Supermarket Sweep #19: Reviews of Sputnik (Russia 2020), Peninsula (South Korea 2020), Black Water: Abyss (Australia/USA 2020), Robot Riot (USA 2020), The Vigil (USA 2019) and The Curse of the Knight Templar aka Curse of the Blind Dead (Italy 2020)

Sputnik (Russia 2020: Dir Egor Abramenko) Many reviewers have prefaced their pieces on this film with an 'inspired by Alien' caveat, but the reality is that this is closer in spirit to Dennis Villeneuve's 2016 movie Arrival than any creature on the loose flick.

It's 1983 in Russia, and the country proudly awaits the re-entry of a two man Cosmonaut expedition; unbeknownst to the citizens of the country, something has gone wrong with the mission while the craft was in orbit; and when the capsule re-connects with terra firma, half of the crew is dead.

The remaining Cosmonaut, Konstatin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov) is taken in for observation; something is clearly amiss, and it's not long before truculent psychologist Tatiana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina), who is already facing questions because of her unorthodox treatment of a young male patient, is summoned to observe the Cosmonaut; and with good reason. 

Klimova's study of the Cosmonaut remains inconclusive until she's shown the problem directly; Veshnyakov has brought back with him an alien host, which can exist outside of the human body for a short period of time, but enjoys a strange symbiotic existence with its human (although the latter doesn't know about the former's existence). It has also attacked one of the other facility staff and remains behind toughened glass for everyone's safety. The psychologist's challenge is to see whether host and human can exist separately, but she doesn't reckon on becoming attracted to him (the human, obviously).

Sputnik is to be praised for showing restraint when in others' hands this might be a more visceral movie. Veshnyakov is by no means the perfect hero; the Cosmonaut feels that he may have brought the infestation on himself for abandoning a young son in favour of a career. And Klimova's bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired. The pressure of Soviet victory at any cost hangs heavily over the proceedings, and while the movie may follow the tried and tested formula of the scientist gradually unveiling the real truth behind the cover up, none of this feels contrived. There's some great brutalist locations to underscore the gloom of the story and Oleg Karpachev's score is satisfyingly portentous. It's perhaps a shame that a lot of the dramatic tension revolves around a not overly impressive bit of CGI, but the human drama and moral dilemmas of the piece make up for it.

Peninsula (South Korea 2020: Dir Sang-ho Yeon) It's been four years since Yeon's game changing zombie flick Train to Busan and its animated prequel Seoul Station. The balletic attack sequences of the latter and the nihilism of the former were both memorable for different reasons. The 'Train to Busan Presents' strap before the title of this movie suggests a franchise in the making, and by the end of it we're pretty sure where that's going.

In a prologue, set at the time of the original movie, we are reminded that it took just one day for the infected to take over in Seoul. Soldier Han Jung-Seok (Dong-Won Gang) is driving hell for leather to ensure that he, his sister and her son make it onto a boat departing for safety. But the craft is diverted to Hong Kong after an infected outbreak (an early scene which reminds us of the speed and potency of the virus; one passenger infects about thirty others in just a few minutes). Han's nephew and his sister succumb, but Han and his brother in law Chul-min (Do-yoon Kim) survive.

Four years later sees Han and Chul-min living off the grid in Hong Kong, hopelessly awaiting the award of refugee status. Seeking quick cash they get mixed up in a scheme to recover a lorry, containing $20 million, located in the Korean peninsula, now entirely abandoned to the infected. Predictably the heist goes wrong and the two men become separated. 

Han is picked up by a woman, Min-jung (Lee Jung-hyung), who lives with her daughters - the elder of the two is Joon-i (Re Lee) and her equally resourceful sister is Yu Jin (Ye-won Lee) - and her father (Hae-hyo Kwon). Chul-min, on the other hand, is captured by a band of renegades led by the bonkers Captain Seo (Kyo-hwan Koo) and made to cage fight, alongside other prisoners, with the infected. Ultimately the two men reconcile, as they both attempt to free themselves and their charges and escape the peninsula.

If the first two movies were, respectively, the Mad Max and Mad Max 2 of the trilogy, then Peninsula is most definitely its Beyond Thunderdome. Here the infected almost take a back seat to the human drama, and Sang-ho Yeon purposely foregrounds the character's survival instincts, loyalty and savagery; oh and the bad guys' love of cage fighting, a future movie plot standby. That's not to say that the film isn't without its set pieces, but here there's far too much emphasis on CGI, and some of the set pieces, which thrilled in TtB, feel a bit overexposed in the sequel. There is of course an emotional final reel, and some impressive performances (particularly, once again, on the part of the kids) but I couldn't help wishing for less of everything. Good, but just not great.

Black Water: Abyss (Australia/USA 2020: Dir Andrew Traucki) Thirteen years after Traucki's first Black Water movie, and ten years after the shark infested waters of his The Reef, we're back in Northern Australia, where in a pre credits sequence we get the measure of what we're up against; a backpacking couple fall into a sink hole in the Outback and get devoured by a ravenous giant croc.

Jen (Jessica McNamee), her keeping-his-options-open boyfriend Eric (Luke Mitchell) and their friends, newly pregnant Yolanda (Amali Golden) and asthmatic cancer survivor Viktor (Benjamin Hoetjes) are given a tipoff about an unexplored cave by Cash (Anthony J. Sharpe), who found it while looking for said missing backpackers; you'd think that local boy Cash would be aware of the risks associated with swimming in the area, but there you go.

So the party set out for the secluded entry point. There's a storm on its way but it's not moving in their direction; yeah, I know. The five, a combination of the inexperienced and old hands, do the spelunking thing, in the knowledge that no-one knows they've made the trip, and things go ok for a time. But the storm changes direction and breaks, filling the hole with water from a burst riverbank; there's no phone signal, the water level is rising, and their options are running out. And then the croc arrives. 

This may be movie by numbers business, but it remains amazingly effective despite the clichés on show - early injured member of the party who slows them all down; third reel character reveal - largely due to keeping the croc out of sight for most of the flick (rendering its occasional glimpses very threatening) and a superbly claustrophobic setup, all rising water and accompanying shuddering string soundtrack from Michael Lira. Favourite moment of the film was the 'a ha!' moment as the getaway plan of the final survivors turns pear shaped; overall this feels like a real guilty pleasure watch, unlikely to remain in the memory but fun while it lasts, once again showing that Traucki knows what he's doing when it comes to watery predator movies.

Robot Riot (USA 2020: Dir Ryan Staples Scott) "Where the fuck am I?" are the first words uttered by Shane, a stranded solder with no memory and a chip in his neck, who almost immediately is stalked by a robot that looks like Ed 209's beaten up older brother. He gradually encounters other soldiers, all in similar situations. They band together and come to the conclusion that their continued survival seems to be some kind of test, and they must pit their wits against the different sized robots who want them dead. But who are the shadowy figures who have set up the deadly challenge? And will the Government owned mechs (the robots), formerly docile machines turned into sentient killers by the leader of the baddies, develop a collective guilty conscience and turn on their programmer? And just who was that human sized robot we saw briefly at the beginning?

Despite all the above questions being answered during the course of the movie's 90 odd minutes, this remains a fairly excruciating chase around a warehouse romp, with sci fi elements added in post. Scott's movie comes across like something the SyFy channel considered then rejected. Filmed in the ghost town of Maud, Oklahoma, and with Scott basing most of his action there to make full use of the location, Robot Riot's title suggests it wants to attract viewers brought up on a diet of 'Robot something' movies from the 1990s, with a soupcon of Westworld thrown in. But for a couple of briefly violent scenes and the odd F-bomb, this would strictly be early teen fare. It's soulless, dumb, but what's worse is resolutely un-fun, which is basically all a movie like this has going for it.

The Vigil (USA 2019: Dir Keith Thomas) Recent attempts to take a kind of 'world cinema' approach to 'faith and fright' flicks, with ancient evil reaching into the present day, have been a mixed bag. Babak Anvari's 2016 movie, Under the Shadow, set the bar high, with a mother battling a djinn in Tehran. 2018's unsuccessful The Tokoloshe saw the supernatural and the working classes at war in Johannesburg; and closer to home, Remi Weekes' His House from last year depicted the plight of an immigrant family forced to live in a London council house, threatened with an evil force that could equally have been domestic or foreign in origin.

Thomas's The Vigil takes us into a community of young Jewish people who have broken from the constricts of their religion and are hoping to forge a new, more 'modern' life.

The film concentrates on one of the group, Yakov Ronan (Dave Davis) who, as well as having the challenge of adjusting to new habits and customs, is additionally plagued by mental health problems, seemingly triggered by memories of the tragic death of his younger brother. Yakov's perilous financial situation (he's faced with a stark choice between buying food or medication) leads to him agreeing to be a paid Shomer for a night. In the Jewish faith, the term refers to one who watches over the newly dead, protecting their soul during the first night after they have passed, called 'the Vigil.' Yakov isn't the first choice apparently, but Shomer Number One quit because they were afraid.

Yakov's charge is, or rather was, Rubin Litvak; his wife (Lyn Cohen) is still alive, but with Alzheimer's; she's unhappy to see her Shomer for hire. The young man begins his vigil but, before long, Yakov is having strange nightmarish visions, coupled with flashbacks to his brother's death. He fears he might be headed towards hospitalisation again, but Mrs Litvak tells him that her husband had the same visions, and that something followed Litvak, a Holocaust survivor, back from Buchenwald; that something is described as the Mazik (in Hebrew texts defined as a mischievous person), a creature who latches on to sadness in its victim and drains them dry before moving on. And Litvak's demon has its sights on Yakov.

Thomas's film has its heart in the right place, but its symbolism and loading of portentous events and signs quickly wearies the viewer. As Yakov Davis is a simmering ball of guilt and frustration, always seconds away from a complete meltdown; it's an impressive performance but after a while the intensity starts to overshadow the supernatural elements of the story, and all you're left with is an unfocused feeling of anxiety. Despite some odd imagery, The Vigil just tries too hard to be more than a horror movie, and ends up not being very clear what it wants to be. And a note for the future: don't underscore your final 'but will he escape?' shot with an intrusive emo-core number, as it's a real mood killer.

The Curse of the Knight Templar aka Curse of the Blind Dead (Italy 2020: Dir Raffaele Picchio) Remember the series of 'Blind Dead' movies back in the 1970s, directed by the inimitable Amando de Ossorio, that mixed beautiful Spanish backdrops, slowed down horse riding and lashings of gore? Well scrap the inimitable because here's Raffaele Picchio, director of the controversial 2011 hit Morituris (which featured ancient Romans returning from the grave), to kick start the legend of the 14th century sightless knights of the undead, 45 years after they were laid to rest in 1975's Night of the Seagulls. Actually, the distribution company are perhaps banking on movie fans not remembering the original movies, hence the title change for UK audiences and the rather Game of Thrones look of the cover.

Except this time the Knights Templar end up in a post apocalyptic landscape, a setup tossed aside as soon as the 'action' begins (the concept of the blind dead thriving through, or because of the evils of history is established via a credit sequences showing, somewhat distastefully, brief real scenes of death and horror through the 20th century). After a prologue, which sets up the baby sacrifice theme revisited during the movie, while also explaining how the knights ended up sightless, we meet two survivors of nuclear war, a father, Michael, and his (pregnant) daughter Lily. Rescued after being set upon by murderous denizens, the pair are taken into a community who hang out in what looks like an abandoned church (actually a former cement factory) run by a guy called 'Maestro' Abel who convinces them to stay, and seek comfort in their religion. 

But all is not as it seems, and, as the moon enters full eclipse, Lily's baby is about to be sacrificed to the blind dead (the Knights don't actually appear until past the movie's half-way point). But the dead are no respecters of the subservient Abel and his cronies and are soon abroad, and on horseback, on the lookout for more babies, principally the one carried by Lily.

This rather horrendous homage to/revisit of de Ossorio's movies appears to be little more than a supposedly good idea by the director squandered in a sea of witless direction, terrible performances and appalling dialogue. The post apocalyptic scenario sits awkwardly with the Knights Templar (and there is more than one, re-titling team), who sort of turn up, pull some limbs off, ignore some plastic looking babies and disintegrate when caught in the rays of the morning sun (only to appear again a few scenes later). Cheap, pointless and above all humourless, had I seen it in the year of its release it would have been my stinker of 2020.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #24 - VHS Forever? Psychotronic People (UK 2014: Dir Darren J. Perry, Mark Williams)

It seems almost fitting to review this documentary under the 'Retrovision' strand; it's nearly seven years old now, but its subject matter harks back to a cultural phenomenon that has been increasingly fetishised and worried over in the intervening years: the boom in home video entertainment, the 'Video Nasties' farrago and the arrival of the dreaded Video Recordings Act of 1984.

Jason Impey's 2019 documentary VIPCO: The Untold Story, which covered some of the same ground, was remarkable for two things; the method used to obtain interviews with then VIPCO boss (VIPCO being one of the most successful VHS labels to emerge from the first wave of the video boom in the UK) Michael Lee; and the chance vs causality approach to the build up of his video empire (full review of that doc here). 

The chanciness of the growth in videos comes through in Perry and Williams's documentary, which broadly covers the period from 1978 (when JVC introduced the first video cassette recorder, priced at a whopping £799, to the UK), to the clampdown on videos which led to the 1984 Act of Parliament. The further away from this period that we get, the more difficult it is to remember the times in which it happened (if you were old enough). But the huge and sudden rise of independent video outlets, newsagents and corner grocery shops supplying uncertificated video tapes for rental to the public for consumption at home at the beginning of the 1980s was a cultural sea change not equalled until the world wide web started to gain mass appeal in the mid 1990s.

Now I'm a bit arse about face here. I reviewed this doc's sequel VHS Forever? Once Upon a Time in Camden over a year ago (you can read the review here), which focused on the Psychotronic Video shop in north London, and which looms large in the recollections of the various talking heads offering their testimonies; while it's true that the Forbidden Planet store - and others around the country - had been plying their (legitimate) wares for years before the Psychotronic shop, this was the place that made scores of weird and wonderful releases available over the counter (albeit in often nth grade quality copies).

As well as the fans and the dealers, who delight in the usual 'my-version's-rarer-than-yours' chatter, VHS Forever? Psychotronic People also includes 'names' like Lloyd Kaufman, Norman J Warren, and David McGillivray, all of whom weigh in on the crappy quality of the VHS versions of their movies, or act incredulous at the hypocritical approach of the Tory government of the day to the eventual clampdown. Slightly strangely, Caroline Munro turns up to wax lyrical about how she adores VHS covers, and gets to talk lovingly about the big box releases of Dracula AD 1972 and The Last Horror Film.  The company names that crop up, Intervision, Alpha Video, Medusa, CIC Video, Wizard Video, Astra, Magnetic Video and of course VIPCO, act as a kind of mantra for those in the know; it's a period in history that remains vivid for a small group of people, overlooked or forgotten by most of the rest of the population. "It was a disgrace to the country" says one, of the draconian police tactics, perhaps not realising that the same sentiment was echoed in the (small) section of the community who wanted the clampdown in the first place.

The 'Del Trotter' characters responsible for the video companies often had little interest in the contents of their product; they saw an opening and exploited it. That makes it rather strange that the titles on offer, provided more by accident than design, should have fuelled the interest of so many young horror fans; where would Euro horror have been without those camel coated purveyors of cinematic filth?

Perry and Williams' approach to assembling the film puts enthusiasm above technique, but it's one quite in keeping with the subject matter. What shines through is the passion of grown men (and it is mostly men) for whom this brief period of British cultural history has defined a lifetime of obsession and a residual anger about the curtailment of free speech and viewing liberty.

You can order the DVD of VHS Forever? Psychotronic People from here.

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020 #13: Reviews of 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (UK/USA 2020), Get Duked! (UK 2020), Conjuring: The Book of the Dead (UK 2020), Meeting (UK 2020), The House in Sherwood (UK 2020) and Blood Spirit (UK 2020)

47 Meters Down: Uncaged (UK/USA 2020: Dir Johannes Roberts) Roberts's claustrophobic 47 Meters Down was a surprisingly suspenseful movie given its budgetary limitations, although it was difficult to see a way into a sequel. One way round this was not to use any characters from the original movie, so here we have withdrawn and bullied at school Mia (Sophie Nélisse), whose family have taken up residence in Mexico (the beautiful exteriors are actually the Dominican Republic, but the underwater scenes were filmed at The Underwater Studio in Basildon, Essex) courtesy of dad (Grant Corbett) who has landed a job exploring some submerged Mayan ruins in the area. Also in the household are mum (Nia Long) to whom he's just got married, and her new half sister Sasha (Corinne Foxx). Sasha's all about fun with her friends, whereas bookish Mia, who's an experienced scuba diver (I'm sure this will come in handy later) shares dad's interest in all things aquatic; ok sharks. 

Dad suggests that the half siblings have some bonding time on a glass bottom boat trip in the hopes of seeing a great white shark, but Sasha, keen to hang out with her mates - pushy Nicole (Sistine Stallone, Sly's daughter) and Alexa (Brianne Tju) - bails, taking Mia with them. They end up in an isolated pool that is part of dad's Mayan dig, and guess what, someone's left some scuba gear lying around. Despite the fact that they're trespassing, the girls don the gear and before you know it, are swimming around the Mayan remains, deep below the surface; 47 metres below, I'm guessing.  

But as they're taking one more turn round the ancient ruins, a blind tetra fish surprises them, causing their way out to be blocked off. To add to their woes, not one but two great white sharks turn up; although the sharks are blind (something to do with the depth at which they're swimming) they're incredibly predatory, and the battle is on to make it out alive, with diminishing supplies of oxygen.

Despite the limited set up and some effects being more, er, effective than others, Roberts generates a fair amount of tension in this sequel. I'm guessing he took a few notes from Alexandre Aja's Crawl (2019) in creating a claustrophobic setup and some judicious editing to cover up the fact that the sharks are CGI created. Points for some wry details, such as a Jaws 'chewed head' jump, and ironic use of The Carpenters' 'We've only just begun' about half way through the movie as an indicator that there's more shark action on the way. 

And of course the movie finds time for a few life lessons; the sisters do eventually bond under duress and Mia learns to stand up for herself (no sock in the jaw for the school bully though, sadly). Ok the sharks may pick and chose who they immediately eat (adults and mean people, basically), but as the sequel no-one really wanted 47 Meters Down: Uncaged is great fun and proves that Roberts is one of the best low budget genre film-makers in the UK.

Get Duked! aka Boyz in the Wood (UK 2020: Dir Ninian Doff)  Doff's debut feature centres on four teenagers, three of whom, under the direction of substitute teacher Mr Carlyle (Jonathan Arise) are about to undertake four days on their own in the great outdoors - specifically the Highlands - for their Duke of Edinburgh award; and to address past school misdemeanours. They are bad boy Dean (Rian Gordon), dim Duncan (Lewis Gribben) and self promoting hip hop artist DJ Beatroot aka William (Viraj Juneja). They're joined by overkeen Ian (Samuel Bottomley), who unlike the others actually wants to do the award. 

Carlyle gives them a map, tells them that there's no mobile phone signal, and pretty much leaves them to it. "Don't get lost," he advises, helpfully. The four are initially three against one; Ian has ambitions to pursue a law career, in contrast to his new found colleagues whose plans range from getting a job in a factory to, well not much at all really. 

The delinquent arm of the group see through the whole exercise: "everyone knows that the Duke of Edinburgh award is all about getting shitfaced!" which prompts the drugs to come out and the shitfacing to begin; with the exception of Ian, of course.

But things are about to turn nasty. The boys are being watched by a real Duke (Eddie Izzard) and his wife, the Duchess (Georgie Glen) and, in a class based take on 1932's The Most Dangerous Game, lined up as 'vermin' to be hunted and killed. The four lads don't help themselves by tearing off large bits of the map for skins, leaving them pretty much lost. The rest of the film is largely taken up with the toffs' efforts to hunt the boys down, and our heroes gradually learning survival tactics to escape certain death.

Get Duked! (the original title, a play on Boyz in the Hood, was changed as a mark of respect to the BLM movement), is pretty much a one joke movie, leavened by some nifty graphics and funny-ish musical interludes. Whether you find it amusing watching the boys creating makeshift weapons and bickering their way from one situation to the next largely depends on your sense of humour; I found the whole thing fairly quickly outstayed its welcome, although Juneja's clueless DJ, while by no means an original character, is by far the most interesting in the cast. With his endless raps about the size of his penis, a discussion about not using the word 'orienteering' because it's racist, and his gradual understanding of the ridiculousness of his adopted name, he's a good comic creation. The inclusion of comedy heavyweights like Izzard and Alice Lowe as a bossy policewoman come across more like favours called in than wise casting, and the final haves/have nots monologue feels like it's strayed in from another movie, however much I might agree with the sentiment.

On reflection this is probably a movie best seen with a beer and a crowd, not on a laptop screen in the middle of the day during 'dry' January. But there you go.

Conjuring: The Book of the Dead (UK 2020: Dir Richard Driscoll) Now I'm not going to get into the whys or wherefores about Richard Driscoll; I'm here to review films, but my previous exposure to this guy's work has convinced that he hasn't really got an original thought in him. And so we get to Conjuring: The Book of the Dead which tricks from the outset, with its opening prologue about demons and runic symbols, which pretty much plagiarises the subject of and opening to Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon (1957), surely one of the best British fantastic films ever made. This however is among the very worst British fantastic films ever made.

Vicodin addicted writer George (Driscoll in his Steven Caine persona), who's seriously off his game, is persuaded by his agent Martha ('troubled' Lysette Anthony) to travel to New Orleans with a book that she bought in auction. Purported to have been included in a lot of paperwork belonging to HP Lovecraft, Martha thinks that what she has is a diary which originally belonged to 'The Great Beast', Aleister Crowley, but she needs its authenticity verified.

George accepts an all expenses paid trip to New Orleans; while he's there, Martha also asks him to start developing a story, incorporating Crowley, which can be turned into a graphic novel. When he arrives he questions the locals and finds out that the Crowley expert is a kind of dominatrix tattooist called Zillia (Bai Ling). After a torrid night with the rather forward lady, he realises that he's involved in a plot to use the book, a precursor to the Necronomicon (although the cast keep pronouncing it as Necromonicon), to raise the spirit of Crowley.

A quick scout around the internet shows that this movie is a rehash of his possibly unfinished 2017 flick, the terribly titled When the Devil Rides Out. And the story that George composes, which is shown on screen in graphic novel form, is basically scenes from his earlier movie, 2008's The Raven: Evil Calls aka The House of Harrow. This cobbling together of earlier work allows him to include a cast list that, as well as Anthony, includes Michael Madsen, Tom Sizemore, Oliver Tobias, Dudley Sutton, Norman Wisdom, Jason Donovan and Robin Askwith. 

In between the shonky CGI scene setting moments, real locations are used including New Orleans (including an actual Crowley haunt, The Absinthe House) and New York, but don't go thinking this adds any excitement to the whole farrago; everything looks messy and awkward in this movie. It's literally stitched together and if the synopsis above makes sense to you, well try watching the thing. Driscoll is appalling and half the cast mutter their lines like they don't want to be discovered acting in the movie. Only Ling pushes the boat out performance wise; she shouldn't have bothered. Awful.

Meeting (UK 2020: Dir Emre Sen) Turkish born Sen is by day a classical pianist, whose own experiences in therapy inspired his first film. "Upsetting people is important in filmmaking," the director said in a recent interview, going on to mention that, when making a film about psychotherapy, "you need to dive in the shit." 

Quite a lot of shit gets dived into in the course of Meeting, mainly courtesy of Julianne (Shipra Jain Khanna) a woman who is, from the point where we first meet her, on the edge. And that introduction comes as she organises a meet up group for creatives at her mother's flat; they're an odd bunch, including over the top Elisabeth (Linda Clark), her friend Can (pronounced John, played by Sen), bitchy Samantha (Ava Amande) and various others. One of the guests, Linda (Nalân Burgess) sings a song called 'Light Me Up' which gives Sen a chance to tinkle the ivories, and then play one of his onw compositions. But it's all too much for Julianne who, after experiencing violent flashbacks, retires to the bathroom to self harm, prior to fainting. When she wakes up, she's alone.

Julianne confesses to her therapist Carol (Portia Booroff) that she thinks her guests are trying to kill her and rationalises her self harm by explaining "I hurt. I've got no choice". Carol thinks the guests might be figments of Julianne's imagination, and feels that her client's trauma stems from childhood abandonment by her father and a poor relationship with her mother (Bhrina Bache).

But Carol also feels affected by Julianne's condition, which stirs up memories of her own trauma. Julianne begins to withdraw from any help offered, but a figure from the past re-enters her life and, deeply unwell, she decides on some drastic measures to achieve salvation.

It was touch and go whether to include Meeting in the NWotBFF strand, but on balance it's strange enough to secure a place. It's a difficult watch despite some indifferent performances and the whole thing feels like a soap opera version of the 1965 movie Repulsion, via a Jane Arden film. Khanna is the standout performance here; she falls apart very convincingly, and Sen's inexperience in directing a film helps maintain a continued sense of awkwardness. This won't be for everyone, but I thought it was quite brave, very sad and at times menacing.

The House in Sherwood (UK 2020: Dir Richard Mansfield) I've covered a number of Mansfield's London based spook films before a shift to Nottingham several years ago moved his seat of operations but continued with the frights; looks like this guy's going to be haunted wherever he lives. Last year he gave us The Investigation: A Haunting in Sherwood, and this year he's brought out a new podcast, The Demonic Tapes, (now on its second season) and a follow up to last year's feature, a lockdown-filmed fauxcumentary which picks up where events in the 2019 movie left off.

The infamous house house in Sherwood has been shut up since the incidents in the first film, where two people went missing; but now YouTube medium Angela Bennett (Eleanor Aldous) has moved in, streaming live to her fans and hoping for some paranormal activity. Fake medium buster, peevish Karen Keane (Kathryn Redwood), who runs a Twitter channel called GhostEXPOSE, is hot on Bennett's tail, with an obsessive need to expose the medium; a state driven by the desire to seek revenge for Angela providing her with dodgy psychic investment advice and rendering her penniless as a result.

Let the pranking begin! So while Angela gets serious about exploring the house, Karen gradually ups the ante, from hoax calls to poison pen letters. And when she finds a spare key to the house she wastes no time in gently trashing the place, secreting a walky talky on the premises, and generally making a nuisance of herself. But, for anyone's who's seen the 2019 movie, there's real bumps in the night going on. And without giving the game away, the fact that the film has been constructed from the phones and social media accounts of both women doesn't bode well for either.

Mansfield's previous films have been quiet, unassuming affairs, where a spirit of dread slowly creeps up on the (usually male, usually solo) occupant of whatever building is being haunted. The House in Sherwood breaks the mould with two central characters, both given equal screen time, and the focus is as much on their motives as the supernatural aspects of the film. While this set up is initially rather clever, there's a bit of a law of diminishing returns operating here. Redwood's Keane character is a figure of almost cartoon spite, and while her motivation is obvious, an hour or so of her 'more by vinegar than honey' approach to life gets a bit wearing; hats off to the actor though; I'm sure she's very nice in real life.

The House in Sherwood ups the gears in the final section, and manages several low budget scares, which have become Mansfield's trademark. I just wasn't as sold on this movie as his others; heaven forfend that I would want any director to stick with one style of filmmaking, but I wasn't fully convinced by this one.

Blood Spirit (UK 2020: Dir Anthony Allin) A young couple, Solomon (Smari Gunn) and Cassie (Ayvianna Snow), arrive at their friend Josh's house; correction, it's his late great uncle's place and Josh (Tom Scurr) has decided to hold a Halloween party in the unoccupied but fully furnished property. Luckily, the discovery of certain items in the loft, suggesting his late relative was into necromancy - blood magic - will help Josh set the party mood, much to the disgust of Josh's on-off girlfriend, Rowena (Carmen Silva). One of the bedrooms has been set up as a shrine to great uncle's wife, Grace, who died under mysterious circumstances. An ominously locked room is accessed by the foursome, which has strange markings on the walls and rubber sealant, protecting entry to a connecting room. Cassie, who's studied stuff like this at Uni, feels that the shrine is "a classic set up to commune with the dead. I wonder if he made contact?" But when the group decide to access the hidden room, they discover that Grace is more than spiritually present.

Blood Spirit is a pretty daft hour and fifteen minutes, where an awful lot of sitting about and chatting eventually leads to a narrative turning point that descends through layers of silliness involving mirrors, beyond the veil rituals and some very gothy makeup. I couldn't help feeling that the script/story would have been better delivered in an older country house, rather than a two up/two down in the Surrey suburbs. The cast do their best with a script that meanders all over the place and then piles on the mystery without concern that the plot's actually bobbins. Things aren't helped by a very limited soundtrack which, for the most part, comprises the same piano motif played again and again. Don't get me wrong: I love indie filmmaking, I don't doubt that it can be a very challenging business, and defend to the hilt the right of people to pick up a camera and get stuck in. There's no denying that the Blood Spirit team know what they're doing technically; it's what they've shot that's the problem.

The Exception aka Undtagelsen (Denmark/Norway/Sweden 2019: Dir Jesper W. Nielsen)

There's a huge, and some would argue audacious parallel narrative going on in Nielsen's latest feature which, depending on how you feel about it, either makes The Exeception a rewarding or frustrating watch.

Four women work at a research library, the Danish Centre for Information on Genocide. The project manager is Malene (Amanda Collin), who has progressive cancer related arthritis; the others are her colleague and best friend Iben (Danica Curcic) who is still suffering PTSD after being held hostage - and escaping - while aid working in Nairobi, and the team secretary Camilla (Lene Maria Christensen). Making up the four is relative newcomer Anne-Lise (Sidse Babett Knudsen), an older middle-class woman who doesn't seem to fit in with the team atmosphere.

Malene appears a little controlling of Iben who because of her experiences is referred to to as 'the hero from Nairobi' - for example, at a party where Iben is getting on well with mutual friend, the writer Gunnar (Magnus Krepper), due to their shared love of Africa, Malene asks to be taken home because of her arthritis, telling Iben on the journey that people like Gunnar are 'born unfaithful.' Malene will later sleep with him.

At work tensions between Anne-Lise and the others, principally baselessly orchestrated by Malene (who has, she confesses, begun to hate healthy people), increase, particularly when all of the women except Anne-Lise receive threatening texts from an anonymous source that they suspect is either from a Serbian war criminal who they have been researching, via a paper entitled 'Psychology of Evil', or someone closer to home. Iben and Camilla become drawn into Malene's increasing hatred of Anne-Lise and the office dynamic becomes three against one, a subtle change which their rather hands off boss Paul (Olaf Johannessen) is ineffective in addressing. Malene's partner Rasmus (Simon Sears) is an IT whizz who wants to send some spyware back to the message originator to find out their identity; what he discovers may or may contribute to his downfall.

The subject of the women's research is a Serbian war criminal named Mirko Zigic (Borut Veselko); psychologically he's one of the 10 - 30% of any army that, when asked to carry out atrocities, go over and above their required duties; basically he's insane. It is popularly believed that after the war Zigic became part of the country's mafia operations, but it's possible he may have arrived in Denmark.

And it's this narrative parallel - Malene's marshaling of her work colleagues in an escalating hate campaign against Anne-Lise without evidence to support it, alongside a more general overview, in the context of the Centre's studies, of how power works in the same way in the context of military dictatorships - that audiences are forced to accept. The parallel clearly wants us to reflect on Edmund Burke's famous line "for evil to succeed, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing" - evidenced in one character's brave action later in the film - although whether a group of bickering office workers can be comfortably compared with those who perpetuate horrendous war atrocities is a matter of speculation. 

The truth about the messages is less convoluted than might be suggested and the climax is arguably both soapy and melodramatic. Some of the mid-section scenes misfire, principally a sequence where Anne-Lise infiltrates Camille's choir looking for information, which may give us some key exposition but is also mildly silly. Unsurprisingly by the time all is revealed the women have been (mostly) forced to confront their own histories.

While The Exception (the title refers to those who act against likely psychological scenarios; "you can make yourself the exception to the rule, because you have free will", one character comments) asks a lot of the audience, I'm on the side of concluding it a success. Danish drama (on TV at least, and Nielsen has some experience here) has a habit of taking a relatively low level dilemma and exploring it in almost forensic detail; I'm thinking here both of Maya Ilsøe's family opus The Legacy (in which Lene Maria Christensen starred) and Adam Price's political drama Borgen, some episodes of which Nielsen directed, and which propelled Sidse Babett Knudsen to fame. The four women at the centre of the drama occupy their roles subtly and completely, and the script refuses to provide easy answers to any of the problems it dwells on. Over the top it may occasionally be, but I found The Exception riveting and extremely well made.

The Exception will be on all major UK Digital Platforms including iTunes, Sky Store, Google Play, Amazon, Virgin, Curzon Home Cinema & Chili from 22nd January 2021.

Synchronic (USA 2019: Dir Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead)

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's previous three features have all foregrounded believable sympathetic characters encountering horrific, mysterious or sci fi infused scenarios, and in many ways Synchronic, their latest movie, is no different. 

We're in New Orleans, and two emergency services recovery workers, Dennis (Anthony Mackie) and his friend Steve (Jamie Dornan) are on hand to clean up when things get messy. Steve reckons that the pair only get to see a small proportion of total deaths in the city - the sudden ones - and that there's infinite possibilities before one karks it, indicating that the future isn't set.

Dennis has a wife, Tara (Katie Asleton) and an 18 year old daughter Brianna (Ally Ioannides), with whom he finds difficulty communicating; she's failing at school and can't see the point of her education. Steve, as a man without commitments and a seemingly younger outlook, has no such problems in being able to talk to the restless girl.

In the course of their day to day duties, the pair come across some weird emergencies: a woman in a hotel room bitten by a rare snake; a guy who falls into a lift shaft and is mysteriously dismembered; a corpse run through with a medieval sword; a body, burnt to a crisp, with no other signs of fire; and a drugged out flop house with the words 'time is a lie' written on the wall. The connection between these incidents is a packet found at each scene, which contains a drug in pill form called 'Synchronic'. We've already seen first hand that the drug induces strong hallucinations, taking the user out of their body and apparently transporting themselves elsewhere in time.

Well there's no 'apparently' about it; that's exactly what the drug does. Ostensibly a legal high, for those who can vibe off its powers, mainly the young, 'Synchronic' is literally a time travelling pill. When Steve is exposed to a needle on one of his pickups, a routine blood test leads to some terrible news; he has a progressive cancer and a poor prognosis. He fails to tell Dennis, who nevertheless notices that his partner is drinking heavily and popping a lot of painkillers. Shocked by what the drug is doing to the community, Steve goes to the source - a downtown vape/legal high shop - and buys up the supply. Faced with an uncertain future, Steve tries the drug himself, the extent of the reaction to which depends on the state of the user's pineal gland; Steve's condition results in his gland remaining youthful (it calcifies with age apparently), and so he's able to experience the full 'Synchronic' effect, which literally lurches him out of one time to another.

But when Brianna, who also takes the drug while at a party, goes missing somewhere in time, Dennis and Tara fall apart; it's left to Steve, using what's left of the drug, to leap into time to try and find her.

Characteristically for the directors Synchronic isn't really about one thing, which has left some sci fi fans feeling short-changed. The movie uses the properties of the drug to ask questions about friendship, time, history and memory, rather than a tricksier approach that might have been taken by, for example, Christopher Nolan. Steve seems a doomed individual even before the diagnosis; a frequent dream about coffins sliding about in a storm leads to an awful family revelation which overshadows his life and possibly accounts for his itinerant existence. The limited lifespan available to him actually focuses his mind on what's important.

Some of the science of the drug nods in the direction of the HG Wells novella 'The Time Machine': the drug allows the user to go back seven minutes, but dependent on where they are they can be displaced to different points in time, a little like a needle jumping tracks on vinyl (allowing for some wild scenes including Conquistadors and KKK members); as a man of colour, this nearly always works out badly for Steve. The idea of looping time was effectively utilised in the pair's last movie, The Endless (2018), but the emotional core here is much stronger, while the mind bending-ness of the whole thing, and its take on randomness, chance and luck edges nearer to chaos theory than anything cinematic. 

But while the themes in Synchronic are a heady brew, Benson and Moorhead's trademark humour shines through, often unexpectedly; "You might see James Bond, but I experience Charlie Sheen" comments Steve at one point, in the middle of a dark conversation following the revelation about his cancer.

I fully get that some people won't like this movie. It restlessly never settles in any one direction, but the playfulness of the thing never gets in the way of the bigger themes it's offering up. Funny, thought provoking and damned sad, it's a film which offers some redemption but under a decidedly existential stormcloud.

Synchronic has its VOD UK premiere on 29th January 2021.

Supermarket Sweep #18: Reviews of In The Trap (Italy 2019), Widow's Point (USA 2019), Death of Me (USA/Thailand 2020), The Voices (USA 2020), The Haunting of Sophie (Italy 2018) and Child Eater (USA/Iceland 2016)

Haven't done one of these for a while, it seems. For the uninitiated, this is a (n irregular) feature on genre movies currently clogging up the supermarket shelves. Supermarkets have seriously reduced the availability of DVDs and Blu Rays in their shops recently. Shelving policy is a rather cynical exercise, very much dictated by what's trending viewing wise at the moment (1917 for example triggered a whole rush of recently and not so recently released low budget war movies), but there's still stuff to be got hold of, and here are six examples.

In the Trap (Italy 2019: Dir Alessio Liguori) Devon, England 1995. A little boy, Philip, thinks there's something in his bed. His religious mother gives him a cross and tells him to say a little prayer if he's scared. A figure rises up from the bedsheets and he screams for his mother again. His sister Isodore also wakes up and, in the film's first frightening moment, gets dragged by an unseen force into a room, where she is killed. 

As a grown up Philip still lives in Devon, in his mother's house, which he has inherited following her death. He's a proofreader, who has also inherited his mother's religious tendencies. He's also deeply in love; his girlfriend Catherine (Sonya Cullingford) is a musician, and they make a sweet couple. But something seems to have survived from Philip's childhood encounter; one night in bed Catherine wakes up and beholds something clearly ghastly. The day after, strange things start happening; Catherine hallucinates that her hands are bleeding, which the doctors put down to stress. Philip finds an unwound rosary and later a displaced statue of the Virgin Mary, and Catherine discovers an old teddy bear, which was Isodore's, thought lost. Philip's mentor, Father Andrew (David Bailie) asks Philip not to read much into the events, but later he finds Catherine in a distressed state in Isodore's room. Father Andrew is called, and concludes that she has become possessed. He attempts an exorcism, but it fails and Catherine dies. This all happens in the movie's first thirty minutes.

Then things get very confusing. Philip isolates himself in his home. An odd, vaguely seductive neighbour called Sonia (Miriam Galanti) pops round for some salt and then later enters his apartment claiming the door was open; is she some form of succubus? Father Andrew warns Philip not to see her again, which is sage advice, but Philip, who periodically glimpses the creature that haunted him as a child, and a strange old lady, doesn't listen. 

In the Trap's hysterical conclusion is just plain daft and makes absolutely no sense; if it's supposed to make you look back and re-evaluate everything you've seen in the last ninety minutes, what it actually does, while drowning itself in an increasingly overwrought soundtrack, is make you conclude how pointless the whole exercise has been. Despite its flashiness, it's all pretty thin stuff; none of the characters are fleshed out, the acting is often questionable, and the themes of religion and psychology merely tacked on. Terrible.

Widow's Point (USA 2019: Dir Gregory Lamberson) Based on a 2018 book by Richard and Billy Chizmar, Harper's Cove has a haunted lighthouse, the subtly named Widow's Point (named after a woman whose grief at her missing mariner husband resulted in her falling from a cliff). Built in 1838, it's one of the most infamous haunted places in America, which has only been prevented from demolition by the local historical society (the location is actually the Dunkirk lighthouse in New York state, which also makes a claim to be haunted). 

Author Thomas Livingston (Craig Sheffer, Hellraiser: Inferno) rents a house in the town to research his new book; he's getting a divorce and has been forced to return to the genre that made him famous. He hopes that the area will provide literary inspiration.

The building was last occupied in 1933 when a lighthouse keeper's entire family were slaughtered by a friend of the family who had been instructed to 'kill them all' by a woman in a white bridal veil. In 1985 a film crew used it as a location for a movie, when one of the stars hanged herself; and more recently a photographer, who gained access to the building, went crazy after taking innumerable shots of the same watery location; all the lighthouse's victims were heard to chant "it will come." The lighthouse has been cordoned off since then, but Livingston wants to generate a bit of publicity (and a few dollars) by being the first person to occupy the building since that time, planning to spend a weekend locked in, without methods of communication. He will be monitored via video feed courtesy of Rosa (Katelynn E. Newberry, The Curse of Lilith Ratchet, Mother Krampus 2: Slay Ride).

Predictably things go wrong pretty quickly; his video feed gets cut off and Thomas begins to unravel after hearing children's voices and that of his dead dad's. All his bottled water tastes salty and therefore become undrinkable, he loses track of time and generally starts going a bit Jack Torrance (and I don't even want to begin talking about his perma bad hair day). 

This is one of those unsubtle movies where the supernatural presence starts making its presence visually in about the first minute. There are spooky dolls, ghost children, a very cheap synth heavy soundtrack, and lots of flashbacks to add historical perspective to the rather dull prospect of a guy going doolally in a confined space. Sheffer loses the plot very hammily but is still by far the most convincing member of the cast; unless you count the CGI blob that makes an appearance in the film's bafflingly Lovecraftian finale. Terrible.

Death of Me (USA/Thailand 2020: Dir Darren Lynn Bousman) A couple staying at an Airbnb in Thailand, Christine (Maggie Q) and travel reporter Neil (Luke Hemsworth), wake up in a filthy state after a night out about which they can remember nothing, and have to hurry to reach the ferry that will transfer them to their flight home. When they get to the port they've mislaid their passports, so can't access the boat, and Christine has also lost her phone; to compound matters the ferry sails away with their luggage on it. Neil uses the photos on his phone to recall their night; it includes a two and a half hour video in which they film themselves visiting a bar, getting their drinks spiked, having rough sex outside, culminating in Neil strangling Christine then snapping her neck, after which he busts her phone and buries the body. It's a rather amazing 18 minute pre credits sequence, and sadly the rest of the film doesn't come anywhere close to matching its tension. In fact it all slowly unravels from this point on.

Understandably distressed, the couple are still at the accommodation when the next booking turns up; Samantha (Alex Essoe) and her daughter are initially concerned, particularly at Christine's state, but agree to help. They work out that the pair have been given a strong Buddhist hallucinogen; Christine starts hallucinating and throws up dirt, weeds and worms. In the middle of a carnival which Neil is photographing, a guy nicks his phone and deletes the video.

By now if you've ever seen The Wicker Man or Rosemary's Baby, you'll know what's ahead. The remainder of the movie has Christine and Neil, and later Christine alone as Neil goes missing, trying to find out exactly what's going on. The use of Thai islanders as 'other' really isn't great in 2020, but perhaps worse is Essoe's character who starts acting as white intermediary but is also possibly part of the whole thing. Lush locations and some impressive photography can't cover up the fact that this is a stylish movie in search of a point, and when the point finally arrives it's not been worth the trip and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. Q and Hemsworth have both been in better movies than this: Death of Me does their careers no favours.

The Voices (USA 2020: Dir Wesley Alley, Bradley Fowler) After discovering her boyfriend David (Brendon Sexton III) having a thing with one of her best friends, Grace Crawford (Amanda Markowitz) leaves the city and stays with her older sister Catherine (Virginia Matlock). Catherine, who is gently welcoming but rather distant, has clearly had mental health problems, and, after divorcing her husband Jerry, now lives in a rather basic house inherited from their late parents; no Wi-Fi or central heating. 

Grace picks up a book she finds lying around the house, 'Abnormal Mental Health' whose pages contain scribblings and references to someone called 'Penny'. "I sleep when the sun goes down: I like to keep a consistent pattern," Catherine informs her. It is perhaps fortuitous that Grace is in the middle of prepping a thesis for college on the subject of 'Paranoid Schizophrenia; The Demons Within Us' as she quickly identifies the signs of the illness in her sister; and on the first night Grace wakes to find Catherine up playing a board game and talking in a child's voice to someone called Abby, revealed as her daughter who now lives with her ex-husband following the divorce. It is revealed that their mother was similarly ill, and took her life because of her condition.

Grace and Catherine gradually re-connect and Catherine, correctly as it happens, suspects that Grace might be pregnant, and becomes worried as the pregnancy was the trigger for the mental health problems, both for Grace's sister and their mother. Catherine also reveals that 'Penny' is a childish character who she must inhabit to communicate with Abby. Grace begins to lose touch with reality until she realises that what she thinks may be her own mania has more than a basis in truth.

Until its final histrionic drama-of-the-week minutes, The Voices is a carefully controlled essay in the extremes of mental ill health. It's strongest in the first half, where Grace tries to understand in the her trained detached way what's happening to Catherine, but can't sustain the position because of her need to connect with her sister emotionally. Virginia Matlock delivers a powerful performance as Catherine and the movie really revolves around her. It's perhaps a shame that The Voices reaches a rather prosaic conclusion, but it remains a powerful piece which for the most part resists the opportunity to sensationalise its subject matter.

The Haunting of Sophie aka The Music Box aka Il Carillon (Italy 2018: Dir John Real) Any film that gives us a ghostly glimpse in the first minute of its running time never bodes well. But let's not be too hasty. Annabelle (Rachel Daigh), a book restorer, and her temporarily dumb orphan niece Sophie (Cearl Pepper) move into an oddly shaped rental house with added gargoyles on the roof (and inside too - the gargoyles get a lot of visual attention considering they look like they were bought wholesale from a garden centre). The place has been empty since the previous owner died.

Outside they find a box buried in the garden with unusual markings on the case, and which contains a musical box. Why was it buried? Sophie undergoes counselling via toy therapy, courtesy of Loris (a truly wooden performance from square jawed former male model Antonio Lujak). Asked what the toys convey to her, Sophie writes, with better script than I can achieve (she's about 6) "their daughter was left alone she's so sad." Soon Sophie is talking to someone who isn't there named Lania (it's her new best friend and who everyone else thinks is imaginary), there are strange noises in the house, rose petals left on Annabelle's pillow, and more glimpses of the troubled spirit. One of the books she is restoring is named 'Theory of Possessed Objects', containing an inserted illustration of the same markings as on the retrieved box; and the last person who booked it out of the library was, guess who, the previous resident of Annabelle's house. Working it out yet? Yes, the music box holds the spirit of a young girl, trapped in the box, and she's on the lookout for revenge.

If you've never seen even one of the legion of movies which The Haunting of Sophie has borrowed from, you're still unlikely to be enamoured with this weak offering. In the grand tradition of Italian directors aiming for a wider market, 'John Real' here is actually Italian producer Giovanni Marzagalli, a man clearly better suited to brokering deals for movies rather than making them. Having most of his Italian cast having to speak their lines in English doesn't help (and the occasionally dubbed performance is laughable), but the real problem here is the total lack of imagination, woeful plotting and, with the exception of Daigh, half baked performances. Oh and there's a 'One month later' end coda in which nothing happens. Utter nonsense.

Child Eater (USA/Iceland 2015: Dir Erlingur Thoroddsen) Helen (Cait Bliss) is asked to babysit for Lucas (Colin Critchley), the son of Matthew Parker (Weston Wilson), who's the local sheriff. The house, located in the middle of a forest (the movie was filmed in the Catskills) was the site of a series of killings 25 years previously by someone named the 'Child Eater of Widow's Peak,' his MO being to eat the eyes of kids to stop his incipient blindness (a rather disturbing prologue illustrates this).

Lucas is a slightly weird little kid who quickly puts the frighteners on Helen by claiming to have seen an old guy creeping around outside; the threat however is much nearer home. "When I was a kid," an old-before-his-years Lucas says, "I used to think children couldn't die". Helen's on-off boyfriend Tom (Dave Klasko) turns up to the house, only to be greeted with the news that Helen is pregnant. Lucas goes missing and while searching for the boy Tom ends up in a bear trap and, incapacitated, becomes the CE's first victim; the monster has returned, and it falls to Helen and Lucas to stop him.

While Child Eater is terribly formulaic, its lack of post modern context (there are no references to horror movie tropes in the dialogue, nor name checking of other horror movies) and general seriousness makes it feel like a 1990s supernatural killer movie; and the CE, whose creepiness is exacerbated by his wearing aviator shades, is refreshingly catchphrase free. Critchley is plucky and resourceful and Bliss makes for an unlikely heroine, resolute even in the face of injury (let's just say that going forward the 3D experience won't be for her). Most of the movie is filmed at nighttime and the cinematography adds to the movie's claustrophobic feel. Child Eater won't be on anyone's Top 10 list but it's an effective and at times very nasty thriller.

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020 #12: Reviews of Monstrous Disunion (UK 2020), Barbatachthian (UK 2020), Carmilla (UK 2020), Cognition (UK 2020), Wreck (UK 2020) and After the Flames; An Apocalypse Anthology (UK 2020)

Monstrous Disunion (UK 2020: Dir Jackson Batchelor) Portsmouth's Trash Arts productions, a hothouse of independent film making talent from the south of England, have done it again with Batchelor's spot on Brexit satire.

It's 23rd June 2016, the day of the EU Referendum. Dad of two Mark Baker (Martin W Payne) is a Brexiteer (he proudly wears a 'I Be Leave' sticker on his shirt) and a traditionalist, quietly waiting at the dining table while his mother Anne (Janette Evans) does all the cooking, and regurgitating jingoistic 'facts' that he's read about in the right wing press. He's keen for son Pete (Connor Mellish) to follow in his political footsteps, telling him how to vote in the Referendum. Pete's sister Maddy (Jessamie Waldon-Day) on the other hand is a media studies student, dismissive of the reactionary comments made by her dad. Maddy has persuaded Mark to allow two of her fellow students, politics studying Mikey (Ryan Carter) and Jas (Alexandra Robertshaw) to lodge in the house, clearly seeing them as intellectual allies opposed to her father's views; the dining table becomes the scene for a heated leave/remain debate doubtlessly echoed across the UK on that day.

But something's stirring as the nation prepares to cast their vote; rumours abound about the spread of swine flu and fellow ranty Brexiteer neighbour Nigel (Simon Berry) has broken into the Baker's back garden, crouching on all fours seemingly in the throes of transforming into a pig. Barricading themselves in the house for protection, Mark decides that the three students are a threat and confines them to Maddy's bedroom. And it's not long before Pete and Mark also transform into pigs, their attention turning to the three people upstairs; let battle commence!

Batchelor's satirical take on Brexit Britain is delivered with a decidedly angry subtext; state of the nation statements at the end of the movie set out Batchelor and co-writer Sam Mason-Bell's stall very clearly. The tone of the thing reminded me of Dominic Brunt's similarly scathing 2017 movie Attack of the Adult Babies, but while that movie swung fists at the whole establishment, Monstrous Disunion concentrates on 'little Britain', or more precisely England. 

Shot in black and white, possibly to mirror the partisan nature of the Brexit debate (or maybe in homage to Night of the Living Dead?), Batchelor's movie starts quietly and ends, just over an hour later, in violence and fratricide. The tension of the piece is helped immeasurably by Mason-Bell regular Rusty Apper's brilliant sound design, and some good performances, particularly Payne, whose character personifies all those who saw a 'leave' vote as a chance to get their country back.

Barbatachthian (UK 2020: Dir Ian Austin) Back in 1977 indie band 'The Desperate Bicycles' uttered the rallying cry "it was easy, it was cheap, go and do it!" at the end of one of their songs, which could equally be applied to independent filmmaking. Well it does if you're Ian Austin, whose debut, ahem, feature cost £100 and was shot and edited on an ipad during lockdown. But just because you can make a film, it doesn't always mean you should.

Meet Chester Zerum (Austin wearing a Superman T shirt), who works for Blue Sky, a global think tank dealing with fringe science. Zerum's home is haunted by a being named Barbatachthian. He finds out from his landlord that said home was built on the site of a convent which, as well as the nuns, housed an orphan called Timoteus Zerum, who summoned Barbatachthian via a ouija board and subsequently burned the convent down.

Zerum tries spirit writing to communicate with the entity and then undertakes a one person séance where he ends up having a lengthy physical tussle with the being, involving beating himself up and being thrown round his kitchen. Rather slowly. Eventually he's assisted by the Archangel Michael (Holly Schelkens) who turns out to be Lucifer who hastens Chester's demise and descent into purgatory and then hell.

Austin, who slightly resembles a cross between Louis Theroux and Timmy Mallett, plays a number of other characters such as Detective Perspex (Austin with a stick on tache, hat and cane) and distant relative Frederick (Austin wearing a hoodie). 

According to his Film Freeway profile "Austin’s life is a whirlwind of weird and whimsy. A lifelong fan of horror, he aspires to make the sort of films that he and his friends can have a good laugh watching." Judging by the deeply unfunny Barbatachthian, he'd probably have to pay his friends to do that. I'm sure that Austin had a good time making this, but asking an audience to watch over 90 minutes of improvised extemporising, silly voices, fluffed lines and dodgy visual effects is quite the ask. On the plus side the soundtrack is quite good, if pilfered.

In his blog Austin threatens us with two films this year; Kung Fu Island and an adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Oh and he's planning a kind of redux version of Barbatachthian, complete with director commentary, and a sequel. Well don't say you haven't been warned.

Carmilla (UK 2020: Dir Emily Harris) Firmly in the Cadbury's Flake school of filmmaking, all soft focus and filters, Harris's debut feature, the latest adaptation of the 1872 novella by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, is a confident and ambiguous take on the familiar story of vampirism and same sex attraction.

Motherless Lara (Hannah Rae) lives in isolation with her distant father (Greg Wise) and involved but repressed governess Miss Fontaine (Jessica Raine), who equates Lara's left handedness (as she does a lot of things) with the devil and physically binds it, rendering the left arm unusable while at study. Left to her own devices, Lara daydreams and by night surreptitiously borrows books on anatomy from her father's library.

The lack of companionship with someone her own age looks to be at an end when the daughter of one of her father's friends, Charlotte, arranges to stay with the household. Sadly Charlotte becomes unwell and is unable to make the trip; Lara feels guilty that she may have had something to do with Charlotte's condition, and it's clear that Miss Fontaine's repression has rubbed off on her young charge; there's even a suggestion of the beginnings of self harm.

But later that night a disappointed Lara experiences an excitement; outside a carriage overturns and its occupant, a young girl, is brought into the house to recover. Lara is immediately interested in the stranger but forbidden to disturb her by Miss Fontaine. But it's not long before the two girls find each other, and Lara is immediately drawn to the unusual young woman (Harris has moved the location of the story from Austria to England, accentuating the otherness of their guest, played by German born Devrim Lingnau). The stranger asks Lara to pick a name for her, and of the options given, 'Carmilla' is selected. From then on the pair become inseparable, but Miss Fontaine strongly suspects, after finding a book of satanic woodcuts in the overturned coach, that 'Carmilla' may be evil, and also responsible for Charlotte's declining condition.

Stylistically Carmilla treads rather familiar ground; the blissed out pastoral look of the thing, with closeups of insects and rotting fruit, together with the soundtrack's carefully plucked strings and folk horror-esque glitches and bleeps (courtesy of 'Radiohead' drummer Philip Selway). But look beneath this and something more interesting is happening. Carmilla's arrival, rather than the predatory vampire of Le Fanu's story, here is a trigger for an extended battle between repression and individual freedom (the images of binding and corsetry contrast with Carmilla and Lara's flowing nightdresses). Carmilla, who is nameless until Lara provides her with one, is almost a constructed response to the strictures of the household. At one point Miss Fontaine warns Lara against the perils of infatuation, hinting at her own lovelorn past, but whereas she dealt with her emotional turmoil by over-analysing the relationship, Lara sees her friendship with Carmilla as liberation.

Performances here - principally from Raine, Lingnau and Rae, are beautifully controlled, Miss Fontaine only finding release through a brief liaison with a local doctor and, finally, in staking 'Carmilla', finding truth in the theory that a stake driven into the heart would kill anyone, vampire or not. Carmilla is a peripherally slight movie whose surface belies some more profound activity beneath. Cautiously recommended.

Cognition (UK 2020: Dir Ravi Ajit Chopra) Bit of a change of pace here; a 27 minute sci fi short that spares no visual expense in its sweep.

Based on a story by Chopra, watching this feels like being dropped into the second or third reel of a sci fi epic. A father, Elias (Andrew Scott) and his son Abner (Milo Panni) stand on the surface of a distant planet, surveying the worlds visible in the night sky. Elias has always wanted to visit them but never realised his ambition: "if you have a dream, follow it. Otherwise it stays in your heart for the rest of your days," he advises. A fierce storm blows up, forcing the pair to take shelter. When they emerge, two armed hooded men confront them. 

14 years later on the planet Vega, a grown up Abner (Jeremy Irvine) has been chosen by the Consul to lead an expedition to new worlds; he will be accompanied by a clutch of younger people, as talented as Abner was when a child. Abner has been conditioned to reject the past and embrace the future, and he has a control chip in the back of his neck. Abner's crew have similarly been trained to think themselves superior to others, with no fears, doubts or fluctuating emotions. Abner has one recollection of his youth, and it is a shocking one. The recollection forces Abner to take a decision; he will lead the expedition but on his own terms, leading to a final shot involving a pre converted Battersea power station.

Chopra's CV is mainly based on his work for the BBC, which has stood him in good stead for this, as I'm pretty sure a few Auntie colleagues were among the 150 odd people behind the scenes, not least the BBC Orchestra who provide a majestic score. The visuals are the main reasons to watch this; I'll be honest, the whole sp*ce op*ra thing isn't really my bag, but I can recognise a labour of love when I see one. As many have commented already, Cognition feels like a very impressive calling card for Chopra and a visual begging letter to give him a feature. Oh go on!

Wreck (UK 2020: Dir Ben Patterson) Written by Patterson and co-produced by Tony Manders, whose first movie as director was Death Follows, this is another from John Pasternack's and Manders' 'Kerchak Films' stable, a kind of 'bigfoot in Swindon' movie with added crime elements.

Mean club owner West (Ben Loyd-Holmes) asks his two mules, Jimmy (Ryan Gilks) and ex stripper Sandy (Gemma Harlow-Dean) to drive to a specified destination to deliver a case for him; Sandy, to whom the case is handcuffed, is keen to release some cash to pay for medical treatment for her mother. But others are after the case too, a couple of tooled up bad'uns who'll stop at nothing to track it down, including torture.

But something else is lurking in the woods to the side of the roads along which the pair drive. We've already seen two policemen attacked by a wild beast while investigating an abandoned bloodstained car, ominously discovered near a fracking plant, and a woman walking her dog.

Back in the car, and Jimmy, bickering with Sandy, takes his eyes off the road, and before you know it the motor's overturned, Jimmy is dead and Sandy, still handcuffed to the case, is alive but her leg is trapped under the crashed vehicle. A passing hiker (Manders) offers assistance but turns out to be no good; Sandy's options are running out as both the creature and the robbers close in for the kill.

The creature, who looks like a gone off Bungle from 'Rainbow' and then an angry Banana Split after it's been singed (Charles Clark-Devonauld, who also this year played a monster in Kris Carr and Sam Fowler's The Young Cannibals) may not be very good, and Sandy's threat remains pretty unconvincing, but the film's merge of creature feature, survival movie and crime caper was actually quite entertaining, with some inventive DIY gore and, at 70 minutes, just long enough.

After the Flames: An Apocalypse Anthology (UK 2020: Dir D. W. Hoppson) Hmmm. Another loose group of short films - all but one from the UK - and a rather thin link story around them. A gaggle of young people gather round initially to talk about their favourite apocalypse (for which read zombie) films, then invite each other to share stories:

Story 1: 'Road Trip' 2019:  dir Ronald J Wright. A family arrange to go on a trip; where they're going they won't need phones and they can't take the dog because he barks. As they travel to a clifftop coastal location there are glimpses of dead bodies by the roadside. When they get there the cries of seagulls sound human. Turns out the noises aren't coming from birds; this is the end of the road for the family and if you've ever seen The Mist...well let's just say it isn't a happy ending. 

Story 2. 'The Dogs' 2020: dir Ronald J Wright. A mother and her son walk through an estate at night - she has a bruise over one eye. They're chased by a feral pack, but what they initially think are dogs turns out to be something much more human...and hungry. 

Story 3 'Sola Gratia' 2011: dir Danny Cotton, Simon Edwards. The oldest of the shorts, and the cleverest of the stories on show. A man cradles his sleeping daughter, Grace, apologising for the state of the world; mum lies dead upstairs in a rocking chair. Outside zombies roam the streets. One breaks in and while it's feeding off mum they make a break for it. "Everybody's bad now," dad says, but when they arrive at a shopping centre there's an abrupt twist to the story.

Story 4 'Shift' 2018: dir Johan Earl. We're taken away from British misery for a change of pace in this lavish Australian short. In the near future a group of renegade survivors of a war, fused with biotech to allow them to breathe the polluted air, do battle with alien soldiers who appear and disappear through a portal; the group capture one, take it back to their hideout and dissect it in a last ditch effort to find the invaders' achilles heel. Very impressive, even if tonally it's totally out of keeping with most of the other shorts.

Story 5 'To Live from the Land' 2020: dir DW Hoppson. A young woman, Emi, defends her farmhouse. Two strangers arrive looking for shelter and get more than they bargained for when they find out how Emi manages to survive. The interesting thing about this short is that everyone talks in broken English, as if they've either forgotten, or had to learn, the language. Oblique and very interesting. 

Story 6 'Journey' 2017; dir Radheya Jegatheva. This animated short takes some of its visual cues from 2013's Gravity and 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey in a story of an astronaut trying to find his way home to Earth and learning that the planet may already have destroyed itself.

Most of the stories in this anthology work well - the first three particularly build up a gloomy atmosphere - but the wraparound story features weak acting and is pretty pointless. There's a quote at the start from Orson Welles which reads: "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations." Well quite.

The Haunting of Alice Bowles (UK 2020)

Ok not a film or TV but an online stream of a play, directed by Alastair Whatley and Peter Franks and adapted by Franks from 'The Experiment,' a 1931 story by M. R. James. A production of The Original Theatre Company, streamed online via originaltheatreonline.com, the play was produced and perfromed under socially distanced conditions ie largely from actors' bedrooms and homes.

Matt (Max Bowden) broadcasts his urban exploring experiences for his online fans. For his latest expedition, he's joined by his girlfriend Caitlin (Alexandra Guelff). They're about to explore an area that, back in 1918, accommodated the bodies of over 200 victims of the Spanish Flu; they're particularly interested in the grave of one Francis Bowles. Fairly quickly they find a sign on which the words 'Talk to the dead' are scrawled in chalk; the grave itself has been defaced with the word 'monster.'

Watching their broadcast on a laptop is an old guy dressed in tweed who produces a pile of papers from his desk. He holds up a card with the devil on it and says: "Do I have your attention? Another experiment, just like before."

We then flashback to Norfolk in 1918, and the main part of the story. Reverend Hall (Stephen Boxer) is informed by his housekeeper, Mrs Ivey (Poppy Roe) of a recent local death; it's the not especially popular Mr Francis Bowles ("Good riddance; vicious old bastard," mutters the housekeeper). Rev. Hall pays his respects to Bowles's surviving family, comprising Mrs Alice Bowles (Tamzin Outhwaite) and her son Joseph (Jack Archer) from a previous marriage. Alice, although apparently deep in grief, seems unusually keen for her late husband to be interred that evening, and in the north side of the churchyard rather than the family vault; she also won't be attending the funeral. 

The subsequent will reading leaves most of the estate to Alice but some volumes from Francis's library are gifted to one Edwin Fowler of Gloucester. Although apparently Bowles was a wealthy man, the will contains no cash settlements; he had no bank accounts or bonds, and it's assumed that the money was kept on the premises. Alice thinks she knows where it is, and she and Joseph search therough Bowles's cabinets and drawers. But what Alice finds, rather than money, horrifies her. A series of papers and photographs implicating her late husband in the practice of child abuse and Satanism (with young Joseph included in the rituals), also involving Mr Fowler.

Alice decides to blackmail Fowler by letting him know what she's discovered, but the resulting communication from the Gloucester man is very strange; he makes reference to something called the 'Middle State of the Soul' in which a recently deceased person can be summoned to answer questions. Joseph feels that this is the only way to discover the location of Francis's money, but the ritual, once performed, has deadly consequences.

Meanwhile Matt, who's in rather dire financial circumstances, finds himself in receipt of pile of old papers sent by, he supposes, a fan of the show. And within them disovers documents and guidance related to the 'Middle State of the Soul.'

The choice of subject matter here may be a rather minor James short story, but it's a good one; it's relatively unknown, has parallels with the current pandemic in its Spanish Flu backdrop, and features enough Jamesean narrative tics - secret papers, unholy deeds, dishonest seekers of fortune, the past reaching into the present - to satisfy. But it's the welding of James's approach to storytelling - assembling the elements of the tale piece by piece - to the structure of the play that really works. What could be a somewhat distancing experience, that of watching the actors performing their parts separately, is actually anything but; the disassociation actually works in the play's favour. There are also some great performances here which override any limitations of set up (Tamzin Outhwaite's vicious and secretive Alice is terrific) and the technical elements which knit the thing together - not least Max Pappenheim's ominous but not overly intrusive sound design - create real tension. 

You can watch The Haunting of Alice Bowles online now until 28 February. Details of streaming can be found here.