NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2022 # 2: Reviews of 60 Seconds to Live (UK 2022), Beyond Existence (UK 2022), As A Prelude to Fear (UK 2022), Homebound (UK 2022), The Haunting of Pendle Hill (UK 2022) and Exorcist Vengeance (UK 2022)

60 Seconds to Live (UK 2022: Dir Various) Tony Newton's UK Vestra Pictures have been behind the last three '60 Seconds to Die' movies and have decided to provide their latest with a more optimistic title. Never fear though, the contents are pretty much as you'd expect, drawn from the four corners of the countercultural planet. To be fair, apart from the British production team, this is only a borderline BFF as most of the micro shorts (and I do mean micro, hardly any of them scrape a minute in length) emanate from the US.

Blighty is prepresented in the opening and closing shorts: 'Snuff Film Part 1' and 'Snuff Film Part 2' feature a man in a mask, tied to a chair being cut up. People being cut up or taking cut throat razors to themselves is a bit of a theme here, although a paucity of budget means a minimum of gore. 

The best part of the film is the middle section. The demon baby of 'Comfort Him', the 70s look of 'Savior', the jump scare of 'Tricks or Treats' and the animated killer pumpkins of 'Toxic Pumpking' by Davide Pesca all stand out. Pesca's strange man birth short 'R.I.P. Angel' is one of a number of abstract movies, best of which is the nightmarish soundtrack of 'The Holy Woman'. I also liked both the revenge shark coming through the TV to get his trophy killer in 'Poltershark' and Tom Gores' 'Raising the Stakes', a colourful take on The Fearless Vampire Killers which even finds time for a blooper. 

It's always difficult to review things like this because nothing stays around for long enough to leave more than a passing retinal image. Perhaps that's the point, but the older viewer here can only conclude that there's some sick puppies in this world; and someone's given them some cameras.

Beyond Existence (UK 2022: Dir Stephen Hoque) For his first feature director Stephen Hoque has traded in his usual CV of commercials and short films in favour of an ambitious subject; the potential end of mankind’s existence. And, equally boldly, he’s decided to tell this story with just three main characters and a setting of the UK countryside.

The Professor (Gary MacKay) is a once brilliant, now washed up alcoholic scientist whose Nobel Prize winning days, at the age of 23, are well behind him. The Professor is also the guardian of a couple of secrets; his own and the cube he keeps locked in a secure facility which has enormous, far-reaching powers.

On his tail is Ellen (a Tilda Swinton like Amelia Clay), a professional assassin who has been instructed to capture The Professor and bring him in. And on both their tails is The Guardian (Vincent Vermignon) who has exited from a gigantic pyramid. But once the pair compare notes they realise that there’s more sense in teaming up than being at each other’s throats, and so begins a quest for survival and the outwitting of The Guardian.

There’s a few narrative reveals in this movie that would be unfair to repeat here, suffice to mention that as each brain boggling detail is revealed, the viewer becomes ever more conscious that this is a film of people talking about science and alien worlds rather ponderously, rather than one which has the budget to show them to any great extent.

So what we have is The Prof and Ellen on an extended road trip round the UK while they get to know each other, or at least suss each other out. But the setup isn’t hugely successful in that Hoque really doesn’t develop his characters.

I liked the concept of the story, but its scope is way too epic to be successfully delivered by a couple of ordinary souls in a hatchback (McKay and Clay being little more than serviceable in their roles), and so it’s left to the Indian VFX crew ‘Wild’ to pull out some modest topped and tailed set pieces which are more impressive than anything that occurs between them. I can’t fault the director’s ambition but Beyond Existence doesn’t really work either as sci fi or drama.

As a Prelude to Fear (UK 2022: Dir Steph Du Melo) Du Melo's second film out this year, after the disappointing C.A.M. (and you can read the review of that in issue #2 of the hard copy DEoL fanzine, details elsewhere on this blog) is apparently based on real events, and some statistics before the end credits suggest that AaPtF's story is intended to be a universal one.

Classical cellist Eve Taylor (Lara Lemon) is scheduled to meet up with a man who it is hoped will give her musical tuition but about whom she knows nothing. Dropped off by her boyfriend Jamie Harris (Jamie Langlands) at a local cafe - the agreed meeting point - she gets a call to rendezvous instead at a nearby, rather dilapidated building. On arrival she's promptly captured by a big hooded man with a Jigsaw like altered voice who imprisons her in the basement.

Harris reports Eve's disappearance to the police. The person in charge of the subsequent investigation is DCS Barnbrook (Francis Magee, who older viewers may recognise as Liam from Eastenders back in the 1990s) supported by DS Dobson (Lucy Drive), and suspicion immediately falls on Mr Corcoran (the movie's co-writer Roger Wyatt), a rather odd local music teacher who Barnbrook had interviewed in connection with three previous murders; all girls, all cellists.  

Back in the basement, Eve encounters other imprisoned girls who she can hear but not see. One fills some gaps in the narrative; mainly that the kidnapper has a track record of abducting and killing girls and is a bit of a musician on the side. As Barnbrook focuses his attentions on the admittedly shifty Corcoran, Eve fears that she's about to be the next dead cellist.

While AaPtF is an improvement on the woeful C.A.M. it's still a pretty flat movie, strangely managing to generate lifeless performances from the cast's professionals (Magee and Drive) as well as the less seasoned newcomers. This movie comes across as half TV procedural, half Saw like thriller, mercifully without the torture porn. Du Melo turns in a score which works in parts but which you hope will shut up once in a while (silence is also good for drama). It's well shot and put together, but terribly uninvolving, a movie aiming but not succeeding in punching above its budgetary weight.

Homebound (UK 2022: Dir Sebastian Godwin) Godwin’s first feature (of sorts, it’s barely over an hour long) sees Holly (Aisling Loftus) travelling with her new husband Richard (Tom Goodman-Hill) to his family home in Norfolk. It’s a tense time for Holly – Richard’s first wife Nina will be there with his kids and it’s the first time she’ll be meeting teenagers Ralph (Lukas Rolph) and Lucia (Hattie Gotobed), and little Anna (Rafiella Chapman).

But when they arrive, Nina isn’t around and the kids have been left to fend for themselves. Holly immediately picks up an odd bond between the trio and Richard, something stronger than mere blood ties; a country family, she is aghast to see them catching and killing a goose for dinner, and Richard making liberal with the wine for all the family.

Holly initially decides to go with the flow and play along with the family’s odd lifestyle, but the longer she stays in the house the more she realises that nothing between them is quite right, including the man she’s recently married.

Homebound becomes progressively nasty as Holly struggles to understand the dynamics – and secrets – at the heart of her new family. It had the opportunity to be more unpleasant, but Godwin holds back on the shocks in favour of a growing unease, which can occasionally make the film feel a little undercooked.

The atmosphere is helped by some great performances, mainly from Richard’s three children (Gotobed in particular is subtly menacing) and Aisling Loftus is convincingly caught between love and fear; one also wonders whether this is another role for Goodman Hill which echoes his recent real life abrupt marriage walk out – he has famously said that the realities of his private life have helped him get into character for parts like these.

Homebound is helped no end by a script which avoids cliché even if the scenario is familiar, and an authentically jarring soundtrack from Jeremy Warmsley. It may be a little slight, but it certainly has its moments. And the atmospherically distressed Wiveton Hall in Norfolk is a great setting; property owner Desmond McCarthy, whose ebullient frame graced the recent BBC show Normal for Norfolk (in which he described the challenges of affording to keep a country house in order) has presumably seen the financial advantages of turning the gaff over to film crews, so expect more movies to be located there.

(A version of this review appeared on the Bloody Flicks website).

The Haunting of Pendle Hill (UK 2022: Dir Richard John Taylor) The true story of the 17th century Pendle witches from Lancashire, while not as famous as their Salem sisters, is a small but notorious part of English history. Originally novelised by William Harrison Ainsworth in 1849, and later by Robert Neill in 1951, the womens' story was televised by the BBC as a drama in 1976 and a documentary in 2011.

So now here's UK director Richard John Taylor, taking a break from his trademark gangster movies, to deliver his take on this bit of history. Mixing the real characters of the original account with a contemporary storyline, as the film opens, in 1612, John Law (James Hamer-Morton) leaves the home of Roger Nowell, JP and witchfinder (Noel Brendan Mcalley) and his daughter Maud (Lowri Watts-Joyce): encountering a mysterious figure in a cat mask in the woods, he promptly dies.

Flash forward to the present day, and Matilda, an American (also played, with a pretty good US accent, by Brit Watts-Joyce) is concerned about her father (also Mcalley). He has been in England researching a book (with the same name as the movie) concerning Nowell and the potenially supernatural events surrounding arch witch Demdike, and has gone missing. Matilda's uncle Alfred (played by Taylor regular Nicholas Ball, sporting a particularly bad American accent) fills her in on the Pendle witches and suggests she travels to the UK to look for dad; there is a suspicion that the evils of Demdike and her like may have travelled through time and put Matilda's father in danger.

On arriving in Blighty she teams up with another American, local guide Arthur (Brit Jeffrey Charles Richards) and the search is on. The movie's main shtick is moving backwards and forwards in time, with Matilda and Maud both searching for their respective fathers, and with the threat of the supernatural looming large. Taylor, who also wrote this, fiddles with history here by making the historical figures actual witches rather than subjugated working class women coming a cropper at the hands of powerful local men. 

But the director does deserve some praise for trying something a little different, and for disguising a story which combines lots of walking around in the woods while borrowing folk horror motifs from The Blair Witch Project with some interesting historical flavour and dialect (although one 17th character asking another "art thou ok?" did provoke a snort). Best line: "I'm an atheist"; "you're a millennial!"

Exorcist Vengeance (UK 2022: Dir Scott Jeffrey, Rebecca Matthews) This is the second of Jeffrey and Matthews's movies to utilise the, er, specific talents of Mr Robert Bronzi (following last year's The Gardener, which won't be covered as it falls outside the NWotBFF remit) ie that the Hungarian actor looks exactly like Charles Bronson, I'm assuming the pair got a BOGOF contract for his services.

Anyway in this one Bronzi is Father Andres Jozsef, priest, ex drug pusher, hardman, exorcist, religious pontificator, as handy with his fists as he is wielding the King James version, and mourning for his dead wife. His multi skilled talents are called into play fairly quickly, when he fells and shoots a fleeing killer on the mean streets of London town. But when an old possessed lady takes her own life, but not before transferring the demon inside to her maid Magda (Anna Liddell), Father J is appointed to the case via the Vatican in the shape of Bishop Canelo (Steven Berkoff). 

After consulting his dead wife's grave for advice, he arrives at the house, where the family remains in shock. They are grandma's children Patrick (Simon Furness) and Christine (Nicola Wright), Christine's kids Nick (Ben Parsons) and Rebecca (Sarah Alexandra Marks) who have returned from America - hence the dodgy accents - and Patrick's daughter Rose (Nicole Nabi). But Father J's talents are tested to the limit as, one by one, the family members start getting killed, presumably by the demonic entity; the same family who don't want him on the premises in the first place.

The main takeaway from Exorcist Vengeance, apart from the extraordinary casting of Bronzi as the impassive, impenetrably accented Father Jozsef, is how Jeffrey and Matthews have upped their directing game for this film. The pair's CV, as covered extensively in these pages, has tended towards slower paced, social drama centred fright flicks. But no more! EV is, for them anyway, non stop action, cleverly combining possession drama with a whodunnit subplot. As Gavin Whitaker points out in his review, this may have something to do with the presence of US producers Jeff Miller and Mark L. Lester (the latter of whom had production duties on, among others, The Funhouse (1981) and 1990's Class of 1999). 

Plot wise there's still the usual amount of bobbins associated with this sort of thing, and scenes like Chrissie Wunna's police interview, where she's dressed like a stripper cop, complete with US badge, suggest that Jeffrey and Matthews haven't lost their sense of humour. But this is huge fun and the final scene, hinting at Bronzi's return in a sequel, prompted a small round of applause from this reviewer.

Dark Eyes of London - the Magazine!

I realise that I haven't posted up here that Issue #2 of my hard copy version of this blog, also called 'Dark Eyes of London', is now available (actually it has been for a few weeks and over half have sold already).

Issue #2 runs to 32 pages this time, but is still £3 each including postage (in the UK, outside there will be an extra charge, not much but need to cover postage costs). If you'd like a copy please email darkeyesoflondon666@gmail.com for details.

I'm aiming to have Issue #3 available in August to tie in with London FrightFest.

Davidxx

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #10: Reviews of Jekyll and Hyde (UK 2021), Spider in the Attic (UK 2021), It Came from Below (UK 2021), Martyr's Lane (UK 2021), Bad Moon Rising (UK 2021) and A Curious Tale (UK 2021)

Jekyll and Hyde (UK 2021: Dir Steve Lawson) The third of Lawson’s treatments of classic horror stories, following on from Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing and Ripper Untold. Jekyll and Hyde traces a similar pattern to these movies: a kind of reimagining of the story with good attention to period detail and some spirited acting from his usual cast stable.

Lawson’s version of the famous Robert Louis Stevenson novella dances in and out of the original text. As the film opens Henry Jekyll (Michael McKell, who gets to sing a power ballad over the end credits) draws up a will with family friend and solicitor Gabriel Utterson (Tom Hendryk); in the event of Jekyll’s demise, the whole of his estate is assigned to a Mr Hyde. The morning after, Jekyll is chased back to his laboratory by the police, in the shape of Inspector Newcombe (Mark Topping) who have accused him of murder; on gaining entry they find that Jekyll, who has also been implicated in a number of other murders, has shot himself dead.

Most of the rest of the movie is told in flashback via a long letter from Jekyll delivered to Utterson, which describes his experiments, the existence of Mr Hyde and the trail of violence that follows. Convinced of Jekyll’s innocence in the face of almost incontrovertible evidence Utterson turns amateur sleuth; but the truth is stranger than anybody expects.

Lawson’s micro budget adaptation relies, for the most part, on accounts and descriptions of the action, rather than the action itself (although the final reel generates some excitement which is pretty amazing considering the paucity of the sets). There’s some rather ill-advised comedy in the form of the Enfield character (David Lenik) who has some entanglements with ladies of the night, but Sarah Utterson (Helen Crevel) is arguably the best thing in this, handy with her fists but looking the part as the normally demure solicitor’s wife. Slight, but not without appeal.

Spider in the Attic aka Spider from the Attic (UK 2021: Dir Scott Jeffrey) In the opening scenes of Jeffrey’s latest creature feature, scientist Dr George Zizerman (Chris Cordell) has been fired from his employer for unethical research practices (he’s been investigating ancient Nazi experiments into genetic mutations, possibly using alien life forms); which is a shame as he’s just perfected a growth serum which he’s used, successfully, on a spider. A side effect of the serum is that the treated subject becomes highly aggressive…and, of course, huge. I think you can guess what happens to the doc.

Radio host Linda Buxton (Nicola Wright), who runs a show devoted to the unexplained, is losing ratings fast, and vows to her station manager Shauna (Kate Sandison) that things will improve. Her daughters, heavily pregnant Belle (Chelsea Greenwood) and girl from the military Lucy (Sarah Alexandra Marks) rally round mum suggesting that she needs something new and exciting to enliven the show. And Lucy has the answer: an investigation into what happened to Dr Zizerman.

Linda, Belle and Lucy break into the scientist’s house and eventually find the good doctor, dead and cocooned in his bedroom, and one of the mutant spiders (actually they look more like a cross between a spider, a scorpion and the ‘facehugger’ from Alien); Belle’s boyfriend Dan (Clint Gordon) turns up, seemingly only to bicker and whinge with his partner, and they also come across Shauna, who’s been checking up on Linda, together with assistant Lorena (Danielle Scott). Whereas anyone else would do the sensible thing and exit stage right, Linda senses a story and suggests that everyone hangs around to get the scoop: big mistake.

Spider in the Attic is a little formulaic: like many micro horrors I’ve reviewed the horror is interspersed with scenes of domestic intrigue and of course the old B movie standby of wandering round an empty house. Jeffrey deserves credit for casting, instead of the usual YouTube teen, an older actor (Wright) who brings some gravitas to the role, and an all woman climax: and while some of the spider CGI looks a little hokey, in their smaller incarnations the creatures look quite scary, scuttling up walls or across beds.

The movie’s last half hour does mount some tension – despite the abrupt end – improved by Andrew Fosberry’s atmospheric soundtrack, in contrast to the rather talky first two thirds; Spider in the Attic isn’t great but, like a lot of Jeffrey’s movies, it has its heart in the right place and is definitely worth a watch.

It Came from Below (UK 2021: Dir Dan Allen) Allen’s second feature (after his 2017 remake of the 1982 Don Gronquist movie Unhinged) comes with the guiding hand of co-scriptwriter Sam Ashurst (A Little More Flesh) and producer Scott Jeffrey (ooh, everything!) but manages to be its own beast, a tense movie which rises above its low budget limitations.

Megan Purvis, sporting the by now obligatory but largely redundant American accent required for at least one character in these things, is Jessie Harper, a woman grieving her father (grief is often a narrative device in micro horrors I've noticed), a potholer who came across a certain something in some local caves and died as a result (Purvis can do good ‘moody’ and is a natural for parts like this). Jake Watkins is Sam Harper, also sporting a US accent (and who is possibly Jessie’s brother, or half-brother; it isn’t that clear), and together they’re on a journey to reclaim dad’s honour; he died a laughing stock, full of stories about underground monsters. In their revisit of the same caves that took his life they’re accompanied by their English friends Joanna (Georgie Grace) and Marty (Tom Taplin), the latter of whom has a past with Jessie. Dad left behind a comprehensive handwritten journal of his sightings, which the English pair dismiss as nonsense although recognising the potential for profiteering, furthering rattling Jessie’s cage; she wanted to travel alone.

Their descent into the caves is despite warnings from the camp rangers; “Don’t go in the caves,” they advise, but Jessie’s full of purpose. Pretty soon the party are without Marty who swiftly loses it and runs off to the interior; somewhat inevitably he’s victim number one, and it’s not long before the (rather impressive) beast emerges, first seen crawling along the roof of one of the caves. Jessie and the rest of the gang become trapped in the stony netherworld, and the rampant beast isn’t their only problem.

Despite the rather undercooked script there’s a lot to like in It Came from Below; it really only gets going once the party descend into the darkness, helped by some stunning photography from Dominic Ellis and Allen’s tense direction. The creature’s pretty good value and although it doesn’t feature in the movie that much, this is probably for the best. Domestic disputes (another hallmark of UK low budget horror flicks) are kept to a minimum, and Purvis makes for a convincingly terrified protagonist. I’m going to guess from some of the exterior shots that the shoot was a cold and damp one, which really adds to the atmosphere of dread. It’s not The Descent, but then what is?

Martyr’s Lane (UK 2021: Dir Ruth Platt) Seen through the eyes of 10 year old Leah (Kiera Thompson) the world is a mysterious and often frightening place. With dad as the village vicar (the family live in a Victorian rectory) her life revolves around stressed mum Sarah (Denise Gough) who suffers from night terrors and wears a mysterious amulet containing a lock of blonde hair, and Leah’s bullying older sister Bex (Hannah Rae) whose unbridled anger is clearly overcompensating for something. Things get odder when Leah meets Rachel, a strange, ethereal little girl in the woods (Sienna Sayer), complete with broken angel’s wings, who she invites home.

I’m not really giving the game away to confirm that there's a connection between the lock of hair and Leah’s strange nocturnal visitor. Actor turned director Platt conjures up a beautifully framed, almost overly polite ghost story, where the central tragedy is discovered clue by clue (stray buttons, a doll, loose teeth), with Rachel and Leah at the centre of the mystery. Things only threaten to transform to full on genre movie at its climax; for the most part the story is happy to move slowly towards its dramatic conclusion.

Martyr’s Lane would be a lesser thing without the twin talents of Thompson and Sayer, the latter particularly achieving a delicate balance of prosaic and mystical, quite a feat for someone so young. Thompson’s Leah is a child adrift in a world of adults whose motivations remain a mystery to her (scenes shot from her height emphasise this) and her parents’ staunch Catholic faith runs at odds with Leah’s encounters with an increasingly strong Rachel, who may or may not be real, but is the closest thing Leah has to a friend. Martyr’s Lane may be a very mannered ghost story, but it’s one with a lot of atmosphere, topped off with Erased Tapes collaborator Anne Müller’s haunting score.

Bad Moon Rising (UK 2021: Dir Alasdair MacKay) Lucy (Dani Thompson), Jordan (Loren Peta, Sean Young’s performance double in 2017’s Blade Runner 2049) and Pip (Honey Holmes) make up ‘Scream Team’, a trio of fun loving TV ghost hunters whose ‘structured reality’ show in under threat of cancellation. Apart from gullible Pip, the girls don’t believe in the supernatural. So when slimy manager James (David Curtis) books them a gig in Bulgaria to investigate a real haunting, they’re a bit perplexed, but are pressured into accepting it to keep the show going.

Arriving in a quiet part of the country they end up in a small village. There’s one bar and a creepy graveyard with cages over the graves. To keep something in, the girls muse? And they might be right; a local woman is mauled by an unseen beast, and when the team are filming in the woods, they’re approached by a local man (and ferret) who tells them that the area is unsafe. As the team put their report together, things are gathering outside, waiting for the moon to rise.

Put out by the re-energised Vipco label (which is currently giving lifeblood to a number of recent UK fantastic titles), Bad Moon Rising is, sadly, just bad. Hampered by some poor sound, indifferent acting and an almost indecent lack of plot, at 75 mins this is a real chore to get through. Some of the footage has obviously been kicking around for a while; the late Richard Gladman, who died in 2016, plays himself as a journalist in one scene, and internet sources make mention of filming an earlier version of the movie back in 2015.

I’m all for low budget enthusiasm but Bad Moon Rising feels lazy, derivative and pretty pointless. A credit for the ‘Essex Ferret Welfare Society’ is about the only thing to commend it.

A Curious Tale (UK 2021: Dir Leigh Tarrant) In 1588, the film's prologue tells us, the Spanish armada invaded the shores of England; the Sussex heritage, in the shape of three buried crowns, aimed to protect the country from further invasion. The crowns’ powers meant that while one was still in existence, no foreign army would invade.

Hang on. Isn’t this the plot of M R James’s story ‘A Warning to the Curious’? Why yes it is, and although director Tarrant does  acknowledge the source text in the end credits of his 50 minute short (mistakenly referring to it as a novel) it’s still a bit of a cheeky move. So we open with a man digging in a coastal location for the remaining crown who gets bumped off by a fearsome cove who tells him (altogether now) “no diggin’ ere!”. 12 years later there’s a new treasure hunter in town: Pete Rattlebone (the oft used character name of Australian actor Pete Tindal, 60s musician turned TV personality and podcaster) who seeks the crown for himself, only to come across the ghostly protector of the antique, a Mr Hagar, as opposed to the story’s ‘Ager’ (Noddy Holder-esque Ian Kear).

Tarrant lifts stylistic chunks of Lawrence Gordon-Clark’s 1972 BBC adaptation of the story but adds a few ideas of his own, namely a female ghost and a dream sequence in the hotel where Rattlebone stays. Jeff Crampton’s score is sufficiently atmospheric, but there’s some ‘local’ acting which rather lets the things down and the budget forces some awkward compromises (word processed texts inserted into old books for example); it's ok but I would have preferred Tarrant to create a story of his own.

A Curious Tale can be rented via Vimeo.

Top 10 Films of 2021

So this year I doubled 2020's figure by getting to see 32 films at the cinema (last year it was only 16), and watched 384 overall, including 45 movies reviewed for the Bloody Flicks website. My Top 10 of the year, in no particular order and with no explanations this year, are:

Promising Young Woman

The Sound of Metal

Summer of Soul

Zombies in the Sugar Cane Field

The Velvet Underground

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Last Night in Soho

The French Despatch

Shiva Baby

The Sparks Brothers

Honorable mentions: 

Sweetheart, The Mitchells Vs the Machines, Undergods, My Heart Can't Beat Until You Tell it To, Lapsis, Werewolves Within, The Night House, Candyman, Night at the Eagle Inn, The Ghost of Winfred Meeks, Slumber Party Massacre, Annette, Don't Look Up, 7 Days, Censor, Acting, The Deep House, Freaky, Wyvern Hill, Don't Look Up

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.