Charlie Polinger’s feature debut is, ostensibly, a ‘thriller’ set at a boys’ water polo camp. Unfortunately, the unmet expectations of The Plague don’t stop at the film’s genre credentials. The Plague follows 12-year-old Ben (played by Everett Blunck, whose already impressive list of credits includes the beleaguered Rust) as he arrives at an all boys […]
The Shrouds Review: Cronenberg’s most personal film is his least accessible
Be warned: this review contains spoilers. Everyone’s favourite techno-corporeal freak is back and this time he’s looking death right in the face – both metaphorically and literally. David Cronenberg, father of the body horror subgenre and the acclaimed filmmaker behind taboo-breaking cult classics like Videodrome, Crash (not that one) and Dead Ringers has just released […]
Presence Review: Spirited but a little too transparent
In 2025, there’s something almost quaint about the idea of a straight-ahead haunted house movie. Leave it to Steven Soderbergh – an indie cinema trailblazer with a penchant for visual and structural experimentation – to play with the formula. The central conceit of Presence is that it’s a ghost story from the perspective of the […]
When You Dream That You’re Dreaming: The enduring urgency of Messiah of Evil
Many horror films from the late 1960s and the early 1970s are marked by disillusionment, by a sense of slipping reality, a malignant and sometimes surreal sense that the world is not a kind place. Films like Night of the Living Dead, The Devils, Straw Dogs and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre emerged from a period […]
Longlegs and the Burden of Feminine Sacrifice (2024)
Care has been taken to avoid spoilers in this review but please proceed with caution if you have not seen the film. An innovative and aggressive marketing campaign may have prepared audiences for Longlegs’ nightmarish visual elements and unsettling tone but it certainly didn’t signal the film’s complex and deeply intimate take on motherhood and […]
The Invisible Man and the Paradox of Invisibility (2020)
Most people who have had lived experience as a woman could attest to the occasional fantasy of invisibility. Being seen, particularly under the harsh lights of the male gaze, begins to erode girls’ self-esteem and sense of security from the time they’re in primary school. In order to counteract the vulnerability that comes with being […]
Pulse (2001)
That Pulse came out when home internet was still in its relative infancy is particularly impressive given how prescient the film has continually proven itself.
Parasite: Screwball horror
Much has been made of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite and its domination as a Korean production of awards season in the United States (including Best Picture at the Academy Awards). But to pigeonhole this as a “Korean” film suggests that it’s overcoming some sort of cultural divide. Bong has always been savvy about genre, combining a […]
Pumpkinhead and Viewing Trauma Through a Patriarchal Lens
This review contains spoilers. Keep away from Pumpkinhead,Unless you’re tired of living So begins a schoolyard rhyme recited about the titular character during an early scene in VXF artist Stan Winston’s directorial debut, Pumpkinhead. Over the next 70 minutes, the movie proves this adage true, in a way that we may not have foreseen. While […]
In Fabric (2018)
A cursed red dress leads to misfortune for those who wear it – but with that jumping off point In Fabric leads down a deep rabbit hole of identity and belonging