really quite challenging sound quality. But what the film lacks in polish it makes up for in invention and genuine 'otherness'. Glasgow doesn't come out of Burns Night particularly glowingly, but I get the feeling that the cast would also see this as a celebration of the freaks that occupy the city's darker corners.

You can watch Burns Night for free here. 

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2026 #1: Reviews of Bone Keeper (UK 2025), Daggers Inn (UK 2025), Jitters (UK 2025), Forty Five (UK 2025), Beyond Mamushi (UK 2026) and Wizard of Oz: The Dead Walk (UK 2025)

Bone Keeper (UK 2025: Dir Howard J Ford) Imagine the cast of - and story from - the average Scott Jeffrey Jagged Edge production, beamed down into a movie with ten times that company's budget, and the result is Ford's latest feature.

Olivia (Sarah Alexander Marks, The Killing Tree, Manor of Darkness and a whole load of others) is searching for her mother, who has gone missing while on the hunt for her own father, an adventurer journalist who also vanished in the same place; a cave system on the Welsh border. All have been investigating the legend of the 'Bone Keeper'.

Determined to track mum down using maps in family journals, Olivia teams up with some friends, and arranges a trip. Along for the ride are cocky TA trailed Ethan (Louis James, Bogieville), Olivia's friend Annabelle (Tiffany Hannam-Daniels, The Lockdown Hauntings), Nick (Tyler Winchcombe, Piglet) and science nerds Nadia (Sophie Eleni, Walking Against the Rain) and Ravi (Danny Rahim in his first British 'fantastic' film role). En route to meet Professor Harrison (John Rhys-Davies, G-Loc, those Lord of the Rings films) they pickup a hitchhiking woman, travel blogger Ashley aka 'Bitchhiker' (Sarah T Cohen, Cinderella's Curse, Alien Invasion) whose addition can give the mission a bit of much needed publicity.

Harrison's 'be careful in the caves' entreaties fall on deaf ears as Olivia and the gang tool up for a bit of spelunking; but the tentacular entity they discover deep in the rocks turns out to be nastier than any of them imagined.

Ford's movie is one of two distinct halves. In the first the bickering and emoting amongst friends is very familiar territory (pretty much all of the flicks mentioned above include similar character developing techniques), and for a while David Engellau's score almost manages to drown out the drama. But when the caves loom into view (enigmatically filmed in the Forest of Dean) Ford really finds his feet. The underground scenes carry a real tension and the creature, a mix of CGI and practical effects, is impressive both in production and intent. 

I could have done without the rather silly prologue in which the origin of the creature is established (and a little more detail on how it manages its hybridity would have been welcome), but Bone Keeper manages to shrug off its early scenes and become a thoroughly nasty monster flick. It is perhaps a shame that the next time we'll see this cast will likely be a return to the low budgets - and expectations - of Mr Jeffrey and his ilk. Shame as here they acquit themselves really well.

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

Daggers Inn (UK 2025: Dir James Smith) Smith and his creative/life partner Caroline Spence have a reputation for creating credible features from very little at all; Casting Kill, their 2023 movie, was an expansive (not expensive) mini giallo filmed in just a small handful of locations.

Daggers Inn bases its events in a cosy Essex village, passing as the fictional Haxanbury (geddit?). In the manner of all small town murder mysteries Haxanbury is a place you might want to visit but wouldn't want to live in.

Central to Haxanbury's problems is a ruthless local firm nominally run by Stanley Montagu-John (Martin Payne), but subject to internal feuding between company members Lauren (Terry Bamberger, a real American for once, rather than a dubious UK actor adopting a bogus accent) and the supremely odious Toby Vass (James Hamer-Morton). Expansion is on their mind, and they'll do anything in service of it - including murder.

But things are about to change. A stranger, Donna (Anna Danvers), arrives in the village, on a quest to find out what happened to her twin sister Sibyl, and one suspects she knows more than she's letting on. Donna weaves a spell around the villagers, drawing them under her influence, as she infiltrates the company in a quest to find the truth, teaming up with outsider Samron (Gavin Gordon) and put upon company employee Karen (Eve Kathryn Oliver) in the process.

There are so many ways in which Daggers Inn gets it right. Smith ensures that nothing is explained (in a good way). Is Donna a witch, or maybe even Sibyl in returned form? Certainly her arrival prompts some unusual behaviour; company employees become entranced, and Toby's girlfriend Bethany (genre regular Charlie Bond), who may be central to the mystery, is determined to be rid of her. The director, who like previous projects also serves behind the camera, does some wonderful things capturing both the external landscape and the claustrophobic goings on in the medieval village's board rooms and tea shops. Casting is spot on, performances being as generally understated as the movie's sound design (always a blessing in a genre where directors mistakenly feel that a histrionic score can make up for a project's shortcomings). 

One of the reasons that I cover small scale British 'fantastic' cinema is some filmmakers' ability to craft silk purses out of sow's ears, a skill which Smith and Spence have in abundance. Excellent stuff. 

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

Jitters (UK 2025: Dir Marc Zammit) Now I quite liked Zammit's co-directed second feature, 2024's Witch, an inventive film that wasn't perfect but remained pretty watchable.

Grizzled Detective Nick Collymore (Fabrizio Santino, adopting a US accent for no reason apart from he's reasonably good at it) has returned to duty after a rather ugly incident and is keen to get back in the policing saddle, by intruding onto a crime scene, namely the death of a gamer, Tiff (Jessica Impiazzi), her body found slumped at a computer.

Meanwhile colleague Detective Sam Harding (Anto Sharp) is also investigating a death - this time filmed online. Tech wiz Dean Holness (Jack Cray) has taken his own life via nailgun in front of his many fans. Further investigations have revealed that he was working alongside Tiff on a new AI game.

Other deaths occur and Nick discovers that the game can be accessed via a USB. A personal test reveals a weird avatar called Jitters (Daniel Jordan) who poses riddles which, if solved, release cash (possibly in bitcoin). But the real power of the game isn't realised until Nick understands that, once downloaded, the avatar's deadly reach extends to anything with internet connectivity.

Jitters is a very different beast to Witch, a combination of police procedural and a modern AI take on A Nightmare on Elm Street and Videodrome. Collymore's character is the hardboiled cop more usually seen on TV screens rather than the movies, with family and health problems to contend with. The 'Jitters' character is a good few years older than a lot of the other cast members, making his odd 'clown-with-a-colander' getup quite distinctive. Jitters could do with tightening up a bit but it's an ambitious pic for the budget, and the final scene's suggestion of a sequel wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.

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

Forty-Five (UK 2025: Dir Bazz Hancher) The 'forty five' of the title in Hancher's latest could refer as much to its slender run time (actually it's just a little over 40 minutes) as its true meaning, the sum of an arcane subtraction in the Bible's Book of Daniel, relating to the Antichrist and the end of the world.

Under three quarters of an hour is pushing it to depict such monumental events, so Hancher wisely focuses events on a smaller canvas of torture and damnation.

Three years after the death of his daughter Ariel, in a sickening ritual killing where the girl's corpse and nether regions are re-arranged to form an inverted cross, her distraught father Boyd Fallon (Kemal Yildirim, who does a nice line in troubled characters) is still on the hunt for Ariel's killer.

A hired private investigator swears off the case but directs Fallon to a succession of people who may hold information, namely an agitated priest, Father Vaughn (Andrew Tales from the Great War Elias), cancer ravaged Ruben Blake (Laurence Saunders) and an unhinged, badly beaten woman, Botis (Laura Liptrot). All have have suffered greatly after contact with the obscure, other worldly 'forty five', and as Fallon digs deeper and gets closer to the truth, he is plagued by death dreams and, ultimately, discovers why his daughter died... and who really murdered her.

Hancher's film is compact, beautifully photographed and rich with apocrypha, and in Yildirim's character creates a tragic figure straight out of Aeschylus, a man destined to uncover his own fatal truth. Disturbing images abound, and Hancher is correct in keeping his film lean and mean. I liked this a lot.

Beyond Mamushi (UK 2026: Dir M W Daniels) My last exposure to Daniel's work was his segment of the lockdown movie The Isolation Horrors. 

Here he brings us a 50 minute psychological drama, centring on Kate (newcomer Corina Jayne), a troubled soul, with a violent, controlling partner, Chris (Gary Cross) and the Mamushi of the title (Jemma Thompson), Kate's therapist (Mamushi is her surname) who seems to have forgotten most of her code of ethics.

Chris exhibits classic controlling behaviours; nasty then nice, belittling and flattering in turn, witholding then making her beg for the medication she seems to need.

Ama Mamushi indicates that she's taken a tough love to Kate's progress, but clearly oversteps the mark when she suggests to her client that murder is probably the only way out of her abusive relationship. Kate's horrendous position is made worse when, on a visit to Chris's father, the older man tries to rape her. Kate's response triggers a cycle of violence which she seems helpless to avoid.

I confess that in 2026 the 'bonkers-woman-driven-to-murder' narrative is more than a little unwelcome. There's very little subtlety here in the story of a woman driven to the edge and then over it, and the reason provided for her actions is just a little silly. Jayne does well in her first role and the film's brevity is to its credit; Daniels took on most of the behind the camera roles and it's clearly a passion project for him, but I found it generally uninvolving and, honestly, more than a little unnecessary.

Wizard of Oz: The Dead Walk (UK 2025: Dir Louisa Warren) We love Louisa Warren's films at DEoL towers and here she is with her latest TCU entry, the title of which sounds a little like those classics vs horror mashups that were all the rage some years ago.

When I interviewed Warren back in 2021, she mentioned that she made two types of movies; 'wacky' and 'serious'. Wisely, because of her own rather childlike obsessions, Warren has decided to stick with the first category in recent years, and Wizard of Oz: The Dead Walk might just be her most 'wacky' yet.

Dorothy (the authentically American Alina Desmond) has been rescued from a dying Oz by her Auntie Em (Jodyanne Richardson, who by resemblance is possibly related to the Richardson acting dynasty), in the process getting herself hooked on heroin.

Em has secured her a place at the Emerald rehab centre, a dodgy clinic run by Dr Oscar Diggs (Stephen Samson) and occupied by patients who still seem to be able to access the hard stuff. Kept heavily sedated while withdrawing, Dorothy has vivid dreams involving malevolent versions of the scarecrow and the tinman from Oz, and the good witch Glinda (Yvonne Curwen) who also seems to have transformed into something more evil. Dorothy dreams about an ancient book hidden in a tree; when she wakes she realises that the tree - and the book - are within the clinic grounds. Reading a passage from the book brings the murderous Oz characters into the real world to begin a campaign of mayhem and death.

With a cast list including the daftly named Detective Jack L Antern (Adam Barnett) this is very silly stuff indeed, but actually quite watchable and at times gory, albeit within the constraints of the usual Warren budget. The director manages to include a cursed book - a bit of a Warren signature move - and the absence of the cowardly lion is sort of explained towards the end of a movie which also wins an award for including the opening credit sequence about three minutes before the end titles. It's bonkers, most people won't like it, but I for one am hungry  - well ok peckish - for more.  

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #23: Reviews of Caveat (UK 2020), Censor (UK 2021), Infinitum: Subject Unknown (UK 2021), The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud (UK 2020), Last Night in Soho (UK 2021) and The Legend of Jack and Jill (UK 2021)

Caveat (UK 2020: Dir Damian McCarthy) Mood trumps narrative in McCarthy's debut feature. A lone guy, shaggy of beard and haunted of look, accepts a job offer that most of us would reject out of hand. Isaac (Jonathan French), who can also add post accident amnesia to his list of woes, is asked by the uncle of a young girl to 'babysit' her for a short while, on payment of £200 a day. Isaac, who clearly hasn't seen money like that for a long time, cautiously accepts.

When the girl's uncle, Moe (Ben Caplan) escorts Isaac to the location of his charge, the latter is disconcerted to find that the house is on an island - and he can't swim. Further details emerge. The niece, Olga (Leila Sykes) has a fear of men, being touched and pretty much everything else, and Isaac will be obliged to wear a full bridle, anchored in the cellar, but which gives him access to the whole house except Olga's room. Olga's mother has died, and her father took his own life; hence the need for, what? A companion? A housekeeper?

With two hundred reasons to say yes, Isaac accepts the terms. The isolation is intense, the only sound to be heard being the scream of foxes, and the strange company of Olga, who warily brandishes a crossbow on their first encounter. But Isaac's curiosity gets the better of him, and a search of the house reveals that Moe's explanation isn't quite correct; worse, it's possible that he's been to the house before.

There's a certain fairy tale quality to Caveat, setting the film up as an exercise in atmosphere rather than telling a story. The question here is not 'why did Isaac accept the position?' but 'what's the nature of the threat?'. In some ways the film is a reimagining of the classic 'governess with eerie child' tale, but, taking place as it does in a house bereft of anything resembling a home, one filtered through the lens of the Quay Brothers. If you accept Caveat on the premise there's a lot to, if not like, admire, there are one or two sequences which are genuinely frightening. Sykes's elegantly deadpan delivery as the troubled Olga is central to the movie, against which French's increasingly spooked Isaac plays well. Macabre and unsettling, I liked this a lot.

Censor (UK 2021: Dir Prano Bailey-Bond) Beloved by 'proper' critics, and roundly embraced by the BFI on first release (who part funded the thing) Censor delighted those who saw in its subject matter - the 'Video Nasties' scandal of the 1980s - a very meta take on the whole business, while angering those ardent collectors of the original DPP list of 'banned' films who seemed to have a problem with Bailey-Bond, a woman, straying onto their turf, making something which they dismissed as too arty, with  - horrors! - a female central character.

Censor is a low budget meta movie that takes its subject seriously (Kim Newman is an executive producer, for flip's sake). Enid (Niamh Algar), prim, buttoned up and extremely serious, is one of a group of censors navigating the choppy waters of the early 1980s. Their work is, pun intended, cut out for them as they decide how much eye gouging, stabbing or beheading to excise from the films they review or, as sometimes preferred by their risk averse boss, whether to ban the thing altogether. It's a strategy that gains credibility when a real life crime is seized upon by the press as mirroring the events in one of the films passed.

While the political climate tries to associate the viewing of such items with an increase in violent crime, Enid's motivations seem triggered by an event which has already happened to her; the disappearance of her sister Nina some years previously while both were out playing in the woods as children. The decision of Enid's parents to finally declare their missing daughter dead is a tipping point for the guilt ridden censor who sees, in one of the productions of the exploitation duo - shadowy Frederic North (Adrian Schiller) and unctuous Doug Smart (Michael Smiley) - a cast member who looks like Nina. Enid's determination to uncover the truth takes her through the video booth looking glass and into the movies themselves. 

As well as the whole 'video nasty' gatekeeping issue, many of the film's detractors did not like Censor's rather abstract denouement, which contrasts with its relatively coherent first half. But this is a psychological film whose subject suffers the fractured end result of compartmentalising her life to cope with trauma, and there are no easy answers. This is Bailey-Bond's first feature and at times it feels like it, but it's also bold filmmaking which makes for distinctly uneasy viewing, not least its Stasi Germany take on the early 1980s.

Infinitum: Subject Unknown (UK 2021: Dir Matthew Butler-Hart) There's something about the restrictions inflicted by the 2020 pandemic that feeds into the DIY spirit of independent filmmaking. I really liked both Butler-Hart's 2018 feature, the moody The Isle and, looking forwards, his 2024 film Dagr.

Sandwiched between these films is the director's intimate but ambitious sci fi mindbender, filmed on an iphone and with a cast comprising, well Mrs Butler-Hart and a couple of borrowed luvvies. Let me explain.

At an unspecified point in time (the future? Present day?) the discovery of an alternate earth, albeit one which is war torn, has excited scientists and occasioned much experimentation, including human subjects.

One such is Jane (Tori Butler-Hart) who wakes up tied to a chair in an otherwise empty room. Managing to free herself, Jane experiences visions of the other earth, but is initially unable to leave without being returned to her original position. A gradual understanding of her situation - and how to liberate herself - enables Jane to escape by car (her drive through empty suburban streets is chilling both visually and as a reminder of the very real weirdness of the pandemic). Eventually Jane happens across the Wytness Centre, a building which houses those attempting to understand the 'paraverse'. But her discovery of files and recordings only deepens her concern about her role in the search for scientific answers.

Abandon hope anyone expecting a fast paced sci fi thriller; Butler-Hart's movie is deliberately slow, focusing on Jane's anguish and slow realisation of the truth, with only occasional CGI interventions which frankly aren't really necessary. Tori is the centre of the film and acquits herself well considering she's in every scene; well every scene except those featuring a rather bemused Sir Ian McKellen and a scientist (Conleth Hall). I: SU isn't for everyone. I got a real sense that this was Butler-Hart, frustrated at the limits being placed on him as a filmmaker and deciding to make his 'fuck the pandemic' movie. 

The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud (UK 2020: Dir Martin Owen) According to his professional page, TIAoMC has been in development since 2018, which is unsurprising as it has labour of love written all over it. 

It's a witty piece in thrall to video gaming of the late 1980s/early 1990s, and what you get out of it rather depends on how nostalgic you find the setup. 

It's Brooklyn in 1990. Sarah (Isabelle Allen) just loves games, particularly playing 'Max Cloud' with her friend Cowboy (Franz Drameh), much to the annoyance of her father Tony (distinguished TV actor Sam Hazeldine). 

Sucked into the game via a Space Witch (Jason Maza), she becomes one of the game characters, Jake (Elliot Langridge), a chef who, with his boss Max Cloud (Scott Adkins), have crash landed on Heinous (yep, rhymes with 'anus'), a notorious prison planet. Heinous is home to the evil Revengor (the John Hannah) and his deputy Shee (Lashana Lynch); Max and his team must complete various level missions to escape the planet, while Cowboy, back in Sarah's room in New York, assists.

TIAoMC has a great setup, zigzagging between 20th Century USA (actually the whole thing was filmed in a studio in Yorkshire) and the world of the game (with some fab graphics depicting the characters on screen in all their 8 Bitness). It also has a witty script; unfortunately everything runs out of steam way too quickly as the restrictions of the budget prohibit any real development of what we're seeing. But everyone looks like they're having a good time and go to hard man Adkins steals the show as the chisel jawed, unreconstructed Cloud.

Last Night in Soho (UK 2021: Dir Edgar Wright) Edgar Wright's hymn to a vanished Soho (a theme also developed in the 2022 portmanteau movie Midnight Peepshow) is also his Mulholland Drive, with a murderous background, a seedy underbelly and switched identities.

Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is young, talented and besotted with the 1960s. Living with her grandmother (Rita Tussingham) in deepest Cornwall following her mother's suicide, she's in for a shock when, securing herself a place in a London fashion school, she finds that the 'big smoke' is a far cry from the swinging decade she idolises.

When she arrives, as well as the casual misogyny she encounters on the streets, Eloise experiences a different type of threat in the form of the city raised girls on her course, whose bullying behaviour exploits her rural upbringing. Leaving the pressure of student housing she rents a time capsule like bedsit run by Ms Collins (Diana Rigg in her last role) which hasn't been redecorated by the owner since the 1960s. But once installed in her room Eloise, who her grandmother has described as 'sensitive' (in more ways than one), begins to tune in to an older London, and in particular the spirit of an aspiring singer and performer Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), who may have occupied Ellie's room back in the 1960s. Eloise finds it increasingly hard to separate the past from the present, and wonders whether the poor mental health fatally experienced by her mother has passed on to her, as the visions of Sandie and her tortured life in Soho intrude into her present day existence.

Wright's love of the giallo movie is also thoroughly explored in Last Night in Soho's exponentially nasty setup, which balances elements of the ghost story narrative with the director's trademark production flashiness. I actually gasped when, in the first of Eloise's increasingly dreamlike visions, she walks down an alleyway and into a stunningly rendered 1960s West End, complete with bright marquee lights, rain slicked streets and a mile high poster of the (then) latest James Bond film above the cinema (actually London's Haymarket). The movie is far from subtle; cast wise, with the exception of caring fellow student John (Michael Ajayo) all the blokes are awful, and most of the women not much better. But this is an Edgar Wright film of course, a director with great vision but often little maturity; Last Night in Soho has lots to savour but leaves a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

The Legend of Jack and Jill (UK 2021: Dir Jack Peter Mundy) The fifth of no less than five features directed by Mundy during 2021, basing an entire movie on the slim premise of a 12 line poem is one of the more ambitious undertakings in the genre now referred to  - sigh - as the Twisted Child Universe (TCU).

But Mundy, supported by the Scott Jeffrey Jagged Edge production machine, doesn't even need all 12 as the inspiration for his Sawney Beane/TCM style backwoods chiller; just the first - and most well known - verse is enough. In a prologue two children, Jack and Jill, are urged by their mother to run up a hill (geddit?) not to fetch a pail of water but to escape their berserk dad; mum sacrifices herself for their safety.

The two kids grow up feral; they're also possibly deformed, although it may be that their misshapen faces are the result of them wearing masks of human skin; this, like so much in the movie, is never explained. What is known is that a succession of hikers are reported missing in the area; intrepid local reporter Bernice (Sarah T. Cohen) is sent to investigate and comes a J&J cropper; the assumption is that the missing become dinner.

The main 'action' in the movie centres around a group of friends who travel out to the same area to help one of their number, Eden (Beatrice Fletcher) get over the suicide of her boyfriend. Much hand wringing follows as everyone examines their own grief; friendships deepen - there's even a same sex unfulfilled crush - and then J&J work out that their version of a Deliveroo order has arrived; and then the killings begin. The fact that the hillside killers live about half a mile away from the house where the group are staying (the ubiquitous Jeffrey youth hostel, one supposes) strains the concept of their lonely feral existence, but let that be the least of your WTF moments. On a more positive note, James Morgan's rural cinematography is often rather striking, and as Jill scream queen regular Antonia Whillans manages to elicit pathos in her role of a cannibal who perhaps would rather not be; but then Mundy mounts a climax where our two villains live to fight (and eat) another day; indeed, Jack and Jill 2 and 3 would be just around the corner.

Jimmy and Stiggs (USA 2025: Dir Joe Begos)

Joe Begos's world turned dayglow around 2019 when, following his first two rather sedate features (Almost Human and The Mind's Eye from 2013 and 2015 respectively), he leapt onto the stage at London's FrightFest with a battle cry to "watch this movie, motherfuckers!" and gave the world the vampire/art movie Bliss. Awash with bright colours, neon drenching and a lot of grunge, Begos set the tone for his movies to come. VFW, from the same year, was a more sedate but equally colour rich tale of veterans under siege in a bar; and the bright blues and greens lighting up his seasonal robo Santa movie Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022) were entirely in keeping with that movie's general er, excess.

Dayglow is present and correct in Jimmy and Stiggs, but sadly it's the only thing going for it. Like most of the director's films, the premise is brief. Jimmy (Begos, who also had a part in his last movie) is an unpleasant, unhinged film director whose latest project has fallen through (I'm guessing nobody wanted to work with him) and decides to snort and drink everything in sight to compensate for the bad news, ignoring his prospective date in the process. The result is a blackout, where 12 hours of his life go missing - but not entirely. His morning after recollections suggest that there may have been an attempt at alien abduction (and at this early point the audience are probably thinking that they're welcome to him).

Jimmy, who lives in an apartment littered with half empty bottles (I'm guessing he would never see them as half full), pills and powders, invites his friend and sometime filmmaking partner Stiggs (Matt Mercer, go to indieweird actor) round to help him figure what the hell's going on. On the TV Jimmy's hoovering up programmes about alien probes, but in case people are jumping to conclude that it's all in the guy's head, there are visiting aliens; and Jimmy and Stiggs must go to war with them.

The hyperbolic dialogue between the wretched pair is matched by attention deficit editing and a colour scheme which outdoes all his other movies; the best comparator here would be the insufferable characters in Ryan Kruger's 2020 movie Fried Barry crossed with the dayglow VHS nightmares created by Cassandra Sechler and Craig Jacobson. The practical FX, which look like they might be impressive, are lost in the oversaturated look, and there's only so long you want to spend in company of a couple of bums, one of whom has a death wish booze and drugs habit. Sure it's anarchic, over the top and relentlessly gloopy, but so's a custard pie fight, and I stopped finding them good value a long time ago. 

Jimmy and Stiggs is available on UK and Ireland digital platforms from 16 February 2026  

Missing Child Videotape (Japan 2024: Dir Ryota Kondo)

Keita Kodama (Sugita Rairu) divides his time between working in a grocery shop, sharing his small flat with psychically gifted room mate Tsukasa Amano (Hirai Amon) and devoting time to assisting in the location of missing persons. When we first meet Keita he's managed to track down a young boy, previously presumed vanished. "Big brother," whispers the rescued child, enigmatically.

The motives for the young man's extra curricular duties are disclosed via a journalist, Mikoto Kuzumi (Kokoro Morita), seeking an interview with Keita via Tsukasa; she enlightens him that thirteen years previously Keita's young brother Hinata had gone missing while the pair were exploring the same area. Keita's guilt over the still absent sibling is not helped by his mother sending him various possessions of his late father, including a video tape, shot by Keita at the point where Hinata disappeared, showing a mysterious and possibly haunted building which had subsequently also vanished.

Kuzumi, who is supposedly writing a positive piece about Keita and the recovered boy, digs deeper and, in classic J-horror fashion, discovers that the area in which the disappearances took place - Mt. Mashiro - has a history of similar incidents. The journalist, Keita and Tsukasa realise that if they are to discover the truth they must journey to the mountain and face their fears.

This is director Kondo Ryota's first feature, developed from a short film of the same name. Ryota's overall production steer comes via Takashi Shimizu, a name that should mean far more to fans of fantastic film than it may do; much of Shimizu's work as a director, outside of his Ju-On: the Grudge movies and 2004's excellent Marebito has failed to achieve a UK theatrical or even physical release.

In summary MCV could be seen as a 'greatest hits' of J-Horror; 'haunted' videotape; isolated rural location; spooky if unresolved narrative. But Kondo takes those elements and inserts them in a film less 'slow' than 'stop' burn; almost score-less, most of the film's scenes progress in near silence, a mood of gloom and despair prevailing throughout. There is a climax of sorts but anyone seeking tidy resolution will be left wanting. If there's a criticism it's that the performances are a little too underplayed to truly take hold, and the film's themes aren't fully developed, but there's no doubting the director's ability to create a mood of ratcheted up creepiness.

Missing Child Videotape plays as part of the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2026 which takes place in cinemas around the UK from 6 February to 31 March 2026. You can watch the trailer here.

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2022 #7: Reviews of Writers' Retreat (UK 2022), Ghost Crew (UK 2022), The Mothman Tapes (UK 2022), When the Earth Gives Up the Dead (UK 2022), Tales of the Creeping Death (UK 2022) and York Witches Society (UK 2022)

Writers' Retreat (UK 2022: Dir Mishaal Memon) This 30 minute short film, produced via the University of Westminster Film School, truly earns its 'esoteric' category.

Under the tutelage of Mrs Winters (Bernadette Moran) two maids, Nancy (Rosie Gray) and Flora (Lizzie Back) are, as the title suggests, employees in a writers' retreat; but one with a difference. Those on it are required to go back in time, almost literally, dressing in period costume and immersing themselves in the classics ('Take a step back in time and learn to write like the Greats' suggests one of the guides). The writer providing the intellectual stimulus in one J.T. Redford.

As we join the party in a suitably aged setting (Bore Place House in Kent, actually used as a retreat) a third maid, Jemima, is dead. Although Mrs Winters encourages the others to rise above the incident, Nancy feels that something odd is going on, and that the spirit of the dead writer may be exerting his influence over them. After Nancy discovers notebooks containing (incorrect) psychological observations about the employees, she is determined to leave, taking Flora with her. But leaving isn't so easy.

Within its short running time, Memon's three hander film immerses the viewer in its period setting, such that the sight of a packet of cigarettes or a contemporary vehicle are the piece's biggest shocks. As suggested by including this in the 'esoteric' category nothing is explained; indeed the film seems to submerge itself in layers of artifice. Which is all the better; here's one short film I wouldn't want extended into a feature.

You can watch Writers' Retreat here.

Ghost Crew (UK 2022: Dir Lawrie Brewster) A departure from Brewster's previous feature, 2022's fantasy pic Dragon Knight, Ghost Crew is a stripped back exercise reminiscent of a home counties homage to The X Files.

Tom Staunton steps from behind the camera for his first acting role as, er, Tom, shambling host of a paranormal show which shares its title with this movie (Staunton also wrote the piece and was originally scheduled to direct according to early online mentions of the project); Brewster plays camera person Michael. Content wise he's rather down on his luck; an early scene shows him tracking down a ghost monk, which turns out to be a gobby teen wearing a hoodie. To make matters worse Tom's US backer is threatening to pull the plug unless he comes up with something.

And that 'something' turns up in the shape of 16 year old Sandy (Brewster's muse Megan Tremethick), suffering from amnesia following her incarceration in nearby Stonehaven psychiatric hospital. Sensing that here, at last, might be the road to an authentic haunting, Tom and Michael use the girl to delve into the history of the hospital, constructing the story by piecing together witness reports; and the truth is stranger than either of them were expecting.

Despite its rather slight set up - a lot of wandering around in an abandoned and wrecked location standing in for the hospital - Ghost Crew is all about the script, peeling away the layers of narrative to uncover a story of murder and abuse, and watching Tom become increasingly unmoored as he amasses information. It's pretty slow stuff but it's well acted, and a decision to lose the comedy elements early on in the film is a wise one.

The Mothman Tapes (UK 2022: Dir Philip Mearns) This 'found footage' three - and occasionally four - hander finds us in the wilds of Kent; the real life Dering Woods in fact. The location is being visited by a trio of YouTubers, headed by the excitable, fame hungry Dan (Ryan Hill) and his more taciturn colleagues Kev (Chris Roughley) and Rob (Mearns). Based on a blurry picture that they've seen online they're on the hunt for the infamous 'Mothman' of legend, who seems to have forsaken its American homeland and taken up residence in 'the garden of England'. 

As they scout the area they encounter Paranormal Pete (Ben Shockley), an altogether more professional paranormal hunter who was responsible for the photograph that drew the trio to the area; Pete knows his moths.

Soon enough the three - now four - arrive at an electricity pylon, the site of the photograph, and it's not long before the Mothman - in broad daylight - makes its deadly presence felt.

While The Mothman Tapes very much does things by the FF book - lighthearted first section, darker second part, lots of running about towards the end - there is something quite endearing about the various members of the Mearns clan helping out behind the camera and the not too shabby FX work, courtesy of the 'Lunar Fantasy Arts' company (which, I would suggest, is yet another Mearns family member giving themselves airs and graces). The makers also take a leaf out of the 'Blair Witch Project' playbook and provide a rather arresting audio design. Cheap as chips this may be, but at 52 minutes it doesn't outstay its welcome and is far better than about 90% of its FF genre mates.

You can watch The Mothman Tapes here.

When the Earth Gives Up the Dead (UK 2022: Dir Matthew Cooper) Following from Markham (2020) and At the Mountains of Madness (2021) Cooper brings us the third in the HP Lovecraft themed Sekurig trilogy, and while both of those movies were reasonably straightforward, WtEGutD is another beast entirely.

As far as I can ascertain, a spy (Gary Geeson) is appointed to tail a Professor, Nathan Pickman (Ashe Russell), whose perambulations over a 3 plus day period, charted on a map, spell out 'Sekurig'.

When the Spook questions Pickman about recent events (basically the key moments from the previous two films) and the mysterious 'Bob' (which could be a person or a drug), he is also drugged and taken to the village of Dunwich, site of the last exorcism in England in 1947.

From here the film descends - and becomes significantly lighter in tone, almost comedic - into a fever dream which includes a zombie summoning priest (Tony Coughlan), Lovecraftian references galore, like a monstrous baby from the Whateley family, a Necronomibomb, and of course The Old Ones; Cooper also includes a kind of 'Apocalypse Now/Cthulhu' mashup.

None of this makes much sense but it doesn't matter - images are overlaid, the soundtrack comes thick and fast (good of Magazine, The Doors and Elmore James to have granted use of their material in the film), and honestly it's best if you go with it. It even has an uplifting ending (I think) featuring Leeds United football ground and a winning Lottery ticket.

You can watch this and all of Matthew Cooper's films on his YouTube channel here.

Tales of the Creeping Death (UK 2022: Dir John Williams) Since his 2015 feature debut The Slayers Stoke based Williams has built a small but loyal fanbase who eat up his micro budget fright flicks, which are full of inventiveness and humour; and TotCD is no exception.

In thrall to the anthology, or portmanteau films of yore (and actually the present, as the format has experienced a resurgence in recent years) TotCD's wraparound story has a hitman, codename 'Goose' (Michael Socha) employed to provide protection to an eccentric older guy 'Harold'; in exchange for staying with him until 3am - and keeping him alive - Goose will net £20K.

To keep the pair entertained Harold digs deep into his scrapbook of press clippings culled from the more salacious organs, his theory being that it's necessary to look behind the headlines to seek out the real stories. Keen to while away the hours until he collects the readies, Goose listens to four tales spun by Harold. In the first a trio of Halloween partygoers crash a posh gathering, looking conspicuous in their fright gear amongst the black tie guests, despite being welcomed by them. 'Zombie' Billy (Billy Cook) gets drunk, loses his friends and becomes the real - and deadly - focus of the toffs. The second and most obviously funny story has Kevin (Dean Ackerman) a body harvester who carries home the bodies of those who've taken their own life and, well, modifies them; the third tale revolves around three workers en route to an employer away weekend, who detour into some local caves thereby missing out on an alien invasion (with some nice nods to Close Encounters of the Third Kind); and the fourth story has bingo calling Shane (a great comic turn from Darren McAree) left to fend for himself after his mum and stepdad were both attacked and killed by a werewolf while on a camping trip, only to find that the lycanthrope that offed them may have infected him!

Like all great anthology films, don't worry if one of the stories isn't to your taste as there'll be another along in about twenty minutes. Luckily all four of William's segments have something to offer, and there's a wealth of local (and unashamedly working class) talent to bring his script to life. Added to this are some very clever-on-a-budget practical FX and the whole thing is directed with pace, humour and affection for the genre.

York Witches Society (UK 2022: Dir Liza Bolton) Bolton's second feature is a YA movie with a female-centred witchcraft theme, familiar from movies like 1996's The Craft (and its 2020 follow up) and the 2004 TV show Hex.

Amber (Georgia Lock) is the distant descendant of a 17th century witch, Heather Gray (Rachel Warren), burned at the stake by the witchfinder general Matthias Alastair (Finbar Lynch) and managing to curse everyone before she snuffs it. Socially awkward and keen to study, Amber is enrolled in a girl's college on the site of her relative's demise, where she rooms with her emotional opposite, keen as mustard Kirsten (Sydney Craven). Kirsten's enthusiasm to join every group available provides Amber's introduction to the 'York Witches Society', a group of influential cosplaying Wiccans.

Undergoing one of the Society's initiation ceremonies, Heather is dared to sound a bell in the grounds of the school and shout her name. This action disturbs the grave of the witchfinder; in demon form Alastair returns to stalk the last descendant of the Grays, sparing no one in his quest.

Or something. To be honest it's probably not a good idea to concentrate too much on the scant detail that makes up the barest thread of story here. YWS starts well; Lock and Craven are an appealing odd couple, and the Society itself has some intrigue. But as soon as the movie gets going it kind of grinds to a halt, unrescued by some very polite gore (a beheading and a disembowelment if you're interested) and the last reel appearance of the risen witchfinder. A shame really as the Norfolk locations are very atmospheric (until industrial amounts of smog masks pretty much everything) and the cast would probably be good, if only they were given something to do. Nice to see a stalwart of 1970s TV drama, Deborah Grant, still getting work as Amber's (briefly seen) mum, though.

DEoL Top Films of 2025

Well it's been quite a busy year. In 2025 I managed to see a total of 350 films, 90 of which were at various big screens. I coordinated the first ever free film festival in the town where I now live, showing nine films over one week to big and small appreciative audiences; I hope it's the first of many. 

I've also done a couple of film introductions, something I used to do a lot. With thanks to Dom and London's micro grindhouse cinema, The Nickel, I've been able to talk about the films of Arch Hall Jr and my beloved Ray Dennis Steckler.

In terms of written publications, as well as my (ir)regular DEoL blog posts, I was pleased to have a major piece on Japanese filmmaker Nobuo Nakagawa included in the 'We Belong Dead' publication Japanese special, which won a prestigious Rondo Award earlier this year. So I'm an award winner! Ok sort of. I also contributed some pieces for their recent book on UK 1960s 'fantastic' cinema, 'Mods and Shockers'.

My thanks as ever go to Paul Downey for opportunities given to me to cover London launches of new films and several film festivals, including this year's FrightFest and Grimmfest, for his wonderful Bloody Flicks website. This year I've covered 29 films for BF (plus a couple of book reviews), and 2026 will be my tenth year of working with him.

In terms of 'on the air' activities my friend Larry Brookes and I have continued, when personal and business commitments allow, to bring you episodes of 'Larry and David's Film Salon', this year covering The Servant, Le Mépris, Sunset Boulevard, Ran, Cutter's Way and The Wages of Fear. You can hear all the episodes here.

I also launched my own podcast under the 'Dark Eyes of London' brand. The brief here is pretty wide, and my first 'season' has been a four parter covering the work of US maverick director Jerry Warren. The second one, on director Larry Buchanan, will be out early in 2026. All episodes here.

Oh and on a musical note (arf) this December saw the release of the second album from my band Detronics. 'World Goes Bang' is the usual, as someone recently commented, "Bowie fronting Pink Floyd" stuff. It may be your bag - it may not, but you won't know unless you've had a listen.

Anyway, to my usual end of year round up. Unlike some critics I don't differentiate between 'fantastic' and non fantastic titles in my selections: if a film's great, it's great. Notes on the films where I haven't covered them, links for those I have. They're in no particular order:

Nickel Boys (USA 2004: Dir RaMell Ross) This one made a lot of critic 'best of' lists last year; it's a bold film which utilises an unusual 'first person' filming technique to tell the story of events at Arthur G Dozier’s Florida School for Boys between 1900 and 2011, told through the experiences of two friends, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson). The racism experienced is as much via set text as in the actual classroom; it's an occasionally overstaged piece but exudes a mystery way beyond the average.

A Real Pain (USA 2024: Dir Jesse Eisenberg) The director's second feature is a bittersweet two hander between Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin; they are David and Benji, two cousins from New York, who go to Poland to visit the childhood home of their late grandmother. Benji is querulous (matching his Roman Roy role in Succession) and hyper, David apologetic and seemingly long suffering. The road they take, ending up on a Holocaust tour, produces the emotional heart, the 'real pain' of the film. A Real Pain is superbly acted, knowing and sad, with some lovely support performances.

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

The Ugly Stepsister (Norway/Denmark/Romania/Poland/Sweden 2024: Dir Emilie Blichfeldt)

Sinners (USA/Australia/Canada: Dir Ryan Coogler) A film of two halves in the spirit of Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn, Coogler's film dwells at the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul, gives us a potted history of a black community living through the Depression, gang running and star crossed lovers; oh and vampires. It's a rich, witty ride and its halfway point narrative pivot disappointed as many as it won supporters. I'm definitely in the latter camp, and it's a movie that sustains multiple viewings.

Weapons (USA 2025: Dir Zach Cregger) Cregger gave us Barbarian back in 2022, a film about which I had mixed feelings. Weapons is no less high concept and, at times, awkward, revolving around 17 missing schoolchildren who have mysteriously vanished from their class, the impact of the incident on the local community and, latterly, an explanation for the event. Like Barbarian I enjoyed the first part of Weapons more than the second (the more we know the less it intrigues) but it's an enthralling ensemble piece with a superb performance by Julia Garner as Ms Grady, the teacher at the heart of the story.

The Presidents Cake (Iraq/Qatar/USA 2025: Dir Hasan Hadi)

One Battle After Another (USA 2025: Dir Paul Thomas Anderson) I blow hot and cold with Anderson's films. I didn't get on with 2021's Licorice Pizza, but I can never rewatch 2017's Phantom Thread enough. OBAA may be as much of a shaggy dog story as his last feature, littered with set pieces and a playfulness that shows a mastery of the form, but Anderson's take on counterculture, conspiracy theory, messy relationships and freewheeling road movies is nothing short of astounding. I mentioned when I originally wrote about the film, that halfway through I had to go to the cinema and buy some popcorn, because to watch it without seemed criminal.

Honey Bunch (Canada/UK 2025: Dir Dusty Mancinelli, Madeleine Sims-Fewer)

The Ice Tower (France/Germany/Italy 2025: Dir Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

Honorable mentions: The Girl with the Needle, Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii, 28 Years Later, Hallow Road, Bring Her Back, Dead of Winter, A Desert and The Housemaid.