NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2022 #8: Reviews of Croc! (UK 2022), Jack Frost (UK 2022), Powertool Cheerleaders vs the Boyband of the Screeching Dead (UK 2022), Amityville Scarecrow 2 (UK 2022), Dreaded Light (UK 2022) and Dinosaur Hotel 2 (UK 2022)

Croc! (UK 2022: Dir Paul W. Franklin) Although director Paul W. Franklin is a relatively new name within British Fantastic Film circles, his producers Scott Jeffrey and Rhys Waterfield definitely aren’t, and sadly the formulaic approach taken by Jeffrey’s monster movie output is present and correct in this creature feature.

After the obligatory prologue where two horny campers get despatched by a waiting crocodile, we flash forward to meet Dylan (Mark Haldor), an environmental crusader whose wife was killed in Africa, but who’s on the rebound. Dylan is the father of brittle Lisa (Sian Altman) who, with her friends, has rented a wedding venue out in the country – the same venue where the previous campers met their ends.

Lisa’s intended is Charlie (George Nettleton) who, on the evening before their wedding, decides to sow his last wild oats with Lisa’s friend Georgie (Beatrice Fletcher). Grabbing a chance for a quick one, the pair are surprised by the arrival of the croc who chows down on Georgie; a blood soaked Charlie makes his escape and covers the whole thing up, fearing the exposure of his infidelity. The following day the wedding party are assembled, minus Georgie; the rampaging croc gatecrashes the party and the rest of the guests fight to stay alive as the giant amphibian wreaks havoc.

If you’ve seen as many of Jeffrey’s films as I have you’ll recognise that he only has one creature feature template. The croc effects here are better than some of his movies and I was delighted (ok that’s a bit strong, more interested) to see that at one point the venue’s swimming pool is used for some water based croc attack scenes. Fans of low budget Brit cinema may recognise this as the same pool used in Dominic Nutter’s 2022 movie Blood in the Water, which also features a crocodile! You're gonna need a bigger pool etc etc.

Croc! can’t really decide whether to be tongue in cheek or not; a cast who mostly play it straight don’t help here (but as they’re nearly all Jeffrey veterans they’re pretty practised at this) but the second half ramps up the comedic possibilities of the ludicrous setup. Favourite line: “The Lord moves in mysterious ways” says the presiding vicar. “Oh yes. He put a killer in the middle of fucking Hampshire!” is the response. Oh please yourselves. 

Jack Frost (UK 2022: Dir Liana Failla) It's a Jagged Edge production, for ITN distribution, so it's Scott Jeffrey behind the scenes for yet another people-trapped-in-a-youth-hostel seasonal shocker. 

Taking a leaf out of the Poohniverse movies, Failla's debut feature kicks off with a slice of sketchily illustrated legend, with Jack Frost an exiled assistant to Santa Claus who goes all evil, starts a war and is dismembered for his insolence. Jack recovers his various body parts, ready to wreak destruction again, except for one hand, and regularly comes back to earth to recover it. The hand is kept hidden by a family who are the descendants of Mr and Mrs Claus (Mrs C died in the war).

In present day Blighty Pepper (Lauren Staerck) has grown up in a family that are not allowed to celebrate Christmas because of a massacre 50 years previously occasioned by Jack Frost. This year Pepper and her family, including Jagged Edge regular Nicola Wright as mum Alba, are being joined by relatives, including Laura (Sarah Cohen, another JE familiar face, in her second seasonal horror movie of the year) and the Christmas boat is being pushed out. But Jack chooses this moment to come back to earth for his hand. Meanwhile Pepper and Laura steal away for an illicit drinking session in the woods; well you can guess what happens next.

Despite the rather good Christmas atmosphere and some gore which might be more impressive if it was better lit, this is the usual combination of social drama and running around screaming that those familiar with JE productions will recognise. Jack's mask is quite impressive but doesn't allow any vocal movement; the overdubbed Jack's voice is a combination of cheeky and slightly menacing, and somehow seems too posh for the head in which it's stuck (oh and the arrival of the demon is announced via some cheesy heavy metal guitar). I'm sure none of this is meant to be taken seriously, but it's also rather humourless.

Powertool Cheerleaders vs the Boyband of the Screeching Dead (UK 2022: Dir Pat Higgins) Higgins, a talented and versatile director, took a break from filmmaking duties after this. And I'm maybe not surprised. It's his most ambitious work to date, a scrappy but loveable zombie musical with a freewheeling approach and a heart of gold.

Emily (Charlie Bond), a girl with a fear of cheerleading courtesy of her murderous pom pom wielding granny, becomes one at the encouragement of her boss. Joining a cheerleading group naming themselves Power Cheer, comprising Brianna (Carrie Thompson),  Ashley (Liz Soutar), Olivia (Megan Rose Buxton) and single parent Mackenzie (Faith Elizabeth), the girls are tutored by the icy Chloe (Dani Thompson), and as a result end up on a TV talent show called 'Spotlight Chasers'. Their competitors are a boyband, 'Starmen', fronted by Emily's sort of ex Hunter (played by James Hamer-Morton). But a powerful charm, obtained by Emily from granny and finding its way into the hands of the opposition, deploys its powers when 'Starmen' are mortally wounded in a car crash. Resurrected to a zombie state, keen now for human flesh as well as the talent show trophy, it's a fight to the death between the rotting lads and the Power Cheer team.

I had the privilege of seeing this film's premiere as part of an excited audience, including well lubricated members of the cast and crew. And it's probably the best environment to see it; viewed at home, it's scrappiness is more apparent, but it's still a wild and ambitious ride. Songwriting wise Higgins, along with Hamer-Morton, skewers the power ballad as well as the west end stage stomper, the cast enthusiastically vocalising irrespective of singing talent; it's just not that kind of movie but, viewed some years on, it finds a more contemporary analog in the knowing songs of 2023's Barbie. The cast are, of course, excellent, a virtual who's who of 2020s British fantastic film, and Higgins directs with real comic flair. This remains excellent stuff.

Amityville Scarecrow 2 (UK 2022: Dir Adam Cowie) Fans of Amityville Scarecrow - I see you at the back - will be thrilled that somebody - ok Scott Jeffrey - decided that a sequel to Jack Peter Munday's 2021 movie was needed. AS2 scores points for being faithful to all those rotten 'we-absolutely-didn't-need-them' sequels, resurrecting the thought demised Scarecrow from the first movie. 

It's two years since the events in Amityville Scarecrow. The bestrawed killer is no more; owners of the Amityville campsite, sisters Tina (Amanda-Jade Tyler) and Mary (Kate Sandison) - both still sporting blink and you'll miss 'em American accents and reprising their roles from the first flick - decide to resurrect the attraction for a new generation of glampers. Along comes Harriet, Mary's daughter (Sofia Lacey, also in the first AS) and a bunch of disposable twentysomethings, including Harriet's BF Dylan (Dan Robins), and it's not long before the Scarecrow is back, carving up the camp staff.

Jeffrey bizarrely decided in the first movie that the Amityville site would be removed from its New York state location to Kent in order to utilise the name for hapless folk looking for the latest haunted house movie. Cowie, presumably following the Jagged Edge production company requirements, continues the deception, even including a campfire storytelling sequence in which the DeFeo murder spree is recounted. The result is formulaically pitiful: domestic drama; camp counsellors getting it on (thanks Chrissie Naked Attraction Wunna for leaving the kids at home and getting nekkid again); running and screaming; mild entrails related gore. Just hopeless.

Dreaded Light (UK 2022: Dir Mark MacNicol) Dreaded Light is MacNicol's first feature, a confident, slow burn piece centred on a bereaved father and his troubled daughter. 

Duncan (Adam Robertson, simply 'Dad' in the credits) has recently lost his wife to cancer, leaving him in sole charge of the stables she used to run, and daughter Michelle (Rachel Flynn), who suffers with Heliophobia; literally an irrational fear of sunlight (perhaps unsurprisingly Michelle's choice of home viewing is Werner Herzog's Nosferatu). 

Dad has his own battles, namely an over reliance on 'jazz Woodbines' to get him through the day, and an inability to sleep upstairs because of painful memories. A chance meeting with a woman taking riding lessons, Jen (Kirsty Strain, Anna and the Apocalypse) takes an unusual turn when the woman discloses that she is a medium, a fact which sceptical Duncan dismisses.

Michelle's behaviour grows more problematic; suffering from seizures, from time to time she appears so different as to be almost possessed. Running out of options, Duncan has little choice but to consult Jen and ask for spiritual help.

Don't go running away thinking that Dreaded Light is a straightforward spook story; there are definitely 'fantastic' elements to it, but above all the film is an exploration of grief and human frailty. Essentially a three hander, MacNicol handles the more 'out there' elements of the story carefully, keeping events (and character motivations) believable. Filmed on location in Scotland and with a local cast who rarely put a foot wrong (it even has a score by one member of Scots band 'BMX Bandits'), this is one of those undiscovered movies that demands a wider audience. Gripping stuff.

Dinosaur Hotel 2 (UK 2022: Dir Jack E, Bell) In which Scott Jeffrey, of Jagged Edge Productions, creates his own franchise, spreading the love by allowing various directors from the JE stable to have a go at an instalment.

In 2021's origin movie Dinosaur Hotel we met a gamesmaster who created a scenario whereby contestants, in search of a grand prize, had to outwit and survive the attacks of dinosaurs. At the end of that movie the gamesmaster had been eaten by his own beasts while several of the contestants, including Sienna (Chrissie Wunna), had survived the ordeal.

In the sequel we're some years in the future; 2032 to be precise. The game has upped the ante; there's a new gamesmaster, already disillusioned Eddie (Marcus Massey) and the show is now broadcast on TV, with viewers placing bets on the likely winner. Behind the scenes the shadowy Morgana (Gillian Broderick), who's pulling the strings, is also doing a bit of inside betting. Oh and the dinosaurs now include the winged variety, meaning that the predation can take place outdoors. The sequel opens as the last two contestants of a game (JE regulars Samantha Cull and Julia Quayle) battle it out to the finish. But the show is losing ratings, Eddie is off his game and the series producers want to try something new.

Sienna is invited to be a contestant on a special livestreamed reunion show, where the prize fund is $10 million. Listening to the concerns of her kids she refuses, but the powers that be kidnap them to force her to participate, where she joins the winners of the other seasons in the ultimate battle, a motley and occasionally psychotic bunch, many who have also been lured there against their better judgement.

While there's a script reference to the film being set in Colorado, USA a clearly shown sign for 'Beacon Hill Fort' places the 'action' in Essex. No mind; this is a fun development of the original film. "At first we had to be scared of dinosaurs: now we have to be scared of each other," summarises Sienna, and she's right; more time is spent with contestants trying to off each other, 'Hunger Games' style, than dealing with the poorly animated raptors. Not overly demanding, but DH2 has something to say about TV audiences' demand for onscreen unpleasantness, and the cast do 'threat' pretty well.

DEoL at 2026 Raindance Festival: Reviews of Broken Beak (New Zealand/USA 2026), Child (Luxembourg 2026), Corporate Retreat (USA 2026), Modem (UK/Sweden 2026), Sacrificios (Mexico 2025), Shadows of Willow Cabin (USA 2025) and The Troll (USA 2025)

London's Raindance Festival is back this year with another strong lineup of Fantastic films. I got the chance to see seven of them.

Broken Beak aka The Burning of Broken Beak (New Zealand/USA 2026: Dir Christian Carroll) Maori descended photographer Emma (Briar Rose) is recalled from New York to her native New Zealand, accompanied by her impulsive partner Jackie (Lydia Peckham) to attend a will reading; the will in question belongs to an uncle, a ruthless property developer, who was killed in a knife attack.

Arriving at her uncle's flat in an imposing converted power station (a real location in Devonport), now occupied by his cleaner Paula (Katlyn Wong), the will reading discloses that the rest of Emma's family seem to be money grabbing horrors, and that she has inherited the apartment, provided she can stay there for thirty days. 

But as Emma works out what she wants to do, she is reminded by Paula of the history of 'Broken Bird', a mythological creature that attacked the island's first avaricious settlers. As people start dying around her, Emma has nightmare visions of the bird and feels that she may be linked to it.

"Stop being greedy" is the last line of Carroll's movie and, despite the horror elements within, this is basically a movie in support of that statement. Broken Beak opens powerfully with a recording of a bird made back in 1987, its song calling for a mate which will never arrive as its species is on the edge of extinction. Sadly nothing to follow equals that powerful opening, and indeed the film is so full of quirks and ecological messages that its whodunit story is rather lost in the other narrative chicanery. You get the feeling watching this that Carroll is pretty mad at the world, and with good reason; the anger just needs reining in a little. On occasion the film fizzes with themes and ideas which work well, but there's just too much going on. One applauds the sentiment, but sadly not (pun intended) the execution.

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

Child (Luxembourg 2026: Dir Cyrus Neshvad) Another first feature, a relentlessly dark drama from Neshvad, an Academy award nominated Luxembourg director of Iranian origin. 

Greg (Malik Zidi) is both a doctor and a father; his son Leo lies comatose in front of him in hospital, the result of an accident in which Greg was parentally negligent. Leo needs an organ transplant to ensure his survival, with little hope of securing the thing through normal channels. So in a move which threatens the career of both Greg and the consultant surgeon, arrangements are made to secure the organ on the black market.

Greg must travel across the Luxembourg border with his wife Marie (Anne Klein), who can barely share the same car as him, to transact the deal. But obtaining the illicit body part from shady organ farmers becomes the least of their problems when the parent of another child turns up seeking both her daughter and revenge.

When Child's third act finally tips over to horror, and the true nature of the illegal setup is made known (although even these elements are integral to the story), we have already been exposed to a series of increasingly grim tableaux, not least being the moral and ethical conundrums faced by the parents, and Greg's profession. Not much happens in the movie, but we feel everything; Greg and Marie's journey into the heart of darkness (literally; this is a dark film in more ways than one), with the car's GPS slowly counting down the kilometres, is impossibly sad, and the journey back, with the organ contained in a refrigerated glowing box, is equally moving. 

Child is a superbly rendered, bleak and at times heartbreaking film which accurately summarises parental fear (and loathing); a must see. 

Corporate Retreat (USA 2026: Dir Aaron Fisher) Movies about brutal office politics are generally a bit iffy. 2006's Severance was a patchy but enjoyable romp about an outward bound team building trip and 2016's The Belko Experiment had a group of people trapped in an office at the mercy of a control voice.

Aaron Fisher's Corporate Retreat collects together a group of workers employed by Immaculate Pond Technologies for an away weekend. Most of the usual office roles are included - Finance, HR, Operating Officer and Tech - with annoying Cliff (Elias Kacavas) heading up the group. Thinking they're actually having a romantic break, Cliff's girlfriend Ginger (Odeya Rush) is pretty non plussed when she realises the true purpose of the getaway.

The weekend is facilitated by two humourless souls, Amber (Zión Moreno) and Lola (Sasha Lane), who inform the team that they will be guided through seven stages of enlightenment via a series of team challenges. But the shadowy face behind the whole enterprise is ex company CEO Arthur (Alan Ruck), whose annoyance at being deposed focuses on the people in the room; and it looks like the team games are about to get very nasty,

Corporate Retreat starts lightly, with some 'hip' music announcing the cast in a Tarantino lite style. But it soon settles down to be a nasty, pointless 90 minutes where company members, who are unable to leave the building, have to go through things or be shot by the facilitators. It's the kind of movie where people gouge their own eyes out (with a shared spoon, natch) and experience pain for about three minutes. It's also the kind of movie that casts Rosanna Arquette and then kills her off in the first ten minutes. I kept thinking that this was all done for satirical purposes, but the point of the send up alluded me, unless it's a sideswipe at corporate culture. In which case, big fail. Not good.

Modem (UK/Sweden 2026: Dir Tim James Brown) American husband Michael (Josh Burdett) takes his family for an extended summer break to a remote rental in the Swedish countryside, this being his Swedish wife Johanna (Amanda Renberg), teenage daughter from her first marriage Nora (Nika Tallroth) and Michael and Johanna's baby son Stig (Stig Lundström).

Michael, who has a history of both drinking and being sexually inappropriate at work, is looking forward to a detoxing few months spent in nature without the distractions of the internet. Johanna too is hoping to get their life on track, but hasn't reckoned on bratty Nora, for whom summer in the wild means no parties, no guys and, crucially, no Wi-Fi. But an accidental find under the floorboards unearths a dusty old dial up modem. Despite signs forbidding it being plugged in, Nora is unable to be screenless for another night and connects it. Johanna is supportive; as the only breadwinner she needs to work while the family is on extended vacation.

In the film's prologue we've already witnessed the hiding of the modem by a previous cottage occupant, and know that no good can come of switching it on, an activity made more ominous by its connection to a sinister receiver, which acts as a kind of summoning to local spirits. As the family begins to fall apart, the tech begins to take over, manipulated by a sinister presence, culminating in the disappearance of Stig while a drunk Michael snoozes in front of the baby monitor.

Brown's debut feature wouldn't be half as good without the excellent performances of the family members, who completely convince as they try and hold things together. The supernatural elements are less convincing and, at times, plain clunky (do we really need another scary plague doctor character?) but Brown gives us a good sense of place and a real feeling of isolation as the weirdness takes hold. 

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

Sacraficios (Mexico 2025: Dir Mauricio Chernovetzky) The title literally translated as 'Sacrifices', Chernovetzky plunges us into a world of grief centred around Juan (Jorge A. Jimenez) and his wife Alma (Frida Astrid). Alma is pregnant with their second child, their existing son Andrés (Siddhartha Tonalli) a playful and curious boy who loves their seaside home and on whom both parents dote.

One evening, when Alma is lecturing at the local University, after putting Andrés to bed Juan accesses his laptop and a cam sex site. Alma's specialism is Mexican beliefs, and her talk cites the God of the Dead, to whom devotees provided their own blood and flesh as sacrifice to the deity (it's telling that earlier Alma left a book, with pictorial depictions of the god, open for Juan and Andrés to see, cementing the link between man, boy and god). While Juan is distracted, a sudden and violent storm glitches the tech used by Alma, and wakes Andrés who, venturing into the bathroom, falls into the tub, mistakenly left full after his bath, hits his head and drowns. 

Juan's guilt is immediate, paralysing him into inactivity (when Alma returns, he's motionless in a chair cradling their dead son; some days later he remains in the same position, still wearing the bloodstained top and unable to attend Andrés' funeral). Instead he takes a boat out on the sea with, it is assumed, the intention of taking his own life. But his boat becomes snagged in a tangle of seaweed that encloses, within its structure, a mass which contains the body of a young boy; it is Andrés, returned to his father. But changed.

Sacrifios reminded me of the films of Lucile Hadzihalilovic in its blurring of myth and reality, but the  casting of Jimenez and Tonalli, both in their own way excellent, creates a sharp focus of love and dependency at once abstract and detailed. This is a stunning film, one which resists easy interpretation, but vibrant in its intensity and beauty.

Shadows of Willow Cabin (USA 2025: Dir Joe Fria) Fria's debut feature is a haunted house movie with a difference; its occupants are as spooked as the building itself!

Shy Albert (Bryan Bellomo) is staying at his late uncle's cabin, a remote retreat with little phone coverage that presents the ideal location to invite Devon (John Brodsky), a guy he met on an app. It's a big risk for Albert, organising a weekend away with a guy he knows nothing about. 

But when he arrives, Devon seems nice enough. Well toned to Albert's slight fleshiness, he brings the wine and the smarts. Albert is hesitant, for reasons we only discover as the movie progresses; he's married, not even sure he's gay, and in Devon he meets someone comfortable in their own queerness. But Devon didn't always have it so easy; scars on his body attest to a strict religious upbringing and his early attempts to literally cut the gay away. As the weekend progresses, and the booze flows, the two become more relaxed.

But there's a third presence in the house, asserting itself gradually but eventually trapping the pair in the cabin, forcing Albert to face deadly family secrets and showing itself as a powerful entity.

Shadows of Willow Cabin is an uneasy - and overlong - mix of gay relationship drama and cabin in the woods horror. Albert and Devon aren't a great match and this unlikely pairing makes it difficult to appreciate the movie as a romantic or emotional one. The lurch into horror in the last half an hour is perhaps welcome (although not for the two cabin occupants) but the whole thing feels uneasy and rather meandering. Hats off to Fria for trying something a little different but this didn't really work for me.

The Troll (USA 2025: Dir Brianna Lee) Lee's first feature only just exceeds her string of inventive shorts lengthwise, and, like her other films, she writes, directs and stars. Here's she's musician and influencer 'Killa B' (the B stands for Bethany), doing it all for the likes and the fan approbation. But her popularity may be on the wane, judging by some of the comments received on her latest video (a song also written by Lee).

One response in particular stands out; a put down comment which no influencer wants to hear: "Nobody is looking at you." Ms B goes into herself momentarily, but decides that rather than heed the poster's other observations about her being too old and having a manly face, she's about to troll the troller to a new and murderous level.

The contemporary horror film genre has tended to take a dim view of influencer culture, with a succession of movies meting out punishment to those who are 'always on' and playing up their more irritating traits. So it's somewhat refreshing to see the tables turned; Lee is both hilarious and unhinged as a public figure whose response to online hate is meticulously cruel, whether infiltrating an AA group or manipulating a fan meet (I'm not going to give anything away except that Killa B's plan for revenge is devilishly thought through). 

The Troll may only be 67 minutes long but it's a sharply observed, hugely funny movie which looks like it was a blast to make. We definitely want to see more from Lee (and I can also recommend her work on Instagram).

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

Nino (France 2025: Dir Pauline Loquès)

The Nino of the title (Théodore Pellerin) is the personification of thousands of young men living in Paris. He's 28, on the cusp of 29, quiet and unassuming, currently single and working in a fairly uninspiring job. While attending a hospital one Friday, ostensibly to pick up a sick note for his employer, he gets a shock; the sore throat from which he's been suffering is actually cancerous, the result of a long dormant sexually transmitted disease.

The polite but direct doctor schedules him for immediate chemotherapy, starting the following Monday. As if that wasn't enough to take in, she also suggests that he donate his sperm as quickly as possible in that the treatment's potency will render him infertile.

Spat out onto the Paris streets, dazed and frightened, Nino returns home only to find that he's mislaid his door keys, and the building's concierge is absent. And so begins a weekend that we spend with the young man, in which the camera never takes its eye off him (Loquès places Pellerin front and centre in every scene; he's unable to escape our gaze) as he spends time with his mother (Jeanne Balibar), an ex who's in the process of moving to Montreal and to whom he may have transferred the infection, at a 'surprise' party in his honour, and finally with an old school chum (Salomé Dewaels) who he meets by chance.

The joy of Nino - if that's the right word for a movie about a man struggling to come to terms with a cancer diagnosis - is that the film resists mawkishness. We may feel immediate sympathy for the young man but his biggest battle is how to conquer the isolation in which the diagnosis has placed him, while preparing to tell his friends and loved ones.  

But Pellerin is supported by a handful of remarkable performances from the supporting cast. He and Balibar have some of the most intimate scenes in the movie; as mother and son their relationship is obviously close, and when Nino tries to explain the news from the hospital - which she mistakenly thinks is him about to confess that he's transitioning - he ends up telling her he's being treated for depression, possibly feeling guilty about how the cancer originated (later on, Balibar's ex husband Mathieu Amalric turns up in a cameo role). 

Nino is Loquès's first feature, and she's ably assisted by some superb cinematography by Lucie Baudinaud and fine editing by Clémence Diard, both resisting flashiness but effortlessly capturing Nino's fractured, distracted sense of himself and his surroundings. It's a simple but effective film, and at its centre is a casually riveting performance by Pellerin.

Nino is on release from 19 June 2026. 

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2026 #2: Reviews of Voidance (UK 2026), Rose of Nevada (UK 2025), The R.I.P Man (UK 2025), Bride of Frankenstein (UK 2025), Doctor Plague (UK 2026) and The Goodman's Croft (UK 2024/5)

Voidance (UK 2026: Dir Marianna Dean) Dean's first feature, 2023's Breaking Infinity, successfully used a 'quantum loop' idea to create an intriguing kind of low budget multiverse. And now Dean is back with a similarly high concept low cash sci fi movie. Only far less successful.

Newbie ATIC agent Alana Toro (Zoe Cunningham), who answers to the hologram direction of command chief Agent Polo (James Cosmo), is assigned her first solo mission, the final step of her training. As part of the feuding taking place between rival planets Atopia and Cho-Hacha, a terrorist group, the Marai Haria, have been attacking various targets. They have hijacked a freight ship for reasons unknown; it's Alana's mission to infiltrate the group and stop them.

And it's at this point that I have to mention the budget again, for despite the grand introduction and the opening graphics which suggest spectacle is just around the corner, Alana actually rocks up in The Forge, a dimly lit bar on a space station, where it's supposed that the terrorist group are hanging out. And here she stays for the next 80 odd minutes. For Alana has a tool at her disposal; the ability to reset the mission if she fails, enabling her to learn details about the characters she encounters with successive repeats. And if you're now thinking of movies like Source Code, Edge of Tomorrow/Live Die Repeat or even Groundhog Day, well stop now; one of the first problems with Voidance (that title! Sheesh) is that there's no clarity about what's going on, and where in those other films the 'repeat' element was a chance to learn more and have some fun along the way, both of these qualities are much missing in Dean's film.

Admittedly towards the end things tighten up a bit, by which time we've been subject to waves of histrionic full orchestra score trying and failing to convince us that something interesting is happening, and some of the flattest acting outside of the local village hall drama society; senses have been accordingly dulled. Reader, this is a slog; poorly paced, lacking in tension and, in Cunningham's Alana Toro, a mono emotional lead character that, in her wig, at times looks like Dave Hill in his 1970's Slade heyday.

Rose of Nevada (UK 2025: Dir Mark Jenkin) I try, I really try, to like Mark Jenkin's films. They're the visual equivalent of some of the earlier releases on the Ghostbox label, or maybe the 'false nostalgia' sounds of Boards of Canada.

There's no denying the care invested in his saturated images, the 16mm film stock used betraying all the glitches and pops associated with such an analogue medium, and small casts of actors giving committed, understated performances more associated with 1970s 'realist' TV plays.

And yet, for me, there's 'something' that doesn't work about his films. Rose of Nevada is his most ambitious yet, in terms of storyline. The title refers to a fishing vessel, lost at sea thirty years previously and now mysteriously returned to the harbour of a remote Cornish fishing village (almost the same location and community documented in Jenkin's 2019 debut feature Bait). 

This news is of particular concern to one of the missing men's wives (Rosalind Eleazar), who sees its re-appearance as ominous (to compound this, the words "Get off the boat now" are scratched into the vessel's woodwork). The community's economy is not good and times are hard, so it makes sense to re-use the 'Rose of Nevada' with a new crew, comprising Nick (George MacKay) and the lairy Liam (Callum Turner). The pair's first trawl is a success, the boat laden with fish. But on return the village seems to have regained a feeling of prosperity; the local pub is unusually packed, and stranger still the widow of the lost fisherman greets Liam as if they are man and wife. For the pair have returned to 1993; the vessel is not lost at sea, and Liam and Nick are welcomed back to a world that existed before they were born.

Much of the film from here on in is concerned with the young men's responses to the situation in which they find themselves, with Jenkin failing to resist some of the oft used time travel flags (a newspaper dated 1993, smoking allowed inside pubs etc). Liam is accepting, possibly relishing the stability of a new life, whereas Nick is more contemplative and, ultimately, frightened by their time imprisonment. 

As well as location (and some cast members) Jenkin here returns to the theme of Cornwall as a forgotten county, blighted by the slow collapse of the fishing industry and the rise of second-homeism; due to the time travel nature of the admittedly slender plot (which also acts as a mirror to the filmmaking process), Rose of Nevada rather rams these points home. It's an intriguing piece, but it's slightness and 'trapped in amber' mis en scene didn't really work for me.

The R.I.P Man (UK 2025: Dir Jamie Langlands) Despite its title, The R.I.P Man only just scrapes in as a 'Fantastic' film courtesy of the titular killer's modus operandi. 

In the days leading up to the 21st birthday of Clarissa (Jasmine Kheen) several of her friends wind up dead, victims of a killer who, after texting them to warn of their impending doom and then despatching them, extracts one of their teeth.

The police are initially baffled until the pieces start to be put together; a chattering teeth toy left at the scene of each crime is traced to a toymaker whose adopted son, Alden, was committed to an asylum, suffering with a rare oral disease.

You guessed it: Alden, played by Owen Llewelyn (last seen - by me at any rate - in 2022's As a Prelude to Fear), is the R.I.P Man, so named because he wears a dental plate embossed with those letters until he's completed filling his toothless gob with the teeth of his victims. At this point, I wondered whether Langlands was inspired by the eponymous creature of Louisa Warren's 'Tooth Fairy' franchise, whose lank haired monster is equally handy with the pliers (or in this case a drill).

Made for around £20,000 and filmed on the mean streets of, er, Sussex (Brighton and Worthing feature heavily), Langlands's follow up to his 2024 movie The Cellar suffers from leaden pacing, patchy performances and a police department who divide up the cliches evenly between them. It spends too long with the drama lite activities of a group of Clarissa's friends, not even stopping to give us a red herring or two; we know who the killer is pretty much from the first scene.

On the plus side it's well and consistently photographed, does not drown in an over emphatic soundtrack (and even uses a local band in a couple of club scenes) and in Llewelyn's Alden, gives us a creepy killer. Langlands is already making the sequel, fright fans.

Bride of Frankenstein (Awakens) (UK 2025: Dir Louisa Warren) Warren's 38th (!) feature as director uses Maggie Gyllenhaal's movie The Bride! as a spiritual jumping off point, but this is very much a Champdog Productions joint (Warren's in house company), meaning that it's not meant to be taken all that seriously and is a lot of fun as a result. The distributors had the foresight to add the word 'Awakens' to the title, just in case we were wondering about the named monster's dormancy.

A confusing prologue, explained not much later in the movie, has a dead man reanimated into a flesh eating zombie via a book of spells (and such a book now appears as a Champdog trademark in nearly every Warren movie). 

Newly married Santana (a game Nicola Ditter) is heading off for a new life with disgraced surgeon husband...wait for it...Frank N. Stein (Geordie actor Wayne Dobson, all impressive ink and fight-in-a-car-park charm) and away from her deeply unimpressed family. But their bliss is short lived when Santana is hit by a car and killed. Luckily she gifted Frank a book of spells as a wedding present; yes, the same one we saw in the prologue. It contains the means to resurrect the dead; the only snag is that Frank needs new body parts. Roping in his old ex surgeon pal Dr Pret (Jack Darrell) Frank's obvious destination for the required limbs is Santana's family, headed by the god fearing Arthur (Graeme Muncer). Santana, newly re-assembled, although looking exactly the same, is magicked back into life and sets about munching on the rest of the cast.

Although this is arguably Warren's most successful feature to date (it doesn't have any, or much, of the mid movie slump from which the majority of her movies suffer), the director still can't resist bogging the whole thing down with some character drama which gets in the way of the action. To be honest the whole 'Frankenstein' angle is simply an audience hook, as the Bride's shtick isn't much different to Warren's other creature features. But it's fun while it lasts and Ditter gives us a very physical - and at times nuanced - performance.

Doctor Plague (UK 2026: Dir Ben Fortune) Fortune's first stint in the director's chair is aided and abetted by genre veteran, producer Jonathan Sothcott, whose company Shogun films is behind the venture. 

Martin Kemp (yes, that Martin Kemp, and arguably the best actor in this) is troubled detective John Verney. Marriage in pieces, son getting mixed up with the wrong crowd and career facing an uncertain future - his boss, Parker (David Yip, of BBC drama The Chinese Detective fame, about which you may need to ask your parents) sees him as a couple of steps from the detective knacker's yard - Verney is down on his luck, and now has the added problem of thirty one unexplained dead or missing persons on his east London patch.

The culprit is a guy in a plague doctor outfit, with glowing green eyes and a "Repent or die!" catchphrase, as evidenced by the only person who has survived the attacks but who later mysteriously dies while in hospital. Teased for his inability to solve the crimes by an itinerant YouTuber, a desperate Verney thinks there might be a link between the killer/abductor and the Jack the Ripper murders. He consults an expert, Professor Altman (Peter James) and discovers a link to the Brethren of the Flame, a sect who flourished during the Pandemic and who deal out divine retribution to people who've been naughty. When Verney's son is also kidnapped things become personal; is this gang related, or is there something more supernatural going on?

'No-ish' is the spoilerish response; again, right up to the last ten minutes or so Doctor Plague, despite its title, risked being dropped from my 'Fantastic' films survey as it looked like it might remain a rather prosaic psycho on the loose police procedural. That it saves its spookiest moments for the last reel does not rescue the rest of the film from overall blandness. Kemp is very watchable, and Sothcott has made a career out of casting 'resting' UK TV thesp mates in his productions (not to mention his rather unusual looking wife Nerissa) but a capable bunch of actors can't save a dull script and an overall lack of pace. 

The Goodman's Croft (UK 2024/5: Dir Doug Kyle) Kyle is an independent filmmaker living in Scotland who has been producing and directing idiosyncratic movies since 2016. A man who understands the link between myth, landscape and humanity, his films aren't polished but they're warm, witty and deserve to be more widely seen.

In The Goodman's Croft, which manages to be funnier - and more action packed - than most of his projects, Kyle plays Chris Ward, an ex RAF Pastor whose travels to foreign climes have brought him face to face with the devil.

Now returned to Scotland, Ward is seeking 'The Goodman's Croft', an area of the Highlands historically reserved for Beelzebub. But his researches are fraught with menace, whether being Satanically stalked or distracted by the gruff Scorbie (a Kyle regular, his brother Andrew). And then there's the Parish Council, a group of disparate types presumably constituted to keep anyone away from the Croft. Meanwhile more secular powers worldwide are failing to hold together global peace; it comes to something when the search for the devil is less important than the prospect of World War III.

With such lofty and depressing themes at work, it's both surprising and refreshing that Kyle treats his subject so lightly; there's an amusing script here, some charming characterisation, and the extended gunplay seems to be a first for the director, who packs an awful lot into his 67 minutes. Scrappy as you like, it looks like The Goodman's Croft was made over two years (2024 and 2025) but only released this year.

You can watch all of Kyle's films via his Chaos Box YouTube channel.

Touch Me (USA 2025: Dir Addison Heimann)

If the creators of The Mighty Boosh had bonded over lunch with Frank Henenlotter (I'll leave you to work out the details of that one) Touch Me may have been the result.

"I fucked an alien, an alien named Brian", confesses anxiety filled Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) to her therapist, in the middle of recounting a bizarre and not altogether safe sexual experience. Joey encounters the track suited, impressively coiffed and potentially planet saving intergalactic visitor while on a catering gig (Lou Taylor Pucci). One touch of his glowing finger relieves her of her inner fears, and the resultant drunken sex with tentacles, although not consensual, is life changing.

Joey's description of the event as a sort of "hentai porn" experience is a pretty good description for the majority of Heimann's decidedly odd sophomore feature. To flee her weird and borderline dangerous encounter, Joey retreats to the safety of the home she shares with gay Craig (Jordan Gavaris); their slacker shtick is one of the highlights of the film.

But that safety is short lived; when their shower backs up with horseshit leaving them unable to afford the plumbing fees, 'Brian' enters the scene again when Joey accepts an invitation to his weekend retreat, bringing Craig with her. In between bouts of hip hop workouts with his assistant, Laura (Marlene Forte), 'Brian' seduces both flatmates; but his promises of a solution to earthly climate change mask a sinister, and more deadly purpose.

That Touch Me's executive producers include those purveyors of the headscratchy, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, is a thumbs up for the combination of humour and absurdity that abounds in Heimann's film, which takes a whacked out look at addiction (chemical and emotional), self help and friendship without ever becoming self consciously quirky. Dudley and Gavaris are excellent as the two vaguely millennial friends - I could have watched a movie starring just the two of them - and Pucci's Brian is splendidly polymorphously perverse. If this was filmed twenty years ago it would definitely have been more explicit (the credited Intimacy Coordinator is a sign of the times) and because of this at times I felt that Touch Me held back a little. But it's a funny, inventive movie with enough quirks and ticks to maintain interest.

Touch Me is available on digital download from 4th May.

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.