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 [...]

Vampire Boys is laughably terrible.  Featuring terrible acting, terrible dialogue, a terrible score and a genuinely terrible storyline, Vampire Boys is perhaps the worst “horror” film released in 2011. Dewy-eyed and innocent Ohio boy Caleb (Christian Ferrer) has moved to Los Angeles in a free flat-share with guitar-twanging student Paul (Ryan Adames). As soon as [...]

Beginning with an exclusive news report in front of Area 51, we’re told how the American government has opened their doors to the press, to dispel all rumours of extraterrestrial goings-on at the notorious base. The two golden ticket reporters are “Fact Zone” founder and general snooping bitch Claire (Vanessa Branch) and world famous newsreader [...]

Tucker & Dale vs Evil is genuinely funny, full of great performances and gleefully gory. Taking the traditional, well-used tactic of dumping a group of young adults in the arse end of an American camping forest and sitting back as the requisite motley crew of backwards hicks and redneck freaks mutilate and murder them, and [...]

Wreckage is horror at it’s worst; lazy, confused, boring, stupid and brimming with clichés. Some of the acting is decent, but otherwise Wreckage is a car-crash of a movie and it’s an absolute write-off. It begins with two starts – for some insane reason – one featuring a bespectacled child executing his mum and her [...]

Recently there has been a slur of myth-based horror films coming out of Europe’s less-prolific filmmaking countries, with the likes of Rare Exports (Finland), Troll Hunter (Norway) and Saint (Netherlands) all arriving in the last year. What they’ve all had in common is the twist on a well-known fairy tale – from Trolls to Santa [...]

Four mountaineering friends discover a young foreign girl buried underground with only a breathing tube and a bottle of water for company. With little option but to take her down the mountain to civilization, the group splits up – one team scaling a severe drop to call the authorities, one team taking the “long” route [...]

TROOOOLL! The moment suspected poacher Hans screams “Troll” at a camera crew in the middle of a dark forest before sprinting away in panic, Troll Hunter is one long, exciting, gleeful thrill ride. The prelude to this moment is perhaps superfluous and slow, but once our bearded troll hunter starts legging it away from something [...]

Hit men, paedophiles, family troubles, straw masks, Tyres from Spaced and one absolutely brutal hammer assault in a kitchen – Kill List is a refreshingly different and darkly mature piece of filmmaking, which sadly spirals awkwardly out of control towards the finale and ends up feeling like a demented genre mash-up that confuses more than [...]

Remakes: impossible to avoid, unwanted by those who adore the original and often seen as a pointless cash-in on someone else’s legacy. Fright Night is a remake, and although it cannot possibly match the kitsch, gleeful stupidity of the original, it is it’s own film: modern, fun, sharp, sleek and thoroughly enjoyable. My hope is [...]

Who remembers the fifth film in any franchise? Really? What about Dream Child? Revenge of Michael Myers? Saw V? Fields of Terror? Forsaken? Seed of Chucky? Perhaps only Leprechaun in the Hood can actually be classed as a “memorable” fifth in a horror franchise, but that’s because it was so bloody ridiculous; pitch one psychotic [...]

A movie is a sum of it’s parts. Sometimes it can be slightly let down by shoddy make-up or poor continuity, sometimes afflicted with terrible editing or an intrusive, awkward score. The Uninhabited is brilliantly directed, features a tense, overbearing score and is genuinely scary at times… but… the acting is appalling. Significantly let down [...]

Quarantine 2: Terminal is surprisingly good. It knocks out a thousand clichés and holds very few surprises, but it’s a decent sequel to a decent remake and well worth a watch. The original Quarantine came out it 2008 and was an almost shot-for-shot remake of the award-winning Spanish horror Rec (2007), albeit with a more [...]

While drilling for oil, the crew of the The Rig’s rig accidentally bore into a dodgy section of sea bed releasing a load of purple stuff. And something with rather a lot of long and pointy teeth. Coincidentally a big ol’ storm rolls in and isolates the cast just as the man-in-a-fish-monster-suit starts picking them [...]

The Dead Undead; having already slogged my way through Zombie Undead in April, the prospect of trudging through the second most tautological zombie film of 2011 was not a exciting one. I expected another cheap Romero rip-off with shallow characters and zero invention. Instead, I got the most explosively ridiculous zombie / vampire mash-up I’ve [...]

Moby Dick author Herman Meville died before anyone acknowledged his book was anything special. It was never well-received in his lifetime and he died without knowing the true impact of his work. Since his death his book has inspired countless writers and filmmakers, been made into films featuring everything from dragons to aliens, and his [...]

Limerick, Ireland, 1188. Some Irish Templar Knights hunt down a red-cloaked figure and lob a giant metal shield at it, which magically turns into a box and decapitates the psychotic beast. Skip forward a few centuries and we find Professor Whelan (Lauren Holly) working on an archiving project in the bowels of an American university, [...]

The Violent Kind is sharp, fast-paced, bonkers, weird, unexpected and – yes – violent. It is also very surprising; surprisingly good, surprisingly likeable and features some genuinely surprising twists and turns. It is a unique and very enjoyable horror / sci-fi film that confuses, amazes and compels. Quality stuff. Young biker / mechanic / criminal [...]

Four women wake up in a “cell”, with no memory of who they are or how they got there. A creepy doctor informs them they’re part of an experiment – what, we do not know. The walls are electrified, the guards wear masks and something horrible is lurking somewhere in the darkness… something with a [...]

Having endured the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I felt compelled to watch the last instalment of an eight film franchise, spawned from seven progressively meandering books by J.K. Rowling. The trailer and all the hype told us this film would be carnage and violence and war and death and that [...]

Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus. There is little that needs to be said about this film that the title doesn’t already say. It’s a film about a huge shark having a fight with a giant crocodile. Plot written. *dusts hands cockily* Okay, so the plot contains more than that. This film is a sequel to the [...]

After Dark Originals: so far they’ve given us a decent set of releases, having delivered the genuinely enjoyable Husk, Prowl, Seconds Apart and Fertile Ground in 2011. The Task is their latest release, but it’s sadly the runt of the litter and seriously fails to impress. Seven contestants are dragged off the street and handcuffed [...]

Nazis – they failed miserably in taking over the world. Yeah, they tried really hard and killed a lot of people, but they still utterly and completely failed. Yet – according to the history of film – they had hundreds of nefarious schemes involving everything from releasing monstrous entities imprisoned in another dimension (Hellboy) to [...]

Hobo With A Shotgun is bonkers. It’s funny, nasty, compelling and very, very bloody. A true homage to the grindhouse era that turns everything up to 11, Jason Eisener’s cult classic-in-the-making is lots and lots of fun. If anyone goes into Hobo With A Shotgun expecting a cerebral arthouse flick or a fun-filled romp then, [...]