SFF Review: We Are Still Here, a sacrifice must be made

May 28, 2015.Reading time 3 minutes.

You know what the haunted house genre has been missing all these years? Ted Geoghegan. Marking his feature film debut, We Are Still Here is a ghostly tale of vengeful spirits and dark secrets, all of which are wrapped up in a lonely old home buried under a blanket of snow. Bound in a wintery atmosphere, We […]

SFF Review: The Invitation, a dinner party for the mad

May 18, 2015.Reading time 4 minutes.

The long wait to see Karyn Kusama back behind the camera of a feature film is finally over, following up Jennifer’s Body with her cutthroat, paranoid thriller The Invitation. Calculated, tense and unflinching in its brutality, it’s a terrific simmering style of storytelling that boils into one insanity-fueled finish. In it, while attending a dinner party at his […]

SFF Review: The Boy, and a troubled mind

May 12, 2015.Reading time 4 minutes.

If a 9-year-old Norman Bates grew up in the 80s living with his father in a failing, isolated motel, he might have been a lot like Craig William Macneill’s The Boy. The film is a slow-burning look at a young, impressionable kid whose growing fascination with death leads him down a horrifying path of destruction. It’s very much […]

SFF Review: Goodnight Mommy, a faceless mother returns home

May 8, 2015.Reading time 4 minutes.

One of most unhinging films I saw at the Stanley Film Festival came from directing tandem Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, whose psychological shocker Goodnight Mommy (Ich seh, Ich seh) delivered a nasty, gut-grinding film about damaged minds and tormented children. In the film, nine-year-old twin brothers discover that after their mother comes home, bandaged after cosmetic […]

SFF Review: The Hallow, a fairy tale of horror

May 6, 2015.Reading time 4 minutes.

Up-and-comer Corin Hardy makes his feature film debut with an intense, practical effects driven creature feature called The Hallow. It’s an ambitious monster movie that wastes no time getting to the good stuff, as it creates early tension before unleashing an army of evil woodland creatures. In the film, a family who moves into a remote milll house […]

SFF Review: Deathgasm, horror goes metal

May 4, 2015.Reading time 3 minutes.

Jason Lei Howden makes his feature film debut with the utterly insane Deathgasm, a gnarly horror film with a heavy metal pulse and a glorious dose of the red stuff. It’s a simple story about a couple of metal heads who unwittingly summon demonic forces that take over their town. Cut from the same cloth as films like […]