Exam is smart, cunning, compelling and thoroughly enjoyable. It is well acted, the script is excellent and the direction is sharp and stylish. The only significant failing is the actual plot, the concept, which is difficult to believe and more than a little extreme. Exam is a quality film, but its core is deeply flawed.
Eight [...]

Sexy Killer is completely insane. It’s kooky, zany, stupid, violent, offensive, funny, shoddy, incredibly dumb, self-knowing and totally shameless with it. It could be seen as annoying, it could be seen as brainless, it could be seen as trashy exploitative nonsense, yet miraculously it’s all these things and still manages to be an engaging, amusing [...]

Pandorum is violent, furious, moody and demented, yet it smacks with such over-the-top childishness that any hopes it could be the next Event Horizon are dashed the moment the first “monster” appears. It is violent fun, but nothing much else.
It is 2173 and the Earth has died. Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) awakes inside a stasis [...]

Shrooms is a bad trip. Meandering, poorly scripted and bafflingly stupid in places, it is certainly watchable but it’s terribly constructed. Perhaps a handful of psilocybin would make this better, but that’s not an advocation of Shrooms. This is silly and clichéd – avoid.
Shrooms begins well. The setup is simple – a group of friends [...]

White Noise 2: The Light is mediocre. It shamelessly pilfers ideas from many better films and fails to be scary in any way, but it’s a watchable, intriguing little thriller that neither challenges nor upsets. With some decent acting and a couple of awesome set pieces, it’s tolerable stuff.
In a bizarre and brutal start, the [...]

Low-budget, silly, funny, nasty and surprisingly enjoyable, Manhater is decent in places but overly flawed. Poor directing and acting lets it down occasionally, and there are few surprises throughout. Manhater is entertaining but neither scary, clever or horrific – it’s good fun, but tragically forgettable.
Beginning with a mad-haired woman casting spells over a midget cauldron [...]

Welcome to the Jungle is incredibly boring. Simple in idea and diabolically executed, it is a dull trudge through mediocrity that is both cliché and pedestrian.
Four friends, living in New Guinea, have been given a surprise adventure. A friend has told them of an old white man hidden deep within the jungle, in cannibal territory. [...]

Bloody, grotesque, funny and attempting to be nothing more than violent titillation, Return to House on Haunted Hill succeeds on a number of levels, but it doesn’t stop it from being dumb, ridiculous, clichéd and utterly needless. Stupid fun, and surprisingly well-scripted, this may well please those who were expecting too see a mentally deranged [...]

Paintball is a complete mess. Terribly directed, poorly scripted, awkwardly acted and incredibly frustrating – under all this waste lies a great concept, but it’s horribly squandered. Amateurish and disappointing. Avoid.
Eight adrenaline junkies enter the Redball Woods paintball tournament, pitted against another team of unknowns. Their target is to collect six flags across the huge [...]

“Tonight’s game is The Night We Dare the Ghosts. Group one, proceed to the torture chamber”. These are words you never want to hear and this is Ghost Game, a game show that challenges contestants to stay in haunted houses / villages / concentration camps until they run screaming in terror. The last remaining contestant [...]

With a title like Cube Zero you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was a horror film about a sugar free beverage. It is, in fact, the third instalment in the Cube series, but as this was made in the post-Phantom Menace “noughties” it is, naturally, a prequel and though the result never quite [...]

Zombie Women of Satan is depraved, insane, stupid, bloody and incredibly rude. Laughably childish in places, you’ll either find it gleefully fun or offensively immature, but you’re unlikely to see many films like it.
Self-serving burlesque troop Fleshorama are being interviewed on Tycho Zander’s television show, along with feisty rock chick Skye Brannigan. Unbeknownst to them, [...]

“Never judge a book by its cover”, sage advice which everyone is given at some point in their lives and though I’ve tried to follow this pearl of wisdom, I have to confess I was rather dubious as soon as I saw the cover of Cube 2: Hypercube. It was that word “Hypercube”. Something about [...]

Adapted from Clive Barkers short story and directed by Anthony DiBlasi, who also produced this title, Book Of Blood and Midnight Meat Train as well as recently being linked to the proposed Hellraiser remake, Dread is a taut, incredibly well acted, well-directed piece of psychological horror.
After an evening lecture, the sensitive Stephen meets the enigmatic [...]

Acolytes is slow, confused and poorly acted. Although it has a very interesting concept, it is so poorly executed it comes across as shoddy and amateurish. Disappointing stuff.
Acolytes starts with a half-naked girl, in the woods, disorientated, lost. She finds a butterfly. Then a car hits her in the face. This is Tanya Lee, a [...]

Disturbing Behaviour is like a filmic time capsule of the late 90’s. It’s got that Kevin Williamson-inspired, oh-so-clever teen dialogue, a band of relatively likeable misfit characters and straightforward plot down to an art.
The students of Cradle Bay have been acting a little strangely recently. Instead of late night parties, drinking and the expected aberrant [...]

Hierro is a film of two halves. The first half is smart, creepy, tense, disturbing and utterly compelling. The second half is meandering, confused, clichéd and horribly disappointing. Although worth seeing for Gabe Ibanez’s quality direction and Elena Anaya’s excellent performance, Hierro is an incredibly frustrating watch.
Marine biologist Maria is taking her son to the [...]

Someone’s Knocking At The Door is a truly unique cinematic experience. And I mean that in the best possible way. It’s daring, shocking, awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping and, surprisingly, very watchable.
A group of young medical students decide to experiment with a drug called Taldon, which causes their perceived reality to blur around the edges. When their friend [...]

Directed by master comic book maestro Brian Pulido in his first foray into feature films, The Graves is, unfortunately for someone with such a prolific background in horror comics, a disgraceful mess.
The story follows the two Graves sisters as they embark on a road trip which is supposed to broaden little sister Abby’s horizons before [...]

Salvage is a twisting, vicious, intelligent horror film that is let down by inconsistent pacing, confused story-telling and a poor antagonist. Well acted and directed, this is worth a watch despite its numerous flaws. Solid work.
Beth is a bad mother. She has neglected her daughter Jodie, happy for the teen to live with her father [...]

The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue is a great example of a sadly over-looked zombie movie. What should rightfully be a classic is often dismissed as a derivative undead fable with poor dubbing and while there is some truth to the latter, the former accusation is mostly unfounded. Filmed in Rome, Madrid, Manchester and [...]

Beginning with a trippy, visually arresting, mind-fuck of a scene involving an anguished woman running through a train carriage, subsequently faced with a corridor full of naked people, then taking part in a lesbian tryst, A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin is a triumph of startling imagery from start to finish and is arguably master [...]

A Tale of Two Sisters (also known as Janghwa, Hongreyon) is, simply put, a wonderful film. Loosely based on an old Korean folk tale, it follows the story of two sisters, Su-mi and Su-yeon, who arrive home after being discharged from a psychiatric hospital to stay with their father and his new wife, Eun-Joo. Although [...]

In vehemently religious, small town America, a teenager sticks a gun in his mouth and promptly commits suicide in front of his bewildered girlfriend. This tragic event seems to have a domino effect as one by one, the residents of the town in Maryland follow suit and kill themselves in a variety of different and [...]

The Stepfather is completely wrong. It did not need re-making, it has too many superfluous scenes, it fails to scare and ultimately the title is a misnomer as our antagonist doesn’t actually become a Stepfather! Dull, predictable, clichéd and a complete waste of time. Avoid.
For the first five minutes we’re treated to The Stepfather (Dylan [...]