NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #12: Reviews of Afraid of the Dark (UK 2021), You Might Get Lost (UK 2021), The Unkind (UK 2021), Something Weird, Something Strange (UK 2021), Monsters of War (UK 2021) and Little Monster (UK 2021)

It's been quite a while since I uploaded my last round up of 2021 Fantastic Films, so time to play catch up:

Afraid of the Dark (UK 2021: Dir Jonathon Green, Myles Keyland) The enjoyment of Green and Keyland's quirky and creepy little debut is considerably enhanced by the fact that hardly any of the cast and crew are old enough to have left school/university yet!

Hannah Fox (an extraordinary performance from Amy Lally) is a schoolgirl leading a dismal life in a sleepy village. Aimless and bored in a way that only teenagers can achieve, and misunderstood by her mother and her siblings, her unhappy existence is shaken up when she discovers 'something' in a box while walking in the woods.

She finds it difficult to convince the police, who consider her a time waster, but she realises, after finding a card with the words 'you've made a big mistake', that someone has witnessed her discovering the 'something' which is possibly related to the disappearance of another boy while out on a family picnic in the same area.

When her family decide to spend a few days away, Hannah is left on her own in the house, and her feelings of insecurity increase, compounded when her friend Olivia (Boo Miller) attempts to take her own life, a response to years of bullying by others in the village. Hannah realises that everything she's taken for granted about living in a quiet location has been a lie.

To be fair, Afraid of the Dark's narrative doesn't always hold together and the conclusion is slightly disappointing. But there's so much to like about the film that those flaws are balanced out. There's a real sense of teenage angst here, of parents and children politely warring with each other (although Hannah's potty mouth rather tests the idea of the 'little girl who should be seen and not heard'). Equally importantly there's a real sense of dislocation; Hannah's internal angst, a counterpoint to the external fury of Olivia, is ably supported by some fine close up photography from Tim Marsh and an ominous soundtrack by Keyland and Aaron Cilia. If I'd known the ages of those involved before watching I'd have been tempted to write this off as an end of year project, but it's so much more.

You Might Get Lost (UK 2021: Dir James Eaves) Filmed in a rather drab Southampton (where the director is based), this low budget timey wimey movie features Corinne Wicks as Arlene; she's wife, mother, drunk and office flirt with sleazy colleague Steve, and her life is going seriously off the rails. One evening she leaves some post work drinks to belatedly pick up her son William (Harrison Trent) from school in the car; the inevitable happens and Arlene is involved in a side on crash which spares her but kills William.

Separated from her husband, Arlene rents a room on her own and ponders her life decisions and, wracked with grief, her future. But bizarrely help is at hand in the guise of a shadowy organisation called the Endeavour Institute. For a price they can offer Arlene the option of moving forward or backward in time; fairly obviously she's interested in the latter option and a chance to reset events, get her son back and repair her marriage. But although the procedure is successful Arlene finds that it's more difficult to escape from past events than she thought.

As usual with this type of film there are lots of "what if...?" ideas which only work if you don't think too deeply about them. I suspect that the script may have been edited down because some things are just left hanging (for example, Arlene pays for her treatment by placing money on the horses when she goes back in time, on the basis that she would already have known the result, but as she's shown no interest in the sport up to then, is this advice given to her by the clinic?).

Wicks is adequate as Arlene, but I had hoped her rather dispassionate portrayal would have unravelled a little more as the movie progressed; considering the quandary she finds herself in and her subsequent actions, I would have expected a more on the edge performance. The rest of the performances are in service to Wicks, the character around whom the film revolves (Colin Baker cameos as Arlene's abusive dad). There are some neat little ideas about time and memory, but despite its narrative You Might Get Lost doesn't really take off either as a sci fi movie or a moral tale.

The Unkind (UK 2021: Dir Luca Gabriele Rossetti) The Unkind doesn't really act like a UK fantastic film. Directed by an Italian - his first feature, adapted from his own story - it's more like one of those ploddy running-around-in-the-forest-chased-by-a-demonic-presence movies of the 1990s; hell it even looks like one. 

After an 1898 prologue, in which a snaggle toothed witch/demon slays the Domintrescu family, asleep in their Italian mansion (with the exception of dad who wrestles the creature to the ground, nails it in place and then burns it), we flash forward to the same country in 2008, and a group of New York students on a holiday trip. Their destination? Why the very same mansion featured in the prologue; seems that it's in the family of one of their number, Chris (Andrea Fornale, an Italian actor who, like most of the rest of the cast is dubbed; on this occasion by Corey T. Stewart). The group also includes Goth lite Ashley (Arianna Monguzzi, voiced by Taylor Skeens) who's a bit psychic on top of all the other indicators of the outsider; she wears black lipstick, draws, has a bad tattoo and is on medication. Oh and "I'm bisexual so it hasn't been easy", she admits.

Discoveries are made of an old book and, after a good deal of wandering round, the site where the witch/demon was staked and torched. Jodie (Claudia Perrotta) one of the discoverers, cuts her hand, which has the effect of awakening the demon whose murderous impulses come to the fore once again, threatening the lives of the whole group.

Some really bad dubbing makes The Unkind (and what is that title all about?) rather stilted, hampered by a sluggish script and lacklustre performances. As well as ripping off scenes from various movies, including Ju-On:The Grudge, Ghost Story and The Woman in Black, Rossetti chucks in laughing ghostly children, a toybox, old photos found in cupboards, radios that turn on by themselves, limbless window dummies, a menacing woman in black (told you) without any sense of logic. The Unkind is truly excruciating; if you don't believe me, you can watch it here. 

Something Weird, Something Strange (UK 2021: Dir Geoff Woodbridge) Woodbridge, who attracted some interest with his 2018 drama Some Girls Wander, returns with a movie that on the surface is only borderline BFF. Comprising a number of monologues, written by Woodbridge and performed by a young cast, it's the themes of the stories that have secured its inclusion.

The direct to camera pieces range in quality (and delivery). A couple of the sci fi sections don't really work (particularly when the narrator is doing so from their bedroom) and several of the participants are overly actorly in their delivery.

Where Something Weird, Something Strange works best is a combination of intimate content and subdued performance. Standout contributions include: Christopher Sherwood narrating 'A Closed Door', a very strange story about hypnotic, possibly time travelling footage, once glimpsed never forgotten (with a slight nod to Videodrome); 'Waiting for the Girl' with Jonathan Brandt, in which an absinthe soaked aesthete reflects on the allure of a lost, possibly non existent woman (the green eyed girl - or is it just the drink talking?); and possibly best of all, the affecting 'The Guest', with Ting Fung telling a very personal ghost story.

There are other tales of sea monsters, cannibalism, serial killers, rituals and more ghosts, and like most anthology movies it doesn't all work, but it is surprisingly captivating. I could have done with fewer, longer stories, but that was Woodbridge's choice. you can check the film out here.

Monsters of War aka War of the Monsters (UK 2021: Dir Jack Peter Mundy) Another Mundy film, written by Scottt Jeffrey, and the usual bunch of cast members have been assembled (Chelsea Grimwood, Chrissie Wunna, Kate Sandison, Sofia Lacey, Aimee Marie Higham, Antonia Johnstone and Stephen Staley), together with a by now overfamiliar plot.

A massive earth movement, ostensibly an earthquake, turns out to be an eruption from underground which disgorges a load of previously thought extinct dinosaurs onto the land; the UK is on standby and May (Wunna) grabs her kids (Wunna's own - see my review of Dinosaur Hotel for more on that, a film which could have been shot back to back with this one) and heads for granny's place; she's diverted by a trio of monsters who force the family into a cave along with two potholers caught up in the chaos, who swiftly get theirs.

May and kids escape the cave and wind up at Jeffrey's/Munday's favourite youth hostel (an oft used location which at least is called a hostel in this one) run by Lyn (Sandison) and her hothead son Mark; there's a bunch of other survivors also holed up including Brenda, a doomy nun (Johnstone), a game goth (Lacey) and a snivelling wreck (Higham): and they're soon joined by a pair of soldiers, Mel and Ryan (Grimwood - who always gets to do at least one scene where she emotionally falls apart - and Staley). Then, as tends to be the way with these things, things slow way down for some domestic intrigue, health related drama and a missing child. Wunna pulls a series of exasperated long faces and says things like "it's ok to show people how you really feel", there's some more crying, and then the CGI dinosaurs turn up for the last reel, which sets itself up for a sequel which to date hasn't materialised.

As usual with this school of filmmaking, the 'action' scenes are far more interesting than the soapy dramatics. Wunna's kids get way too much to do in the film (and the little moppets are also called upon to have a go at American accents) and the whole thing feels pretty lazy. Obviously this, and the other 'Dinosaur' movies produced and directed by Mundy, Jeffrey et al are attempting to emulate the cheap and cheerful SyFy offerings and pick up a few quid via streaming and supermarket sales. In fifty years time these may attain the same status as Roger Corman's 1950s sci fi quickies, but I'm unlikely to be alive to find out.

You can watch Monsters of War here (well you could when I published this).

Little Monster (UK 2018/2021: Dir James Plumb) It's a bit of a cheat listing this film as a 2021 movie; Little Monster was filmed in 2017 and it had its premiere screening in 2018. A collector’s edition DVD was released in early 2019 and it was streamed on Amazon Prime later the same year. The film was uploaded on YouTube in 2021. which is where I come in.

In suburban Wales, distracted dad Gareth (Martyn Stallard) is too busy looking at his phone to notice a dishevelled man approaching the playground where his daughter Ana (Isobelle Plumb, the director's daughter) is having a good time. While the other parents move their kids out of the way, Ana is bitten by the interloper. In return Gareth kills the stranger. But later it's discovered that the attacker had died some time previously; Gareth is exonerated of any charge of murder, and Ana is discharged from hospital, much to the relief of Gareth and his wife Jen (Stacey Daly).

But back home things don't go so well. Ana is clearly still unwell, and the parents' attempts to elicit help from a resource strapped hospital come to nothing. Faced with the awful prospect of caring for their increasingly sick child, Gareth and Jen discover that Ana's infection means she can only survive by drinking blood; and after a while, with their own plasma donations making them both physically weak, they realise that the only option is to source fresh supplies from the Welsh streets.

Little Monster taps into elements of the suburban tensions of the films of Andrew Parkinson and also early Dominic Brunt, while the later scenes evoke the searches of the alien female in Jonathan Glazer's 2013 movie Under the Skin. "Killing him...it was easy" says a distraught Gareth, recalling how he despatched Ana's attacker; an insight that will explain his later actions. Later Jen will say, of her daughter who is now no longer her daughter, "I miss her": Little Monster revolves around the levels to which parents will rise/fall to protect their children, and the dangers of those parents taking opposing views of what is best. Sure the events of Little Monster take place with no seeming knowledge of the popular culture of the zombie, but that's made more believable by the world into which Ana's parents slip, faced with the impossible task of caring for a child for whom their assistance is never enough. Excellent work, and at times very affecting.

You can watch Little Monster here. 

Tom and His Zombie Wife (UK 2020: Dir Kevin Short) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM

Kevin Short is a rather unsung British maverick. A regular on the south coast arts and festival scene, his first claim to fame, way back in 1978, was as the front person in the parody punk band 'Kevin Short and the Privates'. The group were signed to EMI, and while their only single 'Punk Strut' didn't trouble the charts, Short's continuing life and times on the music scene, together with other ageing punk mates, informed his second feature, Punk Strut: The Movie (a bit of a contrast to his debut, 2016's Speed Love, about dating for the over 50s, starring Elaine Paige). He even put the band back together 30 years later to record an album, songs from which pepper all his subsequent features. 

His third feature, A Reel Life from 2018, was a dark and surreal comedy drama about a screenwriter who cannot distinguish fact from fiction, reality from unreality, who finds his life slowly becoming a film; it was shot on the mean streets of Bognor, West Sussex.

But we're here for Tom and His Zombie Wife, a kind of zombie tragicomedy subtitled 'A Love to Kill For'. Orignally shot in 2020, it did the rounds of the festivals in 2021, with some success, and as a result is now being marketed by Bayview Entertainment for release in the UK later this year.

At first glance it's maybe difficult to see what Bayview found to get excited about. Shot in black and white (there are nods to George Romero's zombie movies throughout), we meet Tom (Short) who, following an unspecified apolocalyptic event, has taken shelter in an abandoned schoolhouse with his unnamed wife (Claire Lewis). Outside the dead walk; sadly his wife was bitten by her zombified son (Jamie Lemetti) and as a result, Tom has imprisoned her in a separate room to avoid infection but to keep her near him.

It's clearly an impossible life: while Tom snacks on a seemingly endless supply of tins of cold beans (with the inevitable gaseous results) he is forced to source bodies for his wife to chow down on, hacking them up in the kitchen so he can feed her (praise here for some very disturbing limbs supplied by award winning uk company Millennium FX Ltd). All the while Tom finds it hard to believe that his wife, although still in bodily form, is no longer with him in spirit - an Alzheimer's analogy possibly - and struggles to encourage her to remember her pre zombie life.

But despite his attempts to humanise her - again a nod to the 'Bub' character in 1985's Day of the Dead - Tom realises that he still needs to procure bodies for food. And it's on one of his sorties that he runs into his zombie son.

Tom and His Zombie Wife has a bit of a 'cake-and-eat-it' thing going on. Early scenes in the movie are almost too sad to watch, a husband and wife duo who were once close but now emotionally and physically separated; in one scene Tom reviews footage of the pair filmed on video while she was still in pre zombie mode, discussing their shared anguish that Tom had to shoot their son to save his wife (neither worked), while his turned wife watches the footage, oblivious, from her makeshift cage. But then, and because this is Kevin Short, he decides to throw in some light hearted calypso based songs and even a couple of zombie dances, recalling the final scenes of Tim Burton's 1988 movie Beetlejuice. It's all rather bizarre, but I applaud Short for attempting to do something idiosyncratic that doesn't play by the rules; and for pulling an almost upbeat ending out of the hat.

All My Friends Hate Me (UK 2021: Dir Andrew Gaynord) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2022

Gaynord's TV based career (he directed the most recent season of the excellent Stath Lets Flats) has been a good grounding for his feature debut; it's a tragi-comedy - barely a 'fantastic' film at all in truth - that deals in the comedy of cringe, which is more about the characters than what's going on.

Do goody Pete (Tom Stourton), who has been working with refugees, receives an invitation to spend his birthday with some of his old Uni mates; the venue is friend George's (Joshua McGuire) dad's pile, and they'll be joined by uber posh Archie (Graham Dickson), George's girlfriend Fig (Georgina Campbell) and Claire (Antonia Clarke) with whom Pete had a relationship. Pete has some concerns about the weekend; he feels that he's grown up and is worried that his old muckers haven't. 

When he arrives, with the promise of his girlfriend Sonia (Charly Clive) joning them the day after, he finds the house empty. Unbeknownst to Pete, the group arrive later having been waiting for him in the pub; and with them is a stranger, the awful Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns), whose constant needling of Pete recalls Shaun Pye's persistent winding up of Ricky Gervais in Extras (2005). From this point on there's a ratcheting up of unease as the group fails to gel, egged on by the horrible Harry, who everyone else but Pete seems to like. But Harry seems vaguely familiar to Pete, and whatever the latter says to his friends, the weekend becomes more and more awful.

As I've mentioned, with the exception of the opening scenes - Pete's journey to the manor house is punctuated by some potentially folk horror-esque encounters - All My Friends Hate Me is far more an exercise in unease than outright horror, even at its revelatory climax. Gaynord's interest is entirely in the way that a group of unlikeable people become more so the longer you spend with them. Harry is smart as a whip, but very much of country stock; he provides an interesting conduit between the actual poshness of Pete's friends and Pete's own reformed anti classness (which quickly dissolves when he shouts "pikey!" at a key point).

Sadly the narrative strands of the movie aren't that strong; the audience waits for a big payoff, then gets a couple of explanations of past behaviour which don't really justify the tension experienced. But for the most part it's a great ensemble piece, with at least a couple of moments requiring the curling of toes and a sharp intake of breath. Well set up but ulitmately unfulfilling in delivery, but worth seeing for Demri-Burns's subtly nasty Harry.

Dashcam (UK 2022: Dir Rob Savage) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2022

I'm assuming that, by swiftly relocating the action of his new movie from the USA to England, this isn't a coincidence but rather Rob Savage cheekily responding to those who wondered how the director might fare on the other side of the pond, courtesy of his lucrative three picture deal with US company Blumhouse.

Playing herself (albeit a more amped up version), Annie Hardy is a potty mouthed social media presence who runs a show called 'Bandcar', in which she cruises America's highways and byways in her vehicle while freestyling her decidedly unliberal views, and with her fans providing constant on screen responses. But with lockdown depriving her of much of the street based inspiration she needs for her rhymes, Hardy decides to relocate to the UK and stay with her ex show mate Stretch, presumably hoping that this country's attitudes to dealing with the pandemic may chime with her own mask swerving antivax views.

However it's not long before Stretch and his unforgiving girlfriend Gemma (Jemma Moore from Host) find Annie a little too much for them and ask her to leave. Our social media star decides to boost Stretch's car and resume operations, but before long the movie's narrative turning point arrives: entering a seemingly empty diner, she encounters an employee who asks, and then heavily bribes Annie to give a lift to Angela, an older woman who is apparently unwell. Pocketing a wad of notes for her trouble, Annie soon finds that Angela is both incontinent and, well, demonic. And so begins a long night of our obnoxious anti heroine protecting herself while the world turns to shit.

Watching Dashcam one longs for the more sober camerawork of his last movie. This is a full on first person shot film, stylistically in keeping with JJ Abrams' 2008 flick Cloverfield (but without the monster, well without such a big monster) and the glitch aesthetics of the 'V/H/S' movies, with the big set pieces always just out of shot. As with all such films, there's the constant question about why people are continuing to film in the face of mortal danger (answer: they have to or we don't get a movie); in Dashcam mortal danger seems to crop up almost every five minutes courtesy of yet another crashed car or blurred attacking entity.

Savage's choice of a lead is an interesting one. In real life Hardy, who in the movie is a MAGA hat wearing Libtard caller outer, is the in your face guitarist and singer in the two piece band 'Giant Drag', whose gobby stage presence isn't a million miles away from the motor mouther social media character who swears and staggers her way through Dashcam. Hardy is difficult to take seriously and a good indicator of how Savage would like audiences to view his movie (let us not forget that the genesis of Host was an online prank perpetrated by the director). It's devoid of plot and character development, but gets by on shaggy dog violent and gross out set pieces and a constant sense of rather inarticulate forward motion. It's not a movie one would rush to see more than once (even at 68 minutes plus some spoofy credits) and it's hardly breaking new ground. But Savage remains a director to watch.

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #11: Reviews of Alien: Battlefield Earth (UK 2021), The Midwife (UK 2021), The Seed (UK 2021), The Mutation (UK 2021), The Haunting of Hythe House (UK 2021) and The Devil Came Home (UK 2021)

Alien: Battlefield Earth (UK 2021: Dir Andrew Jones) Prolific Welsh filmmaker Andrew Jones has, in his last few movies, broken away from the mould of his previous films, home grown supernatural horror dramas which have been well made but rather boring. But nothing prepared me for this: micro budget director goes seriously epic with his first big concept sci fi flick. It's also his Covid movie.

When two crew members from a distant planet crash land on earth, the US army capture them fearing they're the spearhead of an alien invasion. The aliens see this as a declaration of war and mount an attack on our world's cities, causing widespread destruction and, with their massive saucers hovering over key capital cities, force a political stand off. 

Being 'Jones the filmmaker' (hopefully that'll catch on) of course all this happens in the first ten minutes of the movie, leaving him free to do what he does best in his movies; have people chat. So as the aliens pontificate about what to do next, and the President of the USA seeks answers, the people of the world, well, sit about really, rather unperturbed by the chaos surrounding them.

Stirring it all up is internet conspiracy freak Saha (Peter Cosgrove) whose metaphysical ruminations set up the more chin strokey elements of the film. The aliens, a combination of people in suits and CGI, go by the names of Magon, Gweldor and Hagor; they're a range of shapes and sizes, and their slowed down voices can't disguise that one of our ETs has a Welsh accent. 

Elsewhere the human drama is largely rendered via some Zoom calls, the chat centring on the restictions placed on the people by the Government, which is a thin bit of narrative allowing the characters to talk about confinement and being cheesed off about being locked down. I suspect that Jones was having his Neill Blomkamp moment (the South African director's District 9 was clearly an influence) while working around, and incorporating the Pandemic.

I appreciate that this is a conscious step up for Jones, but while there'a lot more action here than we're used to seeing from him, and some admittedly creative use of stock footage, elsewhere he's still plagued by pacing (and script) issues, with talking heads carrying most of the narrative weight. But Alien: Battlefield Earth looks very good, I'll give him that (well done to funders 4 Digitalmedia!) even though the visuals sometimes part company with the logic of the thing (there's a scene set in Egypt that I'd love someone to explain to me), and you can't help like an earth huggy message, no matter how confusingly delivered. Nuts.

The Midwife (UK 2021: Dir Ryan Gage, Marta Baidek) Lissie (Lara Goodison) and Charlie (Jeremy Joyce) are living in a house way too big for them. It's a family house, but luckily Lissie is  pregnant. She's also incredibly superstitious and fanciful, a combination just made for an indie fright flick; it's not helped when Charlie, who may or may not be fibbing, tells her that the site of the house has a dark past. Money is tight and they're dependent for income on their new lodger, Kara (Ellie Morris), who's a bit of a nouveau hippie herself. Wendy (Adeline Waby) the assertive midwife arrives, unexpectedly, and takes over, but her efforts are made redundant when Lissie loses the baby, who they'd named Michael. 

Lost in grief,  Lissie becomes afraid and increasingly manic, convinced that there are shadowy things in the house, while Charlie and Kara seem to become close. Resisting Charlie's requests for Lissie to commit herself to hospital, the tension between them thaws somewhat when Lissie tells him she's pregnant. But Lissie is far from well, and the re-emergence of the creepy Wendy, ready to look after the new arrival, and the continued presence of the fruity loops Kara, suggest that Lissie's problems have only just begun.

The title's all you need to know about this one; it, and the film itself, is a rather classy throwback to psychos-in-the-house movies of the 1990s; you know, the ones with the third reel twist. This is a four character movie where no-one can be trusted, with an ending that left this reviewer scratching his head. It's crisply filmed, well (and occasionally, justifiably, over) acted with an impressive score by Andrew Leung, and until the last ten minutes or so has a firm grip on its rug pulling narrative. At one point Charlie, Lissie and Kara are sitting down watching Gaslight, which is about right. Fun, though.

The Seed (UK 2021: Dir Sam Walker) In a recent interview Sam Walker said that with The Seed he wanted to make a "popcorn creature feature...and hide something in it". The 'something' in this case is the supposed vacuity of social media, and the "dark, nefarious algorithms" which are part of it. 

Three young women head off for a house in the Mojave desert, the perfect location to watch a promised 'once in a lifetime' meteor storm. The house is owned by the father of one of the girls, Heather (Sophie Vavasseur), the kind of spiritual soul who greets you with a 'namaste'. Deidre (Lucy Martin) is a social media star and their friend Charlotte is both technophobic (she still has a flip top phone) and social media unfriendly ("I don't want 'likes' - it's really invasive", she says). I'm not really sure why she's with them, but it makes for some interesting dynamics.

During the aformentioned storm something falls into the swimming pool. Initially thinking it's frozen, er, waste from a passing plane, they are surprised when the blob comes to life. The girls are, respectively repulsed with and fascinated by it, until the creature starts exerting its influence on them, first mentally and then physically; with very squishy results.

The Seed's last 15 minutes, a gross out fest full of lots of great practical effects, would have made a great short film. As it is the movie takes an incredibly long time to get to the action, and once you've familiarised yourself with the characters it's a case of sitting around waiting for someting to happen. The filmmakers do a pretty good job of getting Malta (and some stock footage) to stand in for the USA, and the three leads mainly pull off convincing American accents and do good 'going bonkers' (Ms Vavasseur even has to eat raw eggs, shells 'n' all, as shorthand for alien possession). But this is a film that wears its influences pretty openly - I counted ET, Eraserhead, Earth Girls are Easy, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Possession in there - but doesn't really have enough going for it to sustain interest over the movie's 90 minutes.

The Mutation (UK 2021: Dir Scott Jeffrey) At one point Jeffrey's gazillionth creature feature for 2021 was to be called 'Rats Reborn' which gives you a better idea of the beast in this movie. And considering the director's amazingly prolific output, you might think that the title change was intended to manage audience expectations; but really this is not a bad movie, showing the continuing improvement of a genre director whose cinematic offerings are growing increasingly watchable.

So in the film's now obligatory prologue a benign scientist, Peter Rowe (Nick Danan), is working on secret experiments while a large beast - actually a giant rat - is chained up; it later escapes. "Remember, you're home" the scientist tells it a little bafflingly, before the beast rips him to pieces (just one of this movie's effective pieces of effects work).

Meanwhile two timing Jenna (Jodie Bennet) is about to leave her zoologist husband Allen (Ricardo Freitas), but before he can respond to this news the local police, headed by Sergeant Chambers (Megan Purvis, spared the ignominy of attempting an American accent, like most of the rest of the cast, and given an Irish brogue instead) asks for his opinion on the type of animal who has ground up Peter, Allen's neighbour. Peter's wife Dr Linda Rowe (Amanda-Jade Tyler) knows what her husband was up to - using chemicals on rats - but wants to avenge her husband's killer anyway, forming an alliance with him and Allen's zoologist assistant, Julie (Abi Casson Thompson). So while the beast is on the loose posing a clear and present danger, the police want to sit on the story of a giant escaped rat so as not to scare the public and create panic; their inaction leads to the rat embarking on an orgy of destruction.

Jeffrey has decided to come off the fence with The Mutation and set his events in a version of the US, judging by the range of accents (and the odd US police car) on display, although the interiors are still clearly UK based, and a TV news strap reads 'Mutated Rat seen in English countryside'. Doh! But having nearly every cast member (all Jeffrey regulars and reliable at this sort of thing) pretend to be American is actually less distracting than his usual character blend of different nationalities. The good news is that Jeffrey seems to be getting better and better at this sort of thing. The Mutation has pace, a good plot, and is clearly in love with the monster movie genre; some of the set pieces, including a standout scene where the giant rat goes beserk in a packed restaurant, are some of the best I've seen from the director. My only concern is that one of my favourite actors from the Jeffrey/Matthews/Warren stable - Sarah Cohen - only has a cameo role in this. But I love the coterie of regulars who populate these movies and work incredibly hard for probably not much at all. Pretty good. 

The Haunting of Hythe House (UK 2021: Dir Steven M. Smith) Harsh critic Danny 'The Destroyer' (Luke Stevenson) takes enormous pleasure ripping into the independent horror movies he reviews. When he wishes in one particular savaging that the producers of a film should take their own life to save everyone's time, his words come back to bite him via an anonymous hacker, 'Control' who breaks into Danny's system and blackmails him, via threat of exposure, to spend 24 hours in an empty house while being filmed. The offer of £1 million is the sweetener that gets Danny out of his grotty flat and into the new location (the abandoned and boarded up Poltimore House in Devon, a regular Smith location).

Once inside, a series of digital clocks in various rooms begin to count backwards to mark his remaining time in the house, and the hacker voice welcomes him to "24 hours in hell". He's told about the mansion's history and the buried treasure hidden somewhere in the property; it's the rich pickings pilfered by the evil butler of one of the house's owners who, with his wife, allegedly haunts the house to protect it. So Danny has less than 24 hours to find the treasure and make his escape.

'Control' wants the movie it's making to be "a cult classic and not another micro budget piece of shit". With lines like that, and a central character who's obviously an amalgam of people like me who are public in my dislike of Smith's films, you better be pretty sure you're going to serve up something that exceeds expectations. Now I like trash, I love low budget films, and I'm prepared to forgive some indifferent acting if the overall project is worthwhile. But this is unintelligent, juvenile drivel, making not a lick of sense, without panache, style or wit. The people in front of and behind the camera have all made better films than this; hell Smith has made better films than this. But The Haunting of Hythe House is listless, dreary, poorly paced and just awful. Yes, even more awful than his 2019 movie Scare Attraction; and I thought that would be impossible.

The Devil Came Home (UK 2021: Dir George McCluskey) McCluskey's gloomy but competent debut feature takes us into the lives of the Baxters, a West Midlands family where all is not well. Dad Tim (Greg Hobbs) suffers from PTSD, the result of 22 years in the army and a difficult time in Bosnia. Tim's increasingly disturbing nightmares - including visions of a goggle masked wearing figure - are affecting the rest of the family, namely Tim's long suffering wife Elaine (Diane Ellis) and step-daughter Mindy (Jade Callender), who had no say in the addition of Tim to the family unit.

Tim's condition deteriorates to the point where therapists are of little use, a straitjacket is purchased to afford protection to his family, and the stricken father begins speaking in a Romanian accent. A priest is engaged, followed by a psychic, and the reality behind Tim's possession is gradually and terrifyingly revealed.

The Devil Came Home's drabness of backdrop - its action largely confined to an anonymous semi detached house - is matched by rather prosaic performances from the cast, which is at odds with the increasingly surprising reveals of the plot. Ultimately this makes the movie both tense and uninvolving; a strange mix of dull and strange, with only Hobbs's committed performance leavening the proceedings. The production team's collective background contains a lot of TV experience, so it's perhaps not surprising that this feels like a rather small screen affair; it's a bold concept, but ulitimately didn't pay off for me.

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