3.0 DVD Review: Unconscious Simon Fitzjohn August 21, 2015 DVDs & Rentals, Editor's Choice More a psychological ‘whodunnwhat’ than an out-and-out horror as such, Unconscious (aka Amnesiac) proves an interesting, if at times frustrating watch. A film that not only asks for, but virtually demands, an audience’s concentration, chances are the...
1.0 DVD Review: Sinister House Emily Stockham August 17, 2015 DVDs & Rentals I’ve just lost about an hour and a half of my life, time I will never retrieve. Okay, so that may sound like a dramatic opening for a review, but I guess I’m trying to highlight how annoyed I am with the film I just watched. Its funny how precious time...
4.0 DVD Review: Robot Overlords David Watson August 12, 2015 DVDs & Rentals, Editor's Choice It’s the near future, three years after a race of giant killer robots have invaded the Earth, subjugating humanity, declaring martial law, and confining the population to their homes under virtual house arrest where they are monitored night and day by...
4.0 DVD Review: Run All Night David Watson August 10, 2015 DVDs & Rentals “I’ve done terrible things in my life,” Liam Neeson’s haunted Irish Mobster mournfully intones in his latest collaboration with Jaume Collet-Serra (who directed him in Unknown and Non-Stop) Run All Night, “Things for which I can never be...
4.0 DVD Review: Cub Simon Fitzjohn August 8, 2015 DVDs & Rentals, Editor's Choice If you go down to the woods today, you’re going to get…well, a pretty impressive horror flick actually. Taking the familiar tropes of the summer camp slasher flick and giving them a very welcome overhaul, writer/director Jonas Govaerts has presented us...
4.0 DVD Review: The Town That Dreaded Sundown David Watson August 6, 2015 DVDs & Rentals, Editor's Choice Released just two years after Bob Clark’s Black Christmas and two years before John Carpenter’s Halloween, The Legend Of Boggy Creek director Charles B. Pierce’s 1976 proto-slasher movie The Town That Dreaded Sundown has been all but forgotten these...
3.5 DVD Review: Girl House Colin D Miller August 1, 2015 DVDs & Rentals By no means is it the best slasher I've ever seen and it has got it's fair share of problems
2.0 DVD Review: Killer Mermaids Emily Stockham July 29, 2015 DVDs & Rentals Tweaked from its original UK title Nymph, Killer Mermaids is a Serbian monster movie about a murderous fish-bottomed lady a la Ariel but without the red hair and Disney smile – her teeth are pointier. The film takes a mythological character with a pinch...
3.0 DVD Review: The Treatment Matthew Hammond July 22, 2015 DVDs & Rentals The death of innocence is perhaps the cruellest and most devastating crime of all, and as such depictions of such a heinous corruption are treated in cinema with both aggressive and tender examinations. Hans Herbot’s thriller The Treatment, based on the...
3.0 DVD Review: The Gunman Matthew Hammond July 21, 2015 DVDs & Rentals, Editor's Choice In a world where Taken has become a franchise and the Expendables has found much joy out of bringing the good ol’ boys of action back to the fore, the recent trend of older actors kicking arse has been welcomed into the hearts of modern audiences. Such...
3.0 DVD Review: The Face Of An Angel David Watson July 16, 2015 DVDs & Rentals When English student Meredith Kercher was murdered in 2007 while studying in Italy and her flat-mate Amanda Knox was charged with her murder (along with boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and friend Rudy Guede), the resulting cack-handed investigation and media...
3.0 DVD Review: The Dead 2 Simon Fitzjohn July 13, 2015 DVDs & Rentals Back in 2010, the directorial team of the Ford Brothers made waves with their original The Dead, a vibrant, fresh take on the well-worn zombie genre that added some much-needed bite to tired traditions. Mixing in-your-face gore and frantic action with an...
2.0 DVD Review: Sacrament Simon Fitzjohn July 8, 2015 DVDs & Rentals Not to be confused with Ti West’s starts-off-great-then-blows-the-ending The Sacrament, Sacrament is an ultra-low budget offering that takes us back to cannibal culture. It also has a sad hook, being the last film appearance of Texas Chainsaw Massacre...
1.0 DVD Review: The Boy Next Door David Watson July 7, 2015 DVDs & Rentals When he won the Oscar for his role in Hannah And Her Sisters, Michael Caine famously was unable to pick up his wee gold man as he was in the Caribbean shooting Jaws: The Revenge, a film so awful it prompted Caine to state years later: "I have never seen it,...
4.0 DVD Review: The Voices David Watson July 1, 2015 DVDs & Rentals Some things you just never expect. A case in point: at a friend’s birthday drinks recently, I fell into conversation with a self-described pom pom maker. Someone who makes their living making POM POMS! That could only be described as…unexpected. On a...
5.0 DVD Review: It Follows Matthew Hammond June 23, 2015 DVDs & Rentals, Editor's Choice It Follows. It. Follows. Evocative, mysterious, bold and pure. Rarely does a title so perfectly encapsulate the mood and mastery of the film it represents, but for David Robert Mitchell’s remarkable horror, it stands as a testament to a film...
4.0 DVD Review: Blackhat David Watson June 22, 2015 DVDs & Rentals Movies about computer hackers, well, they tend to…kinda suck. I mean hacking isn’t really a spectator sport, is it? Which is why every movie ever made about hackers features the same ludicrous stereotypes; upbeat techno music, cyber raves, characters with...
DVD Review: Hazard Simon Fitzjohn June 21, 2015 DVDs & Rentals, Editor's Choice Atrociously acted, poorly scripted and lacking any real scares or tension, my immediate plan after watching Hazard (or Hazmat as it was known in the US) was to lay into it big time. But for some reason, and I’m still not sure why, I actually ended up...
3.0 Rental Review: American Heist David Watson June 21, 2015 DVDs & Rentals You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. If there’s a lesson to be learned from American Heist, it’s that. Well, that and any bank job that relies upon the participation of jittery, nasal, sad giraffe face Adrien Brody is doomed to...
3.0 DVD Review: 2 Jacks Matthew Hammond June 16, 2015 DVDs & Rentals When you hear a film is based on a short story by Leo Tolstoy, perhaps the first reaction is one of dread. The works of Tolstoy are so delicately woven and expansive; the task of taming them in cinematic form is far from easy and has conquered many a fine...
2.0 DVD Review: Tom Holland’s Twisted Tales Simon Fitzjohn June 15, 2015 DVDs & Rentals, Editor's Choice I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been convinced by the concept of the horror anthology. They always seem to be more hit-than-miss, and segments always outstay their welcome. We all want them to be good – witness the hysterical over-reaction...