My expectations were high for this second feature from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night director Ana Lily Amirpour.
Continue readingMona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021)
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Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
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This Gen Z horror comedy is bound to become a pop culture favourite with its witty and quotable dialogue and great blend of gore and laughs.
Continue readingSissy (2022)
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Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes have teamed up to bring us a deft blend of Australiana, comedy and horror. It reminded me of Little Monsters in its loving and gory depiction of modern foibles.
Continue readingCrimes of the Future (2022)
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I think I knew this was going to be overblown Cronenberg fan boy drivel but Kristen Stewart so I pushed on through to a 9.45pm fourth film of the day sold out screening. I was lulled occasionally by KStew and the always mesmerising Léa Seydoux and stuck it through to its trite ending.
Continue readingYou Won’t Be Alone (2022)
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It’s going to be hard to forget this dark fable by Australian Goran Stolevski (his very different Of An Age is also screening at MIFF). He’s not afraid to be daring, setting the story in 19th century Macedonia and centring it on a largely non-verbal girl.
Continue readingGaia (2021)
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Jaco Bouwer’s first feature starts with great visuals and effective suspense but gets lost in a a hallucinogenic mess that promises more than it delivers.
Continue readingComing Home in the Dark (2021)
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James Ashcroft’s ‘family terrorised in the wilderness’ horror is much more than it seems, revealing layers that explore human frailty and New Zealand’s dark past.
Continue readingDay 29: A film that always makes me cry
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Train to Busan (2016)
A South Korean zombie epic might not be everyone’s first choice but I have yet to get through this without crying in two particular scenes.
Continue readingDay 28: My favourite non-English language film
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Let the Right One In (2008)
This one was a hard one to decide. There are a few that I’ve already listed for other prompts and I was going to choose Yiorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster (2015) until I realised it’s in English (duh!). It came down to exquisite Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In or astounding Estonian B&W In the Crosswind (Risttuules) (2014).
Continue readingDay 9: The scariest film I’ve seen
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Paranormal Activity (2007)
Usually scary films don’t scare me for long as I think I maintain an emotional disconnect just to protect myself from being genuinely freaked out. Some are just horrible – Wolf Creek (2005) put ideas and images into my head that I wish I could unsee – and some get let down by the ending where the horror unmasked is less frightening than my imagination promised – Hereditary (2018) is an example of this .
I watched Paranormal Activity one night at home with my partner and he, as often happens, got tired and went to bed before the end. The story is about a young couple who move into a new house where there is a demonic presence. It’s shown only through footage from a camera set up in their bedroom and so there is a lot of suspense created by what happens outside of the room that we can’t see but also what happens while they are asleep that we can see.
It’s one of the few movies that, when it ended, I was scared to walk around my quiet, dark house. I experienced something similar when I watched The Blair Witch Project (1999) for the first time recently. It had the same video camera footage technique and an evil that was potentially demonic and those final scenes really stuck with me. I can see how Paranormal Activity might have been influenced by it (and the long term impact it has had on the horror genre).
What’s the scariest film you’ve seen, particularly as an adult?
Posted as part of the 30-Day Fillums Challenge, created by me. If you want to see what’s coming up, have a look at my post here and feel free to join in by commenting each day with your own choice.
Coming Next: Day 10: Your favourite Australian film
