Horror
The Exorcist: Believer Review
October fifth heralds the return of the legendary Exorcist. Can David Gordon Green and Danny McBride deliver an installment that lives up to the intensity of Exorcist and Exorcist III?? Or, are we stuck with another dreary entry in the hit and miss nature of this franchise? Unfortunately, it’s the latter. Some spoiler information will follow, so please skip to the last paragraph if you wish to rem...
Meg 2: The Trench Review
Meg 2: The Trench sinks its teeth into cinemas this week from Warner Bros. Pictures. After what feels like forever since 2018’s The Meg, fans of the creature feature are hoping for another fin-tastic entry in the franchise. In this mega second instalment, Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) spearheads the Mana One team’s venture into the uncharted depths of the Mariana Trench. They discover a myst...
Talk to Me Review
Other young and aspiring horror film directors would be forgiven for wanting to pack it in on viewing Danny & Michael Philippou’s Talk to Me. It’s a masterclass in contemporary horror cinema featuring fresh, visceral storytelling and inspiring cinematography. Talk to Me is going to be tough to top in a year that’s already seen the hugely successful Evil Dead Rise. The RackaRacka lads trade the...
The Black Demon Review
Hitting Australian cinemas a couple months shy of another anticipated Meg movie, The Black Demon falls short of mediocrity with a blend of pulpy mythological horror and environmental awareness. Directed by Adrian Grünberg (Rambo: Last Blood) and starring Josh Lucas (trading Red Dog for a Megalodon shark) The Black Demon tells the story of Paul Sturges (Lucas), who brings his family along for a wor...
Renfield Review
Universal Pictures and director Chris McKay, (The LEGO Batman Movie), invite you to suck on Renfield. A modern kind of sequel to 1931’s Dracula, yes, that one with Bela Lugosi. In short, it’s pretty fun, it doesn’t suck! Renfield stars Nicholas Hoult as the titular ghoul and Nicholas Cage as the infamous count, both of whom need no introduction. The film acts as a situation comedy first, action ho...
Evil Dead Rise Review
2013 saw the release of Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead. At its time, a welcome remake of Sam Raimi’s original college film affair. With Raimi producing, Evil Dead 2013 dumped the playful, schlocky camp horror of the original beloved cult trilogy (or duology) of films in favour of a more intense horror experience and delivered in spades. This Thursday Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert along wit...
Infinity Pool Review
Infinity Pool, the most recent film from Brandon Cronenberg, is a twisted extended metaphor for the trappings of luxury and inner darkness we all harbour, with some graphic and artfully kaleidoscopic sex scenes thrown in for good measure. It is set on a fictional island that seems to be a pastiche of various locations around the globe that have been exploited by the super rich as they construct hy...
The Pope’s Exorcist Review
Julius Avery and Russell Crowe invite us to the mouth of hell to witness a bipolar cinematic spectacle. With 2018’s Overlord, Avery proved his talent for directing pulpy action horror films. The Pope’s Exorcist is more of the same, without the full metal jacket and with a few doses of comedy. The film as a whole can’t decide exactly what it is supposed to be, but as a piece of entertaining popcorn...
Scream VI Review
The first Sidney Prescott-less Scream instalment re-locates the carnage to the Big Apple, cranks up the number of stab wounds, and revels in murder memorabilia in this satisfying entry in the long-running horror series that is proving hard to kill. Buckle in, there is some ground to cover. It’s a year after the Scream ’22 killing spree and survivors Sam (Melissa Barrera), her younger h...
Knock at the Cabin Review
On the big screen since February 2nd, Universal Pictures and M. Night Shyamalan (Signs, The Village) invites you to witness the apocalypse. Knock at the Cabin demands an hour and forty minutes of your time, perhaps as the credits roll you may wish it really was the end of the world. Based on Paul Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World, the film takes a few liberties, becoming some...
M3GAN Review
Risking comparison to murderous doll flicks of yesteryear, M3gan swings gracefully on screen in January 2023 with mechanical grace and manic sass. Based on the promo material alone, one can be forgiven for passing the film off as a gender bent Chucky riff. This is a disservice. On viewing it is clear, director Gerard Johnstone, screenwriter Akela Cooper, producers James Wan and Jason Blum have cra...
Bones and All Review
Definitely do not have meat for dinner if you’re going to see the new coming of age thriller Bones and All, directed by Luca Guadagnino. Set in the 1980s Midwest, it is an adaptation of a novel with the same name by Camille DeAngelis. It follows two beautiful and oddly relatable young cannibals as they seek out the secrets of their pasts that lay hidden across a myriad backroads of the Midwest, a...