My Bloody Valentine (1981)

After a fortnight of emotional, stirring pictures at the Brisbane International Film Festival, it seemed only fitting to return to the warm, blood-stained blanket of a dumb ‘80s slasher movie. My Bloody Valentine’s strongest elements aren’t particularly dumb. The setting of an industrial coal-mining town provides a welcome reprieve from the pretty, wealthy teenagers that…

Pacific Rim (2013)

Guillermo del Toro usually brings his own unique designs to blockbuster filmmaking; Pacific Rim, surprisingly, feels more like a pastiche. It’s visually a hodge-podge of Godzilla, Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Matrix sequels, and is filled with overt references – there’s a Star Wars quote, and GLaDOS from Portal voices the film’s computers. The lack…

Mama (2013)

Mama has gotten more press than your average horror film, thanks more to its cast than anything else. The film, directed by Argentinean Andrés Muschietti and “presented by” Guillermo del Toro, concerns two young girls found in the woods five years after their disappearance and their foster parents, Kingslayer (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Bin-Laden-slayer (Jessica Chastain).…

House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

Some horror films succeed thanks to a carefully constructed atmosphere of dread, conveyed through a minimalist soundtrack and disconcerting cinematography. Others succeed with nuanced, subtle performances in a bare-bones, unsettling story. House of 1000 Corpses isn’t one of those films. Its cinematography is all over the place: Zombie knows where to place a camera, but…

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

This straight-to-video sequel establishes a tonal shift from the relatively serious Wrong Turn in its opening scene. A young starlet spouts hammy dialogue into her mobile, speeding along country roads in a red convertible, before a deformed hillbilly literally splits her in two with a hatchet. The scene is far broader – and more enjoyable…

Wrong Turn (2003)

Wrong Turn begins with a tense, understated mountain climbing scene, competently shot and edited. It’s an encouraging start. The credits are comparatively lazy, using a Se7en-esque sequence to flash a bunch of silly exposition – shots of headlines with “Inbred-induced psychosis” etcetera. Yes, it’s one of those: another hillbilly horror film. Wrong Turn is populated…

The Bay (2012)

The Bay isn’t the best found footage film of 2012 – that was Chronicle, which told its fairly standard teen superhero story by pushing the boundaries of the genre – but unlike Chronicle, The Bay plays fair. The context is an environmental-horror tale of a small town decimated by an (initially) unknown pathogen, framed as…

The Mist (2007)

The Mist is a good movie that could have been great. The first element that lets it down was inescapable with its low budget: the special effects. The film is intended to be serious, meaningful and to capture real fear, and the acting and composition support this, but the creature special effects appear goofy and…