Solis (UK 2018: Dir Carl Strathie)

Despite its Hollywood sheen and outer space setting, the sci-fi feature Solis was entirely filmed in a studio in Yorkshire, which is as much an advert for UK technology in movie production (Goldfinch Studios in Selby, if you're interested) as it is for Carl Strathie, who has achieved quite something for his first feature, in the 'quart out of a pint pot' low budget filmmaking stakes.

Taking its lead from the David Bowie song 'Space Oddity' by way of Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, Solis stars lantern-jawed Steven Ogg as asteroid miner Troy Holloway, whose capsule gets caught up in an storm while on his way back from a job. Thrown off course and destined to collide with the sun, Holloway's only hope of survival is to effect repairs to his craft, receiving instructions from the disembodied voice of Commander Roberts (Alice Lowe), also trapped on board another ship, while his oxygen levels deplete at an alarming rate.

Beginning with a quote from a Longfellow poem "Look not mournfully into the past, it comes back not again..." Solis sets itself up as a pensive drama - themes of loss and remorse raise their heads from time to time - but for the most part this feels like a Boy's Own version of the Twelve Labours of Hercules (but on a spaceship), with Holloway facing a number of tests of endurance and tasks of increasing hardship.

David Stone Hamilton's rousing and heroic musical score does a very good job of convincing the audience they're seeing something more important than is actually taking place, but Solis is, when all's said and done, a single hander movie of one bloke in a lot of trouble and having to figure his way out of it, even if it's given the added frisson of having its ninety odd minutes portrayed in real time (Holloway's impending impact is calculated at roughly an hour and half after we first meet him, strapped in his capsule with a dead crew mate by his side).

Lowe, who was fantastic in both Sightseers and Prevenge, is sadly wasted as the voice of Commander Roberts; her rather flat Midlands accent isn't terribly dramatic, and although she's a great actress she's not really given a chance here. Steven Ogg, although no newcomer to the screen, plays lead for the first time and does well with what he has - was it me or was he channeling his inner George Clooney for this role? Sadly most of his acting is restricted to facial contortions and his obvious physicality, as evidenced via roles in TV's Westworld and The Walking Dead, isn't that much in evidence.

For a low budget film Solis looks great. The space capsule is pleasantly and authentically dowdy, and the shots of the silent out of control craft speeding through space to almost certain destruction are effectively rendered. But despite the high production values and the superb photography of Polish cinematographer Bart Sienkiewicz, Solis comes off as a slightly more upmarket version of the 2015 single astronaut in peril UK movie Capsule, which was similarly problematic in conveying drama and peril with such a limited setup.

Supermarket Sweep #3 - Reviews of The Sleeping Room (UK 2014), The Cured (Ireland 2017), There Are Monsters (Canada 2013), Angelica (USA 2015), The Heretics (Canada 2017) and The Night Eats the World (France 2018)

Here we go again, with another round up of cheap but hopefully not particularly cheerful DVDs culled (well purchased) from supermarkets across the length of the UK.

The Sleeping Room (UK 2014: Dir John Shackleton) This is Shackleton's only feature - he's a man more used to doing shorts and TV items. And there's something of both in this elegant but slightly overambitious supernatural drama that does quite a lot in its hour and a bit running time - arguably too much.

Blue (Leila Mimmack) a young prostitute from a broken home, living in Brighton, is sent to a new client, Bill, a young man from London in charge of doing up a rundown old house. Bill and Blue form an attachment, and between them uncover a secret room in the house, which was used back in the early days of cinema as a makeshift studio, in which an evil director, Fiskin, made snuff movies. But Fiskin's spirit is restless and he's looking to come back from the dead, with designs on Blue, who may have a stronger connection to him than she first thinks.

The Sleeping Room is big on atmosphere but low on budget and plot cohesion. Someone must have been doing their homework to know that Brighton was a kind of mini Hollywood in the early days of film and the sense of place is well established. But unfortunately it's all a bit silly and while the performances are earnest they're also rather dull. It's the kind of film that's almost embarrassed to have horror elements, so it ups the characterisation by way of apology. On the plus side it is very English in tone and Shackleton's heart is in the right place.

The Cured (Ireland 2017: Dir David Freyne) Also known - slightly obscurely - as The Third Wave (although the director made a short film called The First Wave back in 2014 on the same subject, which might explain it), this Irish made and funded film, shot on the mean streets of Dublin, is a rather occluded 'infected' movie, using an animal based epidemic as a backdrop for a serious drama about outsiders, acceptance, military control and public opinion.

The title refers to a cure that has been found for an infection which has been contained in the mainland but which decimated Ireland. Following the development of the antidote 75% of the infected have recovered after its administration, but 25% remain resistant and have been incarcerated. The 75% are rehabilitated back into society but not without the hatred and mistrust of the uninfected population, who cannot forgive them for the crimes they committed while in their infected state. The Cured follows the story of two men, Senan and Conor, as they attempt rehabilitation.

It's pretty obvious that the 'Maze' virus at the centre of this film (perhaps named after the Irish prison that housed paramilitary prisoners during The Troubles?) and the division between the formerly infected and the remainder of the country are metaphors for the Catholic/Protestant divide, although it could equally apply to the plight of immigrants anywhere. There's very little infected action until the last fifteen minutes or so, so don't come to this one with beer and popcorn in hand. But do stay if you want to see a well acted drama where a quiet civil war of sorts still rages on the streets, and a country struggles to come to terms with its past and navigate its future. An assured film without any easy answers, there is some fine acting on display from Sam Keeley (Senan), Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (Conor) and Ellen Page, playing Abbie, Senan's sister-in-law, a woman who houses him in defiance of her local community. Strong stuff but a very good film.

There Are Monsters (Canada 2013: Dir Jay Dahl) Back in 2008 director Dahl directed a short film, There Are Monsters, of which this is the full length version. But unlike many short films stretched to a feature (his first), it's all the better for it. In fact it's a great and rather overlooked film, made more effective for its slender budget and downplayed performances.

Drawing on elements of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Crazies, we follow a group of film students who travel across country to interview staff of a college. As they make their journey they discover an absence of people, and those who they do encounter seem a bit 'off,' keeping their backs turned to the group or offering crazy grins (as in a particularly weird encounter with a store worker).Various possible reasons are offered for this, including a hadron-collider experiment and/or the release of a gas which results in odd behaviour among the infected.

To be honest the reason is less important that the effects of what we see, and There Are Monsters sets up a very chilling mood, including one or two extremely startling scenes which I wasn't expecting, plus a very odd 'what's in the lunchbox? moment. The small town filmed-entirely-on-location feel of the movie adds to the menace, and the gradual awareness of some of the townsfolk that all is not well is surprisingly effective; "It's like he was a photocopy of what he was," says one character. The shaky first person camera isn't always welcome, and the movie seems to drift in and out of a found footage style. This is worth seeing though, which is a bit of a rarity for movies discovered on supermarket shelves, and I'll been keenly looking out for Dahl's latest, Halloween Party, currently in post-production.

Angelica (USA 2015: Dir Mitchell Lichtenstein) Here's a US movie - with interiors shot in New York and exteriors in London, and a largely UK cast - which plays like an old fashioned period British piece, the sort that Hammer studios used to do very well in the 1970s.

Constance (Jenna Malone) is a shop girl who catches the eye of scientist Dr Joseph Barton (Ed Stoppard); their subsequent marriage is a union of the sexes and classes. But their happy life together is thwarted after the birth of their first child, a daughter they name Angelica, whose arrival medically incapacitates Constance to such a degree that doctors warn the pair off any future children and indeed conjugal activity. Barton buries himself in work - which involves vivisection - and increased sexual frustration, whereas Constance externalises her own desires in the form of a ghostly male figure which she is convinced haunts the house. These thoughts are encouraged by her association with the medium Anne Montague (Janet McTeer), convincing Constance that the shadowy presence poses an increasing danger to both mother and daughter.

While Angelica's story exploits the 'hysterical woman' theme synonymous with the Victorians (are Constance's visions real or the product of post natal depression and denial of sex?), Mitchell Lichtenstein's belated return to the horror genre after his 2007 body horror movie Teeth - the film was actually made in 2014 but subsequently shelved - revisits his interest in stories of twisted feminism. There is an undercurrent of deranged eroticism throughout the movie which feels uniquely English - although the themes could equally find a home in a Henry James or Edith Wharton novel - and the visions of the 'phantom' are intriguingly rendered, comprising hundreds of the same viral creatures that the sick Constance has been shown under a microscope by her husband.

Many have criticised Angelica of being too slow and ponderous, but I liked it a lot for its attention to detail, credible acting, and rising dread.   

The Heretics (Canada 2017: Dir Chad Archibald) Gloria (Nina Kiri) and Joan (Jorja Cadence), who met at an abuse survivor support group, are lovers. Turns out that Gloria was the intended sacrificial offering by a group of cult members worshipping the demon Abaddon but who managed to escape their evil clutches.

After they part following a meeting, Gloria is abducted again by Thomas (Ry Barrett), a guy with scars on his face, which is strangely similar to some scarring on Joan's back. Gloria is chained up, and as the film progresses she undergoes a number of physical changes, including developing some welts on her shoulder blades. Could they be...wings?

Meanwhile Joan is understandably distraught at her gf's disappearance, but acts a little out of character when she guns down a local cop and Gloria's mother when they get in her way. Seems that Joan wants to get her hands on Gloria, but not for the reasons we may be thinking of.

The Heretics is one of those films where every ten minutes or so there's an obvious dream sequence which ends up with the central character waking up in bed with a gasp, requiring viewers to jump. Yes this happens a lot. It's a perfectly serviceable movie and Kiri as Gloria is game for a bit of gloop, but beyond the central three characters it's all a bit thin, if moodily photographed. A distinctly middle of the road horror film.

The Night Eats the World (France 2018: Dir Dominique Rocher) Poor Sam (Anders Danielsen Lie). He's gone to a party at his ex's flat to pick up the last of his things, when he falls asleep. Waking up he finds that the party guests - and most of Paris it seems - have been wiped out, and the only moving people on the streets are flesh hungry zombies keen to feast on whatever they can get.

Largely a prisoner within the apartment block he's been visiting, Sam carves out a new life that involves a lot of wandering around and some casual drumming, until Sarah (Golshifteh Farahani) turns up. Unfortunately Sam shoots her, thinking the girl is 'one of them,' but through some careful nursing he encourages her back to health to provide much needed companionship in his lonely life.

The Night Eats the World drags slower than the ruined leg of one of the city's broken zombies. For the most part this is a 'Robinson Crusoe' setup of one person eking out an existence, which of course brings to mind the source material, the 1954 novel 'I Am Legend' by Richard Matheson, and its many cinematic adaptations, of which Boris Sagal's 1971 movie The Omega Man is the most obvious comparator. Part of the problem here is that the zombie movie is so ubiquitous in modern culture, it's increasingly a massive leap of faith to believe that anyone in a 21st century movie could possibly not know about zombies, or, more importantly, how to kill them. Rocher's film effectively communicates the ennui of existence in a world where man is not alone but human communication is impossible - witness the ongoing 'gag' of a zombie, trapped in the apartment's lift system, who Sam periodically talks 'at' but not 'to'  - and the relief all round when Sarah turns up. I understand that the movie is a meditation on existence, I just don't need to watch it.

Both actors have done better than this material allows - in particular Farahani, who excelled in About Elly (2009) and Patterson (2016). This may have something to do with the fact that Rocher filmed in both French and English requiring the actors to speak in non native tongues (for the version I saw anyway). I'm afraid I just didn't buy this supposed new take on a familiar theme (well I did but you know what I mean) -  The Night Eats the World is for zombie completists only, although I am aware that it has its fans.

Shoplifters (Japan 2018: Dir Hirokazu Koreeda)

Hirokazu Koreeda's movies have come a long way from the relative innocence of his 2011 film I Wish, exploring progressively darker themes but without sacrificing the essential humanity present in all his works.

But on the surface his latest film appears to signify a return to those more innocent times; the poster for Shoplifters features the family from the film happily smiling at the camera. But this is deceptive; they're not a 'family' in the biological sense, and the only smiles they crack in the film are generally rueful ones. If Koreeda is indeed an Ozu for our times, with this movie it's an Ozu family refracted through a very 21st century sensibility.

We're introduced to Osamu Shibatu (Lily Franky) who as the film opens is encouraging his 'son' Shota (Jyo Kairi) to do a spot of shoplifting to provide for the family's grocery needs. Shota is, we learn, not his natural offspring but a boy that has been acquired by Osamu and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) and deployed for shoplifting rather than getting an education ("only kids who can't study at home go to school," he's told). Osamu and Nobuyo are living, in pretty overcrowded conditions, with their grandmother Hatsue (Kirin Kiki, excellent). Except she isn't really their grandmother either, although it doesn't stop them living off her pension even after her death. Add to this odd but phenomenally likeable bunch of waifs and strays sex worker Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) and the family is complete.

One of Shoplifters' themes, echoed by Osamu late in the film, is whether it is blood or love that holds a family together more effectively. The 'Shibatus,' as the family refer to themselves, live cheek by jowl, and refrain from judging each other's contribution to the rather dodgy way that they get by in life. Like a lot of petty criminals, they have developed their own moral code to justify their existence, particularly when Osamu loses his construction job following an accident at work and discovers that he's not entitled to compensation. But their conscience is pricked by seeing a young girl near their home, left outside, abandoned and hungry, while her parents bicker within. Witnessing this cruel treatment of a child, and perhaps with one eye on expanding their criminal-lite fraternity, they abduct her, installing the girl - Yuri - within their already extended household; the discovery of burn marks on the girl's body further justifies their actions. But the removal of Yuri causes a chain of events and eventually exposes the family, who by the very nature of their lives have lived under the radar, to scrutiny, both by the authorities and the audience. Motives are reappraised, and tragedy cannot be far off.

Like all of Koreeda's films, the pleasure and pain of Shoplifters is in the details. The Shibatus are a family that it's initially hard to like, but gradual acquaintance with their patterns of existence and conversation gives way to acceptance of their wayward lifestyle. The scenes of Osamu - who builds homes in which he could never afford to live - desperately wanting Shota to call him dad are both funny and painful. By the time the net closes in on the family, you realise just how much you've invested in the family's need to keep themselves together and look after each other, even if on their own terms. It's a sad, funny movie, beautifully delivered with some deft playing by a fine cast. But it's also the most tragic of Koreeda's movies, a film delivered with a lot of conviction and more than a whiff of anger at the social and economic conditions that can cause a family to live like this.

Mandy (USA 2018: Dir Panos Kosmatos)

Panos Kosmatos's belated follow up to 2010's  Beyond the Black Rainbow is a self consciously 'out there' film so in love with its own otherness it forgets to be interesting. Mandy wants to be immersive and shocking, but it's so lacking in wit and wisdom that it becomes one long (very long) slog to the finish line. Yeah, I didn't like it.

Nicolas Cage is Red Miller, a lumberjack with a dark past living in a possibly mythic location called The Shadow Mountains, who seems finally to have found happiness in artist Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). The scars on Mandy's face also suggest she has a story to tell.

The pair spend nights in bed talking about the planets and the cosmos, but their idyllic state is severely compromised when cult leader and ex-singer Jeremiah Sand - boss of a Manson-like group called Children of the New Dawn - takes a shine to Red's girlfriend. Sand orders Mandy's capture by a Cenobite-like biker gang called the Black Skulls, and after Sand fails to seduce her by playing some of his music and stripping naked in front of her (triggering much mirth from Ms Riseborough) she is murdered. Red, racked with an almost psychotic remorse, vows revenge on Mandy's killers leading to an LSD fueled gory fight to the death.

I should have found Mandy fun. I should have found it a romp. I didn't. It feels like a film that's just trying too hard to be esoteric, and while some scenes had a certain appeal - a chainsaw fight, the 'cheddar goblin' fake advert, the hallucinatory face swapping scene between Jeremiah and Mandy - for the most part it's just too overloaded to be enjoyable, even down to Jóhann Jóhannsson’s unsubtle score.

On the plus side, Kosmatos's overwrought dialogue, design and content is at least perfect for Cage's hyper-kinetic performance. It's the same shtick he's deployed in a dozen other movies, but in Mandy it's just one more over the top thing in a film whose business is excess. A sequence where Miller, grieving the loss of his girlfriend while intermittently swigging vodka, dousing his wounds and primally screaming on the toilet, would in most other movies be worthy of note. Here it's just another scene. Andrea Riseborough seems rather wasted in the role of Mandy, although several closeups of her face, her huge eyes staring impassively but rather creepily, make it obvious why she was cast (it's also good to see her in a role where she isn't heavily disguised).

Yes it looks good - well good's probably the wrong word - it looks hellish; and you'll enjoy the colour palette if you like the colour red, in what I'm guessing is a nod to Argento.

But really, so bloody what? Maybe I need to see this again (unlikely), but its charms were totally lost on me, and I left the cinema rather annoyed at the vacuity I had just witnessed. 

I Think We're Alone Now (USA 2018: Dir Reed Morano)

Cinematographer Reed Morano's first directorial offering was the harrowing Meadowland back in 2015. Its sombre tones find some companionship in her latest film (on which she also offers services behind the camera), a post apocalyptic riff on 'Robinson Crusoe.'

Del (Peter Dinklage), who lives in the library where he used to work, before an unspecified event wiped out most of the human race, is methodical in his daily routine of cleaning out houses for spare (canned) food and equipment, marking the streets off with crosses as he completes his forays. Some lovely touches define his situation - watching a series of laptops that he's acquired which successively die as their power fades for example - and in keeping with his former job his life is devoted to the maintenance of order, like using chopsticks to eat food and drinking his wine out of a glass.

But one evening some fireworks let off in another part of the city alert him to the fact that he's not alone, and the search for his 'Man Friday' leads him to Grace (Elle Fanning) who he first meets passed out in a crashed car. His new found friend's rather hedonistic approach to life is in marked contrast to Del's own - he's happy to stay put, while she plans to see all of the country's landmarks - and his initial instinct is to reject her presence, which is too messy and interferes with his routines. When asked whether he feels isolated, the small in stature Des responds that he felt more lonely in a town full of citizens.

But his 'Man Frida' sees through his apparent difference and a relationship of sorts forms between them, with Grace picking up a dog - later released by Des after it chews some of his precious books - and helping him out on his clean up expeditions (in one moving moment happening upon Des's former home, which clearly evokes too many painful memories for him to countenance living there). "With every piece of trash we pick up there's one less case for chaos in the universe," he explains, warding off the threat of entropy, prompting Grace to respond "has anyone ever told you you're a weird guy?" Des's comeback is one of the film's best lines; "Yeah, but they're all dead now."

But a glimpsed vertical scar on Grace's neck, which she keeps covered from Des, alerts us to the fact that all isn't well, and the sudden arrival of a couple (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Paul Giamatti) who both know Grace and want her to return to the west with them - is a massive shock for Des who thought the pair were all alone in the world. It also triggers a crisis of conscience in him. Does Des follow or remain sequestered in his own existence?

Morano's film is, as you would expect, beautifully shot and exquisitely paced, and Des and Grace are well defined characters despite just a few brushstrokes of descriptive dialogue. The casting is excellent; Dinklage's permanently furrowed brow and solemn expression instantly denotes a depth of thought and melancholy, in contrast with the tall, willowy but equally unhappy Fanning, her girl/woman features perfect for the role.

The film lets itself down slightly with a denouement which is perhaps more The Stepford Wives than it should be, but for the most part this is a satisfying exercise in the pleasure and pain of isolation, and ultimately a plea for the right to be miserable. Really, really good.

Utøya July 22 aka Utøya 22 Juli (Norway 2018: Dir Erik Poppe)

Arguably the controversy over the release of Erik Poppe's Utøya July 22 has been compounded by UK director Paul Greengrass's 22 July (currently streaming on Netflix). Both films reconstruct the 2011 atrocity on the Norwegian island of Utøya, where 77 young people, camping as part of an event organised by the Labour Party's Workers Wing (the AUF), were gunned down by lone extremist right-winger Anders Breivik.

The arguments as to whether a filmmaker should attempt such a film are complex. Commercial movies are, by their very nature, just that; commercial - they are there to make money, irrespective of any higher purpose espoused by the director. On the other hand, film is peerless as an artform in its ability to convey mood, feeling, a sense of time and place, and also to provide different contexts in storytelling.

Poppe's version of the events was planned in close dialogue with several survivors of the atrocity, and sticks closely to the facts - it was even filmed near to where the murders took place, and on film the events have the same time duration as the actual incident - 72 minutes. Poppe's key decision was not to foreground Breivik, but to concentrate on the victims, the movie becoming an extended commemoration of their bravery. The director was concerned that in many written accounts of the events on Utøya too much emphasis had been placed on Breivik's motivations, mainly due to their seeming lucidity, reducing the human cost to an enumeration of lives lost. And it is this aim which is the key to Utøya July 22's success as a piece of film making.

The film opens, and maintains its focus throughout, on 18 year old Kaja (Andrea Berntzen), who like all of the characters in the movie, is fictitious. Kaja comes to represent the body of students in her determination and resilience (her age is not accidental - more of the Utøya victims were 18 than any other age) and we first meet her talking directly to the camera. "You don't understand," she says. Is Kaja talking to the audience? No, she's just hands free on her phone. When she joins the rest of the group, the talk is all about the recently detonated bomb in Oslo (set off by Breivik) - many of the young people are phoning relatives on the mainland - when they can get a signal - and there's a sense of shock among the group; of course we are fully aware of what's going to happen next.

That knowledge gives an off camera scream added frisson as the audience waits for the inevitable violence. But it's just Kaja's younger sister Emilie (Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne) messing about with some other kids. Back in their tent Kaja berates Emilie for her lack of sensitivity, clowning around when a bomb has gone off in the Capital. Emilie sulks and refuses to leave the tent while Kaja joins the others (and it is this separation that drives the story), who are philosophising about the political and social impact of the bombing. One student of colour worries that if responsibility is claimed by a Muslim group he will be victimised - but there's a general feeling that terrorism doesn't happen in Norway.

The build up of tension prior to the event becomes almost unbearable, and this could lead to an accusation that Poppe is playing with the tropes of the thriller here, particularly as we know that while the students are gently bickering among themselves Breivik is travelling to Utøya to begin his murderous rampage.

It's an interesting dilemma. How to make a sensitive film about actual events while at the same time deploying accepted genre devices? As the shooting starts Poppe continues to utilise them: when Kaja returns to the tent to find Emilie, she calls her sister's mobile only to discover that it has been left in the tent. And while Breivik is never fully seen for reasons earlier mentioned, his shadowy figure, glimpsed outside tents or at a distance as a dark, menacing form, brings to mind the killers of slasher movies. Even the choice to film Utøya July 22 with a single handheld camera in one take, with the sounds of screaming in the woods out of shot, brings to mind the found footage genre.

Ultimately any accusations of exploitation are counterbalanced by the all too human tragedy unfolding, and the sensitive way it's depicted. Initially when the shooting starts many of the students gather together but they are soon forced into isolation; and what Utøya July 22 heartbreakingly shows is that children have little survival instinct - they simply shut down. Even Kaja - whose spirited attempts to avoid Breivik and locate her sister provides a ray of hope for survival - tells other kids, trying to hide themselves in the cracks of a steep cliff face, that she's going to find someone who will help. Poppe keeps anything explicit out of sight - there is thankfully no lingering on the aftermath of the shootings - but one very difficult scene, where Kaja comforts a dying child by asking her what she wants to be when she grows up, and who responds with a plea for 'mummy' is almost unbearable; the children who have no future except to face their own mortality is the most frightening thing in a film which remains incredibly powerful long after the credits have rolled.

Utøya July 22 is released theatrically from 26 October 2018.

Ladyworld (USA 2018: Dir Amanda Kramer)

The cinema of freak out seems to be upon us. Last year Darren Aronofsky's mother! disguised its environmental subtext in a house party that gets seriously and murderously out of control, and earlier in 2018 directeur terrible Gaspar Noé portrayed a dance troupe collectively leaving their gourd in his typically over the top Climax.

Nothing stronger than cheap wine and birthday cake fuels the social breakdown in Amanda Kramer's debut feature Ladyworld, but the effects are equally anarchic and gruelling.

Ladyworld takes place within an apartment in the aftermath of an earthquake. A group of young girls, who are there to celebrate their friend Eden's birthday (the apartment belongs to Eden's parents who, like most adults in this movie, are nowhere to be seen), gradually emerge from various rooms to take stock of the chaos around them. The 'quake has apparently sealed them in, leaving the group trapped and with few resources to survive, apart from what's left of the party food and drink.

As supplies (and the charges from their mobiles) run out, the panicking girls form into two separate gangs, headed up respectively by waspish bullying Piper (Annalise Basso) and more level headed but equally ineffective Olivia (Ariela Barer); each is desperate to impose their will on the others - albeit in different ways - and exercise their right to occupy the apartment. As tensions escalate, the veneer of respectability falls away and the girls' more primal urges come to the surface.

Kramer's first film back in 2016, a short called Bark, was in some respects a dry run for the extraordinary Ladyworld, where an argument between two girls escalates into something a lot more physical. Kramer's first feature was shot in 12 days and, with its slender storyline and shifting moods, is best approached as an allegorical look at societal norms and the roles we expect young women to inhabit; albeit a very unsettling one.

In the Q&A accompanying the film's screening (at the London Film Festival) Kramer recognised that few movies depicted women - particularly young women - being ruthless and nasty, and that to some extent Ladyworld was a reaction to how girls are more often cinematically depicted as positive role models. This enables her to have some fun with our expectations of some of these conventions. For example the girls collectively use makeup literally as warpaint, at one point even eating lipstick, a scene which functions not only as a highlight of their animalistic states but also as a comment on commodification. But any playfulness quickly gives way to a more threatening and potentially violent atmosphere; a cupboard in the flat may house the body of a man who some of the girls maintain has been stalking them; or does it house Eden, who made a hasty exit when things started turning nasty? The audience gradually finds itself lost as to who, if any, of the cast they can sympathise with and relate to, building to the final scenes of feral abandon which become a cacophony of voices (courtesy of the cast and a riveting discordant soundtrack by Callie Ryan) and flailing limbs.

The most obvious reference point for the film is Lord of the Flies (early on in Ladyworld a crystal is used to maintain order, much as the conch is deployed in the earlier film) but I was also reminded of Jane Arden's 1972 movie The Other Side of the Underneath whose female cast undergo excruciating on screen primal scream therapy. What these influences have in common is strong ensemble playing, and it's Ladyworld's unwillingness to have a star at its acting centre that is a significant part of its appeal. I tend to write this a lot in my reviews, but Ladyworld isn't for everyone. Although scripted it feels very devised and conceptual in nature, and it takes a while to build to its tour-de-force ending. But it's bold, free (but also very constricting) and genuinely experimental, even if that approach is at the expense of narrative or detailed storytelling.