Don't Speak aka Silent Place (UK 2020: Dir Scott Jeffrey) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020

Scott Jeffrey is emerging as one of the more interesting independent horror directors working in the UK at the moment. So far this year three of his films have been or will be released, and I'll cover the other two in future posts.

Let's get the problematic stuff out of the way first. Don't Speak falls into the category of films which are recognisably British both in location and other visual clues (UK license plates, 13 amp sockets etc) but have their cast speak in - largely unconvincing - US accents. Sometimes the director can get away with it: at other times it's consistently irritating, which is the case here. The second, and perhaps more forgivable thing - as movie makers have been doing it pretty much since the trade began - is that the premise of the movie is a direct steal from 2018's A Quiet Place (both titles of the film pretty much seal the deal on that one).

The reason for mentioning those issues first is that Don't Speak is actually a really good film. It's tense, impressively gory, and makes you care for its characters, even if they are only thinly fleshed out.

Parents Rita (Stephanie Lodge) and Alan (Ryan Davies) drive to see Rita's mother Mary (Nicola Wright), after her father was hospitalised with heart problems. But we've already seen Rita's mum's neighbours attacked by a gloopy humanoid 'something', and while Rita and Alan are en route in their Jeep and caravan attachment, complete with son Ben (Jake Watkins), younger sister Charlie (Georgina Jane, from 2019's Pet Graveyard) and her boyfriend Tyler (Will Stanton), the creature has moved on to Mary's house. When the family arrive, passing a sign on a closed gate which ominously reads 'Caution - testing in progress' (which will be important) Mary is nowhere to be seen. They drive back to the nearest village, which also seems to be deserted, as is the local pub. Alan is looking round when he's confronted with a badly injured man man in army fatigues, covered in blood who, as he dies, exclaims: "They made something in the lab. It got out."

And so the stage is set for a tense stand off between the artificially created being, which is blind and senses its victims via sonar (hence the need to be quiet, although plot wise this element is a little patchily applied), and the family. In its way, this is good old fashioned British science fiction film stuff (which is, I suppose, why I was disappointed by the deployment of the American accents - the film is better than that), with the terrified family trying to stay alive against a backdrop of the familiar - the country cottage, the pub and the family's caravan, which becomes a claustrophobic setting for much of the action.

Performance wise the standout here is Georgina Jane as Charlie. We learn early on in the film that she's pregnant, and there's always the possibility that this fertility might feature rather nastily in the plot: and it does, but not in the way you might expect. Jane's fear is thoroughly plausible; indeed the whole cast play fright and panic well, and while one or two plot points go nowhere, and at times the editing is a little uneven, this is a solid film which, apart from the aforementioned influence, also reminded me of 1982's Xtro. Gruelling and pretty good all round.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #22 - Snowpiercer (South Korea/Czech Republic 2013: Dir Bong Hoon Jo)

Is seven years enough to make a film 'retro'? Well it's certainly taken a long time for Bong Hoon Jo's fifth feature to reach Blu Ray and DVD, after its initial rapturous reception both in South Korea and France, the home of the source material. For Snowpiercer started off life as a series of graphic novels, 'Le Transperceniege,' which emerged in 1982 courtesy of writer Jacques Lob - who sadly died in 2002 - and artist Jean-Marc Rochette. The novels had faded from public attention in the intervening years, although French actor/writer director Robert Hossein had expressed an interest in making a film version in the early 1980s.

But unbeknownst to the artist, 'Le Transperceniege' had found its way to the bookshops of South Korea in the early years of the 21st Century, initially as pirated material, and came to the attention of Bong Joon Ho. The director made contact with Rochette and negotiations began for the rights of the film, which eventually started shooting in 2011.

After its initial reception, things went more than a little quiet, however. And the reason? We*nst*in. Apparently the jailed movie mogul's company had acquired the film’s distribution rights for North America, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa on initial release, and he had reportedly wanted to trim the movie by 20 minutes, and "a few other things." Bong refused and the rest is history, albeit a tawdry one.

So now Snowpiercer is finally getting a UK release, and, for those who haven't seen it yet, what a mighty film it is. Its story is deceptively simple. In 2031, the entire planet is frozen following a reaction to a chemical response intended to tackle global warming. The last of the world’s only survivors live aboard the Snowpiercer: a train that’s been hurtling around the globe for the past seventeen years. Within the carriages the remnants of the human race have formed their own divisive economic and class system - or it's been formed for them. But revolution is afoot. Curtis (Chris Evans) is the group appointed leader of the underclasses, who unsurprisingly occupy the massive train's rear compartments, with - it is assumed - life improving the nearer one is to the front of the train. Kept in check by armed guards, and reduced to eating energy bars (the ingredients of which turn out to be very disturbing), Curtis's aim is to lead a band of renegades through the train, eventually taking control of the engine and restoring equality and redistribution of resources across all compartments. But as the revolution begins, Curtis's team find out that not everything is as expected. To put it mildly.

Tilda Swinton as Mason in the brilliant Snowpiercer

The creators of the original 'Le Transperceniege' have admitted that their storytelling was an idealised left wing vision. But as Bong has proved in last year's Parasite, class, and the telling of stories about the impact of divisions, is close to his heart. The cleverness of Snowpiercer is its deployment of blockbuster sci fi moves and then gently deconstructing them. This is far closer to the works of Luc Besson and Terry Gilliam (the late John Hurt's character is even named 'Gilliam') in its collection of awkward, idiosyncratic characters mixed up with square jawed action hero Evans, particularly Tilda Swinton whose factotum Mason is equal parts Tory Shire MP and a The League of Gentlemen character. Of course in the seven years that this has been in We*nst*in hell, many of the cast have become much bigger names than they were here: Evans has proved himself in any number of Marvel adaptations, and Octavia Spencer's career (she plays Tanya, a mum estranged from her child) has rocketed.

Snowpiercer looks incredible, is full of enough little ticks and tricks to make you want to rush to see it again; it's violent, darkly humorous, and has an underlying message that is even more necessary to convey today than in the 1980s when the graphic novel first appeared. I so want to see this on the big screen (sigh). But in the meantime we can finally savour its delights in the home environment. OK this isn't a retro film: it's a tomorrow film.

Snowpiercer is available on Blu Ray and DVD from 25th May.

Blu-ray special features:

• Transperceniege: From the Blank Page to the Blank Screen
• Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton on Snowpiercer
• The Birth of Snowpiercer
• The End of the World, and the New Beginning (animated prologue)
• Characters

Only the Animals aka Seules les bêtes (France/Germany 2019: Dir Dominik Moll)

German director Moll deploys an oft utilised narrative trick here, telling an endlessly circling story from five different perspectives and temporal shifts. We've seen this used before in films ranging from Rashomon (1950) to 1996's L'Appartement, Babel (2006) and 2007's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

Adapted from the 2017 novel 'Seules les bêtes' by Colin Neil, the movie opens with an extraordinary shot: a young man driving into a town with a goat piggy backing him. The location is Abidjan on the Ivory Coast, and the rider is Armand (Guy Roger 'Bibisse' N'Drin). Briefly glimpsed, Armand returns to the story later. Most of the movie is located in Causse Mejean, a hillside town in southern France. Alice Farange (Laura Calamy), who deals in insurance but sort of co-runs a farm with her husband Michel (Denis Ménochet), ventures out to see a client, taciturn Joseph (Damien Bonnard), whom she loves; but despite them having sex the feeling isn't reciprocated. On her way back from Joseph's, in the midst of a blizzard, she passes an abandoned car which, it transpires, is owned by a woman who has gone missing, Evelyne (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi).

It's pretty hard to describe the rest of the film without divulging many of the plot points, which, in the nature of a film like this, are delivered as 'twists' for the viewer. Suffice to reveal that we learn a lot about Evelyne, and much of what happens results from a combination of misunderstandings and subterfuge. Around two thirds through we are returned to Abidjan and the story of Armand, broke and resorting to internet scamming for money. And his crime, perpetrated from nearly 600 miles away, feeds the heart of the movie.

And 'heart' is an interesting word here; while the film is never heartless, it's often cold and sometimes very calculating. These are lonely, isolated characters, reflected in the chopped up way in which their interconnected stories are revealed. Naming the film's five chapters after each of the movie's key characters emphasises this: Alice; Joseph; Marion (who becomes involved with Evelyne); Armand; and finally Michel, whose section is shortest (and also sadly the most improbable).

When a film is assembled in this way, it's only at the end that you get the opportunity to ask yourself whether the story justified the method (see also the told in reverse narratives of Memento (2000) and 2002's Irreversible). "Chance is greater than you," says one character, and while that's a fair summary of the movie, it's also a study in causality. You might argue - again can't give details - that the characters in the film act foolishly or recklessly, but what Only the Animals seems to be telling us is that it's difficult for us to 'do different' - the cast don't make choices, they pursue their instincts, and chance does the rest. The movie is beautifully shot - the snowy vistas of the French plateau contrast stunningly with the noise and colour of the Ivory Coast, and the jigsaw pieces of the film fit together satisfyingly. There is an inevitability to the finale of the movie but I could still have done without it, because the rest of Only the Animals is much more subtle than that. But it's a small grumble about a very good film.

Only the Animals streams exclusively on Curzon Home Cinema from 29th May.

The Final Wish (USA 2018: Dir Timothy Woodward Jr)

The hoary old story of 'The Monkey's Paw' gets resuscitated for each cinematic generation, it would seem. One would have thought the last word on the subject would have been delivered courtesy of the four films in the Wishmaster series (1997 - 2002) but no: in the 2010s we had a straightforward re-telling of the story in The Monkey's Paw (2013). 2017's Wish Upon changed the paw of the tale to a haunted music box which grants the owner seven wishes, and Woodward Jr's movie - made back in 2018 - pretty much re-runs that film, complete with Final Destination movie touches and even, in the final shot, a yard sale scene which suggests a sequel - could this be the start of a 'Monkey's Paw' universe?

Anyway back to the beginning. Newly qualified lawyer Aaron Hammond (Michael Welch) returns to his Ohio home town following the death of antique shop owning dad, to settle the estate. His mum Kate (Lin Shaye, marvellous as always), caught up in grief, is dismissive of his return after an extended period of time away from home. Aaron has singularly failed to gain employment since he qualified, and feels he's being passed over for opportunities because he's too working class. Re-aquainting with his old friends, it's clear that Aaron has tried to better himself and escape his small town roots, which doesn't sit well with the people still living there, particularly bad boy turned nasty cop (Kiwai Lyman, mean as a snake) who's hooked up with Aaron's former sweetheart Lisa (Melissa Bolona) in his extended absence.

But Aaron's not perfect. In debt because of unemployment - he needs $3000 to avoid being evicted from his apartment - he organises a yard sale to flog some of his father's stuff, without telling Kate, and when that fails tries the auction site route. But salvation is about to come his way via one of his father's many possessions, an ugly urn, which contains a wish granting djinn. Aaron merely needs to preface any request with the words "I wish..." for it to be fulfilled. Aaron is initially unaware of the connection between the urn and his sudden change of luck - a scratch card win, his mum suddenly perking up when he wished she could be happy - but when he's accidentally run over by his friend Ty (Jean Elie) and undergoes facial reconstruction surgery as a result, he has cause to remember his wish to be more handsome (the 'surgery' seems to be no more sophisticated than giving Welch a new hair cut and some subtle eye liner).

The back story to the urn and its occupant - a spirit trapped by ancient, pre Mesopotamian mystics - is delivered by Colin the Librarian (Tony Todd in has gazillionth genre walk on role) who stresses that the wishee is limited to seven goes and then has to forfeit their soul. And Aaron can't remember how many wishes he'd asked for.

This is all pretty silly stuff, but well delivered, and it's good to see a slightly older cast than the usual PG tryouts normally fronting up this kind of thing. The themes running through the story - class, loss, the bond between mother and son - are deeper than you'd normally expect in a movie about a wish giving spirit (Jeffrey Riddick, creator of the Final Destination franchise, wrote the script, which would probably explain some of the FAisms in the movie - no bad thing). Lin Shaye is her usual excellent self - dancing in the moonlight with her worm infested dead husband (yep another wish that didn't quite pan out) is a standout spooky scene - and Michael Welch transforms cleverly from geeky guy to adonis. The Final Wish is perfect Saturday night beer and popcorn entertainment.

The Final Wish is released by Signature Entertainment on Digital HD from 25th May.

The Devil's Familiar (UK 2019: Dir Kieran Edwards)

Like his fellow Kidderminster area dweller, Tom Lee Rutter (who has a role in this film), Kieran Edwards is a West Midlands filmmaker whose love for his local vicinity, and its rich history of myths and mysteries, informs his movie.

The Devil's Familiar is also a found footage film that is clever enough to lever in bits of narrative sleight of hand so that it largely doesn't feel like one. Which is all to the good.

Opening in a police station, where footage has been recovered and is to be played to a group of coppers, as the tape rolls we meet our protagonists. Elliott Mooney (Uriel Davies) and Jake McIntryre (Edwards himself, who largely does the filming and thus hides from the camera - he equally lurks at the end of the credits, the bashful chap) are two final year students on a film and video production degree course. For their last project Elliott, who seems to be the one who calls the shots, decides to put together an investigative documentary covering a murder which took place back in 2006. The victim, Bob Nuegent, was found dead in his car, the victim of terrible wounds, commensurate with the claw marks of a wild beast. Passing dogwalker Edd Greuben found the body, but he also came across the very much alive but bloody figure of Sally Edwards, raving about the huge figure of a wild beast that had carried out the killing; a third person, Paul Webster, was missing from the scene. The tide of public opinion and the law favoured Sally as the killer, and despite protesting her innocence during the court case, she was found guilty, and ended up in a secure psychiatric unit.

Elliott and Jake set out to uncover the truth about the case in that there were some things that didn't add up. They first interview the journalist who covered the whole thing, Reeve Rider (Rutter), then expand their net to a series of experts, Sally herself (Sarah Page) whose marbles have clearly played their last game, and finally Paul's brother Rex (Ross Mooney) who had managed to photograph a dark shape which he believes is the beast that murdered his sibling. With the addition of an expert from the local game park, Logan DeEmmony (David Clarke) - and yes they did check whether any of the animals had escaped that evening - they venture into the location of the murder, Ribbesford Woods, to try and get to the truth.

Making great use of nearby locations - Ribbesford Woods (a real place), West Midland Safari Park (complete with shots of giraffes and other beasts for authenticity), and Kidderminster hospital and police station - Edwards' film benefits from being grounded in a believable world. His cast are good, but not great, which actually helps build authenticity. Elliott in particular descends from self assurance to a quivering mess by the end of the movie, and the supports are made up of West Midlands indie horror regulars.

The beast - and spoiler alert, there is one - is only fleetingly glimpsed, but only at the point where a real sense of atmosphere has been established; it's basically a riff on the 'Black Shuck' myth but a lot more deadly - warning; there are severed limbs in this film.

But the real joy of The Devil's Familiar is the 'onion skin' of the story layers being peeled back, full of unreliable narrators and contradictory accounts. At 56 minutes the movie packs it all in - including some great Kill List business - or maybe The Devil's Business business - and I loved all 56 of them. Well done everybody and I can't wait to see more from 'The Kidderminster House of Horror.'

Proximity (USA 2020: Dir Eric Demeusy)

Eric Demeusy has a variety of technical credits, including digital artist on 2016's Stranger Things, animator on Tron: Legacy (2010) and writer of a 2015 Star Wars short called The New Republic Anthology. Themes from all these projects - and many others - inform the style and content of his feature debut, the disjointed YA sci-fi yarn Proximity.

In a 1979 prologue, a lumberjack, Carl (played as his younger self by David Baumgardner and as an older version of the same character by Don Scribner) has a close encounter with a huge flying saucer, which abducts him.

Flash forward in time to 'the present day' (in reality a kind of hybrid of the contemporary and the 1980s, with the fashion and music of the latter but the tech of the former) and we meet Isaac (Ryan Masson, looking at little like a young Stephen Geoffreys or even, for older readers, Bud Cort) a young maths geek who is a computer modeller working on a space programme (!). On the advice of his counsellor to help him deal with the death of his father, he begins to film himself - on a clunky old school movie camera, no less, but which bafflingly seems to shoot on Hi-8 - and its on one of these reflective video jaunts that he too encounters a UFO and its Whitley Strieber 'Communion' style aliens - you know, tall, skinny, rapidly blinking eyes - and is abducted. But unlike Carl he films the whole thing, and uploads the footage on the internet.

Predictably the crowd goes wild, and he becomes a computer sensation until the doubters find their voice, claiming the film is "shiny homemade CGI." Isaac reaches out to the conspiracy theory/abduction crowd, and meets Sara (Highdee Kuan), who is initially reticent about sharing her story. But Isaac's publicity, all done in the name of being taken seriously, attracts the attentions of a group of 'men in black' characters who kidnap both he and Sara, taking them to the agents' hideout in Costa Rica; they're intent on discovering a connection between the pair and Carl, who has been missing for the last 40 years, and they also may be interested in Isaac's new found super powers, which in truth are less super than plain confusing. Escaping the facility Sara and Isaac, who have hooked up with tech wizard Zed (Christian Prentice), realise they have to connect with Carl by travelling to his home in Canada if they're to stand any chance of staying alive.

Proximity veers woozily from one style to another; it starts off as sci fi abductee thriller, then becomes a chase movie with robots and underground bunkers, then changes pace again with The Matrix style hardware, a dash of the 1997 film Contact and a quasi religious ending (the visiting aliens basically want to know who Jesus was, claiming him to be the "link to the origin of everything," perhaps ignoring the fact that there's more than one religion in the world). The bad guys utter phrases like "Calling all agents and androids!" and talk about achieving their aims by "any force necessary." And if you couldn't work out that lurve is gradually forming between Isaac and Sara, towards the end there's schmaltzy music every time they share the screen.

On the plus side some of the effects do look very impressive and the locations - including Costa Rica and Canada - are stunning. And there was one meta laugh out loud moment where Isaac, filming himself on his enormous 80s camera (remember the movie is set in the present day) is challenged as to why anyone would want to record themselves?

But this is basically an extended episode of The X Files for kids. Look, if I saw this aged 10, I'd probably love it, but it's neither charming nor exciting enough to sustain interest in the 58 year old version of myself. Sorry.

Proximity is available via Signature Entertainment on Digital HD from May 18th.

Edge of Extinction (UK 2020: Dir Andrew Gilbert) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020

While post apocalypse films are very popular as subject matter for independent filmmakers, it's often hard to see them as anything other than exercises in grubby men and women charging about the countryside, with some infected people giving chase.

Andrew Gilbert's second feature eschews a lot of the genre standbys in favour of an extended (and at 144 minutes I do mean extended) look at post nuclear de-humanised society in freefall.

We're introduced to a small band of characters who with one exception are without names, to emphasise the erasure of their collective identities. The Boy (Luke Hobson) lives in a building with a well stocked supply cupboard, which we quickly learn, in a time of extreme hardship and hunger, is just asking to be plundered (although personally I'd skip the suggestion of wood pigeon for main course). Through The Boy's memories we learn that it's been fifteen years since the end of a devastating nuclear war across the world; the UK has been spared the worst of the fighting - and the effects of the warheads - but is nevertheless a country where most resources are non existent. Indeed an early scene shows that rival gangs - called 'roadrats', complete with Mad Max style blackened faces - have resorted to cannibalism for their sustenance. The Boy's younger brother has died along the way, as have his parents, murdered by a looter when he was still a child.

On one of his foraging trips The Boy encounters The Girl (Georgie Smibert), who appears to be on her own; but she's been set up as a decoy by her off/on boyfriend called The Man (Chris Kaye) and his gang, who attack The Boy's stash of food. The Boy vows revenge, but instead bumps into, and gets captured by the 'roadrats' under the command of their sadistic leader (Bryn Hodgen) and his deputy, the sleazy Overseer (Neil Summerville). The Chief has already captured a girl for his pleasure, Chloe (Eve Kathryn Oliver), and soon rapes The Girl to assert his dominance. The Boy and The Man must attempt to marshal their forces to free the women and escape the ultra violent gang, before they become the latest delicacy on the menu of the 'roadrats.'

Edge of Extinction's title is, for once, not a hyperbolic one. Gilbert creates a believable world of societal breakdown, in contrast perhaps to the UK's rather polite response to current pandemic events; an early scene of shoppers stockpiling at a supermarket, and being attacked and shot in the car park, is extremely eerie (the director apparently started filming the movie as long ago as 2017 on his free weekends, so could not have predicted the prescience of the scenario). The extent to which the viewer buys into to this world is highlighted in later scenes where the group come across a couple, who live in a clean, modern house in the woods. We realise that until that moment we've been exposed to 90 minutes of grime, dirt and darkness: it's quite a shock.

While we do learn some facts about the main characters in the movie, Gilbert is generally happy for them to be seen as ciphers for the breakdown of society; when people are killed - and the film is often incredibly violent - the audience are encouraged to be as blasé about the deaths as the cast seem to be. The director's aim is to show a desensitised society who have degenerated within a fifteen year timespan, and the impressive use of real, derelict locations, all discovered in the countryside of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, underscores the decay to great effect. Edge of Extinction won't be a film for everyone - it's quite slow and the 'action' is often repetitive. But to conjure such a credible future world on a small budget is quite the feat. Recommended then.

Edge of Extinction is released across all major On Demand and Download platforms from 18 May, with a DVD released later in the year.

British Horror Films - 2020 onwards - coming to DEoL!

A quick note people to let you know that I will be flying the flag for UK independent horror movies, taking up the challenge from the venerable MJ Simpson who, for the last 20 years, has made it his mission to cover every BHF ever made. MJ packed it in on 31st December last year, but needed someone to carry on the work - he was the only person comprehensively doing this, the fruits of his labours being a 3 volume set of books which will eventually detail every single BHF made in the years 2000 - 2019 (you can buy/order them all here).

I'm not changing the content of my site - it'll still be as random as ever. But when you see a review with the tag 'New Wave of the British Horror Film' you'll know it's going into Volume 4!

And now go and buy MJ's book you stingy beggars.

Films From FrightFest 2019 #8: Reviews of The Sonata (France/UK/Russia/Latvia 2018), Eat Brains Love (USA 2019), Dark Light (USA 2019), Sadistic Intentions (USA 2018), The Wretched (USA 2019) and The Perished (Ireland 2019)

It's touch and go whether FrightFest will take place this year, but no matter, because I'm still catching up on the films that played at last year's festival. A mixed bag this time round, and I'd have been disappointed if I'd chosen to get a ticket for most of them.

The Sonata (France/UK/Russia/Latvia 2018: Dir Andrew Desmond) If indeed the devil has all the finest tunes, you can also use them to summon him. That's the premise in this very gothic confection with a big dollop of Euro pudding.

Talented violinist Freya Tingley (Rose Fisher) inherits a rambling turreted mansion in France, on the death of her long lost composer father Richard Marlowe (Rutger Hauer) who, we see in a prologue, has expired by setting fire to himself. Her brusque manager Charles (Simon Abkarian), who's clearly a wrong 'un, is keen to maintain his preofessional attachment to Rose, who feels that she's outgrown him.

When Rose installs herself in the mansion, she discovers the sheet music for a sonata, her father's last work, presumed unfinished. The music is punctuated with red symbols, hinting at some arcane code. Are they there to stop the music performed or do they serve a more dangerous purpose? As Rose and Charles gradually solve the clues to the symbols on the score, she learns of their origin: a sect who believed that some pieces of music are able to open the portal to other worlds, and even communicate with the Antichrist, and of the horrors that her father perpetrated in service of the devil's music.

The almost otherwordly Latvian locations of Desmond's debut feature do much to give the film a fairytale feel, and it's probably the best way to view the movie. Its quaint, vaguely Lovecraftian plot, sequences of our tortured heroine descending stone staircases in a diaphanous nightgown, ghost children and disconcerting dream sequences all place The Sonata in the category of old school gothic horror, heightened by Alexis Maingaud's lush score, all rising strings and trilling flutes. To be fair there's not much to this, but the style over substance accusation is abated by the trickiness of the clues, some nasty although not overdone touches, a rousing finale and a running time that doesn't outstay its welcome.

Eat Brains Love (USA 2019: Dir Rodman Flender) A peppy zom-rom-com, underneath the gore and the gags this is a rather old fashioned - and faintly sexist - tale of a guy torn between brains and beauty (the cinematic take on this being that both are beautiful in different ways), although one's a psychic and the other's a zombie.

A flashback-y introduction has Jake (Jake Cannavale), a no hope student, making the unlikeliest of couples with cheerleader Amanda (Angelique Riviera). The reason? There's been a zombie outbreak, and both have been bitten, respectively by regrettable sexual partners, the transference of the virus being linked to, well, sex. Jake can't believe his luck that the class hottie has finally acknowledged him, even if their friendship has been achieved by chowing down on the rest of their class.

And now Jake and Amanda are on the run, being tracked down by representatives from a government agency (who call the infected 'necros'), including a trained psychic, Ripley-from-Alien-a-like Cass (Sarah Yarkin), who is able to project herself into other's minds. After spending some time in Jake's, a form of attraction begins, at the same time as Cass begins to question the motives of her boss. Of course the pair have to eat and, in one of the film's funnier plot points, map out their meals by using a guide which plots the locations of people who have fallen foul of the law.

In true modern comedy horror style the gags in Eat Brains Love come thick and fast; most raise a wry smile but rarely a belly laugh. As well as the rather outmoded two gals and one guy scenario, there are also a couple of lesbian characters who are written from a (jock) male perspective, and after a while I began to think this felt like a zombie version of 1978's Lemon Popsicle, and missed the smarts of something like either of the Zombieland movies.

Eat Brains Love would probably work better as a crowd movie than a lone viewing experience (which is how I watched it); its gory set pieces are perfect for a beer and popcorn audience. At times it zips along but for large parts the movie feels a bit baggy, with smart lines and little else. OK but overfamiliar fare.

Dark Light (USA 2019: Dir Padraig Reynolds) Annie (Jessica Madsen) retreats to her late mother's house amid the flat cornfields of mid America, to escape a failing marriage. With her is daughter Emily (Opal Littleton). It's the house in which Annie grew up, but the peace is only temporary: husband Paul turns up (Ed Brody) to remind Annie that it was her poor mental health that led him to have an extra marital affair: "I'm sorry you're back here again," he tells her.

But Annie's anxieties seem to have a physical form, in the shape of a figure - or figures - glimpsed in the house and the cornfields. She ropes in the local sheriff (Kristina Clifford) who is as disbelieving of the perceived threat as her husband.

But, as we have seen in the film's prologue, the danger is real, and has kidnapped her daughter. Annie, under threat, mistakenly shoots her husband and is arrested for the crime. She is taken into custody but manages to escape when the police van in which she is being transported crashes. Annie must then face down her inner demons, and the exterior ones too, to get her daughter back.

Dark Light plays like an extended episode of The X Files, and the explanation for the figures - indigenous life forms driven into hiding - struggles to make a political point but really becomes just another creature feature with a lot of wandering around, flashlights shining in the darkness. Admittedly the rather strange creature designs are effective when glimpsed sparingly, but their impact fades with overexposure; they're still men in suits with TV screens for heads.

Reynolds has a track record of making low budget horror films which attempt something higher than their premise, and Dark Light is more of the same; explanations are in short supply and characters are sketched in rather than fully formed. Ultimately this is a bit of a trudge, and some last reel excitement can't really compensate for the rather pedestrian nature of the bulk of the film.

Sadistic Intentions (USA 2018: Dir Eric Pennycoff) Pennycoff's first feature is a real mixed bag, partly explained by the fact that the script changed completely after the actors had been cast and the single location was found.

Chloe (Taylor Zaudtke) and Stu (Jeremy Gardner), both unknown to each other, are separately invited to meet up with Kevin (Michael Patrick Nicholson), who is respectively Chloe's dealer and Stu's fellow death metal band member. We already know from a rather confusing opening scene that Kevin has blood on his hands - seemingly the slaughter of an entire family (his own? We probably do need to talk about Kevin then) - so when the pair show up at the house, it's surprising that Kevin isn't home. Or is he?

Chloe and Stu gradually get to know each other, and a growing friendship blossoms, fuelled by Chloe's weed consumption. Stu remains the rather taciturn band member. He plays a full-on track by his group, called 'Morbid Annihilator', but feels that their music is just not extreme enough: Chloe counters this by choosing some of her favourite soft rock off the internet, and asks Stu to dance ("I'd rather die in a fucking house fire," he responds), but shows some signs of thawing when Stu invites Chloe into the garden for some death metal screaming (intentionally or not this scene reminded me of Liza Minnelli and Michael York under the railway arches in 1972's Cabaret).

But around half way through the movie the whole thing gets turned on its head when Kevin arrives: the slaughter we saw at the beginning of the movie was real, and Stu's mate is now a fully fledged psychopath, who feels that their latest recording session could be significantly pepped up with some more human sacrifice.

In interviews both Pennycoff and his stars want the audience's takeaway from their film to be an investment in the characters. And while it's true that the director spends some time fleshing out Chloe and Stu's stories, in the accurately faltering way of an opposites attract couple getting to know each other for the first time, that doesn't count for much when those same characters start acting contra to what we expect in the rather draggy second half.

Sadistic Intentions is probably best seen as a three hander extended ode to how rubbish men are; for different reasons Stu and Kevin are not keepers. It has its moments, but the thriller/ horror movie elements come off like a luke warm rehash of the last couple of reels of Scream (1996), and not very successfully.

The Wretched (USA 2019: Dir Brett Pierce, Drew T. Pierce) On the surface The Wretched could be seen as just another YA folk-horroresque fright flick. Its central character is a young guy, Ben (John-Paul Howard), who arrives to spend the summer working at dad's marina. His parents are separated, and Ben's been getting into a little trouble back home (his arm is in a cast as the result of a little breaking and entering). It's hoped some time with dad will put him right.

But any hope of a reconciliation between the parents now seems unlikely, as dad Liam (Jamison Jones) has met a new woman, Sara (Azie Tesfai), to whom Ben does not warm. Ben too meets someone, the rather sweet and down to earth Mallory (Piper Curda) but louses that up at a party when first he gets caught with someone else and then throws up all over her.

But when a family move into the holiday rental next door to Liam's home, Ben begins to suspect things aren't right. The mum of the family, Abbie (Zarah Mahler), brings roadkill deer home and guts it. Later a strange figure emerges from the deer's body - has it been hiding there? And when Ben comes home one day to find the Abbie's son hiding in his house, scared of his mother, he decides to investigate further.

So far, so PG-13. And while The Wretched isn't loaded with gore, it doesn't need to be. There is a real sense of unease created by the odd goings on circling around Ben. And the heart of the movie - the story of the dark mother, 'born from rock, root and tree' who 'feasts on the forgotten' - is genuinely unsettling: an entity who has the ability to make people forget their loved ones is a subtle take on the usual 'being in the woods' story. This adds a supernatural twist to what would otherwise seem like normal events. Who can say whether Liam's careful folding of a family photograph to exclude his wife is simply moving on with his own, or something more sinister? It's quite an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers approach to things, and works effectively for the same reason; normal people acting in a way that seems normal and yet...isn't. There's also an off 1980s feel to the whole thing: while the prologue is set 35 years previously, time doesn't seem to have moved on much in that part of the woods. The Wretched is an excellent little film, well acted and effective in subverting viewers' expectations. It's well worth 90 minutes of your time.

The Perished (Ireland 2019: Dir Paddy Murphy) The haunted history of Ireland's Magdalene laundries - hostels for unmarried mothers and their children which functioned as little more than workhouses, and where the women's children often met early deaths, possibly at the hands of the people running the institutions - permeates writer/director Murphy's brooding and grim latest feature.

Sarah (Courtney McKeon, excellent) falls pregnant by her boyfriend Shane (Fiach Kunz) but before she can tell him, he breaks up with her. Unable to obtain an abortion in Ireland, she flees the tyranny of her religious mother Elaine (Noelle Clarke) and supportive but downtrodden father Richard (Conor Lambert) and travels to England to undergo the procedure.

Returning to Ireland she holes up with her best friend, gay Davet (Paul Fitzgerald) in his parents' large house. But Sarah, who hasn't always been the strongest of people - as evidenced by Shane's sister Rebecca (Lisa Tyrell) reminding him of Sarah's examples of flakiness - is clearly incapacitated by guilt over the abortion, even though she knew she had no choice, and failing to discuss the issue with Shane first.

But what Sarah doesn't know is that the property in which she's staying was formerly a Magdalene house, and the spirits of the dead children - embodied in a strange stripped-flesh half human creature, initially crying in the darkness but then emerging from the shadows - want to reach out to Sarah.

While by no means perfect, what I admired about The Perished was, firstly, that it refused to become just another creature feature. The drama of the film's first two thirds is not sacrificed for a final reel gross out. The second thing is the ambiguity of the piece. Other films on the same subject have located themselves in the past, as if almost to say that history couldn't repeat itself. But in the very believable character of Sarah's mother Elaine is the contemporary reality of the use of religious judgement in a harmful way. It's also a film which doesn't show Sarah to be without fault: someone who, despite making her own choices, is left with guilt for what she's done. The 'monster' element was for me the least persuasive thing in the film - I would have preferred the 'haunting' to be more inferred than made explicit. But this is bold stuff, tense, generally well acted, and very, very sad.

The Shed (USA 2020: Dir Frank Sabatella)

When a vampire captures and bites latest victim Bane (Frank Whaley), somewhere in the farmlands of the Midwest, he fails to see dawn's approaching rays and crumbles to dust. Newly vamped Bane meanwhile, fearing the same fate, hides in a handy nearby shed.

The shed belongs to embittered veteran Ellis (Timothy Bottoms at his meanest best) who lives in a rundown house with his grandson, orphaned Stan (Jay Jay Warren), who has a history of juvenile detentions and a really bad relationship with grandpa. At school his best friend Dommer (Cody Kostro) - pronounced Dahmer - gets an almost daily licking from class thug Marble (Chris Petrovski) and Stan's interventions in these assaults are pointing the way to school suspension. His problems are exacerbated by his one time girlfriend Roxy (Sofia Happonen), who still harbours feelings for Stan, now running with the bad boys.

Stan hears noises within the shed, and initially thinks it occupied by a crackhead. But when Ellis's guard dog ends up beheaded after gaining access to the outbuilding, swiftly followed by Ellis himself, Stan is torn between phoning the authorities and seeing the vampire's attack as the solution to his problems: so he seals the shed and gets on with his life.

Of course in a small town disappearances get noticed fairly quickly, and it's not long before the law shows up in the shape of good ol' girl Sheriff Dorney (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) who feels benevolent towards Stan, recognising that his temper is a direct result of his upbringing. But when she too starts snooping around the shed, looking for Ellis, the trouble really starts.

Bane wakes up in The Shed (2020)

I was half expecting the credits of The Shed to announce that Sabatella's movie was based on a Stephen King short story, so familiar is the setup here (it's not though): Midwest USA blue collar cast; mean older parent; flawed authority figures; horror elements introduced into a small town setup. Nearly all the characters in the movie are angry for one reason or another and, while they can't wait to leave the sleepy town in Pilgrim Hill county, for the duration of the movie they remain trapped within its confines. The unspecified time setting of the piece - although it gives off a decidedly 1980s vibe - adds to this. These are young people forced to grow up very quickly but who, deep down, remain little more than children, as likely to crumble as they are to show aggression. As such The Shed has more emotional clout than you'd expect in a vampire-trapped-in-a-shed story - and is a far different beast to last year's home counties horror comedy Shed of the Dead - with much of the film's interest stemming from how Stan and Dommer interact with a being very rarely glimpsed, except under wraps, and gently smoking when its limbs are exposed to sunlight (a nice nod to the similarly located 1987 vamp flick Near Dark).

In fact there's no humour in The Shed to leaven the rather downbeat goings on (outside of the rather bizarre setup), and the explosive last reel, which falls back on the familiar - the cast tooling up to protect themselves, boy gets girl, and a humans vs vampires standoff - almost comes as a relief. I like this movie a lot. It's simply done, effective and with solid performances from the cast. Good work!

The Shed is out on Digital HD from Signature Entertainment on Monday 11th May 2020.

Every film showing at the Sohome Horror Film Festival - 9 May 2020

Mitch Harrod and his lovely team, who put together London's annual Soho Horror Film Festival, have served up a full day of online frights for us poor locked down mortals. 9 short films, 4 features, and the following reviews were written directly after the films played, so coverage is perhaps not as in depth as usual.

Short - Boys Club (Australia 2019: Dir John Riddell) A rather brilliant little short; two guys, Max and Terry, are self isolating in their basement, because of a something that lurks in the nearby farm. One of the pair has some serious self love issues - "It's the fifth time today and it's not even 12!" the other remarks, but when an approaching truck, watched through a periscope that surveys what's going on outside from the safety of the basement, shows the promise of a woman in the passenger seat, it's too much for our masturbating hero, and he breaks cover to investigate. Big mistake. Tension, blow up dolls, snappy dialogue and a brilliant pisstake of an emo song by King Baby Jr on the soundtrack, and all in five minutes. Superb fun.

The Lake Vampire (Venezuela 2018: Dir Carl Zitelmann) Wow, I didn't expect on a sunny Saturday morning that I'd be inside watching a thoroughly absorbing police procedural/meditation on evil.

Ernesto Navarro (Sócrates Serrano) is a writer whose latest book, 'The Purple Serpent' he describes as a cult classic, although at a book signing there's only one attendee. Kicked out by his wife for having an affair with Zuley (Maria Antonieta Hidalgo), an intern on the local paper - whom he uses shamelessly for his research needs - he's asked to a murder scene (a beheaded body), because one of his signed books has been found at the site, partly burned. Via Zuley Navarro learns of The Southern Devil and starts on a long and complex search for the truth, seeking material as a possible next book. What he finds, courtesy of a retired police inspector, Jeremias Morales (Miguel Ángel Landa), who investigated a string of similar murders back in the 1970s, is a shape shifting immortal blood drinker.

This is a great meditation on the nature of evil as well as a brilliant 'onion skin' thriller, and its bleak Se7en style feel (it even borrows a scene direct from that film) and slow, ominous pace makes it a riveting watch. Strongly recommended.

Short - Dead Teenager Seance (Brazil 2018: Dir Rodrigo Gasparini, Dante Vescio) Punky and Rocky break into a supposedly haunted house; the wandering spirit being that of Adam, son of the family who lived there, who at the age of 12 skinned the rest of them. Keen to investigate, Punky roams the rooms, discovering Adam, who despatches her. But here's the twist: Punky doesn't realise that she's dead until a group of strangers, also in the house, put her straight. She's dead alright; and so are they, all killed by Adam. The house is their limbo, and the only chance of them moving on is to defeat the killer.

This is a nifty 20 minute short that probably doesn't bear close scrutiny plot wise but is a lot of fun and very in thrall to 1980s house based horrors (Night of the Demon I'm looking at you). Pity poor Cassandra though (Bianca Tadini), a psychic who when alive could see the dead, and now she is no more can see the living; her character is blind, and she plays the whole thing wearing what looks like an extremely uncomfortable pair of opaque contact lenses.

WitchStars (Italy 2018: Dir Federico Sfascia) There's no denying the level of inventiveness on display in Sfascia's ambitious but rather overstretched micro budget horror. On Halloween night, four guys slip away from their girlfriends and arrange a band reunion, complete with drugs and (rented) girls. Dalila, the fairly odious girlfriend of one of their number, decides to follow one of the blokes, stupid Renni, knowing that he's on his way to meet them. But something strange is happening in the sky: a large number of meteorites are falling to earth, each containing alien life forms that look a bit like pumpkins, and emitting jets of a sticky substance which mutate all those who come into contact with it; starting with Renni. The whole lot of them end up barricaded against the aliens and, as the mutations begin, each other.

There are some subplots about tangled love to leaven the gore and grue, and there's a lot of screaming and flashing torches. The best and funniest element of the movie is a radio DJ, Rei Satomi, who rails against the world while all his phone-in callers berate him for being a bald twit. WitchStars is apparently a reworked version of  Sfascia's 2016 movie Alienween, but whatever tweaks he's made it didn't really work for me. I found it overlong and its ambition way exceeded what was put on screen, despite some clever practical effects work and a huge amount of enthusiasm from the cast. Sorry.

Short - El LLibre (Spain 2019: Dir Francesca Català Margarit) A very short short in which a librarian discovers a book which refuses to stay on the shelf, only to find that it's actually two identical librarians shoving the book from either side of the bookcase.

Short - Most Steps Ever (USA2019: Dir Nesib Shamah, James Allen Smith) Set in a world of watch phone apps, this inventive short film has Piper, a health conscious woman, utilising software to instruct her running programme and, annoyingly, telling her how to shop sensibly in the supermarket. Retaliating against the app she steals a bar of chocolate, but when outside the store she is chased by a machete wielding assailant - possibly a punishment for her transgression. Fleeing her potential attacker, her watch responds by congratulating her on upping her fitness regime. Arguably in questionable taste, it's a slyly funny short and a good example of having one killer idea (pun intended) and keeping it going just as long as is necessary.

Every Time I Die (USA 2019: Dir Robi Michael) Wow. Foucault's principles of structuralism (the benefits of a classical education, readers - arf) would have a field day with the dualism on display in this melon twister of a movie. Sam (Drew Fonteiro), a paramedic, is a guy in crisis. He's in a relationship with Mia, a woman married to square jawed Tyler and it looks like she's chosen her husband over him. He's also been having blackouts and remains haunted by an incident that happened when he was 8 years old, when his younger sister Sara died by drowning.

Sam's work colleague and friend Jay invites Sam to a birthday party at his remote house by the lake. Jay's partner Poppy is Mia's sister and Mia and Tyler are also in attendance. Perhaps inevitably Tyler finds out about Sam's affair with his wife and after a faceoff kills Sam by drowning him.

But while Sam's body dies his spirit or soul doesn't - instead he wakes up in the body of Jay, with full knowledge of what Tyler did. How can Sam bring Tyler to justice in that nobody is likely to believe he's not Jay?

There are so many great things about this film, not the least of which is applying a fantastic, almost Twilight Zone story to an otherwise down to earth drama. Poppy and Mia are played by real life identical twins Michelle and Melissa Macedo, which further deepens the dual nature of events. And the whole thing is framed by the touching and every changing story of what happened between Sam and Sara, with beautiful performances by Fonteiro and Frankie Hinton; it's an emotional film which could so easily have felt manipulative. It put me in mind of Jacob's Ladder, which is tonally very similar. A very very good movie.

Short - Finley (USA 2019: Dir J. Zachary Thurman) Finley screened at the 2019 Soho Film Festival and was a standout of the weekend. Such a clever and witty subversion of the doll attack movie genre, hugely funny and with an emotional core too.

When a group of people move into a house, they find a load of junk left in the attic, including a nailed down box which when prised open contains a dummy, wrapped in chains. The group don't seem to worry that the dummy - Finley - can suddenly move of its own accord, and seem similarly unbothered when it starts strategising to do them in. But Finley is rather hopeless, like a murderous but clueless child, and before long the housemates ave accommodated his attempts at murder - poison in the salad included - in their stride. But when a band of housebreakers steal into their property with intent to rob - and worse - Finley comes into his own, learning from his previous mistakes.

Finley is a genius short film, hilarious, well observed and one of the few such movies that I never tire of watching. That the rest of the cast play it absolutely straight is a bonus, and Thurman's ability to obtain a human performance from a dummy is astonishing.

Short - Selfie Stick (UK 2019: Katie Bonham) A girl scrolls through her phone, looking at urban myth pages, including one that tells her that her face will get stuck like it if the wind changes. And then, courtesy of a toy windmill which produces, yes a puff of wind, the image last taken on the phone's camera is reproduced in real life: first she's stuck in an Insta pout, and then courtesy of image enhancement software she and her friend are cursed with bunny ears. This feels like a modern version of those silent films warning about the dangers of new fangled creations, and is rather sweet.

Short - Rattle (USA 2019: Dir Patrick Rea) The director's daughter features in this short short about a crying baby whose parents are unable to placate her (the film is shot from above looking into the cradle) but a sinister ghoulish third presence between mum and dad but unseen by them, complete with skeletal rattle - does the trick.

Short - Nest (USA 2019: Dir Michael Fontaine) A rather inconsequential short short in which two girls, who discover a 3 bed 2 bath apartment, find it comes at a price - it contains flesh eating monsters.

Short - Allergic Overreaction (USA 2019: Dir Zachary Eglinton) Genre face Matt Mercer stars in this short about a group of people sitting down to a 'Freddy vs Jason' movie fest. One of the group, who is nut intolerant, ingests nine cookies, and embarks on a murderous rampage

Chesterberg (UK 2020: Dir Jamie McKeller) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH HORROR FILM 2020 In any film festival there's bound to be films you like more than others. The UK director's debut feature, made for about £15,000, introduces a film crew into the seceded province of Chesterberg to document a community's post Brexit descent where murder is is now a sacred act, run by the creator of the underwater post it note, Chester Mapleforthe, who made a fortune and created his own community as a result.

This 'the state we're in' satire - in mockumentary style - takes its fly-on-the-wall approach from programmes like The Office but its take on suburban life is fairly shallow and the human often rather fatuous. Terrible acting, poor pacing, and narrative dreariness do not help matters. Despite the Peter Jackson-esque over the top gore and very 'on trend' subject matter, this would have been far better as a short film. And although most of the gag filled script just felt forced, there is the occasional line of dialogue that amuses - "You jammed corn into my wife's brain." Answer; "Part of her five a day" - generally though I found this rather dull.

A Centenary of Fantastic Films - 1920 #2 The Cabinet of Dr Caligari aka Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (Germany 1920: Dir Robert Wiene)

People with an interest in film will probably automatically know the names of the directors of classic silent fright features: FW Murnau's Nosferatu (1922); Rupert Julian's The Phantom of the Opera (1925); or Paul Leni's The Man Who Laughs (1928), for example.

So the fact that Robert Wiene, the director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, isn't so well known, is perhaps a surprise. Until you look a little deeper. For a long time the definitive critical work on the movie, Siegfried Kracauer's 1947 work 'From Caligari to Hitler,' was damning about Wiene's narrative decision, for commercial reasons, to add a 'frame' to his story of horror and madness, therefore converting it from, as Kracauer sees it, a truly 'revolutionary' movie into a 'conformist' one.

More recently Uli Jung and Walter Schatzberg's 1999 book 'Beyond Caligari: The Films of Robert Wiene' has taken a less polemic approach to the subject. They recognise, in the book's introduction, that Wiene wasn't a genius, but a relatively undistinguished but capable director representative of the type of people making films in Germany after the First World War. The period saw a huge rise in people attending cinemas in the country, and filmmakers responded to this with record numbers of new films, largely aimed at middle or lowbrow crowds, who made up the lion's share of the cinema going population. So it's therefore unsurprising that Wiene, who had worked on at least 43 films pre Caligari, should be targeting markets most likely to want to watch his movies. Admittedly with Caligari he did much more than that, which I'll cover later.

Robert Wiene was born in Poland in 1873. His father, Carl, was an actor, but Robert initially chose a different path, studying law in Vienna and later establishing a practice in Weimar. Early in the twentieth century Wiene moved into theatre management and then, in 1912, he became both film scriptwriter and director. Before Caligari his film choices had included comedies, tragedies and melodramas.
Working to a script by writers Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer (the former of the pair also critical of Wiene's intervention in the framing element of the film) Caligari fuses a totally expressionistic look and feel with an (almost) straightforward murder story, one of the first films to incorporate the radical new art movement into film set design.

The film opens with Francis (Friedrich Feher) sitting in a garden with a friend, and seeing Jane (Lil Dagover) walk by in an apparent trance; he describes her as his "fiancée." Francis decides to tell his strange story to his friend, depicted as a flashback.  Francis tells of an old man (Werner Krauss, the film's titular doctor) who petitions the town clerk of Holstenwall to set up a sideshow at its annual fair, the focus of which is Cesare (Conrad Veidt) the somnambulist, who sleeps in a wooden box and has been borderline catatonic for all of his 23 years. Although the clerk mocks him, the permit is granted: but later that night the official is stabbed in his bed.

The sleeper awakes! Cesare (Conrad Veidt)

Francis and his friend Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), who are both vying for the affections of Jane (the character we saw at the beginning of the film) decide to visit Caligari's attraction. Once awakened, Cesare will answer any question put to him, so Alan asks how long he has left to live: a leering Cesare tells him "Till dawn tomorrow!" Accordingly Alan dies before daybreak, again stabbed by an unseen murderer. Shocked at the death of his friend, and with the assistance of Jane's father, Dr. Olsen (Rudolf Lettinger), Francis undertakes to find out the identity of the murderer. Briefly thrown off by a red herring copycat killer (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) who hopes his failed slaying attempt would be ascribed to the mass murderer, our hero discovers that the director of the local asylum, obsessed with the subject of somnambulism and an 18th century mystic called Caligari, has literally become Caligari after Cesare, the perfect subject, was admitted to his hospital.

As the story closes the director is unmasked as a madman and put in a straitjacket. We return to Francis, still narrating the story, only to find that he's an inmate in the same asylum, along with Jane (deluded that she's royalty) and Cesare, who seems to have the mind of a child; the whole story has been made up by the insane Francis.

Repeat viewings of Caligari expose the multiple layers of the story within a story (and with the mystic 'Caligari' section, a story within that too!). One looks for clues to Francis's madness within the body of the plot, chiefly illustrated by the stylised sets whose wonky angles and skewed perspectives suggest a damaged mind (it is surely no coincidence that expressionist art, which the Nazis later derided as 'degenerate,' should have such a close affinity with the dual themes of madness and the grotesque). As the events play out, with the logic and rationalism of Francis' investigations taking place against the bizarre town backdrops, the film never once fails to be unsettling. Caligari's hut, which houses the sleeping Cesare, is illuminated both by artificial light and natural sun rays painted onto the sets: and in one scene the director, obsessed with the mystic Caligari, wanders around town with the words "Du musst Caligari werden " ("You must become Caligari") appearing in the air.

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari has been hijacked by many critics over the last hundred years to support a variety of agenda. But viewed as a piece of fantastic cinema it's a perfect melding of art and madness, where the supposedly sanest man in the story turns out to be the craziest.

You can watch The Cabinet of Dr Caligari here.