London Korean Film Festival 2019: The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale (South Korea 2019: Dir Lee Min-jae)

It’s been a good year for the zom com. The movie we didn't think we needed - the excellent Zombieland follow up Double Tap - was a huge success, and now here's Korean director Lee Min-jae's debut feature, a fun and seriously sarcastic take on both the zombie movie and the perils of commodification.

The Park family are scam artists. Owners of a run down garage, in the movie's first scene we get the measure of them: a passing motorist is duped out of a load of money, forced into having his car repaired at ridiculously high prices, only to find that the family were the cause of the original vehicle failure by laying caltrops across the road. The family comprise station owner Joon-Gul (Jeong Jae-yeong), his wife, the pregnant Nam-Joon (Uhm Ji-won), failed in business brother Min-Gul (Kim Nam-gil), reluctant daughter Hye-gul (Lee Soo-kyung) and Hawaii obsessed widowed dad Man-Deok (Park In-Hwan).

At the nearby pharma company in the town of Poognsan, human experiments have been carried out to test a trial drug, and have clearly gone wrong. One of the 'experiments,' a young guy turned zombie (Jung Ga-ram) escapes the facility and wanders into the life of the Park family. Of course they remain unaware that he is a zombie - and daughter Hye-gul even takes a bit of a shine to him despite his rather ravaged appearance - until he takes a bite out of Man-Deok, which is unusual behaviour as our zombie is seemingly vegetarian, preferring cabbages to brains.

The bite triggers something rather unexpected: Man-Deok wakes up a younger, more virile version of himself. The zombie’s bite seems to have rejuvenation powers: the bitten man wastes no time in clearing out the contents of the family safe and pissing off to his beloved Hawaii.

Seizing on the potential for a bit of money making, Ming-gul rents out the walking corpse - now domesticated, named 'Jong-bie' and housed in Man-Deok's vacated mobile home - to bite locals (for a price of course), persuading the vegetarian zombie to chow down on the arms of strangers only by applying ketchup to the limb first. Before long the money's flowing in, the garage has been re- purposed, and the town's menfolk are all sprightly again. But it becomes obvious that youth is simply the first phase of infection for the bitten, and it's only a matter of time before the Park family have some new situations to deal with, and not just the fact that Nam-Joon's waters have broken.

The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale is that rare thing, a horror comedy that is actually laugh out loud funny. Sure, in true Korean style some of the comedy is quite broad, but a lot of the fun is found in the interactions of the Park family, whether coping with the undead or each other. They’re a reprehensible bunch (they reminded me of a more comic version of the family in Koreeda's 2018 film Shoplifters), but as with all such cinematic families, the more time you spend with them the more you get to like them.

Lee Min-Jae is clearly aware of the movie's genre - a clip of the 2016 Korean flick Train to Busan is used for instructional purposes, although this movie is much lighter on gore.There's also nods to Cocoon (1985) in the rejuvenative power of the zombie's bite, and Warm Bodies (2013) in the budding rom zom story between the 'Jong bie' and Hye-gul. The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale may be a knockabout movie, but it has some serious things to say about the family, the role of kinship and the perils of the pursuit of money. Apparently the director (who also co-wrote the script) didn't start out with the intention to make a comedy. Well however it happened, I've very pleased that he did.

State Like Sleep (USA/Canada 2019: Dir Meredith Danluck)

At first glance, State Like Sleep advertises itself as a rather routine thriller, with an old fashioned setup involving a woman seeking the truth behind her husband's apparent suicide.

Katherine (Katherine Waterston) is a fashion photographer whose marriage to her TV and movie star husband Stefan (Michiel Huisman) has come to an end. While alone in their former home Stefan kills himself with a bullet to the head. A year after the events Katherine is still in grief, and also has to deal with the sudden confinement of her mother to hospital. Stefan's widow feels that there are aspects to her husband's murder which have not been adequately investigated, such as the fatal wound being on the right side of his head, although he was lefthanded.

Stefan was a secretive guy with a drug and alcohol problem (possibly the reason she left him) and a matchbook at his flat leads her to a seedy club and a meeting with the owner, the shady Emile (Luke Evans). Stefan's mother Anneke (Julie Khaner) remains hostile to Katherine, being left with Stefan's debts after his death. And when Katherine, who has moved into a hotel while she investigates, meets Edward (Michael Shannon), who has the room next door, her life shows every sign that she's unravelling, and can no longer trust what's she's being told.

As mentioned, while the plot description suggests something quite generic, State Like Sleep does something very interesting, and gradually turns from a thriller to a movie far more evasive and involving. As the title suggests, the feelings encountered during the stages of grief envelop the film, conveyed mainly through an astonishing performance by Waterston as Katherine. Her father Sam is also a fine actor, and not only does his daughter bear more than a passing resemblance to dad, she often acts like him too, conveying the pain of her predicament almost entirely through her eyes and little facial tics. This is not a movie stuffed with dialogue and is all the better for it.

Mainly locating the movie in Belgium also plays against the usual smart interiors and exteriors found in slick thrillers. The unimpressive backdrop of a rainsoaked, bedraggled Brussels is perfect for the sense of deepening gloom that enfolds the film. Add in a brooding, thoughtful soundtrack by Jeff McIlwain and David Wingo, State Like Sleep is a mood piece that isn't afraid to occasionally stray into the absurd or even funny (one scene has Katherine suffering a particularly bad hair day after hooking up with a one night stand with a particular sex kink). One could argue that it's tonally restless but I liked its mix of styles and Waterston is incredibly impressive. It's a watchable, smartly intense first feature from Meredith Danluck.

State Like Sleep is available for digital download from 18 November 2019

London Korean Film Festival 2019: Ieoh Island aka Io Island aka Iodo (South Korea 1977: Dir Kim Ki-Young)

Hailed as 'the most bizarre Korean film of all time' it's kind of difficult to know where to start narratively with Kim Ki-Young's film, a comment you could indeed level at a lot of his output from the 1970s, and summed up by one of his own quotes: "I just make films by following my heart, so the analysis I leave to all of you."

Kim Ki-Young is best known for his 1960 movie The Housemaid, often cited as the finest Korean film ever made, and one which has been remade several times. Outside of Korea the director is known, if at all, as someone from the realist school of film making. Ieoh Island dates from a decade when the director's movies were increasingly surreal and surprising (a year later he made the strange and wonderful Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death) and focused on one of Kim Ki-Young's chief obsessions, namely pre-modern Korean culture and belief systems, and their relationship to contemporary existence.

Sun Wu-hyun (Kim Jeong-cheol) is an advertising executive, publicising a new hotel which has been named Iodo, after a mythical island which is known to capture the souls of dead fishermen. Sun assembles a group of journalists on a boat to celebrate the hotel, announces its name and the fact that boat has been chartered for a trip to find the mythical island. One of the assembled journalists, Cheon Nam-Seok (Choi Yun-seok) takes exception to the violation of his people's legends for commercial reasons, and after a late night drinking session between the two men to settle the argument, Cheon goes missing.

Everyone seems to assume that Sun has killed him by pushing him overboard, although the ad man protests his innocence. After losing his job, he is determined to clear his name. Finding out that Cheon came from a remote island now populated only by women (after their men had been claimed by a sea monster and their souls taken to nearby Iodo), he sets off, accompanied by Cheon’s editor, to find out the truth about Cheon.

Once he arrives at the strange, sparsely populated island Sun learns, from interviewing various women, that Cheon wasn't a very nice person at all, seducing lovers out of their savings, investing in schemes to stave off famine and pimping himself out on an island where he was often the only male. Meanwhile the island's shaman, also a woman, is using her magic to solve the island's fertility problem by attempting to summon back the dead from Iodo and using their sperm to impregnate the female islanders. And her sights are set on recovering Cheon's body, his sperm to be hotly fought over by a number of his women admirers.

Ieoh Island is a film with a notoriously graphic climax, even by today's standards (initially cut out of prints but subsequently - and no pun here - re-inserted) but for most of its running time the director handles the rather bizarre content very matter of factly and without exploitation: the flashback within flashback narrative approach may take a little time to get used to, but it makes for satisfying story telling. It's the clash of old beliefs versus modern thinking that is at the heart of the film and the key to its fascination. Kim Ki-Young includes themes of environmental destruction, fertility, superstition, and the spread of capitalism (1970s Korea experienced rapid economic growth, although governed by a right wing military dictatorship at the time). Oh and teeth pulling: Kim Ki-Young's wife, the producer of his films, was also a dentist, so one assumes the dental work close ups are the real thing.

The film that Ieoh Island is closest to thematically is probably The Wicker Man. The island backdrop, a remote location, a search among the villagers, and indeed the shamanic dances all conjure up comparisons with Robin Hardy's 1973 movie. Its stormy coastal location, shamanism and medical obsessions also brought to mind Teruo Ishii's 1969 movie Horrors of Malformed Men. But Kim Ki-Young's film is entirely its own beast. It's audacious, fascinating and more than occasionally a little troubling. It's definitely worth seeking out if you can find a copy.

Supermarket Sweep #10: Reviews of Pentagram (UK 2019), Ouija House (USA 2018), The Haunted (UK 2018), Halloween at Aunt Ethel's (USA 2019), The Curse of Lilith Ratchet (USA 2018) and Dead List (USA 2017)

Pentagram (UK 2019: Dir Steve Lawson) Lawson's second collaboration with Jonathan Sothcott (possibly the least popular person working in the horror genre today) follows on from The Exorcism of Karen Walker, released earlier this year, and represents no improvement on his last movie: it suggests that while Lawson can at least get his films financed through Sothcott's Hereford Films company, the trade off is that he has to use the producer's stories, which are both unoriginal and totally ill suited to small budget productions.

Pentagram is the slender story of four people en route to California, holding up diners to pay their way (you know, just like the couple in Pulp Fiction). They are bad boy Max, his girlfriend Lauren, Holly and her brother Luke. Holly is a drug addict and their intention is to get her into rehab in LA. Fleeing from their latest robbery and with their getaway car on the fritz, they hole up in a very un-American looking house (ok, none of it looks like the US, because it's filmed in Derbyshire). In a bedroom at the top of the house Holly, looking to rest up and beat her craving for junk, comes across a man lying on the floor in the middle of a hand drawn pentagram within a circle. The man, Oliver, pulls Holly inside the chalked design and explains that she is to be a sacrifice, which in turn will enable him to leave the pentagram without being ripped apart by a strange entity. His ruse fails, he's pushed outside the circle and a creature slices him up. It's not long before all four of the young travellers end up inside the pentagram, and have to work out how to leave and who, if anyone, should be sacrificed.

In a more experienced director's hands, and with a larger budget, this fairly simple idea may have worked, or at least managed to generate some tension. On Lawson's watch, it's sadly largely a boring mess. The laws of magic in operation are full of WTF moments, and the audience gets lots of opportunities to raise quizzical eyebrows because of the, shall we say, languid pace of the thing. Cast wise everyone attempts, and fails, to deliver US accents - really, why bother? - and like Lawson's last film, a rather faded star - in this case Nicholas (Hazell) Ball - is roped in for an afternoon's work and trumps all of the rest of the cast in the hopeless accent stakes. Probably the best thing in this is Alexis Rodney as mean old Max: he acts everyone else off the floor and deserves a much better film than this tripe. Lawson was once an interesting director. He needs to unshackle himself from Mr Sothcott and recover some of his micro budget mojo.

Ouija House (USA 2018: Dir Ben Demaree) Now this is why I haunt the supermarket shelves. Laurie is just about to complete her PhD in something supernatural ("I study paranormal phenomenas (sic) as they relate to science"). Astoundingly she has a book deal waiting for her once she finishes it - not self publishing, she's keen to point out - and the icing on the cake of her thesis would be to visit a real haunted house. How handy then that there's one in the family, although Laurie's mum Katherine won't hear it talked about, as it's associated with a side of her relatives she'd prefer to forget.

Luckily Laurie's cousin Samantha who's a bit up on the old witchcraft joins them at the house and fills in the gaps on the witch and warlock side of Laurie's ancestral family, with some choice stories about an evil git called Roka who's not averse to some baby eating. Also along for the thrills are Laurie's friends Tina and Spence, which is a bit daft because there's obviously some unresolved sexual tension between Tina and Laurie's dull BF Nick. Before you know it, a pissed Tina has turned herself into a human ouija board (in one of the more bizarre movie scenes I've witnessed this year - and there's a lot to choose from) using a pebble as a planchette. And no I don't know how the pebble traverses her underwear, best not to ask. It can't be log before the contact lenses are worn, vices growl and there's lots of running around.

The big sell on this one (and that's a relative term) is that the title is for once entirely accurate - the house they're in acts as a giant ouija board, for reasons too ludicrous to detail (but it involves the house trapping the spirit of the demonic warlock Roka). While that might be quite fun with a bit of money behind it, the concept is squandered here. But what a cast! As Samantha Mischa Barton wonders where she went wrong career wise, Dee Wallace plays Laurie's loopy mum Katherine, and go-to craggy geezer Chris Mulkey turns in a ripe performance as crazy Tomas, whose bonkersness is explained by a prologue set way back in time...1988 to be precise.

Actually Ouija House is quite fun. Pretty much every genre standby is chucked in, from the aforementioned ouija board to spooky dolls to demonic possession. And if nothing else it gives people thinking of doing a PhD something to aim for.

The Haunted (UK 2018: Dir David Holroyd) Young Emily, new to her job as care worker, is sent to an overnight shift at the home of Arthur, who is suffering with Alzheimer's. Arthur is in bed asleep when she is introduced, and Emily is left to settle herself into the house - Arthur's bed is monitored by CCTV, but he seems pretty inactive.

With little to do, Emily wanders around the house, but is frightened by occasional glimpses of a young girl. Convinced that the girl is a ghost of Arthur's daughter, as there are photographs of the two of them around the house, Emily feels increasingly isolated and afraid, particularly when Arthur wakes up and has visions too. Discovering a ouija board and and a book of spells, the young care worker begins to suspect that there is something seriously odd going on within the house.

David Holroy's background is in TV and there's certainly something very televisual about his second feature. On the plus side he builds great atmosphere from very little, aided by an effectively moody but spare soundtrack. Sophie Stevens - who also has TV credits - is convincing as out of her depth care worker Emily, and the slow build of tension works well in a movie that at just over 70 minutes doesn't outstay its welcome.

But just as the viewer is wondering where it's all going plotwise, Holroyd brings out all the genre toys and throws them in willy nilly - running about, failing lights, doors that lock themselves - and before we know it he's offered up one of those 'who-is-the-real-ghost?' type endings, which in terms of the paucity of plot and context, makes no sense at all. A missed opportunity.

Halloween at Aunt Ethel's (USA 2019: Dir Joseph Mazzaferro) Here's a limp, desperately unfunny horror 'comedy' with absolutely no redeemable features except its slender 68 minute running time (padded out to the hour and a quarter mark with a cringy fake rap video and bloopers reel.

In a small town in Florida, newcomer Melissa (Madeleine Murphy) is told by her new friends about the story of crazy Ethel, who lives alone and has a reputation for inviting people into her home every Halloween, killing them and chopping their bodies up to make human candy. It's all true of course, as confirmed when the friends decide to stake out her house, underestimating Ethel's truly nasty nature.

And that's it. There's really bad sex gags, lame pratfalls and a rancid script. All three of the main younger actresses are required to appear topless for totally spurious reasons (one of them, Ciara (Rhyssa-Kathryn Marie) promptly and inexplicably disappears from the movie after hers. The main attraction here is Ethel herself, played by Mazzaferro regular Gail Yost, who hams it up something chronic as the cannibalistic Ethel, all pinafores and fright wigs (actually she reminded me of Salvador Ugarte in the camp 1973 flick Miss Leslie's Dolls, and that's not a compliment). The make up effects are perhaps rather better than I was expecting in such a low quality film, but a few convincing severed limbs can't rescue this one.

The Curse of Lilith Ratchet aka American Poltergeist (USA 2016: Dir Eddie Lengyel) Homes of the mid West USA feature prominently in this daft, overlong but heart-in-the-right-place movie. Best friends Alice and Lauren steal a box from a new age store. The box turns out to contain a shrunken head and a poem. The head is that of Lilith Ratchet, a woman whose head was lopped off back in the day following her discovery that her husband was playing away from home, and her soul was transferred to a wicked demon. And guess what? Lilith's spirit is back and she's pretty mad.

So Alice and Lauren take the box to perky Hunter Perry who has hair like Gary Rhodes (ask your parents) and an online show called 'Beyond the Veil.' He knows about this stuff. Perry thinks he's on to something big, so takes over the Halloween bash at the local club for a live podcast in which he gets the audience to pass round the head while reading the poem: "Call her name and feel her pain." Fun, huh? Of course everyone involved in the head passing subsequently starts to get offed, including Lauren, surprisingly early in the proceedings (the only surprising thing in the film), until only Alice and Hunter are left. Will anyone survive?

Lilith Ratchet is full of new age-y nonsense, people being very dumb indeed and everyone talking and talking about what might happen next: this film is an hour and three quarters long and my stars it feels like it. Lilith herself is quite impressive in a knock off Mrs Drablow from The Woman in Black style. The problem is, the demon is so overexposed that she almost has more screen time than the leads. And the rest of our cast are unimpressive but not hopeless. I could see that in the hands of a different director and screenwriter this movie might have something going for it. But as it is, it's pretty poor.

Dead List (USA 2017: Dir Holden Andrews, Ivan Asen and Victor Mathieu) Ah the continued rise in popularity of the portmanteau movie: the V/H/S /ABCs of Death effect continues apace with Dead List, its film within a film approach being the reason for three directors.

A group of actors are all auditioning for the same part. It is, as one of them comments perhaps unnecessarily, a dog eat dog world, but eternal loser Calvin (Deane Sullivan) and his flatmate create a spell to eliminate the competition, via an old book which literally lands on Cal's car windshield. The ancient tome contains a 'dead list' which just happens to list the names of his thespian rivals, who are linked by sharing the same bodily mark as on its cover, and whose fates are the subject of the five short films making up the movie: 'Zander' features a guy who turns into a black guy and is subject to racist police action; uber confident 'Scott' loses his power of hearing when his mobile phone plays up and comes to a sticky end trying to disable it; 'Jason' and his friend Kurt pick up a crazy old lady in the road who turns out to be rather a handful; drug dealing 'Kush' gets bitten while out surfing and turns to goo in the shower; and 'Bob' features a coked up guy hanging out at his friend Jeff's swanky pad and doing battle with a killer clown.

Seriously if I'd pitched that movie to you at funding stage, would you have given it the green light? Dead List feels thrown together, and the stories are all either offensive ('Zander') or just lame (pretty much all the rest). Logan Long's FX work on the 'Kush' segment is really good, but it should have been utilised in a movie where it would have had a much greater impact. Scrappy and inconclusive, this film could more accurately have been titled 'Dead Weight.' Not good.

Films from FrightFest 2019 #5 - Reviews of Darlin' (USA 2019), Nekrotronic (Australia 2018), Satanic Panic (USA 2019), Bliss (USA 2019), Rabid (Canada 2019) and Tales From the Lodge (UK 2019)

Darlin' (USA 2019: Dir Pollyanna McIntosh) There's a certain sense of satisfaction in McIntosh helming the third instalment of the most unlikely cinema franchise ever, mainly because it's one which she has consistently imbued with life and vigour. For those not in the know, McIntosh's feral, cannibalistic 'The Woman' character first popped up in the 2009 movie Offspring. Based on the book by Jack Ketchum, Lucky McKee made a sequel of sorts, The Woman, two years later. As well as giving McIntosh's character front and centre casting position, the movie also served as a damning study of a certain type of maledom in mid America.

Darlin' is something else again, proving the franchise's flexibility. Actually the movie is lots of things, which don't always hang together that smoothly.

At the end of McKee's film 'The Woman' had walked off with some of the family who had initially captured her, including their youngest little girl. As Darlin' opens it seems that only 'The Woman' and the young girl are left. Previously a normal walking talking youngster, Darlin' (as she is now known) has become as silent and feral as her surrogate mother. But deep down Darlin' has desires to rejoin the real world, and breaks into a hospital where she is captured and farmed out to a girl's home run by nuns. Seeing the opportunity to attract necessary funding by publicising the successful taming of a feral child into young womanhood, the Bishop puts the nuns to work.

Meanwhile 'The Woman' maintains a constant search for her child, snacking on the odd passerby to keep her strength up, until she finds some temporary sanctuary with a group of homeless people roughly as convincing as Alice Cooper's bunch of down and outs in John Carpenter's 1987 flick Prince of Darkness. Back in school, Darlin' has been (re?) taught to speak and read, and is a hit both with the class and kindly Sister Jennifer (Norah-Jane Noone) who has taken the girl under her wing. But the school has a dark secret, and the truth is about to come out.

Darlin' is ambitious (perhaps overly so) and fires off in all directions. It's held together by a terrific performance from Lauryn Canny as our heroine (the grown up version) and Noone's Sister Jennifer, who finds out the awful truth behind the goings on in the school. McIntosh wisely pushes herself in the background, but also gives her character more colour this time round (a scene where she travels in a car for the first time and leans her head out of the window like a dog is pretty funny). The thing is,  I didn't like the film that much, although I admired McIntosh's directorial vision.

Nekrotronic (Australia 2018: Dir Kiah Roache-Turner) Since the dawn of time demons have been operating in the world, taking over human bodies and souls, their only opposition being the Necromancers who have a similarly long pedigree. But the demons have found a new way into their human hosts - via the internet, or more precisely a virally successful Pokemon Go like game, where the player spots ghosts (actually the demons) who then latch on to the gamer. The demon activity is master (or should that be mistress?) minded by uber evil Finnegan (Monica Bellucci, having a great time hamming it up) and the Necromancers fight a hi tech battle with the demons to stop them possessing all of the city's souls.

Howard and Rangi, a couple of sewage disposal engineers, get swept up into these events courtesy of the fact that Howard is actually a powerful Necromancer himself. Inducted into the ranks of the demon battlers, and with dim Rangi killed but returning as a spirit guide like sidekick, most of the movie consists of noisy set pieces which rapidly turn Nekrotronic into something resembling a minor entry in the Marvel universe movies.

The film also borrows from Ghostbusters with its demon trapping paraphernalia and The Matrix by way of its slightly dated 'hacking into the mainframe' plot. It's certainly a colourful and fast moving romp, but it fails to sustain interest and the script, which aims for but fails in delivering the smarts of something like Guardians of the Galaxy, would have benefitted from some better one liners. The characters of Howard (Ben O'Toole) and Rangi (Epine Bob Salva) - the latter of whom aims for gormless but comes off as offensive as the only cast member of colour in the movie - are not particularly inspiring, and are rather shown up by the Necromancer sisters Molly (Caroline Ford) and Torquel (Tess Haubrich) who both kick some serious ass. Passable by no means essential.

Satanic Panic (USA 2019: Dir Chelsea Stardust) Stardust's debut feature was one of my favourites at this year's FrightFest. A genuinely funny, occasionally scary and definitely very subversive take on witchcraft movies of the 1970s, with a lot to say about class divisions in suburban USA.

Sam (Hayley Griffith) has taken a job as a pizza delivery girl, but finds out the hard way that the tips, which is where she should be making her money, are pretty hard to find. Taking on a job to deliver food to the swanky out of town Mill Basin area, Sam's funky little scooter and black leather jacket look rather out of place among the suburb's gated community. When the recipients of the pizza order fail to tip, and with her scooter out of gas, Sam, annoyed with being snubbed, takes it on herself to enter the house and ask for the gratuity herself. But the glamorous occupants within are actually Satanists, and, bad news for sweet and innocent Sam, the coven are in need of a virgin to kick start their rites to summon Baphomet. Luckily she teams up with previous sacrificial victim turned non virgin Judy (Ruby Modine) whose mum is Danica, coven leader, and therefore knows her witchcraft stuff - "these demons have more rules than Yahtzee" she tells Sam - and the scene is set for a fight to escape the coven's devilish clutches.

"I know girls like you. You go to public school. And eat Government cheese. And get pregnant in the sixth grade." This diss to Sam is typical of the haves/have littles tension between classes in Stardust's film, which are taken to extremes by the extent of the power and wealth grabbing Satanists, who see the worth of people like our heroine only as sacrifices or incubators for demon babies."Welcome to the world behind the world," summarises Judy, a character who has grown up needing nothing but who sees through the conspicuous consumption and petty squabbling of Mill Basin's nouveau riche. That Satanic Panic works as biting satire and is hugely funny is largely down to Grady ('My Best Friend's Exorcism') Hendrix, one of the smartest writers working in the genre today. Hendrix is unafraid to mine his horror roots - 80s trash cinema (Brian Yuzna's 1989 movie Society was definitely an influence), witchcraft movies - hell there's even a vengeful bedsheet scene which must be a nod to M R James's story and its TV adaptation 'O Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad.'

As Sam Hayley Griffith shows considerable gumption and great comic timing. She's funny, not that smart, but very determined. And as sassy Judy Roby Modine gets all the best lines. Praise too for Rebecca Romijn as coven leader Danica, all cheekbones and withering looks. If there's one thing that slightly lets the movie down it's a rather muddled and abrupt last reel, but most of the movie is so good this can ultimately be forgiven. See it.

Bliss (USA 2019: Dir Joe Begos) I'm really not sure what all the fuss was about at FrightFest on this one. Begos seems to have made a sort of Gaspar Noe-like ramped up remake of Abel Ferrara's 1995 urban vampire movie/metaphor The Addiction. It's noisy, frantic, but actually not nearly as deviant as he thinks it is.

Opening with edgy, scratchy credits underscored by The Nymphs' 1991 track 'Revolt' (also used on the soundtrack to 1992's Pet Sematary II, fact fans), we meet down on her luck artist Dezzy (a performance by Dora Madison which would once have been called 'brave' mainly because she's naked a lot of the time and gets covered in blood regularly) who's late on the rent and whose agent is about to drop her because of a lack both of new product and public interest in the existing pieces: Dezzy is suffering from artist's block and her latest work, a floor to ceiling painting which looks like the entrance to hell behind the Tower of Babel, isn't progressing.

She visits her dealer who sells her a new strain of the popular 'Bliss' drug called 'Diablo,' and while he advises her to take it easy with the powder, Dezzy goes for it, hoping to unblock her creative juices. Teaming up with her friends Courtney (Tru Collins) and Ronnie (Rhys Wakefiled) the evening spirals into a hedonistic wipeout of sex and drugs. And blood. But recovering the following morning, Dezzy's artisitic inspiration may have returned, but with it has come a craving for sustenance that no normal food will satisfy. Dezzy's needs can only be met by the consumption of one thing - human blood - and that makes her a danger to all around her.

Begos deliberately keeps the link between art, drugs and vampirism loose in Bliss, inviting the audience to lose themselves in Dezzy's increasingly abstracted and angry life. One is to believe that the sacrifices Dezzy suffers are all in the name of art, but as is often the case with the expression of the creative painting urge on film - and Bliss is no different - the central piece of art which drives her urges is, well, not very good. Madison is believable as Dezzy, surrounded and increasingly annoyed by the clubflies and sleazebags that surround her. But for all the noise, blood and dizzying camerawork, this felt like rather a conservative film dressed up as something more dangerous, and left me rather cold.

Rabid (Canada 2019: Dir Jen and Sylvia Soska) The Soska sisters' latest is a love letter to Canadian horror and specifically the influence of David Cronenberg, whose 1977 feature they have chosen to re-boot. The original film was full of atmosphere but a little light on narrative coherence, and therefore ripe for re-interpretation, but Jen and Sylvia's take is, although defiantly modern, far more crass and lacking in nuance.

Laura Vandervoort, taking on the role of Rose - previously played by Marilyn Chambers in the original - is a shy fashion designer who suffers a face mangling accident, hit by a car following an angry walkout from a party. She already has imperfections in the form of facial scars, the result of being in a motor accident which killed the rest of her family. As Rose works in the fashion industry it's important to look perfect, so when she receives an email from the Burroughs Institute (just one of a number of groan inducing nods to Cronenberg during the movie) promising experimental stem cell manipulation surgery that will provide full facial recovery, she agrees, despite the warnings of side effects.

But while Rose's post op recovery seems complete she's left with cravings for blood and raw meat, and her body is clearly undergoing some form of change. Those that she attacks turn into rabid monsters, and when she returns to the Institute for help it's clear that those in charge of the procedure have a deeper motive for performing the surgery.

"True beauty lies within the things we've yet to uncover" is just one of the silly lines of dialogue that purports to elevate this trashy and very cheap looking B movie to something more than it is. While those sorts of lines worked in early Cronenberg movies because his films were oblique, the Soska sisters' take on things accentuates the literal, and the homages to their favourite director - the scarlet robes the doctors wear during Rose's op are direct steals from those in Dead Ringers, and the art on the wall of the Burroughs Institute including preparatory sketches for The Naked Lunch, for example - are just crass.

While Jen and Sylvia deserve points for trying, and despite the welter of practical effects which usually get the thumbs up from me, I really didn't like this film. I found it pointless, cold, and all surface - just like the fashion business that provides the setting. Maybe that was the point.

Tales from the Lodge (UK 2019: Dir Abigail Blackmore) If the title of this film suggests to you the portmanteau movies of the 1960s and 1970s, well you'd be right: Tales from the Lodge is a portmanteau film, except here the stories told are more of a sidebar to the central plot.

A group of friends come together to celebrate the life of a mutual chum, Jonesy, who took his life in the lake next to the lodge where they're all staying. They are Martha (Laura Fraser), her seriously ill husband Joe (Mackenzie Crook), Russell (Jonny Vegas) and Emma (Sophie Thompson) having a welcome break from their three kids, and serial womaniser Paul (Dustin Demri-Burns) who has brought along his latest girlfriend Miki (Kelly Wenham), the odd one out among the circle of close friends.

As Miki struggles to integrate, the group make an aborted attempt to scatter Jonesy's ashes (predictably the wind blows them back into Paul's face) and then retire to the lodge for drinks, reminiscing and storytelling. As the alcohol flows the tales told by each of the cast become slightly more bizarre - a ransomed car, a woman who becomes possessed with an insatiable sexual appetite, and the funniest, told by Russell, about a survivor of a zombie apocalypse played by Vegas dressed up as 80s Keifer Sutherland. Like all portmanteau movies, these segments are slight, but the real meat here is the wraparound story, which by the end of the movie shows a different side to all the otherwise likeable cast. Others have commented that the setup is rather similar to Lawrence Kasdan's 1983 movie The Big Chill, but there's something of Kenneth Branagh's 1992 flick Peter's Friends in there too. It's all terribly British (not sure what the Americans will make of it all), quite fun while it lasts, but ultimately rather slight and, with the exception of Emma's impassioned speech about the horrors of child rearing, slightly uninvolving.

The Nightingale (Australia 2019: Dir Jennifer Kent)

It’s 1825, and Clare (Aisling Franciosi) is an Irish woman sent to serve a prison sentence for theft on the island of Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania. With her husband Aidan (Michael Sheasby) and a young baby, she has served her sentence and is waiting for passage off the island. But she remains tethered to her English master, Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), who has been sexually abusing her and is in no hurry to process the papers that will allow her to leave. Hawkins presides over a misfit garrison of soldiers while he awaits a more prestigious posting elsewhere on the island.

In a series of events Aidan challenges Hawkins over his unfairness, and Hawkins receives disappointing news about his prospects for promotion. A combination of alcohol and scarcely contained hatred for those around him leads Hawkins to leave his station with his drunken men and travel on foot to make personal representations to his superiors about his prospects. But not before they visit the hut where Clare and her family are living, and perpetrate a crime so horrendous that Clare, the only survivor, hires an Aboriginal tracker Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) to follow Hakwins and his men - who continue to perpetrate murderous crimes on the journey - and seek revenge.

The early scenes of Jennifer Kent’s excoriating follow up (in chronology only, there’s no connection between the two movies) to 2014’s The Babadook are shocking: the air of violent tension is generated from the very first shot. Thereafter the film moves to (marginally) calmer waters, and the inner core of the movie, apart from an examination of the impact of violence, is the slow discovery of a close relationship between two ostensibly different people, namely Clare and Billy. Both are from displaced families, both have their own language, and importantly each has an equal hatred of their oppressors: crucially Billy promotes a non-violent response, whereas Clare is out for blood.

Ironically Hawkins and his men have also procured an Aborginal guide - an older member of Billy's own family - but his treatment renders him an animal in the white mens' eyes. As Hawkins Sam Claflin is spectacularly unlikable, a seething mass of misanthropy and disappointment. Words cannot adequately describe his levels of disgust at the situation he finds himself in, and with the drunken fools he has been saddled with.

Ultimately this is Franciosi’s film though: she is awkward from our first sight of her, caught between love for her husband and determination to be free of the country that has imprisoned her. And her face rarely lets us forget the horror she has lived through. Arguably this is a period retelling of Meir Zarchi’s 1978 movie I Spit on Your Grave (whose alternative title Day of the Woman is fitting here) and also recalls Warwick Thornton’s savage study of Aboriginal conflict with white settlers, 2017’s Sweet Country, but it’s more than both.

A brutal film shot through with passages of mystical beauty, The Nightingale is a staggering piece of work from Kent.

A version of this review originally appeared on the Bloody Flicks website.