NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #24 - the final three: Reviews of Philia (UK 2021), Slammer (UK 2021) and Burns Night (UK 2021)

Philia (UK 2021: Dir Various) Welcome to the cinema of transgression as we meet a group of people who are clearly working through their own issues in a group therapy environment, tutored by a chap in a bow tie. He explains that the dictionary definition of 'Philia' is 'to love something that is connected to a sexual attraction to what is not normal'. Apparently it's the opposite of 'phobia'. So now you know.

What follows over the next 100 minutes is a series of short films that explore, in mostly abstract ways, a series of 'philias'. There's Mythophilia - the desire to have sex with a mythical beast; Astrophilia - an obsession with stars, planets and outer space; Dacryphilia & Hematolagnia - an obsession with tears and blood; Acarophilia - the love of scratching; Acousticophilia - arousal from music and sounds; Lactophilia - sexual pleasure from milk or sucking the female breast; Necrophilia - fairly self explanatory; and Pictophilia - deriving sexual pleasure from looking at pictures or watching porn.

Until the hour point most of the films only hint at something approaching narrative, and it's only with Lactophilia (featuring the ever-willing-to-go-there Martin Payne as a hammer wielding baby abductor) and the final Pictophilia that we're given a story. This is, I hope the filmmakers won't mind me commenting, unpleasant and soporific stuff. Made with the crudest of materials - during lockdown, natch - it's painfully slow and uneventful. But it is true to the spirit of experimental filmmaking and, to be frank, not everything has to be The Sound of Music, right?

Slammer (UK 2021: Dir Ted Byron Baybutt) Baybutt's debut feature was, according to the director, five years in the making, and filmed during the pandemic.

The sweeping story revolves around a scientist, Ann Waterman (Flora Montgomery), engaged in research for a company called Hansegret, aimed at the eradication of disease. At home she lives with, as she terms it, her 'agoraphobic architect' boyfriend John Howlett (James Atherton) in a rather fractious relationship, not helped by her grief over the recent death of her father, clearly quite a big noise in the same industry.

Ann's sudden disappearance triggers concern and the arrival of the police in the shape of Detective Russell (Josephine Melville) while John is comforted by Sophie (Victoria Emslie). 

But while Ann has departed the world as we know it, she's actually been incarcerated in a kind of future prison. Painfully, she's allowed to monitor everything that's happening on earth (including a growing closeness between John and Sophie) as unseen powers prepare her for the next phase of her life. Even stranger, a stiff backed politician named Mark (Samuel Clemens) is being lined up as next Prime Minister; but is he actually real?

Big pharma, cryptocurrency, conspiracy theories and political corruption all swim around in Slammer. The audience, meanwhile, is generally left clueless as to what is happening. I'm certainly up for a bit of oblique filmmaking, but the opaque nature of Slammer's narrative and the general lack of clarity and resolution - even in the last section which I feel the director hopes will explain things more than it actually does - makes the movie pretty hard work, although there's no denying Baybutt's ambition.

Maybe it was the length of time over which the film was developed, maybe it was the director being too close to the material for too long, but confusion only really works in a movie if you're going to give the audience the necessary keys to unlock the mystery within. Disappointing.

Burns Night (UK 2021: Dir Dean Hoff) The genesis of Burns Night stretches back over ten years, to two seasons of a web TV series, Caledonia, which in themselves were developed from a five book cycle of fantasy novels written by the Scottish born non-binary director, whose upbringing included a long spell drifting in America. 

And Scotland - specifically Glasgow - is the location for the whole Caledonia concept, involving Detective Inspector Leah Bishop, transferred to the city's Interpol office, and discovering that she's the only human in the building; her colleagues are all mythological creatures from Scottish folklore.

Burns Night is the adaptation of the third of these novels, which plunges us into a strange world of Leah, here played by Maria Jones. When Bishop's work partner Detective Inspector (and selkie) Dorian Grey (Alasdair Reavey) goes missing, she enlists the help of Robert Burns (Joshua Layden) to find him. And yes it's that Robert Burns, the famous (and dead) Scottish poet. Except he's now a vampire, turned centuries previously by the enigmatic Desdemona (Hoff); together they have 'lived' and hunted together down the years.

Burns Night also boasts a pair of lads who form part of the six mythical defenders of the city; a fluffy beast called Fludge who Leah finds under her bed and to whom she becomes attached; a laboratory whose staff includes a ghost lab assistant, Hazel (Nicole Donald); oh and Jesus (Neil MacKinnon). After about half an hour of this I really wished I'd read at least one of the source books to help me navigate the no budget bonkersness; it's not so much that it's hard to follow (actually it is) but that it's hard to hear, such is the really quite challenging sound quality. But what the film lacks in polish it makes up for in invention and genuine 'otherness'. Glasgow doesn't come out of Burns Night particularly glowingly, but I get the feeling that the cast would also see this as a celebration of the freaks that occupy the city's darker corners.

You can watch Burns Night for free here. 

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2026 #1: Reviews of Bone Keeper (UK 2025), Daggers Inn (UK 2025), Jitters (UK 2025), Forty Five (UK 2025), Beyond Mamushi (UK 2026) and Wizard of Oz: The Dead Walk (UK 2025)

Bone Keeper (UK 2025: Dir Howard J Ford) Imagine the cast of - and story from - the average Scott Jeffrey Jagged Edge production, beamed down into a movie with ten times that company's budget, and the result is Ford's latest feature.

Olivia (Sarah Alexander Marks, The Killing Tree, Manor of Darkness and a whole load of others) is searching for her mother, who has gone missing while on the hunt for her own father, an adventurer journalist who also vanished in the same place; a cave system on the Welsh border. All have been investigating the legend of the 'Bone Keeper'.

Determined to track mum down using maps in family journals, Olivia teams up with some friends, and arranges a trip. Along for the ride are cocky TA trailed Ethan (Louis James, Bogieville), Olivia's friend Annabelle (Tiffany Hannam-Daniels, The Lockdown Hauntings), Nick (Tyler Winchcombe, Piglet) and science nerds Nadia (Sophie Eleni, Walking Against the Rain) and Ravi (Danny Rahim in his first British 'fantastic' film role). En route to meet Professor Harrison (John Rhys-Davies, G-Loc, those Lord of the Rings films) they pickup a hitchhiking woman, travel blogger Ashley aka 'Bitchhiker' (Sarah T Cohen, Cinderella's Curse, Alien Invasion) whose addition can give the mission a bit of much needed publicity.

Harrison's 'be careful in the caves' entreaties fall on deaf ears as Olivia and the gang tool up for a bit of spelunking; but the tentacular entity they discover deep in the rocks turns out to be nastier than any of them imagined.

Ford's movie is one of two distinct halves. In the first the bickering and emoting amongst friends is very familiar territory (pretty much all of the flicks mentioned above include similar character developing techniques), and for a while David Engellau's score almost manages to drown out the drama. But when the caves loom into view (enigmatically filmed in the Forest of Dean) Ford really finds his feet. The underground scenes carry a real tension and the creature, a mix of CGI and practical effects, is impressive both in production and intent. 

I could have done without the rather silly prologue in which the origin of the creature is established (and a little more detail on how it manages its hybridity would have been welcome), but Bone Keeper manages to shrug off its early scenes and become a thoroughly nasty monster flick. It is perhaps a shame that the next time we'll see this cast will likely be a return to the low budgets - and expectations - of Mr Jeffrey and his ilk. Shame as here they acquit themselves really well.

A version of this review was originally published on the Bloody Flicks site.

Daggers Inn (UK 2025: Dir James Smith) Smith and his creative/life partner Caroline Spence have a reputation for creating credible features from very little at all; Casting Kill, their 2023 movie, was an expansive (not expensive) mini giallo filmed in just a small handful of locations.

Daggers Inn bases its events in a cosy Essex village, passing as the fictional Haxanbury (geddit?). In the manner of all small town murder mysteries Haxanbury is a place you might want to visit but wouldn't want to live in.

Central to Haxanbury's problems is a ruthless local firm nominally run by Stanley Montagu-John (Martin Payne), but subject to internal feuding between company members Lauren (Terry Bamberger, a real American for once, rather than a dubious UK actor adopting a bogus accent) and the supremely odious Toby Vass (James Hamer-Morton). Expansion is on their mind, and they'll do anything in service of it - including murder.

But things are about to change. A stranger, Donna (Anna Danvers), arrives in the village, on a quest to find out what happened to her twin sister Sibyl, and one suspects she knows more than she's letting on. Donna weaves a spell around the villagers, drawing them under her influence, as she infiltrates the company in a quest to find the truth, teaming up with outsider Samron (Gavin Gordon) and put upon company employee Karen (Eve Kathryn Oliver) in the process.

There are so many ways in which Daggers Inn gets it right. Smith ensures that nothing is explained (in a good way). Is Donna a witch, or maybe even Sibyl in returned form? Certainly her arrival prompts some unusual behaviour; company employees become entranced, and Toby's girlfriend Bethany (genre regular Charlie Bond), who may be central to the mystery, is determined to be rid of her. The director, who like previous projects also serves behind the camera, does some wonderful things capturing both the external landscape and the claustrophobic goings on in the medieval village's board rooms and tea shops. Casting is spot on, performances being as generally understated as the movie's sound design (always a blessing in a genre where directors mistakenly feel that a histrionic score can make up for a project's shortcomings). 

One of the reasons that I cover small scale British 'fantastic' cinema is some filmmakers' ability to craft silk purses out of sow's ears, a skill which Smith and Spence have in abundance. Excellent stuff. 

A version of this review was originally published on the Bloody Flicks site.

Jitters (UK 2025: Dir Marc Zammit) Now I quite liked Zammit's co-directed second feature, 2024's Witch, an inventive film that wasn't perfect but remained pretty watchable.

Grizzled Detective Nick Collymore (Fabrizio Santino, adopting a US accent for no reason apart from he's reasonably good at it) has returned to duty after a rather ugly incident and is keen to get back in the policing saddle, by intruding onto a crime scene, namely the death of a gamer, Tiff (Jessica Impiazzi), her body found slumped at a computer.

Meanwhile colleague Detective Sam Harding (Anto Sharp) is also investigating a death - this time filmed online. Tech wiz Dean Holness (Jack Cray) has taken his own life via nailgun in front of his many fans. Further investigations have revealed that he was working alongside Tiff on a new AI game.

Other deaths occur and Nick discovers that the game can be accessed via a USB. A personal test reveals a weird avatar called Jitters (Daniel Jordan) who poses riddles which, if solved, release cash (possibly in bitcoin). But the real power of the game isn't realised until Nick understands that, once downloaded, the avatar's deadly reach extends to anything with internet connectivity.

Jitters is a very different beast to Witch, a combination of police procedural and a modern AI take on A Nightmare on Elm Street and Videodrome. Collymore's character is the hardboiled cop more usually seen on TV screens rather than the movies, with family and health problems to contend with. The 'Jitters' character is a good few years older than a lot of the other cast members, making his odd 'clown-with-a-colander' getup quite distinctive. Jitters could do with tightening up a bit but it's an ambitious pic for the budget, and the final scene's suggestion of a sequel wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.

A version of this review was originally published on the Bloody Flicks site.

Forty-Five (UK 2025: Dir Bazz Hancher) The 'forty five' of the title in Hancher's latest could refer as much to its slender run time (actually it's just a little over 40 minutes) as its true meaning, the sum of an arcane subtraction in the Bible's Book of Daniel, relating to the Antichrist and the end of the world.

Under three quarters of an hour is pushing it to depict such monumental events, so Hancher wisely focuses events on a smaller canvas of torture and damnation.

Three years after the death of his daughter Ariel, in a sickening ritual killing where the girl's corpse and nether regions are re-arranged to form an inverted cross, her distraught father Boyd Fallon (Kemal Yildirim, who does a nice line in troubled characters) is still on the hunt for Ariel's killer.

A hired private investigator swears off the case but directs Fallon to a succession of people who may hold information, namely an agitated priest, Father Vaughn (Andrew Tales from the Great War Elias), cancer ravaged Ruben Blake (Laurence Saunders) and an unhinged, badly beaten woman, Botis (Laura Liptrot). All have have suffered greatly after contact with the obscure, other worldly 'forty five', and as Fallon digs deeper and gets closer to the truth, he is plagued by death dreams and, ultimately, discovers why his daughter died... and who really murdered her.

Hancher's film is compact, beautifully photographed and rich with apocrypha, and in Yildirim's character creates a tragic figure straight out of Aeschylus, a man destined to uncover his own fatal truth. Disturbing images abound, and Hancher is correct in keeping his film lean and mean. I liked this a lot.

Beyond Mamushi (UK 2026: Dir M W Daniels) My last exposure to Daniel's work was his segment of the lockdown movie The Isolation Horrors. 

Here he brings us a 50 minute psychological drama, centring on Kate (newcomer Corina Jayne), a troubled soul, with a violent, controlling partner, Chris (Gary Cross) and the Mamushi of the title (Jemma Thompson), Kate's therapist (Mamushi is her surname) who seems to have forgotten most of her code of ethics.

Chris exhibits classic controlling behaviours; nasty then nice, belittling and flattering in turn, witholding then making her beg for the medication she seems to need.

Ama Mamushi indicates that she's taken a tough love to Kate's progress, but clearly oversteps the mark when she suggests to her client that murder is probably the only way out of her abusive relationship. Kate's horrendous position is made worse when, on a visit to Chris's father, the older man tries to rape her. Kate's response triggers a cycle of violence which she seems helpless to avoid.

I confess that in 2026 the 'bonkers-woman-driven-to-murder' narrative is more than a little unwelcome. There's very little subtlety here in the story of a woman driven to the edge and then over it, and the reason provided for her actions is just a little silly. Jayne does well in her first role and the film's brevity is to its credit; Daniels took on most of the behind the camera roles and it's clearly a passion project for him, but I found it generally uninvolving and, honestly, more than a little unnecessary.

Wizard of Oz: The Dead Walk (UK 2025: Dir Louisa Warren) We love Louisa Warren's films at DEoL towers and here she is with her latest TCU entry, the title of which sounds a little like those classics vs horror mashups that were all the rage some years ago.

When I interviewed Warren back in 2021, she mentioned that she made two types of movies; 'wacky' and 'serious'. Wisely, because of her own rather childlike obsessions, Warren has decided to stick with the first category in recent years, and Wizard of Oz: The Dead Walk might just be her most 'wacky' yet.

Dorothy (the authentically American Alina Desmond) has been rescued from a dying Oz by her Auntie Em (Jodyanne Richardson, who by resemblance is possibly related to the Richardson acting dynasty), in the process getting herself hooked on heroin.

Em has secured her a place at the Emerald rehab centre, a dodgy clinic run by Dr Oscar Diggs (Stephen Samson) and occupied by patients who still seem to be able to access the hard stuff. Kept heavily sedated while withdrawing, Dorothy has vivid dreams involving malevolent versions of the scarecrow and the tinman from Oz, and the good witch Glinda (Yvonne Curwen) who also seems to have transformed into something more evil. Dorothy dreams about an ancient book hidden in a tree; when she wakes she realises that the tree - and the book - are within the clinic grounds. Reading a passage from the book brings the murderous Oz characters into the real world to begin a campaign of mayhem and death.

With a cast list including the daftly named Detective Jack L Antern (Adam Barnett) this is very silly stuff indeed, but actually quite watchable and at times gory, albeit within the constraints of the usual Warren budget. The director manages to include a cursed book - a bit of a Warren signature move - and the absence of the cowardly lion is sort of explained towards the end of a movie which also wins an award for including the opening credit sequence about three minutes before the end titles. It's bonkers, most people won't like it, but I for one am hungry  - well ok peckish - for more.  

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #23: Reviews of Caveat (UK 2020), Censor (UK 2021), Infinitum: Subject Unknown (UK 2021), The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud (UK 2020), Last Night in Soho (UK 2021) and The Legend of Jack and Jill (UK 2021)

Caveat (UK 2020: Dir Damian McCarthy) Mood trumps narrative in McCarthy's debut feature. A lone guy, shaggy of beard and haunted of look, accepts a job offer that most of us would reject out of hand. Isaac (Jonathan French), who can also add post accident amnesia to his list of woes, is asked by the uncle of a young girl to 'babysit' her for a short while, on payment of £200 a day. Isaac, who clearly hasn't seen money like that for a long time, cautiously accepts.

When the girl's uncle, Moe (Ben Caplan) escorts Isaac to the location of his charge, the latter is disconcerted to find that the house is on an island - and he can't swim. Further details emerge. The niece, Olga (Leila Sykes) has a fear of men, being touched and pretty much everything else, and Isaac will be obliged to wear a full bridle, anchored in the cellar, but which gives him access to the whole house except Olga's room. Olga's mother has died, and her father took his own life; hence the need for, what? A companion? A housekeeper?

With two hundred reasons to say yes, Isaac accepts the terms. The isolation is intense, the only sound to be heard being the scream of foxes, and the strange company of Olga, who warily brandishes a crossbow on their first encounter. But Isaac's curiosity gets the better of him, and a search of the house reveals that Moe's explanation isn't quite correct; worse, it's possible that he's been to the house before.

There's a certain fairy tale quality to Caveat, setting the film up as an exercise in atmosphere rather than telling a story. The question here is not 'why did Isaac accept the position?' but 'what's the nature of the threat?'. In some ways the film is a reimagining of the classic 'governess with eerie child' tale, but, taking place as it does in a house bereft of anything resembling a home, one filtered through the lens of the Quay Brothers. If you accept Caveat on the premise there's a lot to, if not like, admire, there are one or two sequences which are genuinely frightening. Sykes's elegantly deadpan delivery as the troubled Olga is central to the movie, against which French's increasingly spooked Isaac plays well. Macabre and unsettling, I liked this a lot.

Censor (UK 2021: Dir Prano Bailey-Bond) Beloved by 'proper' critics, and roundly embraced by the BFI on first release (who part funded the thing) Censor delighted those who saw in its subject matter - the 'Video Nasties' scandal of the 1980s - a very meta take on the whole business, while angering those ardent collectors of the original DPP list of 'banned' films who seemed to have a problem with Bailey-Bond, a woman, straying onto their turf, making something which they dismissed as too arty, with  - horrors! - a female central character.

Censor is a low budget meta movie that takes its subject seriously (Kim Newman is an executive producer, for flip's sake). Enid (Niamh Algar), prim, buttoned up and extremely serious, is one of a group of censors navigating the choppy waters of the early 1980s. Their work is, pun intended, cut out for them as they decide how much eye gouging, stabbing or beheading to excise from the films they review or, as sometimes preferred by their risk averse boss, whether to ban the thing altogether. It's a strategy that gains credibility when a real life crime is seized upon by the press as mirroring the events in one of the films passed.

While the political climate tries to associate the viewing of such items with an increase in violent crime, Enid's motivations seem triggered by an event which has already happened to her; the disappearance of her sister Nina some years previously while both were out playing in the woods as children. The decision of Enid's parents to finally declare their missing daughter dead is a tipping point for the guilt ridden censor who sees, in one of the productions of the exploitation duo - shadowy Frederic North (Adrian Schiller) and unctuous Doug Smart (Michael Smiley) - a cast member who looks like Nina. Enid's determination to uncover the truth takes her through the video booth looking glass and into the movies themselves. 

As well as the whole 'video nasty' gatekeeping issue, many of the film's detractors did not like Censor's rather abstract denouement, which contrasts with its relatively coherent first half. But this is a psychological film whose subject suffers the fractured end result of compartmentalising her life to cope with trauma, and there are no easy answers. This is Bailey-Bond's first feature and at times it feels like it, but it's also bold filmmaking which makes for distinctly uneasy viewing, not least its Stasi Germany take on the early 1980s.

Infinitum: Subject Unknown (UK 2021: Dir Matthew Butler-Hart) There's something about the restrictions inflicted by the 2020 pandemic that feeds into the DIY spirit of independent filmmaking. I really liked both Butler-Hart's 2018 feature, the moody The Isle and, looking forwards, his 2024 film Dagr.

Sandwiched between these films is the director's intimate but ambitious sci fi mindbender, filmed on an iphone and with a cast comprising, well Mrs Butler-Hart and a couple of borrowed luvvies. Let me explain.

At an unspecified point in time (the future? Present day?) the discovery of an alternate earth, albeit one which is war torn, has excited scientists and occasioned much experimentation, including human subjects.

One such is Jane (Tori Butler-Hart) who wakes up tied to a chair in an otherwise empty room. Managing to free herself, Jane experiences visions of the other earth, but is initially unable to leave without being returned to her original position. A gradual understanding of her situation - and how to liberate herself - enables Jane to escape by car (her drive through empty suburban streets is chilling both visually and as a reminder of the very real weirdness of the pandemic). Eventually Jane happens across the Wytness Centre, a building which houses those attempting to understand the 'paraverse'. But her discovery of files and recordings only deepens her concern about her role in the search for scientific answers.

Abandon hope anyone expecting a fast paced sci fi thriller; Butler-Hart's movie is deliberately slow, focusing on Jane's anguish and slow realisation of the truth, with only occasional CGI interventions which frankly aren't really necessary. Tori is the centre of the film and acquits herself well considering she's in every scene; well every scene except those featuring a rather bemused Sir Ian McKellen and a scientist (Conleth Hall). I: SU isn't for everyone. I got a real sense that this was Butler-Hart, frustrated at the limits being placed on him as a filmmaker and deciding to make his 'fuck the pandemic' movie. 

The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud (UK 2020: Dir Martin Owen) According to his professional page, TIAoMC has been in development since 2018, which is unsurprising as it has labour of love written all over it. 

It's a witty piece in thrall to video gaming of the late 1980s/early 1990s, and what you get out of it rather depends on how nostalgic you find the setup. 

It's Brooklyn in 1990. Sarah (Isabelle Allen) just loves games, particularly playing 'Max Cloud' with her friend Cowboy (Franz Drameh), much to the annoyance of her father Tony (distinguished TV actor Sam Hazeldine). 

Sucked into the game via a Space Witch (Jason Maza), she becomes one of the game characters, Jake (Elliot Langridge), a chef who, with his boss Max Cloud (Scott Adkins), have crash landed on Heinous (yep, rhymes with 'anus'), a notorious prison planet. Heinous is home to the evil Revengor (the John Hannah) and his deputy Shee (Lashana Lynch); Max and his team must complete various level missions to escape the planet, while Cowboy, back in Sarah's room in New York, assists.

TIAoMC has a great setup, zigzagging between 20th Century USA (actually the whole thing was filmed in a studio in Yorkshire) and the world of the game (with some fab graphics depicting the characters on screen in all their 8 Bitness). It also has a witty script; unfortunately everything runs out of steam way too quickly as the restrictions of the budget prohibit any real development of what we're seeing. But everyone looks like they're having a good time and go to hard man Adkins steals the show as the chisel jawed, unreconstructed Cloud.

Last Night in Soho (UK 2021: Dir Edgar Wright) Edgar Wright's hymn to a vanished Soho (a theme also developed in the 2022 portmanteau movie Midnight Peepshow) is also his Mulholland Drive, with a murderous background, a seedy underbelly and switched identities.

Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is young, talented and besotted with the 1960s. Living with her grandmother (Rita Tussingham) in deepest Cornwall following her mother's suicide, she's in for a shock when, securing herself a place in a London fashion school, she finds that the 'big smoke' is a far cry from the swinging decade she idolises.

When she arrives, as well as the casual misogyny she encounters on the streets, Eloise experiences a different type of threat in the form of the city raised girls on her course, whose bullying behaviour exploits her rural upbringing. Leaving the pressure of student housing she rents a time capsule like bedsit run by Ms Collins (Diana Rigg in her last role) which hasn't been redecorated by the owner since the 1960s. But once installed in her room Eloise, who her grandmother has described as 'sensitive' (in more ways than one), begins to tune in to an older London, and in particular the spirit of an aspiring singer and performer Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), who may have occupied Ellie's room back in the 1960s. Eloise finds it increasingly hard to separate the past from the present, and wonders whether the poor mental health fatally experienced by her mother has passed on to her, as the visions of Sandie and her tortured life in Soho intrude into her present day existence.

Wright's love of the giallo movie is also thoroughly explored in Last Night in Soho's exponentially nasty setup, which balances elements of the ghost story narrative with the director's trademark production flashiness. I actually gasped when, in the first of Eloise's increasingly dreamlike visions, she walks down an alleyway and into a stunningly rendered 1960s West End, complete with bright marquee lights, rain slicked streets and a mile high poster of the (then) latest James Bond film above the cinema (actually London's Haymarket). The movie is far from subtle; cast wise, with the exception of caring fellow student John (Michael Ajayo) all the blokes are awful, and most of the women not much better. But this is an Edgar Wright film of course, a director with great vision but often little maturity; Last Night in Soho has lots to savour but leaves a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

The Legend of Jack and Jill (UK 2021: Dir Jack Peter Mundy) The fifth of no less than five features directed by Mundy during 2021, basing an entire movie on the slim premise of a 12 line poem is one of the more ambitious undertakings in the genre now referred to  - sigh - as the Twisted Child Universe (TCU).

But Mundy, supported by the Scott Jeffrey Jagged Edge production machine, doesn't even need all 12 as the inspiration for his Sawney Beane/TCM style backwoods chiller; just the first - and most well known - verse is enough. In a prologue two children, Jack and Jill, are urged by their mother to run up a hill (geddit?) not to fetch a pail of water but to escape their berserk dad; mum sacrifices herself for their safety.

The two kids grow up feral; they're also possibly deformed, although it may be that their misshapen faces are the result of them wearing masks of human skin; this, like so much in the movie, is never explained. What is known is that a succession of hikers are reported missing in the area; intrepid local reporter Bernice (Sarah T. Cohen) is sent to investigate and comes a J&J cropper; the assumption is that the missing become dinner.

The main 'action' in the movie centres around a group of friends who travel out to the same area to help one of their number, Eden (Beatrice Fletcher) get over the suicide of her boyfriend. Much hand wringing follows as everyone examines their own grief; friendships deepen - there's even a same sex unfulfilled crush - and then J&J work out that their version of a Deliveroo order has arrived; and then the killings begin. The fact that the hillside killers live about half a mile away from the house where the group are staying (the ubiquitous Jeffrey youth hostel, one supposes) strains the concept of their lonely feral existence, but let that be the least of your WTF moments. On a more positive note, James Morgan's rural cinematography is often rather striking, and as Jill scream queen regular Antonia Whillans manages to elicit pathos in her role of a cannibal who perhaps would rather not be; but then Mundy mounts a climax where our two villains live to fight (and eat) another day; indeed, Jack and Jill 2 and 3 would be just around the corner.