It Feeds (Canada 2025: Dir Chad Archibald)

I like Chad Archibald's movies. His last two features, 2017's The Heretics and the following year's I'll Take Your Dead mixed scares and drama increasingly successfully.

Like these films, his latest, It Feeds, is also a movie predicated on trauma. Cynthia Winstone (Ashley Greene) is every regular therapist's worst nightmare. Whereas most shrinks have to work with their clients for years to root out the reason/s for their poor mental health, Cynthia, faux shrink, actual clairvoyant, can simply enter her subject's mind and find out what the problem is. As the movie opens Cynthia is wandering around in the subconscious of a troubled patient, A Nightmare on Elm Street style, correctly identifying the source of his psychiatric woes to be an abusive sports coach from his past. Having cleared that little problem up, with the clues she has, Cynthia tips off the local police to investigate the likely suspect; she's right of course.

Cynthia's gifts are both a blessing and a curse; she lives opulently with 17 year old daughter Jordan (Ellie O'Brien), who acts as a kind of PA/triage for her mother's waiting list, so business is obviously blooming. But Cynthia's talents have come at a huge cost; not only is there the constant danger, again Elm Street style, of the psychic world leaking into the real one, but she also fears that Jordan may inherit the same abilities.

The unannounced arrival of a troubled teen, 14-year-old Riley Harris (Shayelin Martin) ruffles the organised life of mum and daughter. Riley, in significant distress and with scars covering both arms, begs for Cynthia's help, but when the psychic glimpses an entity with its sinewy arms around the girl, she feels unable to treat her; a tense situation that's temporarily resolved when Riley's father, Randall (Shawn Ashmore) arrives to take his daughter home. Jordan feels differently to her mother and is determined to track down the girl and offer support, but when she finds Riley she's drawn into a world of demonic possession in which she becomes enmeshed.

On the plus side this is a tensely mounted film with some excellent, if rather draining performances, particularly from Greene, O'Brien and Martin. Family friend Agatha (Juno Rinaldi) is there for some lighter relief but her ditziness feels somewhat out of place here. Top marks for the creature effects too; the entity is genuinely scary and threatening, and Archibald is wise to resist the overuse of jump scares.

However, 'trauma' as a driving force in contemporary horror films - and there are many recent examples - can be a bit of a polarising experience. While I realise that audiences may enjoy the cathartic effects of watching movies which may reflect their own traumas, and are thus keen to engage with stories like this, there's a danger of such films becoming increasingly homogenous. It Feeds spends most of its time in near darkness and there's very little happiness on display from any of the movie's characters. I'm not denying Archibald's ability to create a mood but I do feel that the tendency for the depiction of horror as psychiatry porn is rather reductive.

It Feeds is available on Digital Platforms from 12 May. Distributed by Signature Entertainment.

Cloud aka Kuraudo (Japan 2024: Dir Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

While Kurosawa's CV has often dwelt in stories of the strange and unusual, for his latest movie he's concerned with more prosaic matters like, er, the state of consumer society.

Ryôsuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) - plain Yoshii to his friends, and there aren't many of them - is a young, intelligent man, who supplements his tedious factory day job by making money - quite a lot of money - in the shady, borderline legal world of re-selling, under the name 'Ratel' (literally an aggressive badger). As we meet him he's scalping some unfortunate supplier of medical equipment, unable to shift his stock; so Yoshii takes it off his hands for a ludicrously low price and sells the whole stock on line at a staggering markup (quite why the medical supplier couldn't have done the same thing beats me). 

At work Yoshii's boss recognises his talents and urges him to pursue a management career at the factory, but the part time seller, whose clandestine sideline makes him increasingly paranoid, chooses instead to pack in the day job and relocate to the country with his acquisitive girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), while at the same time ghosting a re-selling friend Muraoka (Masataka Kubota) who's offered him the chance to get rich quick via a new online sales platform.

At their country house an increasingly bored Akiko hopes that their relocation might offer more glamour, instead of the usual sales cycle involving living among piles of boxed goods. Yoshii takes on an assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira), keen to learn and obedient. But Yoshii's paranoia remains intact; a broken window at night suggests a prowler, and an ill advised visit to the police to report the crime results only in drawing the authorities' attention to him, a mistake when he starts trading in counterfeit goods. But it's the further knockdown purchase of a set of collectable dolls, again sold online at considerable markup, that tips things over the edge. Those negatively impacted by Yoshii's activities want revenge, and there's safety in numbers.

Until the last few minutes of Cloud, this felt like a slightly fantastically told moral tale. Kurosawa shows us a world where everyone's on the make, inhabiting a grey market arena which is hard, ruthless but perhaps preferable to a day job and a need to be accountable; although there's nothing glamorous about Yoshii's life. Part of the distaste of what Yoshii is doing, irrespective of how glamorous and exciting he sees it, is the constant exploitation of people in a similar economic situation to him.

That the mentioned revenge takes the form of an (over) extended shootout which occupies roughly half the film is baffling, like two movies sandwiched into one. There's no one to root for here; those with whom one might have sympathy - the men exploited by Yoshii - prove equally capable of random violence. And yet the ending suggests that nothing, even right and wrong, is straightforward in our consumer world. It's an odd film where both exploiter and exploited flail around in a world overstuffed with things, knowing, to coin an old phrase, the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Cloud plays in cinemas from 25 April.

The Ugly Stepsister aka Den stygge stesøsteren (Norway/Denmark/Romania/Poland/Sweden 2025: Dir Emilie Blichfeldt)

As the directing world and their common law partner look to (public domain) folk tales for cinematic inspiration, with varying degrees of success (and that's putting it kindly), along comes Emilie Blichfeldt's extraordinary feature which both updates and extends the Grimm Brothers' 'Cinderella' story, while retaining all its cruel vigour.

Elvira (Lea Myren, extraordinary in her first feature film) dreams of a fairytale life, seduced by the poems of Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth). In reality her existence is anything but dreamlike. Elvira and her younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) are unceremoniously whisked off to a new life when their mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) marries the supposedly wealthy Otto (Ralph Carlsson). But when Otto keels over and dies on their wedding night, it's discovered that he was actually penniless, and relying on the meagre wealth of Rebekka to settle his accounts.

Elvira's mother refuses to pay for the costs of Otto's funeral and so, to the deep chagrin of his mourning daughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), his body lies rotting in a back room awaiting the undertaker. 

But salvation may be at hand; an invitation, extended to all the eligible virgins in the vicinity, arrives from the Prince; he's holding a ball and both Alma and Elvira have secured invitations (pre pubescent Alma, perhaps the real Cinderella of the piece, must remain at home). While Alma has a natural beauty (compromised by the fact that she isn't a virgin any more) Elvira, with braces on her teeth and a predilection for pastries, is a less inspiring prospect. But Rebekka sees the marriage of her daughter to the wealthy Prince as the solution to her financial woes so invests in a programme of improvements for Elvira. First to go are the girl's braces, then her nose is reshaped and false eyelashes sewed in place (all without the benefit of anaesthetic). More cruelly to resolve her weight issues, Rebekka prescribes a tapeworm egg which, when ingested, will allow her daughter to eat freely while losing the pounds. As the ball approaches, Elvira's hidden beauty emerges, but of course none of this is without cost.

Blichfeldt plays switcheroo with the identity of the 'ugly sister' (in this case the duckling into swan Elvira) and fleshes out the original 'Cinderella' story, adding in the grand guignol touches that were possibly in the writers' minds when composing it. The body horror elements maybe au courant (thanks to The Substance and a lot of other similar but largely unacknowledged films), but the director takes the story extension further, disclosing the Prince's casual misogyny and the cost to Elvira of her enforced beautification. The ending may have fairytale elements, but The Ugly Stepsister is a dark, satirical revisit of the Cinderella story with touches of Borowczyk and the erotic and gruesome elements of classic European horror movies.

The Ugly Sister plays in UK Cinemas from 25th April.

Death of a Unicorn (USA/Hungary 2025: Dir Alex Scharfman)

One aspect of the mythical unicorn, whose origins date back to ancient civilisations in China and India, was the healing properties of its single horn. More recently the term has been used to describe a rare and highly desirable person or thing that possesses unique qualities or characteristics.

Both of these equally apply in Alex Scarfman's debut feature, a satire on commodity and power which centres on bereaved dad Elliot (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega). When we meet them they've arrived in a country which is supposed to be Canada (but is actually Hungary); with Elliott's wife/ Ridley's mum dead from cancer, it's up to dad to make ends meet; hence an invitation to the mountain home of a wealthy pharma boss, terminally ill Odell Leopold (Richard E.Grant) for a possible company position.

Elliot and Ridley's relationship isn't great; you get the sense that his deathbed promise to his wife, to provide for the family, has been an excuse to throw himself into work. So the prospect of a long weekend with a group of people whose philanthropic exterior masks a cold, heartless family, where profit is all, does not excite Ridley. An argument on the road makes Elliot lose concentration and he hits an animal that has strayed into their path; a white haired quadruped with a horn that, when touched by Ridley, gives her an out of body experience which may be connected with her sudden miracle loss of acne.

Elliot puts the thing out of its misery with a tyre iron and bundles the body into the back of the rental. But when they arrive at the Leopold house, slightly shaken, the beast comes back to life to the amazement of everyone, namely Odell, his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni), their louche son Shepard (Will Poulter) and much abused family retainer Griff (Anthony Carrigan); until the housekeeper Shaw (Jessica Hynes) callously shoots it. But the discovery that the unicorn's blood can cure everything from Elliot's myopia to Odell's cancer turns the family's attention to the profitability of the beast's corpuscles, and Ridley's dad is roped in to their marketing strategy with the promise of lucrative employment. His daughter, meanwhile, who seems to have developed a mental bond with the animal, has been investigating old tapestries containing the story of the unicorn; her warning to the family, that the beasts will seek revenge, goes unheeded.

Death of a Unicorn sets itself up as a satire, but the subject matter is so crass and obvious - rich people bad, the environment must be protected - that it remains throughout a subtlety free exercise. But the movie tries to establish its comedy credentials too (the best satire doesn't need to rely on yucks); and falls completely flat. Every sotto voce comment lands badly, the feuding characters seem to have strayed in from a middling 1980s 'mirthfest' (part of me wondered whether the title was a riff on the Arthur Miller play 'Death of a Salesman') and the pratfall violence, mixed up with some second rate CGI creature action, is just messy. There is clearly some talent on screen but most try far too hard, seeking laughs in a succession of embarrassing facial movements.

So the film ends up uneven, painfully forced and, sorry, dreary; I looked at my watch, thinking that we must be half way through the 107 minute movie, and barely half an hour had passed. Only Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd salvage something from their performances, but that's mainly because they just act, when all around them some terrible farce seems to be taking place. Painful.

Rebirth: Home Sweet Home (Thailand 2024: Dir Alexander Kiesl, Steffen Hacker)

German duo Kiesl and Hacker (although they prefer the more informal Alex & Steffen) have a solid CV of effects and postproduction credits, but this is their first co-directed feature, a sort of 'everything but the kitchen sink' Thai take on The Matrix.

Jake (UK actor William Moseley) is an American cop on vacation in Bangkok with his wife Prang (Urassaya Sperbund) and their daughter Loo (Akeira Hadden); they're in town for some much needed R&R but also to visit Prang's grandmother. But things go a bit pear shaped when they visit the local shopping mall. First Loo goes missing, only to be found chatting to a friendly monk, Chan (Alexander Lee) who seems to know Jake and refers to him as 'The Keeper of the Gates'. Secondly, and in a scene of perhaps dubious taste in these troubled times, an unhinged looking guy with scars enters the mall on a random shooting spree.

Jake, always on duty, separates from his family and attempts to take out the shooter who, when edged into a corner, laughs and combusts; this causes a huge explosion which in turn seems to drive the local population crazy, the denizens attacking each other frenziedly. While Prang and Loo escape by bus, Jake, pursued by a giant creature (the origin of which isn't really explained) bumps into Chan again, who has some good news, some bad news and some really terrible news to impart to our hero. As a result of his actions, the gates of hell have been opened, summoning Chan's dad, the evil necromancer (are there any other kinds?) Wichien (Varintorn Yaroojjanont); and Jake's the only one who can close it. 

As you would expect from a pair with an extensive technical background, in interview Alex & Steffen are most proud of their movie's visuals; the feature contains over 600 stunning effects shots. More cynical heads might comment that the whole thing feels like one big CGI showreel and that halving the 600 might have given more room for characterisation. But honestly R:HSH is the kind of movie you just need to go with; it's fast, very glossy and has a rather nifty origin story which sets Jake up for future adventures. And being based on the 2017 Thai video game 'Home Sweet Home', what were you really expecting, anyway?

It may a bit 'boy's own' - all growling baddies and portentous dialogue - and Prang's character really has very little to do, but Moseley makes a good lead action hero. Despite all the visuals this is basically a film in which people slug it out, with little interaction between the array of monsters and the humans. Unfortunately the directors, faced with a climactic scene which should have involved two 'Jakes' battling each other, bottle it, which is a great shame as I was looking forward to the movie having a Face Off (or, more recently a Mickey 17) moment. Look, I wasn't bored, it's a well put together film and would have been great for kids if it wasn't for the mall shooting scene which felt uncomfortable and unjustifiable. 

Rebirth: Home Sweet Home is available on digital platforms from 14 April and on DVD & Blu-ray from 21 April. Distributed by Signature Entertainment

The Woman in the Yard (USA 2025: Dir Jaume Collet-Serra)

Spanish director Collet-Serra has dipped his toes into the 'Fantastic' genre several times before, including his debut feature, 2005's House of Wax and 2009's Orphan (I'm still not sure that shark movies - in this case his The Shallows from 2016 - count as 'Fantastic' movies). For his latest outing he's sticking a whole foot in.

Danielle Deadwyler is Ramona, a woman injured in a car crash which killed her husband David (Russell Hornsby). Now a single parent with two kids, adolescent Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and young Annie (Estella Kahiha), Ramona is struggling. As well as the bills piling up, the family live on a remote farm which David bought as a 'fixer upper' opportunity as is pretty much falling apart. The wrecked car in which David died stands outside the house covered in tarpaulin, for reasons that aren't immediately clear.

Tensions run high from the beginning, particularly between Taylor and his mum; a power outage means that not only is her son unable to play video games, but the single mobile phone in the house is out of charge, so there's no prospect of finding out when the electricity is coming back on.

Into this rather tense setup comes a strange and unwanted addition; as the title of the movie sets out abundantly clearly, there's a woman in the yard, dressed in black and sitting on a wrought iron chair facing away from the house. When questioned, Ramona is unable to get much sense out of her, but recoils at the sight of blood on the odd visitor's hands. Taylor, always keen to assume 'man of the house' status in his father's absence, suggests a more direct approach, particularly when it seems that the woman, still seated, is getting nearer the house.

With this rather M. Night Shyamalan setup in place, the spookiness starts; family tensions spill over, secrets are revealed and Ramona must face a difficult decision. It's at this point that most critics seem to have written the movie off as 'silly' and 'confusing'. I would agree with the last word, but grief and guilt make the world confusing for anyone who finds themselves in those states. It's definitely not 'silly' though; the closest comparison, in feel rather than detail, was Adrian Lyne's 1990 movie Jacob's Ladder.

The Woman in the Yard is by no means a perfect film - it veers from one mood to another alarmingly quickly - if the expected effect was to unseat the audience, then the director succeeded. I'm not sure if the whole thing wasn't just a little too oblique to be really satisfying (and the central 'woman in the yard' premise didn't really work for me), but I applauded the wonkiness of it and the refusal to play by accepted narrative rules. 

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #22: Reviews of Daytime Nightmare (UK 2020), Expiry (UK 2021), Manhunt: Kill or Be Killed (UK 2021), The Censor (UK 2021), Deadly Nightshade (UK 2021) and Shunner (UK 2021)

Daytime Nightmare (UK 2020: Dir Katrina Grey) Grey plays Lucy, a teacher (although we never see her in that profession) who has aspirations to act. She signs on for an acting class where she's immediately attracted to fellow thesp in waiting Chris (Alexander Winters).

Home is a large house she shares with the rather taciturn Sara (Christiana Chaiwanna), a woman who seems somewhat unsupportive of her housemate's ambitions. As Lucy progresses in class, enjoying the camaraderie of her colleagues and inspired by her teacher, Mr Shaw (Jonathan Sampson), Sara is increasingly frozen out of her friend's life.

Increasingly mistrustful of her housemate, Lucy, who we learn has a history of schizophrenia in her family, experiences a downturn in her mental health, first through headaches and later nightmarish visions of friends and family trying to kill her. Lucy's life spins out of control, but is it all in her head, or are external forces out to harm her?

Apparently based on an actual experience with a stalker, Daytime Nightmare, written, produced and directed by Grey with musical assistance from her husband Randy Kalsi (who also has a bit part as a cab driver), is, as you would expect, intensely personal; at times it feels like we're intruding in a particularly gruelling therapy session. The problem is that, apart from Lucy's outbursts and her visions, everything else in the film is so understated that things progress quite flatly. It's ironic that, as a group of actors, Grey's company vary in their skills; there's no real compelling performance here, possibly to help the director stand out in her own.

To be honest, apart from the sometimes rather nightmarish visions, this is only marginally a 'Fantastic' film; shot in 2020 but released in the UK a year later. It looks lovely though, although the Thai locations are perhaps not expected, and it's certainly an at times uncomfortable watch.

Expiry (UK 2021: Dir Tom Gatley) Gatley's only feature to date is a disquieting, arid sci fi drama which nods to The Handmaid's Tale in its story of one possible near future.

Jamie (Richard Miltiadis) and Sophie (Sarah-Louise Tyler), a married couple are, when we meet them, having trouble conceiving a child. The stress associated with this situation is compounded by a time limit placed on the union by unseen bureaucracy. The future in which Jamie and Sophie live places strict temporal boundaries on marriages which are incompatible; couples are bonded by bracelets which turn red once a marriage has reached its sell by date (five years). In the normal course of events (well, normal in relation to events in the film) both partners would be free to pursue other, more fruitful relationships.

But Jamie and Sophie are different. Their lives operate outside of the convention of this sort of marriage; they love each other and are keen to bypass the state's writing off of their union. But there's a complication; Sophie is a 'foreigner' from the western states, and an end to the marriage means that she will be returned there.

Expiry has some rather damning things to say about state intervention, the increasing isolation of society and the condition of marriage seen as something purely transactional. Jamie and Sophie both regularly attend (separate) therapy sessions, but in each case the therapist is a computer; just one more untrustworthy institution. Sofia's job in a restaurant is blighted by her fellow waitress, the wife of the owner, who pours scorn on her status; Sofia is to all intents and purposes a refugee, a successful marriage her only chance at establishing an acceptable identity.

There is, thankfully, a redemptive solution, but it's a cold. glacial journey to get there. Expiry boldly fails to rush its story which can make it a slightly soporific watch, and there's a sense of ennui over the whole thing, not helped by the bleak urban landscape which is the couple's home. But it's great low budget filmmaking, full of ideas; a shame that Gatley hasn't followed this up with another feature.

Manhunt: Kill or Be Killed (UK 2021: Dir Darren J. Power) This short just inches in to the NWotBFF requirements (which states that, for inclusion, films have to be at least 20 minutes) and is, according to the title screen, a proof of concept for a bigger project, as yet unfilmed, called 'Manhunt; Follow the White Rabbit'.

Don't let the hockey mask in the poster fool you; this isn't some Friday the 13th fan film. But the premise is simple: Conard (sp?), played by Mark Sears, and his girlfriend Roxanne (genre favourite Tiffany-Ellen Robinson) are getting it on. Later Conard wakes up, having been knocked out, and Roxanne is missing. He's instructed by a remote voice to load a video cassette (appropriately marked 'play me') into a VCR, where he sees footage of two masked men with Roxanne.

The control voice issues a simple instruction; if Conard wants to see Roxanne again, he must murder some people. If he fails he'll die; the 'kill or be killed' of the title. Which for the second half of the 20 minute short he does, using various implements including, but not limited to a plastic bag and a hammer, despatching various guys in masks. The murders over, Conard moves to get Roxanne back, but the big cheese, Bishop Howser (Howy Bratherton) has other ideas. 

You can watch Manhunt: Kill or Be Killed here.

The Censor (UK 2021: Dir Guerrilla Metropolitana) Welcome to the 'esoteric' part of the round up. Subheaded 'A British Horror Tale of Real Politics and Social Moral Code', Guerilla Metropolitana's work is "influenced by expressionism, neo-realism, surrealism, pop-art, erotica, underground and other styles".

Against a background of riots and civil unrest, Sir Philip Reginald Tangen III (Metropolitana) is President of the National Film Censorship Association, responsible for safeguarding the nation's morals. The author of a new Obscenity Act, following the activities of one Graham Bright MP back in the 1980s (the politician who led the fight back against the so called Video Nasties), he has identified at least 32 movie titles which he wants to ban.

But Tangen has another life; we see him proposition a young man on a skateboard (also the director), drug and, off camera but captured through sound and visuals of naked men, serially abuse him. And this guy is not the first; he is the 34th young man to have gone missing, the assumption being that Tangen is responsible for, as the caption suggests, these acts of 'Exoletus'. But it looks like The Censor's latest victim might also be his last.

Although only 44 minutes long, The Censor is true cinema as art. Choral music and strange sounds (created by 'Monoxide', Metropolitana's previous band) provide the aural backdrop to a succession of harsh, filtered visuals, exposing the scummy outskirts of a city. Hard to follow these images might be, but they have a rancid power. The horror here is concerned with power and manipulation.

You can watch The Censor here

Deadly Nightshade (UK 2021: Dir Benjamin Rider) And the esoteric offerings in this round up continue. So did you ever have a moment where your world went all pear shaped and you found you were actually the subject of a TV show? No, me neither, but that's the predicament in which Victoria (Suzie Houlihan) finds herself when she gets back to her flat in Brixton, hoping to be whisked away on a romantic weekend with boyfriend Marcus (Matthew Laird). Instead she finds a stranger at home in the shape of Adam (Christopher Blackburn), supposedly a friend of Marcus's, who has been given permission to stay at the apartment while the couple are away. Adam wants her to listen to some tapes; firstly of an obscure band and later a recording of an exorcism.

The return of Marcus, complete with bloodied hand, takes things a step further; apparently he witnessed a car accident and rescued one of the vehicle's occupants. Shaken up, he retires to bed; Victoria then experiences a series of visions which are only the beginning of her nightmare weekend.

Described as a 'mostly improvised feature film', Deadly Nightshade has some good, at times vaguely Lynchian ideas, with a big thank you to 1998's The Truman Show, but squanders them with a confusing setup and flat characters. The TV/game framing is well mounted for what must have been a COVID limited production, but the presence of the ubiquitous Eric Roberts, as a dog collared expert on the supernatural, adds nothing to an already messy project. Well done for getting the thing together at all in the midst of a pandemic, but there's little to take away from this film besides a mild sense of confusion.

Shunner (UK 2021: Dir Michael Fenton Crenshaw) You want more esoterica? Walk this way. The third instalment of the director's 'Left Hand' trilogy, commencing with 2017's The Left Hand Path and then 2020's The House of the Laughing Cuckoo Clocks, Shunner is a no more or less difficult watch than the previous two films.

Set in the liminal spaces of the Essex coast and countryside, several extended scenes tell a loose story of ritual and magick: a dirty old man tries to seduce a passing woman who may in reality be a decomposed body, which he attacks and beheads; the same dirty old man puts on a pair of black gloves and has sex with a blow up doll in a grimy concrete shelter, but is shamed by a distant voice (he will eventually be stabbed in the forest by a pair of witches for stealing an amulet); a very odd convenience shop sells tarot cards, a blood tipped stake, masks and religious artefacts.

All of this is clearly heavily symbolic and rather baffling. Sound and vision are stretched and mutated, and characters from other trilogy instalments here re-appear. Some probably not rights cleared music - in particular by David Last House on the Left Hess - plays awkwardly against the odd goings on. Crenshaw is a filmmaker of some considerable experience; his features are willfully obscure but never boring. But they sure are headscratchy.

You can watch Shunner here.