Scary Christmas Round Up of New (ish) Holiday Themed Horror Movies 2021: Reviews of The Advent Calendar (France/Belgium 2021), Red Snow (USA 2021), Puppet Killer (Canada 2019), Black Friday (USA 2021), Christmas Zombies (USA 2020) and Silent Night (UK 2021)

For the fourth year running, here are some reviews of Christmas/holiday themed movies to inspire some seasonal watching.

The Advent Calendar aka Le calendrier (France/Belgium 2021: Dir Patrick Ridremont) Eva Roussel (Eugénie Derouand), an ex dancer now paraplegic following a road accident, is hardly living her best life, stuck in a crappy insurance job with an equally crappy boss intent on belittling her and hiring others with a view to forcing her out of the business. Her father has Alzheimer's and her stepmother is pretty awful too.

Her friend Sophie (Honorine Magnier) gifts her a wooden box from Germany, a handcrafted advent calendar with 'the miracle of Christmas' written on the front, 'Dump it and I'll kill you' on the back, and a set of rules governing its use. Each of the locked doors must be opened at midnight, with a sharp rebuke from the box if Eva doesn't comply. Inside the box a trickster demon lurks, just waiting for the latest player to open door number one.

Some of the boxes contain chocolates, others objects or messages like "to cure hurt, destroy what hurt you" and "Jesus said to the cripple, get up and walk". Eva gradually understands that the box is exerting a force on her which allows her to control her environment. When she influences a rapey trader guy to die in a car crash, following a disastrous double date with Sophie and her latest beau, she also gets him to send a link to his phone stock market app, which immediately starts bringing in the Euros for her. But Eva also realises the Advent Calendar might have a higher, and deadlier purpose; to help her walk again.

Ridremont's modern fairy tale follows the 'be careful what you wish for' moral of Jacobs' 'The Monkey's Paw' story but the logic is skewed; Roussel is offered a miracle at huge cost, and it's the realisation that her dream of walking again could be realised, and the human cost of that dream, that turns her from an angry and embittered woman into something much darker.

For my taste The Advent Calendar is a little too tricksy to satisfy, but there's no doubting that it's a clever, uncomfortable film and Derouand turns in a fine, anguished performance which grows darker - and richer - as the film progresses.

Red Snow (USA 2021: Dir Sean Nicols Lynch) Struggling horror author Olivia Romo (Dennice Cisneros) is spending Christmas in a Lake Tahoe cabin, left to her by her late mother. In truth Olivia, broke and with her ‘Twilight’ style undead novel ‘Touched by a Vampire’ not setting the publishing world alight, she’s left to spend the holidays alone while the book’s rejection letters stack up.

When a bat flies into a window of the cabin one night, Olivia is minded to rescue the thing from the snow and restore it to health. Leaving it overnight in the garage, the following morning she is surprised but more than a little delighted to see that the bat, which was actually of the vampire variety, has changed back to naked male form in the rather buff shape of Luke (Nico Bellamy).

But when Julius King (Vernon Wells), a private investigator, turns up at the cabin, he’s in search of three vicious vampires, of which Luke is the most dangerous. Olivia finds it hard to reconcile the rather friendly guy she has in her garage with the concept of a murderous bloodsucker, but when Luke’s friends Jackie (Laura Kennon) and Brock (Alan Silva) turn up, she sees a different side of the vampire she thought was going to be useful in helping fine tune the details of her novel.

Red Snow is a comedy that raises smiles rather than belly laughs, and if you don’t warm to the kooky Olivia you may find it hard work. But it’s well cast and the snowy scenery is a bonus. There are some great lines (Luke describes the movie Nosferatu as the Birth of a Nation for his kind, and likens the pigs blood procured for him, rather than the human plasma he requires, as the difference between “craft beer and warm piss”): it’s also surprisingly gory and the effects are good for something that was probably pretty small budget wise. And Timothy Lynch’s soundtrack does a lovely job of sinistering up some Christmas standards; honestly you’ve never heard ‘The Coventry Carol’ sound more chilling.

Puppet Killer (Canada 2019: Dir Lisa Ovies) At first glance, Lisa Ovies’ debut directing feature shares a similar setup to Ben Holt’s Benny Loves You; both date from 2019 (Ovies’ film is only now getting a UK release) and concern childhood attachments to a puppet with murder on its mind. Coincidence, surely?

As a child young Jamie, a horror movie obsessed little boy, has a tough time. Losing his mother to cancer, he’s now caught in the middle of heightened bickering between dad and his new wife, with only a bright pink puppet (a favourite of his mother’s) for company. Bickering has escalated to separation status, and as Jamie’s stepmother makes arrangements to leave the family home, she is knifed to death by an invisible assailant; the body is whisked away and she is deemed to have gone missing.

Ten years later Jamie, now a young student (and in audacious bit of casting, his part is played, not by a teenager, but 50 year old Aleks Paunovic, possibly a nod to all those teen slasher movies where the students are actors in their 20s and 30s) has gathered his schoolfriends together for a weekend at the home where he grew up, now abandoned.

Once they arrived the gang settle in for the usual blend of beer, drugs and pre marital sex, with Jamie more keen to access a stash of VHS tapes in the basement and organise a horrorthon. But the movies aren’t the only thing from the past that’s rediscovered. His pink puppet is also unearthed, and before long somebody, or something, is offing the partying kids.

You have to take a pretty big leap of faith to go with the plotting of this frequently hilarious homage to/send up of classic horror movies. But it wins because the script is smart, the cast are great value, and the puppet gets all the best lines. It’s often pretty gory too; the addition of filmmakers Jen and Sylvia Soskia about half way through, in a plot device which intrigues rather than annoys, displays not only their acting chops but a film which isn’t afraid to chuck everything into the mix. Good work.

Black Friday (USA 2021: Dir Casey Tebo) It’s Thanksgiving (which Americans always conflate with Christmas) and the superstores of the USA are preparing for, as one worker puts it, the “friggin’ vultures” who queue outside at silly o’clock to snap up those Black Friday bargains.

Over at We Love Toys store manager Jonathan Wexler (a bowtie and cardigan sporting Bruce Campbell) is preparing his workers for the busiest night of the year. The staff include Ken (Devon Sawa), who is pissed that he has to work on the night of the holiday while his kids get to have a slap up Thanksgiving dinner at home with his ex-wife and her lame boyfriend; tough final girl in waiting Marnie (Ivana Baquero), with whom Ken is having a bit of a thing despite being twenty years older than her; cleanliness freak Chris (Ryan Lee); employee of the month Anita (Celeste Olivier); and uber bossy bitchy team leader Brian (Stephen Peck).

But this shopping event is going to be rather different. In a neighbouring warehouse a gigantic blob, presumably alien but unexplained, overcomes and mutates some of the workers there. And by the time We Love Toys is open for business the whole district has been overwhelmed with infected shoppers. And they’re headed for Jonathan and his team.

“There’s something wrong with the shoppers” remarks a character at one point, which is probably the understatement of the year. Director Casey Tebo (who seems to have cut his teeth directing Aerosmith promotional videos) has great fun pitching the mutated hordes (well twenty or so of them anyway, the budget’s pretty slim) against the disparate and disgruntled staff of the toy store, who predictably overcome their differences, utilising pretty much anything in the store in the fight against the infected townsfolk.

The practical effects are the star here, a homage to DTV 1980s latex FX classics (and the Dawn of the Dead nods are clear and present), and if the script and overall narrative are sometimes a bit scrappy and inconclusive, the film is saved by some dry performances and an increasing sense of mayhem, building to an impressively fiery climax.

Christmas Zombies (USA 2020: Dir Ashley Hays Wright) OK, here's what you need to know. Ashley Hays Wright is, and I quote, "a home school mother of three daughters...married to David Owen Wright, an 'actor' (my inverted commas)...a multi talented craftsman with many gifts from God". So the Wright family, good Christian souls all, decided to add to their skillset the art of filmmaking, as 'Wright Family Films'. And boy did they go at it, with thirteen shorts, TV slots and features completed in 2020. What, with a pandemic raging, I hear you cry? Fear not, pilgrim, for the Wright family make all their movies at home, and the cast are, you guessed it, mainly members of the Wright family!

So now we're all caught up, let me introduce you to Christmas Zombies, one of the lamest, most atrocious films I've brought you in all the four years of this seasonal post (although have a read of the user reviews on IMDb, particularly the one who writes "I am sure the people that rate this low are upset that this was not a film full of blood, foul language, nudity or the usual horrible things in these type of films." Yep!

On the night before Christmas, dad (David Owen Wright) reads a story to his three daughters (Cadence, Scout and Jaina Wright). Ostensibly it's 'The Night Before Christmas' but dad changes it, narrating instead the story of 'Snuffy' (also dad Wright) a disgruntled elf who gets kicked out of Santa's workshop by Big Red himself and wages war against Santa with an army of robot zombies.

At 66 minutes this feels a lot longer. Through a combination of green screen and video editing, Mr and Mrs Wright do at least manage to make it look like there's a full cast, instead of the family and a couple of hangers on in multiple roles. But oh god it's so terrible. I mean, if their mission was to make a good, clean, family film which won't offend the congregation of their local church, but you have no talent at comedy or even telling a story properly, then this is what you get. On a more sinister note, Snuffy's revenge and the combined opposing forces of the North Pole relies on a proliferation of guns, most of which don't seem to be real, but even so, I'm going to guess that a family whose kids are home schooled to protect them from 'adult content' are possibly well stocked in the gun department. Awful and just a little sinister then (but for all the wrong reasons).

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 Silent Night (UK 2021: Dir Camille Griffin) And so we end this year's coverage with, if not a classic film, an odd and very moving one.

Nell (Keira Knightley) and her husband Simon (Matthew Goode) are hosting a Christmas day get together, at their huge house in the country, for a group of old friends, a quirky mix of vaguely posh people whose affability suggests we're about to watch a witty social comedy; and indeed swirling strings on the soundtrack signify the lightheartedness and opulence of the setup.

But there are some chinks in the overall levity. One of the guests, Sandra (Annabelle Wallis) has splurged her daughter Kitty's (Davida  McKenzie) university fund on an expensive party dress, and Nell's own kids, Art (Roman Griffin David, JoJo Rabbit) Hardy (Hardy Griffin Davis) and Thomas (Gilby Griffin Davis) are collective potty mouths."God we're getting old," says Nell to one of the group, James (Sope Dirisu); "were getting old," he corrects her.

For this is a party with a difference; it's an end of the world bash. A toxic cloud, the results of global warming, is moving around the globe, killing the world's population. The UK Government have provided a human solution for its people; a pill which kills instantly. Nell and her friends and kids have gathered to take the pill together before the cloud arrives, saving them from an agonising death by poisoning. 

But as the movie progresses and the toxic cloud slowly approaches, doubts are expressed about the veracity of the tablet; also James' 15 year old gilfriend Sophie (Lily-Rose Depp, daugher of Johnny and Vanessa Paradis, celeb fans) is pregnant and having second thoughts about joining them in the pill popping party.

Silent Night feels a bit like Richard Curtis remaking Lars von Trier's 2011 movie Melancholia. There's an off feeling about the whole thing (and not in a bad way), which gradually transforms into full on pathos. The disclosure of secrets among the group, which in any other film would be the dramatic climax, here occurs half way through the movie but becomes inconsequential; these people have bigger concerns than human frailty. And while the details behind the catastrophe are only hinted at, one character opines: "We should have voted Green..fucking Conservatives".

This really is quite an extrordinary film, strange but unusually truthful, shot through with mordant humour: and if the final piece of music, Lorne Balfe's beautiful reworking of the carol that provides the film's title, doesn't move you, then nothing will. 

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021#9: Reviews of Conjuring the Plastic Surgeon (UK 2021), Dinosaur Hotel (UK 2021), Familiars (UK 2021), Evie (UK 2021), Shepherd (UK 2021) and Seagull (UK 2021)

Conjuring the Plastic Surgeon aka Doctor Carver (UK 2021: Dir Louisa Warren) In Warren's latest we enter the murky world of plastic surgery and the perils of desiring the perfect body. Chelsea Greenwood plays Tonya, a model who, despite being 24 and beautiful, is dropped by her agent for being too plain; her photographer forces himself on her in return for pushing her career. Tonya feels that a nose job would give her more modelling opportunities. So a surprise call, offering her and three other girls free cosmetic surgery, feels like a dream come true. Tonya's boyfriend Dan thinks it's all too good to be true, but it doesn't stop Tonya heading off to the 'Look Perfect Agency' (which is basically the same house used in lots of Warren and producer Scott Jeffrey's films).

There, greeted by the cold aloof Alex (Danielle Scott), who appears to be running the show, she meets the other willing participants: Dina (Julia Quayle) who wants liposuction as a way of holding on to her man; Belle (Amanda-Jade Tyler) the oldest of the party, looking for some Botox work; and glamour model Peppa (Sofia Lacey) who wants breast augmentation.

Things start to go a bit off when Alexa asks them all to participate in a supernatural ritual, the result of which, following the usual summoning by mirror, is the manifestation of, as far as I can work out, a demonic plastic surgeon (Zuza Tehanu). We've already seen the surgeon at work in a prologue and it ain't a pretty sight. The ladies' desperation for free, normally expensive treatment makes them blind to the oddness of their surroundings, the increasing horror they face and the Doctor's unorthodox procedures!

Needles pierce flesh, fluids ooze and there's a general air of nastiness to the proceedings here which is quite unusual in Warren's films; Peppa's operation is particularly distressing. As a meditation on the horrors of surgery and the extent to which women are either 'forced' into such procedures or bring it on themselves it works well, and the surgeon, with his mangled face and straggly hair, is an effective villain.

Warren has said before that she makes two types of films: vaguely silly creature features, and more serious subjects. Conjuring the Plastic Surgeon is definitely in the second category; and there's already a sequel in the works.

Dinosaur Hotel (UK 2021: Dir Jack Peter Mundy) One of five films made by Mundy this year, and like Amityville Scarecrow before it, scripted by Shannon Halliday and produced/edited by Scott Jeffrey for his 'Jagged Edge Productions' company.

Mundy sets his stall out right from the get go in a prologue where a couple of women, already looking bruised and bloody, face off against a CGI dinosaur and a talking sphere. What's going on? All will be revealed.

Sienna Woods (Chrissie Wunna) is a struggling single mum of two, still grieving the loss of her husband. She gets a phone call telling her that she has been selected for a competition she applied for; she's to be a guest at somewhere called 'Dinosaur Hotel', "where the impossible is possible and all bets are off in the ultimate challenge". There's a prize of £100,000 for the winner, which we later understand means 'the last person to stay alive'. Struggling with what to do with her two kids while she's away (played by Wunna's own offspring, recalling an old phrase about not putting your daughter (or son) on the stage, so appalling are they), she decides to take them with her. Big mistake. 

Upon arrival Sienna meets the other contestants including Zara (Charlotte Greenwood, Dragon Fury), Laura (Sofia Lacey, Conjuring the Plastic Surgeon), Sam (Kate Sandison, Cannibal Troll) and Jenny (Nicole Nabi, Medusa). The floating sphere mentioned earlier is a device that dictates the rules of the game and monitors the action; it tells them that there can only be one winner. The sight of the first dinosaur, on the roof of the hotel - actually it's a youth hostel, and we know this because there are bunk beds - is announced by some soaring Jurassic Park style strings (which won't be the only time that movie is referenced; a couple of later scenes are direct steals, right down to the lighting). Sadly because of the budget the CGI beasts are distinctly sub par; of necessity most of the creatures roaming around the hotel are quite small and slightly more effective than their poorly animated full size brethren. 

The real brains behind the enterprise is the Games Master (Alexander John) and of course, as we've already seen in the prologue, he has no intention of paying the prize money to anyone; there will be no final girl here. So for the rest of the film, sit back and watch computer generated dinosaurs running after screaming women (and children) and try to guess who's going to be next for a 'saur snack. 

This of course is fairly pedestrian stuff, leavened with some lovely exterior photography and a location that at least attempts to look like a hotel (although I do think that Mundy could have removed the sign off the front door telling hostellers that the venue was closed for a private function ie a film was being made there).

Familiars (UK 2021: Dir Michael Munn) Familiars is Munn's fifth feature and fourth 'Fantastic' genre piece, although I confess that I've not seen any of his previous work. And although there's no denying the work he's put into this film, I'm not likely to be rectifying that any time soon.

When happy clappy Sarah is murdered in the woods - the latest in a string of victims, all who have evidence of burn marks on their bodies - the detective in charge of the investigation, Sutton (Munn), has a fleeting vision at the murder scene of a cowled figure with Sutton's face who exhales CGI flies.

Sarah's twin sister, anxiety suffering Emma (Jasmine Hodgson) experiences additional debilitating panic attacks, brought on by the grief of her sister's violent death, and the frustration of not knowing who did it. This can only be relieved in two ways; firstly by having regular chaste and clothes on sex with boyfriend Sam (Michael Howard) and secondly visits to a local medium, Rebecca (Holly Nicol) to get the answers she desperately needs.

While the psychic consultations provide some comfort for Emma, and eventually visitations from Sarah, they also seem to ramp up the threat of danger, ostensibly from Sutton, who appears to Emma in her dreams. But the truth of who killed Sarah and now threatens Emma is far less prosaic than a rogue policeman, as she's about to find out.

Familiars is a perfect storm of not very good things which together make it a well intentioned failure. With the exception of Hodgson the 'local' acting is generally pretty poor, which in itself isn't a massive problem; the other issues are an overambitious and increasingly confusing story coupled with (I'm guessing lockdown restricted) effects which look cheap and nasty (especially in the fiery climax). Possibly the most interesting aspect of the film was the rather accurate depiction of the anxious state (some animation showing Emma's fast beating heart actually worked quite well). Munn is a man of faith, which shows in the moralising 'don't dabble in the darkside' themes and the rather leaden songs - he's a Christian songwriter too. I don't fault the passion he put into this film; I'm afraid it's just not very good.

Evie (UK 2021: Dir Dominic Brunt) Outside of his Paddy Dingle character in the long running soap Emmerdale, for nearly a decade now Dominic Brunt has been building up a CV directing modest but effective regionally focused fright flicks, mingling the mundane with the terrifying. It’s been a while since his last, 2017’s Attack of the Adult Babies, a bizarre, surreal but blistering attack on the class system made, apparently, as an angry riposte to a major film deal that fell through at the last minute.

Evie sees a return to the more prosaic character setup of his earlier films. The titular Evie, when we first meet her, is a young girl playing on a beach (co-director Jamie Lundy’s daughter Honey) with her brother Tony (Danny-Lee Mitchell-Brunt, the director’s son), seemingly happy and carefree. Wandering among the local caves, she finds an amulet (from which she is afterwards inseparable) and has an unspecified encounter with something - or someone - which afterwards leaves her sullen, taciturn and increasingly volatile.

Twenty three years later we meet Evie as a grown woman (Holli Dempsey), dissatisfied in a dead-end insurance job and seeking - and failing - to find a connection with the opposite sex courtesy of a series of one night stands. In fact the only solace Evie achieves, other than chats with a workmate friend, is in alcohol; the intervening years have seen Evie taken into care and, finally, spat out into the world of adults. Is it the system that has failed her, or is she just spiritually doomed?

Her brother Tony (now played by Jay Taylor) makes contact with her, desiring to reconnect. Their reuniting is a trigger for Evie to confront painful memories of childhood, and to face the truth of what happened that day on the beach.

I’m not sure whether it was the result of pandemic filming conditions, a paucity of available time or maybe a lack of confidence with the subject matter, but Evie is, in this reviewer's opinion, Brunt’s weakest film. Plot turns feel forced and unnatural (in contrast to the authentically remote and credible production design) and Dempsey’s adult version of the haunted Evie fails to convince. The background myth of the selkie (a seal like creature from Celtic and Norse mythology with the ability to change into a human) is atmospheric in itself, but rather leadenly applied; for most of its running time Evie is a downbeat drama which finally and rather bluntly resolves itself into a horror movie. I could see what Brunt was trying to achieve but that intention got lost, making this for the most part an awkward and unfulfilling movie.

Shepherd (UK 2021: Dir Russell Owen) Now I really liked director Russell Owen’s last film, 2020’s sci fi opus Inmate Zero, and this enigmatically made horror drama follow up is a production of equal quality, if slightly less satisfying than his previous outing.

Tom Hughes plays Eric, a man whose wife Rachel (Gaia Weiss) has died in a car crash while pregnant. A bereft and barely functioning Tom, haunted by images of the crash and the baby he will never hold, heads north, first to the parental home in Scotland where his mother (Greta Scacchi) wants nothing to do with him, and then deeper into the mountains, to take up a job as a shepherd.

He is shown round the ramshackle accommodation that goes with the job by local boat owner Fisher (Kate Dickie), a woman with only one good eye (eyes will feature heavily in this film) who looks like she’s never left her home village. Curiously as part of the accoutrements she leaves for him is a blank journal (he later finds similar books, presumably completed by previous occupants of the house, which suggest that his predecessors had all lost their mind). “Escaping or running?” asks Fisher. She also tells him that “something’s haunting you, Mr Black, I can see it”.

If Tom was hoping to escape his fears, he finds that his new location has actually compounded them; a scribbled message in one of the journals reads “She’s a witch, she’s here” and visions of a gnarled creature are the least of his problems. A nearby lighthouse offers a different but equally powerful set of terrors. As Tom becomes more and more disorientated in his temporary home, it seems like something there wants him.

The issue I had with Shepherd was that everything looked too polite and mannered, from the designer scuffing of his Scottish home (which I could never believe wasn’t a set) to the visions which seemed almost elegantly interspersed. Some of the imagery is effective – a field of crucified animals, stripped of their carcasses, startles – but the ending was well telegraphed and I couldn’t reconcile the force of the supernatural happenings with the rather mundane upshot. Beautifully photographed, yes, but strangely uninvolving.

Seagull (UK 2021: Dir Peter Blach) It’s rather pushing it to see this first time feature by Danish born director Blach, shot in the gloomy environs of Folkestone, as anything but a domestic drama, despite its rather tenuous fantastic elements.

Centring around two grandparents, Jeff (Adam Radcliffe) and his disabled, alcoholic wife Janet (Jessica Hynes), their daughter, feisty Violet (Rosie Steel) and granddaughter Lily (Miranda Beinart-Smith), disruption to an already unhappy family unit comes in the form of Jeff and Janet’s long lost daughter Rose (Gabrielle Sheppard). For the last eight years Rose has been living on a beach, her home a makeshift tent which finally catches fire and is destroyed; so, with a masked folk-horror figure in tow, she decides to return to her former home and reconnect with Violet, who in reality is her daughter. But Rose has revenge on her mind too, courtesy of an event that occurred eight years earlier.

Even with the presence of the usually great Jessica Hynes this is thin stuff. Populated with actors whose inexperience makes the film appear hesitant where it should be emotionally powerful, its biggest crime is that it makes no sense either as a drama or a more abstract piece of magic realism. None of the characters are developed and the whole project feels under-rehearsed and, well, unfinished. Not very good at all, although shots of the Kent coastline are very atmospheric.

Supermarket Sweep # 25: Reviews of Cynthia (USA 2018), Paranormal Prison (USA 2021), The Haunting of the Mary Celeste (USA 2020), The Last Exorcist (USA 2020), Demonic (Canada 2021) and The Last Inn (USA 2021)

Cynthia (USA 2018: Dir Devon Downs, Kenny Gage) Best summarised as a kind of slapstick version of the 1974 mutant baby saga It's Alive, Cynthia is a movie probably best seen with a crowd.

Michael (Kyle Jones) and his wife Robin (Scout Taylor-Compton) are a young couple trying for a baby via complicated (and expensive) in vitro fertilisation treatments, all the way from China (because they're on a budget). The situation is putting a strain on their relationship, so it's a relief when Robin falls pregnant; initially it's thought that she's expecting twins, but it soon transpires that it's one foetus and a large fibroid cyst, discarded by the medical staff when the baby is born. 

But the cyst is far from a load of dormant tissue, and before you can say Basket Case or It's Alive the little beggar - the 'Cynthia' of the title - is laying waste to the hospital staff while growing at an inordinate rate; there's also a normal daughter but really no-one is that interested in her. 

Genre regulars Robert Le Sardo, the late Sid Haig and Lynn Lowry (as a modern day wet nurse) are all present and correct, and the mostly practical effects feel like something that Joji Tani aka Screaming Mad George (remember him?) would have concocted back in the 1980s. The script, by the creation 'Robert Rhine' (you better look it up, I don't have the space to explain here) develops the wicked humour of his successful 'Girls and Corpses' magazine. It ain't subtle and, despite the light tone of the movie, its subject matter is pretty gritty; definitely not recommended for those trying to start a family. 

Paranormal Prison (USA 2021: Dir Brian Jagger) Jagger's debut 'found footage' feature comes down with a nasty case of firstfilmitis. An Idaho prison with a dodgy reputation, operating as a tourist attraction until recently closed, is the focus of the action; the authorities blame structural problems as the reason for its closure, but others suggest more supernatural reasons and a cover up.

A YouTube group of paranormal debunker investigators, called 'The Skeptic (US spelling) and the Scientist' is led by the enigmatic Matthew (Todd Haberkorn), the owner of the channel, whose ratings have nose dived. He's hoping things will pick up again when the group are offered the opportunity to spend the night in the prison. They are the last such group to be allowed access as the whole building is to be demolished to make way for an apartment complex; 17 film crews have covered the location before, without results; so no pressure then.

So, armed with a variety of bits of equipment (including a machine which lights up blue in the presence of ghosts) the group wander around the prison, while the individual members have direct to camera personal history moments, and the history of the prison inmates is disclosed. 

Like a number of films about paranormal explorations (and their TV counterparts) the hope is that the location will do all the dramatic heavy lifting. And while it is indeed an impressive place, and Jagger wisely leaves the running around screaming to the final reel, Paranormal Prison drags terribly for most of its running time, not helped by the rather clumsy visual and audio effects which punctuate the proceedings. "This is bullshit!" one character opines, and I'm inclined to agree with them.

Haunting of the Mary Celeste (USA 2020: Dir Shana Betz) A group of researchers headed by the almost crazily driven Rachel (Emily Swallow) heads to the Azores to, once and for all, clear up the mystery of the disappearance of the ship the 'Mary Celeste' in the area back in 1872. Accompanied by her two assistants, Grant (Dominic DeVore) and Cassandra (UK's Alice Hunter with a shaky Australian/US accent) they want to scientifically debunk all of the existing theories about the boat, whose crew mysteriously disappeared all those years ago, and get to the truth. Rachel's opinion is that the ship's occupants got sucked into a rift in time, and can still be reached.

Shaft himself, Richard Rountree, is Tulls, the salty captain who helps Rachel and her team out when their boat doesn't materialise, so it's all aboard his trusty rig and into uncharted waters, their equipment a mix of scientific instruments and actual objects from the original ship. Out at sea the engines give up and Tulls's assistant, Aldo (Pierre Adele) sustains an injury; he later disappears. Stranded at sea, other unexplained things begin happening on board, and it looks like whatever happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste is about to repeat itself within Tulls's craft.

This is a rather downbeat haunted house story whose low budget doesn't really allow for anything exciting; at 74 minutes things feel a little rushed and undercooked at the confusing climax; the restrictions of the setting (basically a boat) also fail to build up the required tension. It's telegraphed pretty early on that Rachel has a sad secret, and much of the narrative revolves around this, but overall this is rather uninvolving stuff. I think the critic whose review contained the words 'Genuine Terror' mistakenly included the letter 'T'.

The Last Exorcist (USA 2020: Dir Robin Bain) Could the possession of a human being pass on through generations, asks a shouty exorcist, Father Peter Campbell in a TV broadcast in Rome, moments before he's blown to smithereens courtesy of a robed suicide bomber? 

Epileptic religious observer Jo (Rachele Brooke Smith) and her boozy, druggy older and therefore rather more secular sister Maddie (Terri Ivens) are distraught at the news, as Father Peter looked after them when their mother died. When I say 'looked after' I mean 'accompanied him to exorcisms'; they clearly had a bit of a tough childhood. Onto the scene comes Brother Marco (Danny Trejo), who knew their mother, and feels that they will need his help. And they will, as mum was a possessed soul, and now it's transferred to Maddie! Jo recognises the signs - her mum began drinking heavily as the devil entered her heart, which is exactly what Maddie is doing - but we know things are going very wrong when Maddie stares at a man who's been hassling her, causing him to burst into flames, and goes all low level Carrie in the local good old boy bar.

And then everything gets weird. Maddie ends up in the psych ward, abused by Daniel, a devilish orderly with a fondness for snakes. Jo's epilepsy gets worse but she manages to ordain as a priest, and her first robed up job is the exorcism of her sister, complete with martial arts moves and ritual phrases like "I love you sister!". Start with the easy jobs, why don'cha?

The Last Exorcist is a hoot. It plays like a church funded movie, and everyone's pretty awful in it, including Trejo who looks plain awkward (Ivens gives good possession though). I quite liked the 'possession is hereditary' idea but Bain mangles the storytelling and the script is unbelievably atrocious. Avoid. And I mean avoid.

Demonic (Canada 2021: Dir Neill Blomkamp) Blomkamp's first foray into horror was rather coolly received by punters when it did the rounds of festivals early this year.

Carly (Carly Pope) is estranged from her mother Angela (Nathalie Boltt) who, Carly believes, is in prison for murder following her arson of a fully occupied care home. Her ex boyfriend tells Carly that Angela is in fact in a clinic, comatose; she has all her mental faculties but is unable to move. On visiting the facility, called Therapol and renowned for cutting edge medical technology, Carly meets two men who have developed a way for her to be inserted into a VR world where she can communicate with her mother. Not that Carly wants to do this; she hasn't spoken to Angela in years, and the first virtual meeting is understandably spiky.

But what is supposed to a safe process is the beginning of Carly's nightmares. The clinic persuade her to have another VR conversation, but Carly finds real life and the VR world blurring. She also discovers, courtesy of her resourceful friend Martin (Chris William Martin) that her mother's badass attitude may just have something to do with her being possessed.

Blomkamp's aim here is to tell a possession story with enough narrative tics to differentiate it from the usual genre efforts. The problem is that there are too many of them, and most feel like McGuffins, sleights of hand that just stick out in their awkwardness. Demonic (even the title is borrowed) brings to mind a lot of different films, and indeed starts to feel like watching a number of different movies. The scares are well signposted and noisy rather than frightening, and the creature reveal at the end is quite the anticlimax. Despite the money spent on the thing, and a fine central performance from Pope, Demonic is one of those films you struggle to remember the day after viewing it.

The Last Inn (USA 2021: Dir David Kuan) An online summary of the films of David Kuan includes the following: "The task of directing a film is not at all easy since the director must be attentive or attentive that everything is fulfilled as planned and, if it is not, make important decisions for the course of the project. David Kuan has managed to create wonderful films despite the inconveniences that arise in all the shoots and that is worthy of admiration." Well we'll be the judge of that.

And we're not off to a good start when the movie's opening credits tell us that the movie was 'Derected by' Kuan. But really that is the least of the film's problems.

Relentlessly chipper Laura (Emily Hall) crashes her car into a tree while driving at night in the mid US; she'd swerved to avoid a figure in the road. When she comes to at the wheel the following morning she has no idea where she is. Unable to solicit passing help (why it's as if other drivers can't see her) she comes across a sign directing her to 11 Misty Road and an imposing building in the shape of a huge, abandoned hotel, whose sign reads 'Welcome to the Lawst Inn'.

Inside she meets the hosts, Mr and Mrs Lawst. Mr L wants her to leave but the lady of the house is more accommodating. Laura learns that the whole area has been abandoned following an epidemic. Which doesn't account for how the proprietors are still living. Or are they (see where I'm going with this)? Despite the hotel being supposedly empty, she meets some other occupants of the place; Steven (Walker Barnes) and young couple in love Nicole (Tristan Cunningham) and Peter (Jamel King). Oh and Britney (Zarema Akmalove), a young woman of the gothic persuasion who, with her young son, never leave their room. But it's not long before Laura realises she is unable to leave the hotel, and is forced to watch a horrible chapter of the house's history being played out in front of her.

The Last Inn is, and I don't know how else to put this, putrid. All the cast either sound like, or are, dubbed, and their voice over artists are people who don't seem to be able to read a script properly, much less act; this casts some shade on the quality of the original actors too. Inexplicable things happen, like a charred ghost girl screaming 'Get out of my house!' for no apparent reason, and Mr Lawst disclosing his penchant for chopping up dead bodies. It's all underscored by a soundtrack that sounds like shopping centre elevator music, and there is so much bad CGI that I became convinced that everything I was looking as was green screen created (most was filmed at the massive Hangdian World Studios in China, which may explain the movie's lack of place and atmosphere). Very, very bad.

A Centenary of Fantastic Films - 1921 #1 The Phantom Carriage aka Körkarlen (Sweden 1921: Dir Victor Sjöström)

Swedish director Victor Sjöström is possibly best known as stubborn old physician Professor Isak Borg in Ingmar Bergman's insightful and insular 1957 masterpiece Wild Strawberries aka Smultronstället. One of Sjöström's 44 acting credits, he also has a role in 1921's The Phantom Carriage. This was his 24th feature, made three years before he made the movie from his homeland to Hollywood at the request of Louis B. Mayer; he'd lived in the USA for six of the first seven years of his life, after his father relocated there.

Many of the director's early works before The Phantom Carriage are now lost. This film, like two of his earlier movies prior to this one, was based on 'Körkarlen' aka 'Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!', a 1912 novel by Selma Lagerlöf. Lagerlöf was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature: she had sold the movie rights to her unpublished works to Swedish Cinema Theatre, a company who in 1919 merged with Filmindustri AB Skandia and continued operations as Svensk Filmindustri AB. This period of Swedish cinematic history produced a wealth of output which found international popularity (The Phantom Carriage was a huge success both in and outside of Sweden) and was a cited influence on the work of Ingmar Bergman, born three years before this movie was released.

The film is set on New Year's Eve: Sister Edit (Astrid Holm), a member of the Salvation Army (the movement had been present in Sweden since the close of the 19th Century), is dying of consumption. She makes a last request to summon a man called David Holm (Sjöström) to her bedside. 

Holm is a drunk who has abandoned his wife Anna (Hilda Borgström) and their two children. When we meet him he's in a graveyard with two other drunks; he regales them with a story, told to him by his friend Georges (Tore Svennberg), that the last man to die on New Year's Eve is cursed to drive the carriage of death for the next year, collecting the souls of the newly deceased in the service of The Grim Reaper. Georges was the last person to die before the previous New Year was ushered in.

Edit's friend Gustavson (Tor Weijden) finds David and asks him to return to Edit's house; he refuses and, in a disagreement with the other drunks, David is slain just before the bells of midnight. The cart of death arrives for him and David takes over the reins from the previous driver, who is of course Georges.

The cart of death in The Phantom Carriage 

Before David takes up the job for the next year, in a series of flashbacks Georges reminds him of the consequences of his dissolution (ironic in that it was Georges who introduced the formerly upstanding David to the demon drink): how David mistreated his wife and children, leading them to walk out on him; the spells in prison; how he similarly led his brother astray, his sibling killing a man in a moment of drunkenness.

The previous New Year's Eve, riddled with consumption himself, David had drunkenly attended a Salvation Army 'pop up' mission at which he had met Edit, who looks after him, "never giving a thought to the germs she had inhaled". Edit sees David as someone worth saving, but he seems beyond hope, exclaiming: "I'm a consumptive, but I cough into people's faces, in the hope of finishing them off. Why should they be better than us?" Even her attempt to reunite David and his wife ends in disaster.

George takes David by force to meet Edit. Initially she is unable to make him repent, but David, increasingly wracked with guilt, eventually prostrates himself at her bedside, and Edit dies. Finally George takes David back to the house where Anna, living with her kids, has decided to end all their lives. This provokes a sincere outpouring of grief from the wayward husband. Georges, satisfied of this repentance, releases David's soul back into his body; alive again, he is just in time to race home and stop his wife from her actions, and they reconcile.

While The Phantom Carriage is at its heart an old fashioned morality tale - man descends to drunkenness, refuses help and finds last minute salvation - and is clearly in debt to Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' in both time of the year and moral message, it remains a refreshingly modern looking film. The story within story flashbacks effectively break up the narrative, and while the superimposition effects may not be as impressive today, at the time they were extraordinary, particularly in that they were incorporated into the action rather than seen as stand alone gimmicks. Some still have the power to move: a scene where death picks up a body from the bottom of the sea, or walks into a house to claim the soul of a man who has just shot himself, remain powerful.

The themes of the film were remarkably topical. In Sweden at the time of filming alcohol misuse had accelerated to such a rate that, from 1919 onwards, every Swedish citizen was given an alcohol ration book which controlled how much booze they could buy each month. And following the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 - 1920 Tuberculosis (or consumption) remained a big killer in the country, particularly of younger men.

The novel would be filmed twice more. In 1939 French director Julien Duvivier made The Phantom Wagon (original title La charrette fantôme) and then nearly twenty years later in 1958 Arne Mattsson adapted the novel again in Sweden under its original title Körkarlen.

You can watch The Phantom Carriage here. 

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #8: Reviews of Curse of Bloody Mary (UK 2021), The Ghosts of Borley Rectory (UK 2021), Ghost Tale (UK 2021), When the Screaming Starts (UK 2021), The Ghost of Winifred Meeks (UK 2021) and The Curse of Humpty Dumpty (UK 2021)

Curse of Bloody Mary aka Summoning Bloody Mary aka Bloody Mary (UK 2021: Dir David Gregory) Indie creature features with Scott Jeffrey and his ilk behind the lens can feel a little formulaic. In the by now familiar prologue that launches us straight into the action, staff members Francine (Chrissie Wunna) and Ben (Stephen Saley) are fighting a supernatural creature called 'Bloody Mary' at a health spa (in reality a youth hostel in Yorkshire). Ben stops to smash a mirror, hoping to halt the advance of the creature, but karks it instead.

We meet four young women, reuniting for a weekend at the very same health spa: Elena (Antonia Whillans), journalist Morgan (Beatrice Fletcher), Kate (Sofia Lacey) and pregnant Dani (low budget fright flick scream queen Sarah T Cohen with a terrible strap on bump). They're here for a wellness weekend, and particularly for Elena and Dani to heal old wounds as a result of a bit of love rivalry back at school. Francine, who we saw in the prologue, is the rather distracted owner of the facility, and the girls seems to be the only guests; perhaps Francine's twitchiness has something to do with the fact that the mirror, responsible for Bloody Mary's appearance, is still front and centre in the lounge.

Morgan finds a book partly written in Latin which includes the legend of Bloody Mary. Francine later tells them the legend of Mary, a witch who, after losing a child, killed young girls and used their blood to resurrect her dead baby. Burned at the stake, she vowed that if anyone should say her name in front of a mirror three times she'd come for them. Francine encourages the girls to have a go, and as soon as the deed is done skedaddles out of the building. "I did everything you asked" she says to no-one in particular.

So yes the familiar setup transitions from friendship drama to a fight for life, as 'Bloody Mary' comes looking for victims who, when they are in the creature's thrall, are depicted via a red filter. I probably don't need to mention that the friendship rifts heal, there's a final girl, and the movie rather abruptly ends with footage of said FG being sick out of a car window. Nice.

The Ghosts of Borley Rectory (UK 2021: Dir Steven M. Smith) Despite the UK's rich history of haunted houses, it's perhaps surprising that few of them have gained any wider fame outside those with a direct interest. Perhaps this is why independent filmmakers have repeatedly returned to the subject of Borley Rectory, reputedly 'the most haunted house in England'. The fact that the claim was made by Harry Price, a now largely debunked psychic investigator who had attached himself to the legend of the Rectory for three decades, is telling: Price worked hard to keep the property's supernatural flame alive - and profiting from writing about it - even after it was destroyed by fire in 1938.

This is director Smith's second bite of the Borley cherry; his first, 2019's The Haunting of Borley Rectory, was set in 1944 after the building has burned to the ground. Ghosts is set in 1937, shortlly before the fire occurred, and as such serves as a prequel to the events of the first film. Although it's not that simple; Price's infamy at the Rectory had been established in the 1920s, so the events in this movie are based on his return to the place for a second attempt to record paranormal activity. Here Price (played by Toby Wynn-Davies, giving us a spook hunter considerably more well mannered than the real thing, if accounts are to be believed) has returned to occupy the building for a six month rental and to prove, scientifically, that the spirits he believes occupy the Rectory actually exist. 

In this endeavour, and in the interests of objectivity, he's joined by a small number of supposedly independent witnesses including the real life characters Reverend Lionel Foyster (Julian Sands), his wife Marianne (Leila Kotori, a woman around whom previous supernatural activity had been focused), journalist Charles Sutton (Colin Baker), landowner Basil Payne (Christopher Ellison) and medium Estelle Roberts (Toyah Willcox, excellent as ever). Although based on real events, Price actually invited 48 observers to his sojourn in the Rectory, but that's low budget filmmaking for you. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the movie is that, although in real life Price's experiments came to almost nought, there is actually a proper (demonic, thanks James Wan) ghost nun, who seems to tease the ghost hunter by appearing to everyone except him. 

Smith's film is a distinct improvement on his previous Borley outing; production values are pretty good and there is some fine attention to detail (Smeetham Hall in Essex makes a pretty good stand in for the demolished Rectory). As you would expect there is a lot of talking in the movie but, unusually, this doesn't slow the film down too much; Wynn-Davies's compelling performance holds things together and his supporting cast, for the most part, deliver the goods more than adequately. Quite how much we're able to engage with a lead character (Price) and a setup that have both been comprehensively disproved is another matter.

Ghost Tale (UK 2021: Dir Katherine King) Peter (Daniel de Bourg) and his partner Laura (Johanna Stanton) are at the end of the road together. They've purchased a house for quick sell on, but now they're splitting up and managing the sale while clearly finding it difficult to be in the same room together. Peter shows round a mysterious character called Mr Blake (Edmund Duff) who's interested in buying but then promptly tells Peter that "this is not a happy home" and disappears. Even stranger, the photograph of a young girl appears in the bedroom of the house. Peter thinks that the photo may be that of Emily, who lived across the road. The occupants of that house fled earlier, unable to remain because they thought their house was haunted.

Peter and Laura do some internet sleuthing, finding references to Blake and their house, and also the mystery of a ghost girl, who "peers through the curtains looking for the person that killed her." The couple agree not to stay but find themselves mysteriously locked in the bedroom; the ghost girl is coming for them. 

At first King's first feature feels slightly awkward, until you realise that it's Peter and Laura's unwillingness to be with each other that causes that discomfort for the viewer. Ghost Tale is a bit of a love story in reverse; the couple realise what they've lost by being thrown together in adversity. Bizarrely, almost all of the drama takes place while they are locked in a bedroom of a house they do not call home. Whereas other movies would open events out, King bravely keeps her leads locked in a small space while things happen around them and the 'onion skin' of the story is gradually unpeeled.

This is an unusual, ambitious film that won't be for everyone, but King (whose previous shorts are worth checking out on Vimeo here) is an interesting filmmaker and Ghost Tale's black and white photography and unusual atmosphere stays in the memory; thematically and stylistically it reminded me of the movies of Richard Mansfield. Which is a very good thing.

When the Screaming Starts (UK 2021: DIR Conor Boru) Boru’s spirited first comedy feature, a cheeky titular riff on the 1973 movie And Now the Screaming Starts! (but with no narrative connection to that film) finds Norman Graysmith (Jared Rogers), a Louis Theroux type video journalist, shadowing serial killer wannabe Aidan Mendle (Ed Hartland) as he prepares to perpetrate mass murder across London.

Mendle takes his craft seriously; he has a collection of knives and guns, reads Poe aloud while wearing a raven’s head, and has it in for the neighbour’s cat, Richard, who he accidentally shoots.

Mendle decides to take the Charles Manson route to deadly mayhem, all lovingly recorded by Graysmith; with his serial killer loving partner Claire (Kaitlynn Reynell) (whom he met attending the aftermath of a hit and run accident), he interviews and assembles a ‘family’ of would be maniacs, including a restaurant critic desperate to taste human flesh; she doesn’t make the shortlist. Aidan houses the motley crew he’s put together in a disused warehouse, and trains them in preparation for their first slaughter, the target unexpectedly turning out to be the wealthy family of one of his disciples, posh Amy (Octavia Gilmore). But Aidan lacks Charlie’s charisma; before long there’s infighting among the group, leadership challenges, and the wheels come off his plans for notoriety. Can he regain control and get his murderous scheme back on track?

For the first half of the film, When the Screaming Starts is an amiable and occasionally funny movie very much in the observational mode of a lot of contemporary TV comedy (favourite line: “Too IRA?” Aidan asks as he models one of the ‘looks’ he’s planning to wear on his murder sprees, a balaclava and combat jacket outfit).

So the first slaughter, when it arrives, is somewhat jarring and authentically nasty; sadly from here on in the movie loses its focus, as if, having set up its shtick, Boru doesn’t really know what to do with it. There are some interestingly satirical observations on power and leadership, and a fine turn from Gilmore as the mean as a snake Amy, but interest quickly faded for me after a promising start.

The Ghost of Winifred Meeks (UK 2021: Dir Jason Figgis) Figgis's slow burn ghost story (originally just called 'Winifred Meeks' with the title changed by the UK distributor) is a change of pace for the director. Perhaps aided by his partnership with producer/paranormal journalist John West, both have dug deep into their lifelong love of MR James and the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas to deliver something that definitely taps in to those vibes (my partner, who isn't a big fright movie fan, looked in at what I was watching and asked "is this an old TV show?" which, hopefully, is the effect intended).

Lara Belmont is Anna James, a writer seeking a bit of alone time to work and distance herself from her failed relationship with ex David. She finds a place in Suffolk, Sea View House, in the middle of the country near the sea, and sets up home. She's working on the latest of a successful series of teen crime novels, and initially the change of environment seems to kick start her creative juices. But before long she senses that she's not alone in the house. Anna thinks she sees a strange woman in the garden, but can't be sure because of occlusions in the window glass. Strange figures begin to invade her dreams, which prompt her to uncover the history of the house and the tragic figure of Winifred Meeks, a former occupant. Isolated at the property, her emotional vulnerability seems to attract the restless spirit.

So it's probably best to get this out of the way: The Ghost of Winifred Meeks is a very, and I mean very, slowburn movie. Little happens for the first half of it, and James remains an elusive character to read; her interactions with her parents on the phone are pleasant but no more, and she is (undertsandably) in no hurry to patch things up with her philandering ex. She seeks isolation but this renders her vulnerable to the angry spirit of Meeks. Like the (male) victims of the stories of M R James, whose intellectual curiosity backfires on them, Belmont's writer is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you don't get on with Belmont's Anna then you may not like the movie, but I found it an absorbing if sometimes frustrating piece, which effortly captured the spirit of the genre TV drama.

The Curse of Humpty Dumpty (UK 2021: Dir Scott Jeffrey) Make that written, produced and directed by Scott Jeffrey. Yep, one of the key figures in low budget Indie Brit horror is back with yet another of his features made or released this year; and this just might be one of his best.

British Fantastic Films regular Nicola Wright is Wendy, a 50 year old mother of two who is becoming increasingly forgetful and confused; she's also having scary dreams which may actually be flashbacks to the past. Daughter Liz (Sian Altman) is worried for her mother and recommends that Wendy leave her flat in the city and move back to the family home in the country. The aim is that she'll be looked after by Liz and her sister Hazel (Antonia Whillans), who can't see what the fuss is about with their mother and thinks that Liz is being overprotective. Wendy's husband has long split the scene, leaving his family after being accused of adultery. Or so we're told.

No sooner are they all home than they receive a visit from Beryl (Danielle Scott), the sister of Wendy's ex. She's still suspicious about the sudden disappearance of her brother, and also keen to stake a claim on the property.

Shopping in a local bric a brac shop, Wendy comes across a gruesome looking lifesize Humpty Dumpty doll. Although they don't buy it, all are surprised to see the toy slumped on their doorstep when they return home. The arrival of HD in their lives seems to be a trigger for Wendy's increasing mania and vivid recollections of previous violence, including dreams about the toy murdering other people, transformed into a hideous monster with rows of jagged sharp teeth. As Wendy's mind deteriorates, she begins to recall the past; and her role in previous events.

The combination of almost soap opera drama and horror, which is a mainstay of many indie Brit Fantastic films, often feels a bit forced; not so with Jeffrey's film. Much of this is down to Wright's incredible performance as Wendy, her Alzheimers twisting all of her memories and, eventually, the ability to recognise people (the combination of this terrible illness with horror elements was also a feature of Jonathan Zaurin's excellent 2021 feature Wyvern Hill). The HD figure is truly disturbing, perhaps more so in that the audience is never sure whether it's real or not. Sian Altman is also excellent as the distressed Liz; indeed the whole cast are thoroughly convincing in their roles. Sure the poster may look like The Curse of Humpty Dumpty is another generic creature movie (and the title doesn't help either) but the movie itself is far better than that.

Report from Mayhem Film Festival 2021

In her third Festival report, DEoL's roving reporter Satu Sarkas-Bosman takes us through the highs and even bigger highs of this year's Nottingham based Mayhem Film Festival. Buckle up, there's a lot to get through!

It was a pure joy to be able to join Mayhem 2021 at Broadway cinema in Nottingham after the misery the pandemic brought to all of us cinema lovers. Mayhem, founded in 2005 by two film makers, Steven Sheil and Chris Cooke, is known for its friendly atmosphere and varied choice of films. It was a few Mayhems ago I watched an Ethiopian Sci-Fi film Crumbs which was a treat rarely experienced outside the festival circuit.

The festival started in a very gentle manner with Alien on Stage (UK 2020: Dir Danielle Kummer, Lucy Harvey) which is a heart-warming documentary about bus drivers and other support staff from Dorset whose idea for the Christmas panto is a little bit different from the general offerings. Their adaptation of Alien with an amateur cast and homemade special effects will take you on a journey from local community hall to West End stage. It has all things British; heart, tragedy, a lot of smoking, despair, optimism, dry humour, more wobbly sets than Prisoner Cell Block H and an ultimate triumph. It is pure fun and leaves you feeling quite warm and fuzzy inside.

The Deep House (France/Belgium 2021: Dir Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury) has an interesting setting since it is a haunted house story underwater. Ben (James Jagger) and Camille (Camile Rowe) are vloggers determined to film something extraordinary in order to obtain those valuable views. The story is nothing you haven't heard before: the couple are told about a remote stretch of lake where a whole village is submerged in a flooded valley, and Ben especially is more than happy to be guided by a local stranger with a promise of something unusual. The idea initially works well providing an atmosphere that is eerie and captivating. There is a growing sense of claustrophobic dread, but unfortunately the last third of the film feels rushed and disappointing. 

Mayhem also has a tradition of screening an old classic, often a gem which is rarely shown. The Queen of Spades (UK 1949: Dir Thorold Dickerson) is based upon Alexander Pushkin’s short story about an elderly Countess exchanging her soul in order to be always victorious in card games. Russian soldier Herman, played by Anton Walbrook, becomes obsessed in uncovering the old Countess’s (Dame Edith Evans) secret. This movie is such a feast for the eyes with sumptuous outfits, beautiful sets, attention to detail and dandiest hair you will ever see. It is melodrama at its finest and called a masterpiece by Martin Scorsese himself.

The Show (UK 2020: Dir Mitch Jenkins) is a rather humorous and surreal film, shot in Northampton with Tom Burke as the main protagonist. Alan Moore has written a script which, on the surface, is a simple story of Tom Burke’s character Fletcher looking for a missing man called Mitchum. However once Rosicrucianism, dream sequences, odd costumes, voodoo, stolen artifacts and noir private eyes have been added to the mix… there's no need for any additional chemical enhancements when watching this one.

Night Drive (USA 2019: Dir Brad Burah, Meghan Leon) was one of the audience favourites and quite deservedly so. Sophie Dalah and AJ Bowen have such chemistry and carry this film, ensuring that there are no dull moments. Russell (Bowen) drives a ride share picking up Charlotte (Dalah) and a whole lot of trouble. This indie dark comedy does not have the luxury of a big budget but it keeps you entertained and wondering ‘what’s in the box?'.

Midnight (South Korea 2020: Dir Oh-Seung Kwon) offers us a familiar story of a serial killer and his pursuit to eliminate a witness. Kyeong-Mi (Jin Ki-Joo), returning from work, witnesses So Jung-Eu (Kim Hye-Noon) stabbing a young woman. This film is set apart from the many other similar ones for the fact that Kyeong-Mi is deaf and much of the dialogue is in sign language when she is communicating with her mother. The director uses silence very effectively; when you enter the silent world of Kyeong-Mi, you can feel all of your senses heightened. I have to say that there is a lot of running in this one and I ended up hoping that someone would have been a bit more ruthless when editing.

Well, if Xena the Warrior Princess and He-Man indulged in drugs and decided to tell a story the result would be The Spine of Night (USA 2021: Dir Philip Gelatt, Morgan Galen King). This all-animated fantasy horror tale is a beautiful, violent, epic visual feast spanning hundreds of years involving stories of old Gods and heroic endeavours. You have to admire the passion of its creators; this is a true labour of love.

Knocking (Sweden 2021: Dir Freda Kempff) is a slow burn story of Molly (Cecilia Milocco) attempting to adapt to independent life after spending time at a psychiatric ward. Milocco carries this movie due to her powerful performance. The story itself holds no surprises; after hearing persistent knocking and sounds outside her new flat, the viewer is left wondering if it is supernatural or are Molly’s mental health issues emerging again. I found the ending rather disappointing but the incredible performance of Milocco kept me interested.

Remember Quantum Leap? Kang I-an (Kye-Sang Yoon) wakes up in a different body every twelve hours in this fast-paced thriller. Spiritwalker (South Korea 2021: Dir Jae-Keun Yoon) follows Kang I-an’s desperate search for his real body through different bodies and strands of stories. The action sequences are well choreographed and pace so fast that there no danger of being bored.

Get the Hell Out (Taiwan 2020: Dir I-Fan Wang) is a Taiwanese film taking a swipe at politics and introducing you to a Zombie madness not seen since… well, I don’t know when. If you like your zombie stories completely over-the-top, utterly silly, with memes, frantic with gallons of fake blood and suits so colourful they make your eyes bleed, this is a film for you. It will also introduce you to nail clippers as a potential weapon protecting you from harm. The audience at Mayhem laughed out loud and found it ludicrously entertaining.

Hellbender

Hellbender (USA 2021: Dir , USA, Directors John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser) is a true family affair; Toby Poser, John Adams and Zelda Adams are a mother, father and a daughter team writing, directing and acting in this low key, slow burn story of Izzy (Zelda Adams) beginning to question why she is being kept isolated by her mother (Toby Poser) and the true nature of her alleged illness. The setup is very strong and you find yourself genuinely intrigued by the story. It is a coming-of-age tale with a folk story vibe and an excellent soundtrack.

The Night Shift (South Korea 2021: Dir Ba-Reun Jo) also known as Ghost Mansion is Ba-Reun’s first film and an anthology of ghost stories South Korean style. Webtoon artist (Seo Hyun-Woo) has published a book which failed and is now collecting stories for his new endeavour. He visits a ‘haunted’ apartment complex called Gwanglim Mansion and implores the caretaker to share his experiences. 5 tales are told and, although there is nothing new here, it will keep you sufficiently entertained.

Lamb (Sweden 2021: Dir Valdimar Johannsson) was the strangest story told at Mayhem this year and it is best to watch it with as little prior knowledge as possible. The cinematography is breathtaking and it presents the bleak Icelandic nature at its best. I was rather prepared to be bored since I was expecting a highly philosophical and pretentious piece of work. However, to my great surprise, the story absolutely captivated me and I did not care if anything portrayed on the screen was logical or not. Noomi Rapace (The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo) delivers a strong performance and conveys a multitude of emotions with very little dialogue. The style of this film made me think of Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth): what a start for Valdimar Johannsson’s directing career.

The success of One Cut of the Dead confirmed that there is always appetite for quirky films. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (Japan 2020: Dir Junta Yamaguchi) follows very much in these footsteps in this rather feverish one-take sci-fi comedy. Kato (Kazunari Tosa) finds, to his great surprise, that a TV set in his cafe shows images from two minutes into the future. Throw in the woman he has a crush on, his friends, bad guys and an idea that if you use more than one screen, you can see even further into the future… This is fun and does not outstay its welcome over a 70-minute runtime. It was fresh, fun and a quirky ending to another excellent Mayhem.

Should you ever wander to the deepest darkest Nottingham in October, please consider coming and joining us in whatever Mayhem Steven and Chris decide to throw our way in 2022.

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #7: Reviews of The Feast (UK 2021), Barbatachtian Returns (UK 2021), Lightships (UK 2021), Amityville Scarecrow (UK 2021), The Parapod: A Very British Ghost Hunt (UK 2021) and Acting (UK 2021)

The Feast aka Gwledd (UK 2021: Dir Lee Haven Jones) It almost seems a little odd to brand Wales' first original language horror film as a UK offering, as its ferocious subtext points towards the rape of the land and the perils of ignoring your own history.

"Who lives in a house like this?" I enquire, Lloyd Grossman style, on first sight of the modernist pile that provides the backdrop for The Feast's shenanigans. Glenda (Nia Roberts) and politician husband Glyn (Julian Lewis Jones) live, for that part of the year when they're not in London anyway, in an imposing rural residence built on the site of a former farm owned by Glenda's family, a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright type creation that's a wonder of line and texture but not somewhere in which you'd easily put your feet up.

Their family comprises two sons: Guto (Steffan Cennydd) an addict trying to clean himself up at home and his contrasting brother, the uberfit and uberweird Gweirydd (Sion Alun Davies). As the film opens, preparations are underway for a dinner party, the guests including the couple's neighbours and a consultant, Euros (Rhodri Meilir), who's there to pursuade the landowners of the potential of fracking explorations. Local pub girl, the almost mute Cadi (Annes Elwy), has been employed for the evening, and it's clear from the outset that she has nothing but disdain for the people who surround her.

Having set up the unlikeable characters it's almost inevitable that Jones sets out to destroy them. This makes it very much a film of two halves, and while there's no denying the smart execution of these scenes, my preference was for the more restrained violence of the movie's first two acts. As the first feature of a director with a considerable TV CV, you'd expect it to be full of small details and nuanced performances. It's just that when things get bloody, I felt the sense of directorial control start to slip. Worth a watch though.

Barbatachtian Returns (UK 2021: Dir Ian Austin) When I did a recent talk on the state of contemporary British fantastic films, I assigned Austin's first feature, 2020's Barbatachthian to the category 'Esoteric' (meaning I hadn't a clue what the thing was about, rendering it unclassifiable). Austin threatened a sequel to the movie and now here it is, all 72 minutes of it. According to IMDb it may also be one episode of a 5 part TV series; I'm none the wiser.

Austin starts as he means to go on, with a theme tune sung by himself (which sounds like one of those tuneless things made up by kids when daydreaming) which implores audiences to rewatch his first movie; he then provides a recap of events, re-introducing us to the characters Chester Zerum, the being Barbatachtian and Captain Perspex. Oh and Odin, Loki and Zeus turn up for a family scrap.

Unlike the last movie, where Zerum was menaced and supposedly killed by Barbatachtian in his flat during lockdown, in the sequel a resurrected Zerum (Austin) gets dumped by letter and decides to take a holiday: to Aberystwyth in fact, where he narrowly escapes being attacked by a demonic chanting seagull and enters a multiverse (mainly his flat) to discover his killer...I think.

There's also a character called Captain Perspex (Austin in a hat) who is interviewed by Austin wearing a Mexican wrestling mask to cover the fact that he has no face, and whose wife Daisy is a ghost. This character will later spend a lot of time either trying to prise his mask off or kill himself; it's not really clear. Somebody called Professor Pickle (Richard Sasaki) turns up, who may or may not have been involved in Zerum's murder, along with Chester's racist uncle Fred.

Still with me? Thought not. If it's indeed possible BR is even more unhinged than the first film. I think there's some intellect here; it's just too odd to be entirely random. There are some ingenious filters and a genuinely unsettling sound design to give you the wim wams too. Narratively it's more of Austin's fever dream bobbins, but the character universe he's building is at least consistent, and there's a genuine strangeness that starts to rub off after exposing yourself to his output. Terrible but not terrible then. 

Lightships (UK 2021: Dir John Harrigan) This is the third film directed by Harrigan in just under ten years. All of his works have divided audiences, and his most recent feature is unlikely to perform differently.

Based on the writings of healer and therapist Maryann Rada, we meet Eve (Lois Temel) who wakes up in a white roomed facility with no recollection of how she got there. As Eve meets and interacts with the other patients, who all seem locked in their own little worlds, she begins to remember the circumstances that led to her own incarceration - a son Orion (Ethan-James Harrigan, the director's son) who died, or was he, like the rest of her family, abducted by aliens? Slowly she learns that the inmates may actually be the hopsital staff, and that Orion may hold the key to what's happening via pictures he drew of distant constellations.

Eve begins to receive communications from an external source and to write them down in order to make sense of them. "There is no death," she writes, and "belief is a prison". Is she losing her mind, or is extra terrestrial salvation the endgame here?

As might be expected with source material dealing with the more extreme end of esoteric writing, Lightships is an acquired taste, possibly best suited to those who follow Rada's writing. The closest I can offer as a comparator is Jane Arden's 1972 devised piece The Other Side of Underneath, in which a group of women movie to different states of consciousness within the constructs of therapy. Harrigan's film is deeply personal, which as a consequence makes it very hard to get a handle on, and its almost total lack of narrative in favour of the cycles of instititional existence made it a big walkout film at the screening I attended.

Amityville Scarecrow aka Amityville Cornfield (UK 2021: Dir Jack Peter Mundy) Mundy is a director who, before this year, had mainly created short films and promos. But in 2021 he hit the road running with no less than four features, all of which will be covered in this strand. There was clearly some hand holding going on with this one courtesy of seasoned indie horror producer Scott Jeffrey and scriptwriter Shannon Holiday; the result is a rather forumlaic entry in the category of dramatic horror which both have made their trade. 

In the film's prologue a young couple trespass onto the site of the former Amityville House (now a campsite, complete with scarecrow) and have sex in a caravan. The scarecrow comes to life and kills them both.

The campsite is the focus for a dispute between two women, Tina (Amanda-Jade Tyler) and her older sister Mary (Kate Sandison), both sporting the obligatory (and unnnecessary) American accents. Both spent time at the campsite as kids, before it fell to rack and ruin. Tina wants to redevelop it as an adventure maze for kids and replace the ropey caravans with hi-tech ones. Mary just wants to flog it, still annoyed that Tina slept with Mary's husband (the source of the rift). 

Tina and Mary's respective daughters, nieces Lucy (Chelsea Greenwood) and Harriet (Sofia Lacey) are caught up in the middle of the fracas. Meanwhile Tina's rather useless husband Derek (Andrew Rolfe) finds the Scarecrow's battered hat in one of the caravans; he puts the hat back on the scarecrow, which is still in the campsite. "Amityville; why does that sound so familiar?" asks Harriet; the pair seem oblivious about the history of the place (where have they been?). But not for long; for it would appear that the very ground on which the house stood has retained the evil that triggered the original murders, and the same dark force has now entered the scarecrow who, once animated, seeks revenge on the feuding families, who must reunite to save themselves.

As usual with this type of film there's the usual confusion about where the film is set; the campsite seems British for example, but at some point in the movie it's investigated by a very US looking cop. The Amityville legend is reworked and the names are changed (the word Amityville is obviously there to pull in unsuspecting punters) and the movie follows the pattern of many of its ilk: two thirds talk, one third running and hiding from the titular creature. Amityville Scarecrow isn't terrible, just formulaic and rather unimaginative. And there are a lot of indie Brit films like this doing the rounds these days.

The Parapod: A Very British Ghost Hunt (UK 2021: Dir Ian Boldsworth) The Parapod Podcast is the insanely popular creation of Ian Boldsworth and Barry Dodds; for the last five years the pair have ripped the wee out of the ‘Most Haunted’ style paranormal shows in pitch perfect parody, all night vision, ponderous silences and running about screaming. They play a pair of ghost hunters: Boldsworth is the rampant sceptic, who believes in nothing that he can’t see or touch, whereas Dodds is his accepting, emotional counterpart.

So now the lads have crowdfunded to create a feature film, which takes them on a road trip of the UK’s most haunted places. Told from within the confines of their studio, the pair recount their
adventures, which for the most part consist of Boldsworth mercilessly and sarcastically teasing the innocent, ‘I want to believe’ Dodds.

Setting off from Amble in Northumberland, in a converted hearse purchased by Boldsworth and liveried with ‘The Parapod’ on the side (much to Dodds’ embarrassment), the pair visit Manchester, Kent and Scotland in a series of haunted escapades which predictably produce no real evidence, finally arriving back in Pontefract to track down the infamous ‘Black Monk’.

But the real pleasure here - in fact the whole premise of the movie - is the relationship between
Boldsworth, whose delivery recalls prime Ricky Gervais, and gullible Dodds, who never seems to get
wise to his partner’s endless windups, whether it’s getting Dodds an unannounced slot at a skeptics
conference (clearly a real conference they’d hijacked for the occasion) or throwing things at him in
the dark to give him the wim wams. Like all great comic partnerships, it’s the pairing of straight and
funny man, both in their way quite tragic figures, locked together and seemingly unable to exist
separately.

Acting (UK 2021: Dir Sam Mason-Bell) Director Mason-Bell does a nice line in very British, slightly uncomfortable thrillers and fright flicks, and Acting is probably his most uncompromising work yet.

Una (Annabella Rich) is a struggling actress, picking up small film roles and commercials.  She's offered the key part in a one woman play, 'Tales of the Black Mantis'. She'll play Christine, a serial killer whose murder victims are male prostitutes. Before being given the script she's advised that the role will be intense and involve sex scenes; this also acts as a flag to the viewing audience about what's to come, as does the word 'mantis' in the play's title (and we all know what they're famous for!).

Una's detailed preparation for the role, as well as learning lines, involves mapping diverse aspects of Christine on paper. 'Who is the mantis?' she writes, a question that becomes increasingly unclear as Una develops her role.

Memories of a past abusive relationship begin to intrude into and inform the part. As written in the script, Una's need to kill is unapologetic. In one of her monologues Christine reflects that male serial killers often blame someone else, usually women; she unashamedly likes it, and revels in the eroticism of the moment. But as the preparations continue the line between Una's rehearsals and the character she's playing increasingly blur. Like Catherine Deneuve's 'Carol' in Roman Polanski's 1965 film Repulsion, reality and unreality merge until a final act, which darkly unites actress and character.

Acting is a powerful chamber piece which, within its short 71 minute running time, asks a lot of questions of its audience. Does Christine overtake Una or is it the perfect fit for the actress, tapping in to her extreme feelings about the worth of men? To what extent are there parallels between Una and Ms Rich? Both are offered parts that are bigger than they're played recently, both are required to be nude as part of the role. Is this coincidence or design (maybe a little of both as Rich co-wrote the script)?

Ultimately whether the film succeeds or fails depends on whether you believe Rich as Una/Christine. Hers is a raw, honest performance, strongest in her eventual descent to madness; a method actress hopelessly out of her depth. Or is she? Acting is pretty unpleasant stuff, shot almost as a devised piece with a claustrophobic design and an insistent, sometimes jarring score. Don't expect rom coms anytime soon from Mason-Bell; I think that's a good thing.