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Hereditary

Hereditary

In theory it ought to be possible to respond to a film without taking into account to the critical reaction to it, but once you are aware of that reaction and have seen it pasted on the sides of buses, there's not much you can do about that: it's already in you. But...

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A Cat In The Brain (1990) and Slugs (1988)

A Cat In The Brain (1990) and Slugs (1988)

A CAT IN THE BRAIN It may seem an odd thing to say of a film called A Cat In The Brain but - inured as I am to disappointment in such matters (almost counting on it, you might say) - the last thing I expected to see in it was a cat clawing at someone's (living) brain....

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Three Against Nature

Three Against Nature

THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA (1976) 'An insult to any audience' concludes the review of Lewis John Carlino's film The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (hereafter referred to as Sailor) in my damaged-in-transit Waterstones-freebie edition of the...

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Sleepaway Camp (1983)

This was prefaced by a talk from BFI programmer Michael Blyth around LBGT horror which pleasingly focused on less obvious titles – The Ghost Ship, Homicidal, Alucarda – even if he did seem to be stretching a point sometimes. Passing allusions to Dr. Jekyll And Mister...

Enys Men / Skinamarink

ENYS MEN Mark Jenkin's follow-up to the attention-grabbing and fiercely Cornish Bait is being sold as 'folk-horror' but it's a bit more experimental than that might suggest. I don't know if anyone has complained. Certainly I won't, since I enjoy an experimental film,...

Arrival

Denis Villeneuve's Arrival brings to our attention something about contact with alien life forms that to my knowledge hasn't been thoroughly explored up until now – how boring it might be. That's not to say that the film itself is boring – although it does hover on...

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

In theory this could be my ideal film, uniting art and trash with no middle ground; but there's a difference between theory and practice. I remember years ago, when I used to work in Waterstones, looking at the cover of the book this is based on and wondering if there...

Amulet /Master

AMULET Can horror be 'progressive'? Actor and now director Romola Garai talks about 'changing the narrative' of horror with her first film but I'm not sure that she's managed it (what is this 'narrative' anyway?) though she might have thrown a few spokes in its...

Pacifiction/Infinity Pool/The Outwaters/Beau Is Afraid

PACIFICTION Back in 2013 I almost killed myself hurrying from a London Film Festival showing of Denis Coté's Vic And Flo Saw A Bear on the South Bank, to Albert Serra's Story of My Death in Leicester Square. Given the title of Serra's film, it would have been an...

The Secret of Dorian Gray (1969)

Ah, Valentine's Day – my favourite feast day, since my single status means I don't have to observe it. Nevertheless I was moved to recognise it to the extent of braving rail replacement services to get to the Barbican, where film programmer Josh Saco (aka Cigarette...

White Devils: Get Out, The Transfiguration and Whity (1971)

GET OUT In Get Out a black American guy Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) goes with his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) to visit her (rich) family, only to find them a little overbearing in their acceptance of him. Sure, they're liberal, but as he wearily agrees with...

The Lady From Shanghai (1947) and The Spooky Bunch (1980)

Orson Welles' Irish accent in The Lady From Shanghai is perfectly emblematic of the film itself: you can't quite believe it yet you can't quite disbelieve it either. Welles' character, a sailor called Michael O'Hara, falls in love with Rita Hayworth's lady of the...

Empire of the Ants (1977) / Contamination (1980) / Alien 2: On Earth (1981)

EMPIRE OF THE ANTS (1977) Bert I Gordon, director of such vintage extravaganzas as 1958's Attack Of The 50ft Woman briefly returned to cinema screens in the 1970's with a couple of films which were, nominally, adaptations of H G Wells stories, though B.I.G. (note...

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