Nosferatu [2024]

Robert’s Eggers’s long rumoured gothic horror remake of Nosferatu [1922] has finally surfaced with a captivating and sinister trailer teasing the return of the long fingernailed immortal undead Count Orlock.

Director Robert Eggers is well known for his previous slow burning edgy gothic horrors The Witch [2015] and the Lighthouse [2019], and his new production of Nosferatu features Bill Skarsgård [Stephen King’s IT] as Count Orlock, Nicholas Hoult and William Dafoe. The original black and white silent film was one of the first horror films ever made with its extensive use of german expressionist cinema techniques, ominous shadows, camera angles, special effects and make up which inspire film makers even today.

The film was previously remade as Nosferatu The Vampyre [1979] with Klaus Kinski in the lead vampiric role and directed by Werner Herzog. The rumoured insane use of method acting employed by Kinski to remain in character and prey upon the camera crew and actors throughout the whole production was glorified in the film Shadow Of The Vampire [2000] with William Dafoe in the Count’s role. In a call back to the previous remake, Dafoe returns as Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, in Egger’s remake.

Nosferatu is available in cinemas on December 24th.

Watch the Nosferatu trailer below:

RIP Donald Sutherland 1935 - 2024

I've always followed Donald Sutherland's impeccable career and was saddened to learn of his death. His incredible acting ability always elevated anything he appeared in, including Mash, Klute, Don't Look Now, Kelly's Heroes, and yes, even The Hunger Games. He was a versatile and unique actor who often played the role of the outsider, an unsuspecting lead character, who always brought something very un-Hollywood and grounded to every role.

Weeks before his death, I watched Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978) because I was curious to see if it lived up to the original 1956 black and white science fiction horror classic. I had a weird feeling that I had seen it before but there was something odd about the film. For some reason I couldn't remember if the remake was better or worse. Obviously, I assumed it would be terrible. Jesus, was I wrong.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is a bona fide classic which builds on the orginal cold war premise of encroaching Communism and explores the societal weirdness as the invasion builds steam and more and more people are replaced. Donald Sutherland's performance as a curious, hard nosed, happy go lucky health inspector brings the role to life as he slides into encroaching paranoia.

The file was directed by Philip Kaufman, who it has to be said, was somewhat ahead of his time in the use of hand held cameras to track Sutherland's walk through New York City as he wakes up as an outsider in his own land. The unnerving extended shots of everyday people remind me of Adam Curtis's documentaries and express that intense otherworldly feeling of dread. Lingering shots of other people lurking in hallways, watching, conspiring, waiting for you to fall sleep and replace you.

Of course, the original film, and the remake, were analogies for cold war paranoia and the mcarthy era that swept America. But I would argue that this film can be seen in a new perspective since Covid-19. The constant fear of other people, family members, loved ones or strangers who might attempt social contact and infect you at any moment, represent pure agrophobia. Or perhaps it's just me? The shots of Donald Sutherland wandering the streets alone, caught within a circling web of conspiracy that he can never escape feel very familiar as the pandemic swept their world.

The remake also features an incredible cast of 1970’s actors including Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy, Veronica Cartright, Jeff Goldblum and Brooke Adams. Incredibly, it also features a brief cameo by the original 1956 actor, Kevin McCarthy, reprising his role as the original Dr. Miles J. Bennell. The electronic soundtrack was also ahead of its time with long electronic drones and weird noises punctuating the invasion of planet earth by strange biological wisp like beings from another world.

The final shot of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is pure 1970’s horror and may stay with you forever, which is perhaps why I always remembered there was something strange about this film. After all these years I think I must have blocked out the memory of this horror classic for my own sanity. Thank god I didn't rewatch it in 2020 at the height of the pandemic or I may never have left the house again.

Rest in Peace Donald Sutherland. Your career lives on.

Lumberjack The Monster [2023]

Today I woke up to discover Takashi Miike’s latest film, Lumberjack The Monster, is available to stream on Netflix. This live action horror thriller stars Kazuya Kamenashi as a psychopathic laywer turned vigilante as he sets out to stop a masked serial killer with strange abilities.

Takashi Miike has a reputation as the international bad boy of asian cinema with a huge catalogue of over 100 dark and strange, funny, violent and horrific films such as Audition, Dead Or Alive, Ichi The Killer, 13 Assassins, and many more strange and beautifully weird films and anime series. His work is impossible to pin down because he's not afraid to mix several genres within one film so you never quite know where the story won’t go. So it's surprising to find this lengendary auteur’s latest film released on Netflix with zero publicity or fanfare. In fact, you'll have to hunt it down before the masked serial killer hunts you down first.

Lumberjack The Monster is available to stream on Netflix.

UK General Election 2024 - July 4th - Drowning In Effluence

So Rishi Sunak has finally called a General Election before the Conservatives completely bleed out and devour each other like the evil self serving parasites they are. The PM is hoping to blindside the opposition by being first out of the election gate, launch a personal smear campaign against Keir Starmer, announce another wave of attacks on the poor, disabled and mentally ill, then dangle hundreds of tax cutting policies and lies. Anything to cling to power and please his party before his own colleagues show him the door or the electric chair, whichever comes first.

Let’s pray the long suffering public have finally woken up to 15 years of broken promises, broken public services, broken government, and vote for anyone else. History is our teacher and we must all remember and remember well : Government Covid parties, Brexit, environmental disaster and water pollution, the cost of living crisis, attacks on the poor, mentally ill and disabled, PPE scandals, post office scandals, NHS defunding and cannibalisation, GCSE exam scandals, Levelling Up, the list goes on and on.

People struggling to feed their familes with food banks in a cost of living crisis will have little empathy for a Billionaire PM whose wife famously evaded taxes and has shown his true environment colours by granting new oil and gas offshore drilling permits and coal mines, despite promising his own children a better environment when he first came to office. And Boris Johnson will no doubt already be plotting to rejoin the Tory party amid the extreme right wing madness of Liz Truss’s cabal of followers, by becoming its leader once again, and lead the faithful into oblivion.

A Labour party poised to fix public services and eat the rich is our last best hope before Not So Great Britain flushes itself down the toilet of Tory corruption and ineptitude to join the effluence allowed to be pumped into our rivers and seas by water companies and regulators. It will not be an easy ride for whoever inherits the Tories mess but as PM Clement Attlee proved after WW2, when he created the National Health Service and nationalised major industries and public utilities, lives can be rebuilt, and a new future won.

The horror show must stop. The government is not fit to govern.

The Tory party must die.

Vote them out.

Caitlin Cronenberg's Humane [2024]

David Cronenberg's family are making a kiling at the box office. First his son, Brandon Cronenberg, introduced us to his cinematic world with Infinity Pool, Possessor and Antiviral. Now the family business has expanded with his daughter, Caitlin Cronenberg's directorial debut, Humane, arriving in cinemas.

Caitlin Cronenberg's debut, Humane, stars Emily Hampshire and Peter Gallagher, and as you might suspect, is on brand with a dark socialogical premise and playful black humour. The press release describes this as "a dystopian satire taking place over a single day, months after a global ecological collapse has forced world leaders to take extreme measures to reduce the earth’s population.'

I, for one, would love to listen in on the Cronenberg’s family dinner table conversations to hear what horrors they're cooking up next.

Humane is available to watch in select cinemas and arrives on Shudder in July.

Watch the Humane trailer below:

Late Night With The Devil [2024]

Late Night With The Devil is a slice of 1970’s inspired horror arriving in 2024.

Late Night With The Devil stars David Dastmalchian as a late night TV talk show host featuring magicians, tricksters and charlatans vying for fame and attention on Halloween night. But one act might be horrifyingly real.

This Shudder original was reportedly inspired by the australian Don Lane late night talk show and is steeped in 1970s nostalgia from the stage sets to the costumes, lighting and poster. It even features a scary narrator voicing the trailer for horror fans of this era. So don’t go to sleep. This one’s worth staying up for.

Available in cinemas and Shudder from March 22nd, 2024.

Watch the Late Night With The Devil trailer below:

New Year, New Horror : David Cronenberg's The Shrouds [2024]

2024 is shaping up to be a another great year for horror and the Cronenberg dynasty.

Last year, Brandon Cronenberg released the mindbending Infinity Pool [2023] while his father, David Cronenberg, returned to the horror genre with Crimes Of The Future [2022]. Now, according to reports, the master of body horror is working on a new film, The Shrouds [2024].

According to the press release, David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds concerns Karsh (Vincent Cassel), an innovative businessman and grieving widower (Diane Kruger), who builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. The machine allows relatives to watch the departed decompose in real time at state of the art cemeteries.

The Shrouds is due for release in 2024.

Suitable Flesh [2023]

After opening Fright Fest 2023 earlier this year, Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh has earned itself something of a reputation.

Perhaps its because this outlandish spoof of 1990’s erotic thrillers shares its DNA with Lovecraftian horror, or maybe because it features Heather Graham (Scrubs TV fame) as a fantastic new scream queen. Either way, its body shaping up to be the must see B-movie horror of the year.

Like most 1990’s films, the narrative is deliberately forgettable and centres on Psychiatrist Elizabeth Derby’s romantic involvement with a disturbed patient who seduces her, then swaps bodies using dark magic.

Available for VOD and digital download from Oct 27th.

Watch the Suitable Flesh trailer below:

Dario Argento Panico Documentary [2023]

Dario Argento is finally being recognised by his peers for his groundbreaking contribution to filmmaking with Simone Scafidi’s upcoming Panico documentary celebrating his work at the Venice Film Festival.

The documentary finds the director writing a film script for his latest venture in a hotel and offers “an immersive deep dive into the creative process and life of Argento and features exclusive interviews with the legendary filmmaker and insight from other acclaimed directors like Gaspar Noé, Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn about his impact on the horror genre and generations of other directors.”

Watch the Dario Argento Panico promo trailer below:

Dario Argento : Doors Into Darkness - BFI Film Festival

Dario Argento is finally being recognised by the BFI for his outstanding body of work and contribution to filmmaking with an upcoming retrospective film festival of his greatest, and latest work.

This long overdue respect has finally extended beyond the horror community and led to the BFI curating a Dario Argento film festival at London’s South Bank from May 12th, thanks to season programmer Michael Blyth’s upcoming celebration of his work. The month long programme will include a rare live interview with Dario Argento in discussion with Prano Bailey-Bond about his screen career, Q&A discussions, films rarities, and film introductions from the great auteur himself.

Films:

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
The Cat o’ Nine Tails
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
The Five Days (a forgotten rarity)
Deep Red (including Q&A with the director)
Suspiria (including a personal introduction by the director)
Inferno
Tenebrae (including a personal introduction by the director)
Phenomena
Opera (including a personal introduction by Michael Blyth)
Trauma
The Stendhal Syndrome
The Phantom of the Opera
Sleepless
The Card Player
Do You Like Hitchcock?
Mother of Tears – The Third Mother
Dark Glasses

The entire season programme can be found here:

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Apermalink=darioargento

The main event takes place on Friday May 12th and tickets are available from the link below:

https://southbanklondon.com/events/bfi-southbank/dario-argento-doors-darkness

Watch the BFI promo trailer below:

Dario Argento - Doors Into Darkness

Dead Ringers TV Series [2023]

David Cronenberg’s classic film Dead Ringers [1988] starring Jeremy Irons has been adapted into a modern limited Prime TV series.

Dead Ringers stars Rachel Weisz playing the duel role of Elliot and Beverly Mantle, twin gynecologists, who use their likeness and duplicity to share every experience of their lives at the expense of others.

And like the two main characters, I’m split on whether this modern remake / retake is a good idea, but intriqued enough to watch this blood splattered psychological story play out (despite the poor choice of a Blondie soundtrack). Although, it’s not the first time one of Cronenberg’s films has been reworked - Rabid was remade by the Soska Sisters in 2019 .

The Dead Ringers TV series is available to watch on Prime from April 21st, 2023.

You can watch the Dead Ringers teaser trailer below:

New Year, New Horror : Enys Men [2023]

Continuing with our New Year, New horror theme is the low budget british folk horror film, Enys Men, which translates from the Cornish as Stone Island.

The film stars Mary Woodvine, the director’s partner, as a wildlife volunteer living on a secluded Cornish island in 1973 as she studies a rare flower. Repeating the same daily observations, she slowly experiences strange visitations when the island’s standing stones exert an ill influence on her mind. Or do they?

Written and directed by Mark Jenkin, the film’s narrative sounds somewhat simplisitic, but this could almost double as a slow burning lost cult classic with its eerie use of 1970’s cinematography that make the film so authentically grainy. Apparently, Jenkin used an original 1976 Bolex hand-held and hand-wound camera that could only shoot for 27 seconds, making it look and feel as if it could have actually been made in that era - without the use of VFX.

There is a genuine appetite among cinema goers for folk horror, and so few classics. Enys Men looks set to be another worthy entry into the genre.

Enys Men is on general cinematic release now.

Watch the trailer below:

Enys Men official trailer

New Year, New Horror : Infinity Pool [2023]

2023 is already shaping up to be a horrorific year.

And I don’t just mean the current state of the United Kingdom with its sick workforce, nhs crisis, rail strikes, nurse strikes, royal mail strikes, border force strikes, laywer strikes, food shortages, covid waves, cost of living crisis, and incompetant and uncaring Conservative government.

No, I’m talking about the fantastic new horror films coming your way this year.

Let’s start with Brandon Cronenberg’s latest offering, Infinity Pool. The Cronenberg family have been on a bit of a roll lately with last year’s release of David Cronenberg’s Crimes Of The Future [2022], and his son, Brandon Cronenberg’s burgeoning career. His latest imminent release is the follow up to the mindbending Possessor [2020], a revenge film about identity featuring body horror, shock value, and great cinematography. Like father, like son.

Infinity Pool’s premise concerns a young writer, played by Alexander Skarsgård, looking for inspiration on a road trip with his partner when he accidentally kills someone in a hit and run in a remote country, and is soon apprehended by the authorities. The punishment for his crime in this undisclosed country? The death penalty. But for a huge financial sum, the authorities can grow a body double who will be executed on his behalf.

Infinity Pool is released on January 27th, 2023.

Watch the trailer below:

Enys Men - Official Trailer

Christmas Antidote : Watch Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972)

Confused about what Christmas festive film you should be watching? How about none of them. Bah Humbug. Instead, watch the classically deranged low budget cult horror classic, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things for free, courtesy of our annual Merry Horror Christmas link.

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things’s narrative follows the classic horror movie trope of bored and stupid teenagers (in this case hippies) doing things they shouldn’t and end up getting killed, chased or cursed. We’ve all been there before, and some of us even ended up in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday The 13th. I digress…

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things is a cult horror classic that begins when a group of young hippies excavate a corpse at the local cemetary, then perform a fake satanic ritual for fun, and things go very wrong. Although obviously inspired by Night Of The Living Dead it has enough moments of cinematic genius, unintentionally hilarious dialogue, dead hippies, and atmospheric dread that make it a perfect antidote to the Christmas classic.

Ho Ho Horror.

Watch the Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrwAJWGYdqY

Watch the FREE full movie on Youtube below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fv0fM3i-0U

Children Shouldnt Play With Dead Things [1972]