Liam Neeson versus CGI super wolves. Ding ding! Fight! In the deep cold of an Alaskan oil drilling facility, Ottway (Liam Neeson) works as a sharpshooter and camp protector, sniping wolves before they get too close (and consume the oil workers). These workers are the scum of the earth – brawling, drunken ex-cons who get [...]

The title is a reference to the age old cliché of “the darkest hour is just before the dawn”, which is relatively apt considering how clichéd this alien invasion flick really is. Enjoyable fun, with some superb images, but tragically overwrought, predictable and the aliens – once they’re revealed – are ridiculous. Silly, clichéd, fun [...]

You can imagine the first script meeting for Rogue River. Kevin Haskin and Ryan Finnerty get together and ask a very important question – “What is, like, totally gross and horrible and sickening?” Then they wrote it. Then Jourdan McClure directed it. Then I watched it. Bastards. Whilst The Woman – another recent “kidnapped woman” [...]

Deadheads is neither dead funny or dead in the water. It’s whatever the lukewarm equivalent of dead is. Dead okay? It hits some marks and severely miss-hits others, and overall comes across as a decent-enough comedy horror. Mike and Brent are dead. The zombie apocalypse has arrived and they’re victims of this shambling plague, turned [...]

Anna Marchant (Milla Jovovich) is a bit of a film cliché – she’s a teacher, her horoscope foretells an encounter with a mysterious stranger that could lead to new possibilities, she’s on Facebook, she has a businessman husband called Bryce, she has two superficial sluttish friends blah blah blah… until one day, it all goes [...]

Shock news! Sand Sharks isn’t terrible. Despite the name, plot, characters, actors and dialogue, Sand Sharks is loveably idiotic and an absolutely, ridiculously shameless horror film. Fun with friends and a bellyful of alcohol, this is not a “good” horror movie but certainly a good laugh. The financially broken island of White Sands is in [...]

There are not enough synonyms to describe how boring Camp Hell is, but here’s a few anyway: dull, uninteresting, cloying, lifeless, monotonous, long-winded, yawn worthy, soporific, and a total mega-blah fest. Apparently sloths are so slow they have moss growing on them. This shit’s got trees. Tommy Leary (Will Denton) is having nightmares about a [...]

Okay, before you read this you should know something. I love John Carpenter’s The Thing. Often cited as my favourite movie (alongside An American Werewolf in London) it’s a 10 out of 10, perfectly crafted piece of genius. I’ve seen it dozens of times and still find it fascinating. I even wrote a sycophantic review [...]

Everybody loves a horror anthology; following genre classics like Creepshow right through to TV stalwarts such as Tales From the Crypt and The Twilight Zone. It’s a formula that often works with little effort, because if you don’t like a story, another will be along any minute. It’s an easy starting point for low budget [...]

Seriously sick, seriously twisted and seriously fun – if the title appeals, the film certainly will. Bong of the Dead is a ridiculous, bloody, puerile, childish, drug-addled death fest of cannabis, violence and zombies. Perhaps best watched under – erm – intoxicated conditions, this is a crazy romp unlike anything you’ve ever seen before… Bong [...]

When loner Max (Nicolas Gob) finds a bloodied young woman (Helena Coppejans) in the woods, he brings her to his isolated cabin to check if she’s okay. What starts is a very bizarre relationship between the amnesiac victim and her shy savoir, but slowly it becomes that age old tale of “agoraphobic boy finds amnesiac [...]

A group of young friends decide to take a paintballing excursion in an abandoned military fort, somewhere deep in the countryside. Everything goes well until Monica (Valene Kane) goes missing and they find a slaughterhouse full of dead dogs. The situation worsens when the party comes under attack from an unknown enemy, who use bullets [...]

Unhappy Birthday is slow, awkward and very strange. It features some decent moments and some solid direction, but the plot and characters are so mismanaged it becomes a chore to watch. Not utterly abysmal, but far from great. It is Sadie’s (Christina De Vallee) birthday and she’s pregnant. Rick (David Paisley) is taking her on [...]

Two years on from Declan O’Brien’s lacklustre third installment to the Wrong Turn franchise and here he is again with another straight-to-DVD backwoods cannibal romp. When the Monster Ark director took over the series with Left for Dead, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth but O’Brien has gone some way towards [...]

Saint is a darkly comic, completely deranged, enjoyable little Christmas horror. Unfortunately the plotting is awkward, the humour mismanaged and the characters weak, leaving behind a disappointing feeling of missed opportunity. Saint is good, but not great. In the Netherlands December 5th is a special day. Sinterklaas and his army of Zwart Pieten (or black [...]

Who’s seen the first two Paranormal Activity films? Not you? Don’t worry, this is a prequel! Set in 1988 when the protagonists from both Paranormal Activity 1 & 2 were little ‘uns, we follow their family as everyday life turns from normal to scary to lethal as young Kristi’s imaginary friend Toby stops being imaginary [...]

Episode 50 is a great idea and is cleverly setup but very poorly executed. The idea is a solid one, and one filled with message and meaning, but ultimately a lackadaisical approach to the “found footage” filming and a hilariously bad ending means Episode 50 is a 1000 almosts and 1 absolutely massive fail. Paranormal [...]

Yep. Another zombie film. In the past ten years we have been inundated with zombie films, riding on a wave still popularized by Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days Later and the Dawn remake. Since then there’s been a cavalcade of undead flicks, from the fun (Dance of the Dead) and the flaccid (Boy Eats [...]

Going off the footage in the trailer, Super could very easily have been written off as a Kick Ass facsimile, but the film itself is a very different beast indeed. From Troma graduate James Gunn comes a wry, morally bankrupt, smart, fun and dark as hell superhero movie. It’s no real surprise that this comes [...]

Shark Night 3D doesn’t deserve a proper review. It doesn’t deserve to be watched. It doesn’t deserve to be noticed, whispered about or furtively suggested. It doesn’t deserve to exist. To show the same respect Shark Night 3D has for its audience’s collective intelligence, I intend to describe Shark Night 3D in internet slang. Here [...]

The Tapes is about a big brother audition video that goes horribly wrong. Although a unique enough premise, it is the attempt to make this video that ends up being more compelling than the “horribly wrong” part, which slips into a giant clichéd mess that tragically confines The Tapes to bottom-of-the-barrel boredom. Gemma (Natasha Sparkes) [...]

Guillermo Del Toro is a living genius. He is the man behind The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth and responsible for ensuring we received The Orphanage and Julia’s Eyes from Spain, as well as bringing my favourite superhero Hellboy to the screen. He has now laid his influential hands on Don’t Be Afraid of the [...]

There’s always an element of risk when naming a film – look at Paycheck for an example of a reviewer-baiting title choice. Atrocious is another example of that, but I’m pleased to say Atrocious is not atrocious. It should’ve really been called Mediocre instead. Urban legend hunting siblings Christian (Cristian Valencia) and July (Clara Moraleda) [...]

An isolated place, snowstorms, a scary old house in the woods, four friends and one crazed psychopath – a recipe for disaster? A recipe for cliché soup, more like. This horror story is a simple and common one: homely artist Winona (Hanna Oldenburg) has returned to her home town to do some work away from [...]

The Woman is a harrowing, brutal, darkly satirical, encapsulating horror film. Not for the faint-hearted, this disturbing tale is utterly brilliant. Outwardly the Cleek family seems like the American ideal; successful husband, happy wife, doting son, two intelligent and beautiful daughters. But looks are horribly deceiving; the father is a domineering patriarch, his son a [...]