9 – Anybody home? (Us)

Rising to your feet your eyes dart about in search of shelter, somewhere to escape from the growling all around you. A Church, there must be one, this is a graveyard, surely a chapel at least…there! Rising like a mirage from the mist is a dark stone building with a crooked steeple. You run.

Dodging left and right to avoid the crumbling decrepit tombs and gravestones you quickly arrive at the front of the church where your reflection in a large window draws an involuntary cry from your lips. You look behind you for any sign of pursuit then back at the…window? No, a door, and made of dark, damp wood, then why? No time for that now, the growls are getting closer. You grasp the iron ring of the door handle and wrench it open, slamming it behind you and slapping the bolt closed.

It’s gloomy in the church, the windows yielding little light…when did it get so dark outside?

Slowly you become accustomed to the dim space and make out two lines of pews with a tattered line of carpet sandwiched between them. At the end of the carpet stands a simple altar, cobwebs hang limp between two candelabras set on top of it. This place hasn’t been used in a long time.

Off to your left a faint glow catches your attention. A strip of yellow outlines a small door set into a stone pillar. Stepping over to it you pull the door open and peer inside. Steps. A spiral staircase leading not up, but down. Electric lightbulbs strung together like a line of paper dolls disappear round the bend…a crypt?

Down seems to be the last place you want to go right now, down is dank mortar and mould, down is grave worms and rot, down is death.

A crash echoes about the church as something slams against the front door.

Down it is.

Something a bit more recent this time, and something more widely known, today I’m reviewing the 2^nd of Jordan Peele’s Films, 2019’s ’Us’.

Peele is a relative newcomer to directing but that certainly doesn’t seem to have been a hindrance, with the critical acclaim and success of his 1^st and previous film ‘Get Out’ (It’s on the list).

‘Us’ follows the Wilson family as they go on holiday to a lake house near Santa Cruz. The mother, Adelaide, had a traumatic life altering experience at the beach in Santa Cruz as a child and soon her past comes back to haunt, not just her, but her family, friends and the whole country.

Now this all sounds very dramatic and ambitious for a horror film, but Peele keeps it tight and keeps things focused on the Wilsons. Almost all of the film is set around the 4 of them and we know only what they know, we have no insider knowledge and that’s what stops this film from becoming detached from the horror, we fear for this family.

We don’t just fear for them though, we root for them. I’m not ashamed to say that in quite a few horror films I couldn’t care less about the protagonists and sometimes I’m actively hoping they don’t make it. Here though, the 4 family members, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), Gabriel (Winston Duke), Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) feel like a real family unit, like real people and not just actors in a film. Though speaking of actors, all 4 are excellent and it’s their work which brings those characters to life and makes us want them to succeed, makes us afraid for them but also…wait, no, that’s for the spoiler section. Let’s just say the actors had to work twice as hard in this film, but man, it looks like it must have been so much fun.

If I was to describe the film as a totally made up genre within Horror, I’d say it’s ‘Psycho Home Invasion on a Grand Scale’. The scope and the ideas behind the film are huge and intriguing with a nice chunk of disturbing. ‘Us’ is creepy, it makes you think ‘What if?’ and in your mind you berate the people who designed your home for making it so linear with so few exits. ‘Us’ is also funny at times, particularly when Gabe is on screen, he provides the comic relief to Addy’s serious, haunted tone. Another amusing character is Ophelia, but we’ll get to that in the spoilers.

The music. Oh wow. The music in this film is excellent, fun when it needs to be fun, and down right creepy when it wants to be. Special mention goes to the opening theme ‘Anthem’ and my personal favourite, an incredible orchestration of ‘I Got 5 On It’ that I’m listening to right now and just…chills.

Score time. I really struggled with what to give this one. I flip flopped between two high numbers but eventually decided on 4 Rabbits out of 5. A few things could have brought it higher. The ending was a little predictable, and perhaps it’s just me but although I was rooting for the main 4, I didn’t feel anything for the other characters in the film, perhaps we’re not supposed to, but it made their fates mundane. Sure the premise is messed up, but frankly I didn’t care. Having said that, this is a clever, fun, creepy and ultimately entertaining film with a mind blowing score that deserves your full attention and I’m looking forward to Jordan Peele’s next one.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So the main idea behind the film is that there exists underground doppelgangers of the people on the surface. Clones created by the government and then abandoned when their experiments to control their surface counterparts failed. As far as we’re aware this is everywhere in America. Pretty wild stuff. This is what I meant when I said the scope and ideas were huge. It’s like a zombie apocalypse if the zombies had gold scissors, and were…well…us.

The clones are unsurprisingly played by the same actors as the regular people in the film. This is what I meant when I said they must have had a lot of fun. Imagine getting to play your normal character, and then your character if they’d lived underground their whole lives and where essentially a psychopath. The whole cast did a brilliant job with this, those twins, wow, they creep me out.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s look at Addy’s clone, Red. We first meet Red at the start of the film when Addy wanders away from her parents at the fairground. She goes down onto the beach and goes inside a hall of mirrors where she bumps into what isn’t just another reflection, but turns out to be Red, her clone. Cut to Addy and her parents at a psychologist because Addy won’t talk any more and is acting odd since she wandered off. Do you see where this is going? So yes, years later, and at the end of the film, we discover that the reason Red was different to the other clones, and the reason she was able to organise them and bring them to the surface to slay their counterparts, is that Red…is actually Addy. This was the twist ending that wasn’t much of a surprise.

Now if I’m honest, at the start of the film this isn’t obvious because you don’t know anything about the doppelgangers yet and it relies somewhat on you having forgotten the beginning scene by later on in the film. So when I say it was a little predictable it was a little, but not glaringly obvious.

Oh yes, that other funny moment I wanted to talk about. Ophelia.

The Wilsons meet up with another family on their holiday, the Tylers, friends of theirs who are staying in the area, and their resort house has an Alexa/Siri type device called Ophelia. Later in the film the Tylers are attacked by their clones. The Father and twin daughters are killed outright while the Mum, Kitty, though injured, manages to drag herself along the floor and ask Ophelia to call the police. Ophelia plays ‘Fuck the Police’ by NWA. It’s a nice nod to how infuriating these devices can be and adds a bit of humour to an otherwise gruesome and horrific scene. Though to be honest, this family was annoying…

The last scene I’d like to talk about is where that brilliant version of ‘I Got 5 On It’ comes in. Addy and Red fight in the underground facility and Red (Original Addy), lithely avoids Addy’s (Original Red’s) attacks. The movements flow with the music and the scene inter cuts with one of the two girls, years ago performing ballet in front of an audience. One on a grand stage, the other in a dark underground corridor. It shows brilliantly how their lives have switched and how different circumstances effect what is essentially the same person. It’s so well done. Hmmm…maybe it does deserve a 5…no, I’m sticking with 4.

Now if you’ll excuse me there’s some strange people outside…

8 – A Grave Mistake (City of The Living Dead)

This doesn’t seem right.

You were following a path, it seemed fairly well trodden, there was even a sign, what did it say? Tavernmaw, so there are other places.

But now the forest has closed in tight on either side and looking back the path has all but disappeared behind you, as if erased by your own steps.

You recall Steven’s Map, perhaps it could shed some light on your whereabouts. Reaching into your pocket you freeze as a low growl comes from somewhere to your right, was that a dog? Again…that doesn’t seem right, it sounds like an imitation of a dog, from a human throat. Then an odd noise and the growl again, but this time from your left, and closer.

Breaking into a run you thrash forwards through the trees, blindly pushing your way through the undergrowth which seems to be getting thicker, and thicker, when suddenly you burst out into a clearing, trip on something solid and come crashing to the ground.

Dazed and slightly winded you look up through a low thick mist and see writing.

Here lies Father Lovecraft

Parish Priest of Tavernmaw

May God have Mercy on his Soul

May God have Mercy on us all

It’s a gravestone. This is a graveyard. Now the growling is everywhere.

Wow, another one for the horror enthusiast, I mean, that’s why you’re reading this right? City of the Living Dead is from another of the ‘Godfather’s of Gore’, this time it’s Italian director Lucio Fulci and the first film of his unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy.

As a lover of Horror but a bit of a babe in the woods when it comes to the films outside of the main stream I’d only watched this film once before, and that was very recently when I got hold of a copy on Blu Ray, courtesy of Arrow who seem to be the go to company for high quality versions of semi obscure films. I’m in no way affiliated with them by the way, I’m just a fan of their output.

This wasn’t quite the first Fulci film I ever saw, that would be Zombi 2 or Zombie Flesh Eaters as it’s known here in the UK, but it was the second. So obviously Zombi 2 fully prepared me for what was to come…or not. This film is weird, I know I said the same about The Wizard of Gore but it’s equally true here, the plot is confusing, we jump around almost as much as the zombies, more on that later, and the whole thing feels a bit like a strange dream pulled from Fulci’s head.

The general premise of the film is that a priest in the town of Dunwich, no not that one, but named as an homage to that one, commits suicide and this starts to open the gates of Hell. A few days from this event, on All Saints Day, the invasion of the living dead will begin and our group of heroes is trying to stop that from happening.

This never really felt like an imminent event, even when it was, well, imminent. For a start there were already a few scattered zombies appearing throughout the film and you just don’t get a real sense of urgency. Essentially my main issue with this film is the confusing and disjointed plot which feels like it’s there as an excuse for a series of bizarre events.

The good news is that these bizarre events are great and we get to see all sorts of gross effects and craziness which I’m beginning to suspect is a hallmark of Fulci, I mean he does have that nickname.

Teleporting Zombies, check. Maggot Storm, check. Intestinal Regurgitation, check. The list goes on and I’ll expand on these more in the spoiler section. The effects for these events are great, the film does an excellent job of grossing you out, and I say this having watched a fair few gross films.

Something I’ve noted from the three Fulci films I’ve seen is that he does Zombies well, and more importantly he does threatening feeling zombies well. There’s no hint of humanity here, nothing to reason with. A special mention goes for any scene where zombies are rising from the ground, hands down of all the Zombie films I’ve seen, Fulci does this the best, it’s slow and sinister and deliciously macabre.

Visually the film is really good, there’s great use of lighting and fog that creates a spooky, dreamlike atmosphere. Dunwich itself feels like a haunted town somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, we mostly see it at night but even in the day it never feels safe.

The music is also great, but sadly very repetitive. There’s one particular piece, which I love, but it’s overused. I adored it on the Blu Ray menu but it really began to grate by the finale.

The acting, like many Italian films of this era, is a little hard to judge as the voices are all dubbed in the studio afterwards, this is true whether you listen to the Italian or the English audio, it’s just how they did things. It’s nothing special but it’s also not awful, just OK.

So to the score. I’m probably going to get frowned upon by Fulci enthusiasts but I found this to be pretty middle of the road. Maybe odd to say for something so weird but what I mean is I didn’t come away thinking it was a masterpiece, or that it was terrible either, it was just, OK. With that in mind the most appropriate score is 3 flying maggots out of 5. I definitely think it’s worth seeing for the various set pieces and the brilliant visuals, I almost gave it a 4, but it just never felt, complete. I have seen it stated that it feels like a dry run for the film Fulci released a year later The Beyond, so I look forward to seeing that in the future.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

I mentioned that the film was worth seeing for the set pieces, so let’s talk about some of those.

Peter Bell, a Journalist who’s investigating the death of the medium Mary Woodhouse, goes to the graveyard where’s she’s part way though being buried when he discovers she’s not so dead after all. What follows is one of the most stressful scenes I’ve ever had to sit through. Peter leaps to Mary’s rescue by jumping into the grave and then repeatedly slamming a pickaxe through the lid of coffin at about the point where you would expect her face to be. You would think he was trying to impale her through the head with the point of the axe, it’s frankly amazing that he doesn’t kill her for real.

There’s a scene which seems to be fairly well known, at least in horror circles, and that’s the girl who starts bringing up her own intestines. She and her date are making out in a car when they’re confronted by a teleporting Father Thomas, the aforementioned priest who committed suicide. He then stares at her until her eyes start to bleed and her entire digestive tract makes its way out of her mouth, the effects of which are pretty good, especially coming off the back of watching The Wizard of Gore.

One of the next scenes that stands out is where the hapless character Bob, who people seem to be blaming for the recent deaths, gets straight up murdered by a Dunwich resident who thinks he’s after his daughter. This isn’t a simple case of a father getting carried away and accidentally killing the guy, or even pulling the trigger and shooting him from across the room. No. This fucking psychopath of a Dad holds Bob down on a workbench whilst a lathe drill slowly drills through his head! When I say slowly I mean it, even in the world of film where it takes a descending stone door forever to close it still takes 1m 15 seconds, PLUS Bob was trying to run away, he wasn’t even fighting the Dad. He tries to explain why he was there and the Dad looks at the lathe, then at Bob and makes the decision to drill through his head. Psy-cho-path!

The last of the weird set pieces I’m going to mention is the maggot storm. There’s a shot where our 4 main heroes are sat discussing what they’re going to do when the window blows open and maggots start spraying in through the window. A lot of maggots. 10kg of them apparently, blown at the actors by two wind machines. Lovely!

Some more general observations.

The zombies seem to be able to teleport. This isn’t explained, or discussed, it’s just something they seem to be able to do, well at least some of the time, it’s pretty inconsistent.

Somebody, Fulci I imagine, definitely liked the idea of Zombies grabbing somebody’s scalp and pulping the back of their skull by squeezing it. This happens at least 3 times that I recall. It’s a great effect but some more variation would have been nice.

Lastly, and appropriately, the ending. Our two remaining heroes Mary and Gerry emerge from the crypt beneath the Dunwich graveyard, they’ve saved the day. The little boy who they helped earlier, John-John, really? What a name choice. Anyway John-John runs towards them, everyone’s happy, then slowly we hear Mary start to say, “No!”, “No!” and finally scream and we freeze frame on the boy’s face as animated cracks appear, the screen goes black and the credits roll. I’d love to now explain to you what that meant but unfortunately the best I have is that either, that’s just the ending and it’s weird, live with it, or that the ending was damaged or destroyed and they had no money to re-shoot it so that’s what we ended up with, I haven’t seen a definitive answer.

[Happy laughter then screams. Crackle effect to black. Credits]

7 – Can I Have a Volunteer? (The Wizard of Gore)

You finally reach the edge of town. Cobbled streets give way to trodden dirt and ahead, a wall of green, a forest, with an opening like a gothic archway of viridian leads into darkness.

At the edge of the wood, there has been a massacre. The stumps of trees fill the space, like islands in a sea of muddy ground. You look closer, the earth has been trampled by the coming and going of many feet and the stumps themselves appear worn and smooth on top, smooth except for numbers carved into each one. The ground slopes down to the west and there beyond the rows of stumps, is a stone dais…this is an amphitheatre

A stout wooden table sits in the centre of the dais, dark wood with dark stains.

Looking down, a sheet of paper flaps against your foot. Picking it up you see it’s a flyer for some event.

Mittwoch the Magnificent!

Magic and Mayhem.

You won’t believe your eyes, if you still have them!

A magic show then, but promising something more than just the usual mundane tricks. The flyer has no date but looks fairly new, perhaps the show is still on, if not here then somewhere else on the island…is there anywhere else on the island? People weren’t clear on that.

You fold the flyer and slip it into your pocket with Steven’s map.

Taking one last look at the dais, you turn and stride towards the trees.

Today’s film is a bit more of an obscure one, at least outside of Horror fan circles. I love Horror, but I’d never heard of this film, perhaps shame on me, until I heard it mentioned on Cinemassacre. The Monster Madness series introduced me to many of the lesser known films in my collection and I’ll forever be grateful for that, even when it’s a film like this. Ominous? Perhaps.

The Wizard of Gore is a 1970 film, directed by, The Godfather of Gore, or at least one of them, Herschell Gordon Lewis. This is one of the later films in his initial run between 1961 and 1972 and follows the exploits of a rather intense Magician named Montag the Magnificent. Montag has an unusual show, it has the old clichés like sawing a woman in half, but he takes it up a notch and uses a chainsaw!

Like the film, the spoiler free section of this review will probably be somewhat confusing as I’ll mostly be wanting to type ‘But what the fuck was actually happening when…’ or ‘I don’t understand! I thought…’ etc… Basically the film is all sorts of weird and despite having watched it twice in the space of a month it didn’t really answer my questions.

Let’s get on to what we can talk about. The film is gory, very gory. Real animal offal is used in the gruesome death scenes and performances, though despite the use of real gore, I’d be lying if I said it looked real…does that make sense? It looks like what it is, people with animal guts on them, there are some fun prosthetics and fake body parts used in close ups, though again they’re obviously fake. So despite all of the blood and guts this, probably, isn’t going to make you cringe or look away in the way the Saw or Hostel films might do, I mostly found myself laughing at it, though maybe that’s just me.

Because we’re still in the spoiler free section I can’t go into too much detail regarding the plot but essentially Montag is doing his shows and selecting ‘volunteers’ and these same people are turning up dead shortly afterwards and it’s really a bit of a who done it mystery, which I actually found pretty compelling, at least until the end sequence. I really did wonder what was really going on behind the mysterious deaths, as I hinted earlier this really doesn’t pay off in the end, if you’re looking for a film which pays off in the end, this will disappoint.

On the theme of disappointing, the acting is awful, though hilariously so. The film’s main protagonist, talk show host Sherry Carson, played by Judy Cler puts in probably the best performance though it’s Ray Sager as Montag who steals the show. He’s so over the top and dramatic, which kind of works for a Magician, but he’s always at 200% even when off stage. Oh, special mention goes to the mortuary owner…just wait.

So it’s a badly acted, over the top gore film with a somewhat compelling plot but a disappointing ending, but is it worth watching? Well, I’m going to give this film the lowest score I’ve given any film so far, 2 bloody hands out of 5. It’s campy, it’s silly, but ultimately it isn’t fun, and a film like this really needs to be. If you do decide to watch it, do so with friends, it’s a film that requires lively debate and incredulity. It succeeds as a talking point where it fails as a film.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So my main question with this film is WTF IS HAPPENING?? We see Montag performing his magic tricks, such as chainsawing a girl in half and we keep cutting between a calm scene where he’s going about his business, everybody is watching intently and there’s little going on it seems, and super gory shots of guts everywhere and blood, and screaming, and then back to the calm shot again, and repeat. It seems clear that the audience aren’t seeing all of the viscera or hearing the screaming and are only seeing the ‘trick’ being performed. Are the bloody bits in Montag’s head, is he using magic to hide this part from the viewers?

Later we see the volunteer/victim seemingly succumb to the wounds they received in the show and now everybody can see it. The cast start to think a copycat killer is following the volunteers after the show and killing them in the same way as the tricks that were performed.

We know…do we? I’m honestly not sure. That it’s Montag who is killing these women with magic, or perhaps some form of mass hypnosis (That works on people who weren’t there? And keeps people alive who should be dead?). Honestly this is why I said it was compelling, I found myself really wanting to know how it worked, what was the trick? At the end it seems like perhaps this was all in Montag’s mind, the entire film, this makes the most sense I guess but the ending is equally strange and there’s even a false ending to confuse things further. Montag is killed and our two main protagonists enjoy a well deserved drink. But wait! Jack peels off his face to reveal that he is actually Montag! He goes to kill Sherry but then she laughs and tells him that everything that happened was actually HER illusion! She tells him he’ll have to start again and we go back to the start of the film.

So okay you say, Sherry explains it, it was an illusion of her making, but you know what, that’s bullshit! That’s a case of not knowing how to end the film, it’s similar to the classic ‘It was all a dream’ ending, and those are never satisfying! I was hoping for something clever, but then that was wishful thinking with a film like this. Ultimately it left me unsatisfied.

Moving away from the plot there were a few moments in the film which I did enjoy. I liked the creepy scenes in a graveyard where Montag retrieves the (Suddenly far less grisly) corpses of the victims and starts placing them one by one into a mausoleum, some creepy music plays and there’s a red filter over everything and the whole section plays out like an old gothic horror and is really the cinematographic highlight of the film, in fact if taken on its own the first of these scenes in particular would be a great creepy little short.

Speaking of the graveyard, I mentioned him earlier but the mortuary owner is hilarious. Apparently he’s the actual owner of the graveyard used in the film and he wanted to be in the film. There’s a scene where he’s in the morgue and Montag freezes him with his stare and he stands there with one arm in the air supposedly frozen but he’s swaying about and to be fair to him he’s kept in shot for a very long time for somebody trying to stand still, maybe his direction was to sway about, that’s entirely possible, I could be being too harsh on him, but it’s amusing none the less.

Other than that there’s little else I really want to mention. If you’re looking for a gore fest and you like some 70’s exploitation then you might enjoy it. I myself didn’t hate it, I gave it a 2 out of 5 but it maybe creeps towards so bad it’s good, but doesn’t quite make it. Herschell Gordon Lewis’s slightly later The Gore Gore Girls was a more enjoyable one for me because it wasn’t trying to be serious, the only humour in this feels unintentional.

Now, go back to the beginning…

6 – Tasty Treats (Shaun of the Dead)

With Albert’s ominous warning still fresh in your mind you make your way north through the town, looking to escape the strangely deserted streets flanked by crooked buildings, the occasional twitch of a curtain catching your eye where the windows aren’t covered by shutters.

Did somebody move across the end of that alley?

Was that the sound of shuffling feet?

ICE CREAM!

The voice seems to come from directly behind you. Crying out you spin about and see a thin man with a gaunt face wearing white overalls and what appears to be a sailor hat.

Surrounding him is a gaggle of children, but surely you would have heard them, children are usually so…silent, these children are silent. They fidget and jostle one another reaching for the Ice Cream cones the man is handing them, but they don’t say a word.

One by one the children claim their treats and patter off down side streets and into doorways, soon it’s just you and the Ice Cream vendor.

Little rascals, I’ll lose a hand one of these days.

With that he turns his cart around and shuffles off. The streets are empty again.

It’s been a long time coming this review. For whatever reason I found myself procrastinating and kicking the can down the zombie infested road. I had a similar issue with Alien, I think there’s more pressure when it comes to reviewing such a well known and well regarded film.

Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead sits astride the Horror and Comedy genres and manages to be an excellent example of both. Ask anybody who watches a lot of horror to name their top 10 zombie films and Shaun of The Dead will most likely make an appearance, often near the top.

The film follows the titular Shaun as he navigates through his mundane run of the mill life, dealing with housemates, family, his love life…and zombies.

The pacing of the film, and in particular the introduction of the zombies, is brilliant. It’s gradual and subtle at first. We’ve already been shown how zombie like the human characters can be, that Shaun…well, no spoilers. If you haven’t seen this film already then you should go watch it right now. Still here? Fed up of this cliché review trope? OK, let’s continue.

The introduction of the zombies is slick, which is one of the best ways to describe Shaun of the Dead. Whether it’s the rapid cuts to staccato sound effects, or the excellent use of music, it’s lovingly crafted and really stands out in a saturated genre, be that horror or comedy, take your pick.

So it’s been established that Shaun of The Dead is a slick horror comedy, but is it scary, is it funny? I wouldn’t say it’s a scary film, but it has its moments, the threat is real, and the gore is wonderfully done, there’s a scene where a character is pulled through the window which has echoes of a similar scene in George A Romero’s Day of the Dead. The zombies look great, they’re not as grim and relentless feeling as the ones from Lucio Fulci ‘s Zombi 2 for example but they look believable, especially as newly created undead with their skin and clothes mostly intact, these are your neighbours, the people from down the road.

Another thing this film has is real emotion. Be prepared to cry in this film, it’s not all gory set pieces and comedy, it has some truly moving and upsetting scenes. This is the beauty of Shaun of The Dead, it’s just as good at making you cry as it is at making you laugh, and it’s oh so good at making you laugh!

Shaun and his interactions with his best friend Ed, more on him later, provide the bulk of the laughs but honestly the whole cast are hilarious, each in their own way. Fans of Edgar Wright’s series Spaced will feel right at home as the crude fart jokes evolve into ridiculous set pieces, though what I will say is it’s very British. I mean, I am British, so that’s fine for me but I’d be interested to know how the humour translates to non British audiences.

Ed. If I have one issue with this film, it’s that I found Ed entirely unlikable. He has his funny moments, indeed as I said it’s him and Shaun’s banter which provides the meat of the humour, but I find myself adverse to him on every watch through. So there we go, something negative, but it’s more of a personal feeling rather than an issue with the performance, in fact Nick Frost is excellent in the role. Speaking of performances Simon Pegg is at his very best in this film, the range of emotions he goes through and the seeming ease at which he portrays Shaun has you fully engaged with him throughout, you feel what he feels, good, bad and ugly.

Was there ever any doubt, not only of the rating system but of the final score, I’m going to give Shaun of The Dead 5 Cornettos out of 5. An incredible film which is a real contender for best comedy horror ever made.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

Let’s talk about the introduction of the zombies. I mentioned this in the spoiler free section but couldn’t go into any detail. It’s so well done. We see signs of what’s to come, a woman collapsing, a man in the park who looks like he’s about to bite into a pigeon, then as we go on, we the audience see more obvious signs whilst Shaun and Ed, drunk at this point, are oblivious to the true nature of a couple of zombies they encounter on their way home from the pub. The culmination of this is when Shaun manages to walk through mostly deserted, except for the occasional zombie, streets, buy something from the shop, leaving money for the absent owner, and walk back home without noticing the zombie apocalypse has even begun!

I mentioned moving and upsetting scenes, there are several, not many of our core group make it through the film, but the scene that hits the hardest is the death of Shaun’s mum. As a viewer we notice something isn’t quite right after her earlier off screen encounter with a zombie, she keeps holding her arm, she’s been bitten. After a tearful reveal in the Winchester, Shaun’s mum dies in his arms, and then to make things worse he has to shoot her when she rises as a Zombie. It’s devastating, and to think 5 minutes ago we were laughing as the gang fought off zombies to the sound of the jukebox blaring Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, this film has a huge range.

There’s a moment early on in the film which I feel has affected my own life. Now bear with me. In my garden I have a rotating washing line. The central pole of this washing line slots into another pole which is cemented into the ground. I’d quite like to be able to remove the washing line from the base pole so I have a better view of the garden, but I can’t. Not because it doesn’t come out, it does, but because I know that if I do, that exposed pole is 100% going right through somebody! I’ve always found mundane deaths or injuries the worst in films, because I can see them happening! Ugh! No! It makes me cringe.

The end of the film is a nice touch. We get a happy ending…ish…maybe? I mean, it’s about as happy as it could be with the dead people and all. The zombie plague is over, Shaun and Liz are together, and Shaun still has his best friend Ed, in zombie form, chained in the shed…ok so it’s not THAT much of a happy ending.

Sorry.

No no, I’m sorry.

5 – A New Friend (Alien from the Darkness)

Stepping from the Inn you find yourself on a wide cobbled square surrounded by thatch roofed buildings. At the centre of the square is a tall pole. Different coloured ribbons hang from the top and flutter lazily in the breeze. Your hand brushes the scrap of paper in your pocket…the map, perhaps later, there’s a whole island to explore.

Hullo there friend!

A cheery voice rings out. You look over to a quaint little shop with a multipaned bay window where a jolly looking man with white mutton chops is beckoning you over.

My name is Albert, I heard we had a new visitor to the island. I’m the town chemist, can I interest you in anything?

You glance into the shop through the open door behind the man. Various jars line the shelves, full of things you’ve never seen in any other chemist shop, is that a tentacle?

No? How about some advice then? Not everyone is as they seem. Beware false friends. But most of all, enjoy yourself!

OK…so this is a review I was both amused by and dreading to some degree. Little did I know when I purchased this film in a ‘Wow Anime!’ period I was going through back in the early 2000s, when it was becoming available over here in the UK, that I would be reviewing it 20 years later.

Alien from the Darkness, or Alien of Darkness as the DVD I have calls it (淫獣エイリアン is its original Japanese title or Injū Eirian in the Hepburn romanization), is a Japanese Hentai, about the crew of a Spaceship who discover and explore a derelict craft which turns out to have an alien entity on board. The Alien turns out to be hostile, not to mention horny, and so of course the crew end up in a fight for survival in this pornographic horror from 1996.

I will be the first to admit that I went into this film as a bit of a sceptic. It had been around 2 decades since I last watched it and I honestly couldn’t remember much about it or if it was any good. Spoiler alert, you may be surprised by the result.

I’m going to go right out and say that this would be a better film without the porn side of it, but also if you take those scenes out it barely even qualifies as a film anymore with its already meagre runtime of 45 minutes. The graphic sexual scenes are what they are, they vary from standard lesbian porn scenes to the hentai staple of invasive tentacles. To be fair we’re not talking full hardcore, though it’s entirely possible my copy is cut, being from the 90s, but it’s certainly over and above incidental sexual scenes that are present in many exploitation films for example. The porn scenes are what people are generally watching this for. The thing is, as a by product of wanting to watch some horny space ladies get it on, the viewer inadvertently ends up watching a fairly decent sci-fi horror. It’s nothing special but I’ve very much seen worse.

The film makes no effort in disguising its influence from a film I’ve already reviewed. Alien. Crew finds an abandoned ship. Crew brings something alien aboard their own ship. Crew start to die. OK so that’s fairly vague but wait until you see the crew’s stasis pods and then tell me Alien wasn’t an influence.

I think what I wasn’t expecting in a 45 minute long hentai was a secondary plot, hell I wasn’t even expecting a plot full stop, I actually found myself fully engaged with the film. Yes it’s got some ridiculous scenes and it’s not a film I would ever recommend to people, unless they were after a sci-fi hentai, but it has plenty of good points.

The artwork is decent and at times quite creepy with the various decomposing corpses on the abandoned ship they find. The absolutely bizarre but entirely welcome inclusion of a cute pet ferret running around the ship and providing some awwww moments as well as taking part in the main plot and providing some comic relief. Speaking of comic relief there’s a fair few examples of it in the film. It’s entertaining and after all, isn’t that what films are supposed to be.

With this in mind and taking the film as what it is, porn, I’m going to give Alien from the Darkness 3 rotating vibrators out of 5. This film has no right being this watchable, it feels like the director Norio Takanami wanted to be making something more serious, and it shows.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

The film is strongly influenced by Alien, but surprisingly doesn’t go the whole way and instead goes with quite a few of its own ideas, or at least ideas from different films. Having the creature spend most of the film in the form of a young woman was likely so they could show more boobs but it also means that the crew have no idea that she is in fact the cause of all the deaths and makes this into more of a slasher than Alien.

There is a secondary plot based around the banned substance Metrogria, and our second secret protagonist Lindo, who is trying to smuggle it onto the black market. This was a surprise to me, the fact that they included this in a 45 minute film shows that they cared about more than just a string of tentacle rape scenes.

Let’s talk about Einstein. This furry little ferret was a highlight of the film for me, he’s very cute, even if he sounds ridiculous, his noises clearly being made by a person pretending to be a ferret. He seems like a stand in for Jonesy, the cat from Alien, but really he’s a far more important character. Near the end of the film he leaps at and bites the Alien’s dick! This in turns makes it drop his owner Hikari, who was being gripped by the monster’s tentacles and allows her to shoot it with the Metrogria and blow it out the air-lock. Einstein is my hero.

For a hentai the women are drawn as relatively normal, if physically fit women, which I guess makes sense if they’re the crew of a spaceship. A little more variety in body shape would have been nice but to be honest it’s just nice that they don’t all have massive gravity defying breasts.

In some ways it’s a shame that the film is as short as it is. It does mean that there’s always something happening and the pacing is quick, but it’s a little too fast, even now writing, at this point a week or so later, many of the scenes blur into each other in my mind. It would have been good if we’d had more time to get to know the crew, so we could actually care when they get killed.

Flair, our main protagonist is frankly dull, because, she’s just a monster in a human form, so she doesn’t talk to the crew, or lure them to her in clever ways, they just kind of stumble into each other’s paths and fall under her spell. She’s frankly far more interesting in her monster form, if only because it’s something different to look at.

With regards to the rating system I used, shout out to the scene which I found hilarious the first time I saw it, where the captain and the doctor are getting it on and one of them produces what looks like a grenade, but hey, the captain certainly seems to enjoy it.

This is Emma, last survivor of the…wait, I already did that one…

4 – Time for a Brew (The Mummy’s Hand)

Your breakfast consumed, you sit in a comfy chair by the fireplace, a cup of strong herbal tea steaming beside you. All of a sudden you feel a gentle tap on your shoulder.

Sorry to bother you. My name is Steven Banner, I’m an archaeologist from the mainland. I hope you don’t mind me intruding but it’s just, you have the look of a mainlander yourself, am I right in my observation?

Oh good! Wonderful! May I join you?

I’m sure you think me mad, but I’m telling you, the Egyptians came here, she came here, the Princess, I’m sure of it. The locals tell me I’m wrong, oh they’re nice enough in how they say it, but I don’t like the look in their eyes, they’re hiding something, they don’t like us mainlanders, you’ll find that soon enough.

So what do you say, will you meet me there? I’ve marked the location on this map.

He looks up suddenly, his eyes darting about the room, he stands quickly, speaking overly loud.

Mad am I? I take my leave of you then, good day!

Then in a lower voice.

Come soon…

Some of you may consider the previous review’s film Alien to be ‘pretty old’, and indeed, 1979 was 43 years ago! Today’s film however, came out almost as many years before that, in 1940.

This time I’m reviewing the first of Universal’s Kharis Mummy films, The Mummy’s Hand. Not the first Mummy film from Universal, that would be 1932’s The Mummy, but that film is unrelated, staring Boris Karloff as a very different Mummy named Imhotep.

Chances are that if you imagine the mummy, you are thinking of a shambling, bandaged, killer. That is exactly the mummy that you get in this film, and it is perhaps the earliest example of that stereotype.

The plot follows two American archaeologists searching for the tomb of an Egyptian princess. Along the way they befriend a Magician and his daughter and run afoul of an Egyptian priest and the re-animated mummy Kharis.

When watching films from this far back you have to view them with a somewhat different mindset. The 1940’s is one of the more sterile eras of filmmaking. We are past the introduction of the Hays Code, but before there was much push back against it. There’s no gore, or even much in the way of violence, characters die but it’s all very tame. When it comes to flirting and relationships there’s not even a hint that the characters are anything other than perfectly prim and proper.

If you are capable of watching most recent horror films then this film is not going to scare you, you’d be hard pressed to find a horror film from this period which would. Having said this Kharis himself, played by Tom Tyler, does a good job of appearing creepy and menacing, particularly the shots of him looking towards the camera with those dead black eyes. To modern audiences it’s not very scary but at the time it was probably very effective.

The story itself is decent and compelling if a little disjointed and unnecessary at times, it’s nicely paced, it has to be, the film is after all only 67 minutes long! The main characters are fun, in fact the first half of the film is more comedy than horror with the duo of Steve Banning and Babe Jenson providing a few laughs, particularly once they meet the magician Solvani. The second part of the film becomes more what you would expect with Egyptian tombs, rituals and murder, if you’ve seen the 1999 version of The Mummy then you can see some of it’s roots here.

There’s some nice sets and the scale of the film is good for a lower budget offering, it’s believable that we’re in Egypt even if we don’t see much real evidence of it. It would have been nice to see more in the way of exploration but when a film is this short there’s only so much you can fit in. If it had been even 5 minutes longer and that time had been used to set the scene and add some more atmosphere I feel it would have greatly benefited.

I’m going to award The Mummy’s Hand, 3 Tana leaves out of 5. Not a true classic but an important film in the Mummy mythos. If you’re after a shambling slasher with the archetypal bandaged monster then this is where it began.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

Let’s talk Tana leaves. They are integral to the plot, being the key ingredient of the elixir which revives Kharis, but…why? They just seem to add extra complexity which never pays off. We’re told that 3 keeps him alive, 9 will revive him and allow him to move about, but more than 9 and he’ll become some unstoppable monster! But no, we never get to see that happen, it’s just a tease.

The elixir also seems to work like mummy cat nip and vials of it are used to lure Kharis to his various victims, but again, why? He seems perfectly capable of following orders, it does seem that they’re his payoff for doing the priest’s bidding, but honestly for a film this short we could have done with less Tana and more tombs.

Despite what I said about the story being decent it really does derail a bit towards the end. The Priest, Andoheb, spends most of the film coming across as intelligent, if a little creepy, but then as soon as Kharis brings him Solvani’s daughter Marta, he goes full horn dog and decides he’s going to inject her and himself with the Tana leaf elixir making them both immortal. Oh, so it can do that now? Why hadn’t you done it already if this stuff is so good? It comes out of nowhere.

Speaking of Marta she’s quite a strong female character for a 1940’s movie, she only faints a couple of times, but seriously she’s shown as being the confident, sensible, intelligent person that her father is not and isn’t entirely there to get kidnapped. It’s her who figures out there must be a secret passage, and Steve doesn’t doubt her conclusion. It’s a real plus point for the film that there isn’t a bad boy / good girl dynamic between Steve and Marta which is an often used stereotype.

The final confrontation with Kharis is actually pretty fun, he’s impervious to bullets, super strong and he’s getting close to overdosing on the Tana leaf elixir (OK so maybe it does add something but it could have been handled better!) Kharis meets a fiery end at the hands of Steve and Babe with one fairly graphic, for 1940, shot of the burning Mummy on the floor.

We can’t end on that though, there’s a few light hearted jokes including a nice call back to a letter Steve received earlier in the film. There’s a lot of humour, and it’s well done, it never feels too much and rather than detracting from the horror aspects it helps to make those sections more effective, always end on a joke.

I think that wraps it up…

3 – How do you like your Eggs? (Alien)

As you stare at the TV screen, engrossed, a respectable looking man in a tweed suit walks into shot and turns to camera.

Scientists have yet to determine the age of the craft, or who created it. What they suspect is…hold on…it looks like the first team is returning, perhaps they can…oh…I think somebody is hurt. Dave, cut it there, we’ll do some interviews once we find out what’s happened.

That’s all there is.

Willa steps into the room. The TV screen has turned to static.

Local kid found that tape floating in the brook just east of town. Strange thing is, nobody has any idea where that was filmed. Oh the island is small, but it’s also big at the same time, like a scrunched up piece of paper. You never know what’s hiding round the next bend.

So! How do you like your eggs?

Once again it seems the random number dice Gods have been kind to me. Today’s film is not only my favourite in the Alien franchise, but one of my favourite films of all time.

Alien is a household name when it comes to either the Science Fiction or Horror genres and is probably the film most people think of when asked to name a film which straddles both. We’ve all seen it (We’ve all seen it right?) but we’re still going to review it, Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, Alien.

The story of Alien follows the crew of the Nostromo, a commercial towing vessel. The ship intercepts a signal from a nearby planet and the crew heads down to the surface to investigate. Once there they discover an alien craft with an organism onboard, an organism which soon has the crew fighting for their lives.

I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw Alien. It was certainly when I was younger than the film’s 18 rating, likely watching a late night TV edit, but I didn’t care, and probably wasn’t aware, I just knew it by reputation. This was one of those films that everyone had to have seen, you were a real grown up if you could say that.

Since then I’ve seen Alien an unknown number of times in various forms, cut for TV, uncut and finally the Director’s Cut. This is one of those films that I’m very happy to own on Blu-Ray, it’s a beautiful film with a stunning sense of enormous scale and claustrophobia at the same time. The iconic look of the alien and its surroundings is the work of Swiss artist H.R. Giger. The organic but, well alien, look of his designs adds hugely to the feeling of unease and fear we get from the alien itself. The design is so important to the film that it’s one of those, sadly rare, times when the average viewer is aware of who created it.

Every time I watch Alien, I’m reminded how timeless it is. Partly this is due to its sci-fi future setting but mostly for me it’s because the film is so tight, it’s so focused on the small crew of the Nostromo and we are so engaged and on edge for almost the entire film, that we don’t have time for reflecting on the depiction of computers or characters’ hairstyles. All of that other stuff becomes iconic and I feel myself believing that it’s entirely what things could look like in the early 22nd century (The far future setting certainly helps as it’s a long time before anybody’s going to be able to call Ridley Scott out on that.)

So hey, this is a horror review, is Alien a horror? As a whole series I think it becomes a matter of opinion and certainly varies a little by film, but this film? Damn straight it’s a horror, it just happens to be set in space. Alien, when you really break it down, is a slasher film. A group of people, being hunted down and taken out one by one by a seemingly unstoppable foe. Slasher, and a terrifying one at that. The claustrophobic setting of the Nostromo, the body horror, the excellent creature effects, the eerie score, and the superb acting keep you paranoid and in suspense for most of the film.

I was going to point out a few stand out members of the cast, but that would be doing a disservice to the others. They are all excellent, from the comic relief (Well as much as a film like Alien allows it) duo of Harry Dean Stanton’s Brett and Yaphet Kotto’s Parker. To Sigourney Weaver’s no nonsense Ellen Ripley, they all do their part to immerse you in the film’s universe and make it real to you. The Alien itself is a true monster, it’s both beautiful and repulsive at the same time, a marvel of design with a reproductive cycle to keep you awake at night.

All of these things come together to create something very special and that’s why I’m (unsurprisingly I imagine) going to award Alien, 5 Rolled up Magazines out of 5. This is a true masterpiece, a candidate not just for best sci-fi horror, but for one of the best films period. A film which stands the test of time and feels as new as the day it was released, but then you don’t need me to tell you that, you’ve seen it, right?

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So now that the 3 people who haven’t seen Alien have left the room let’s indulge in some specifics, starting with the iconic Chestburster scene. This scene is fantastic, the mood of the film turns lighter briefly with Kane seemingly fully recovered from his ordeal with the face hugger, everyone’s smiling and joking when suddenly Kane starts convulsing. The crew hold him down and we meet the alien for the first time as it bursts bloodily from Kane’s chest. It’s so visceral and such a contrast to the relaxed feeling moments before that it continues to be shocking with every watch.

Another sequence of the film I love, and one which shows that Alien isn’t just a one trick pony, is the scene where Dallas is crawling around in the air ducts trying to flush the alien out. The paranoia and the claustrophobia in this scene are intense. Every junction in the ducts has multiple directions the alien could come from and the crew’s simple tracking device does nothing to ease the tension. In the end it’s a simple jump scare, but it works.

Let’s talk about Ash. He could just have been a particularly zealous crew member. He could have been a character who was killed for his error of overriding Ripley and bringing Kane back onto the ship, that could have been the limit of his involvement. Many films would have done that. Not here. Having Ash turn out to be an Android, and one programmed to make sure the alien is recovered, crew expendable, really comes out of nowhere. We’re busy worrying about where the alien is and who it’s going to kill next when suddenly there’s another threat, one which we had no idea about, we didn’t even know Androids were a thing! Ian Holm is fantastic and somehow manages to make a scene where he tries to kill Ripley with a rolled up magazine scary, rather than ridiculous.

Ripley has a reputation for being a bit of a badass, but that mostly comes from the sequels, here she’s more of a hardass. She’s far from being a damsel in distress but she’s certainly terrified by her situation and to be honest it’s another thing that I love about this film. She isn’t a superhero, she’s just doing the best she can and keeps her head when those around her are panicking. Ultimately she defeats the alien, blasting it out into space, but it feels like a desperate fight for survival rather than plot armoured inevitability.

Whether you prefer this, or its admittedly excellent sequel Aliens (That’s usually the extent of it, I don’t know many people claiming it’s Alien: Resurrection) this is where it all began and where many other films in the sci-fi horror sub-genre got their inspiration.

This is Emma, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.

2 – The Old Ways are the Best (Ring – 1998)

The sound of silence greets you as you awake, a sliver of sunlight cutting across your eyes like a bright scar. You slept well, despite the muffled sounds of singing from the rooms below going on well into the night. After freshening up you head down to the bar area where you are greeted by a thin, middle aged man with a thick black beard and deep set green eyes.

Good morning friend, I am Gregor, the landlord. I hope your night was a pleasant one, no bad dreams, no tap tap tapping at the chamber door?

Excellent! Breakfast will be served once my daughter Willa returns from the well, if you’re hungry you may wish to give her a hand, it’s out back, can’t miss it.

At the far end of the Inn’s rear garden you see a young dark haired lady in a light summer dress, its geometric pattern reminds you of the 70s, all oranges and browns. She turns quickly at your approach.

Oh! You startled me! You must be our new guest, and come to help with the fetching of the water, very good of you. I’m Willa, and this is our well, deep, dark, and full of history, as well as water. Sometimes when I’m bringing up the bucket I fancy the weight of the water is something holding onto the other end, wanting to come up. A girl can dream. Here now, help me with this water and I’ll get some breakfast going for you.

No, no, you’ve done more than enough already, go sit in the lounge area, put your feet up, breakfast won’t be long. Why don’t you read a book or watch a videotape, hah yes VHS, after all, the old ways are the best, don’t you think?

I would imagine that today’s film needs little introduction, after all, we’ve all seen this film, right, it was huge? Perhaps not…which version have you seen? Just Gore Verbinski’s 2002 version? If so, then you haven’t seen this film. Today we are reviewing Hideo Nakata’s 1998 film, リング or Ringu (Hepburn romanization), or Ring.

Not in fact the first film adaptation, that title goes to Chisui Takigawa’s 1995 version made for TV in Japan, but the 1998 version was the first theatrically released.

All three of the films above are based on Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel, called unsurprisingly Ring.

The story follows a reporter, Reiko, who is looking into the mysterious deaths of a group of teenagers, all of whom have watched a supposedly cursed videotape. The urban legend states that anybody who watches the tape will die exactly 7 days later. As Reiko discovers more and more about the tape and its contents, the stakes become increasingly high.

The two main protagonist, Reiko and her ex husband Ryūji, are excellent, they come across very natural and you can believe there was once something between them. It’s really these two who hold the film together as we discover the story behind the cursed tape and feel their increasing urgency as time goes on.

I should also mention their young son Yoichi who somehow manages to be super creepy but cute at the same time, perhaps due to Reiko’s questionable parenting.

The Ring franchise became synonymous with scary movies, I remember at the time it was becoming well known it was considered one of the scariest, if not the scariest film out there. So, is it? Or more specifically is this particular Ring film scary? Well it’s hard to look at this film through the eyes of a late 90’s, early 2000’s viewer. Is it scary? Yes, it has an excellent premise, making an everyday mundane object into something that can kill, and the way in which it does this is again some grade A fear inducing stuff. Is it the scariest film? No, certainly not by 2022, but even back in in the early 2000’s it was surpassed in shear fear factor by fellow Japanese film Ju-On: The Grudge, to name but one, my opinion of course.

What Ring is however is a film which influenced a generation and opened many peoples eyes here in ‘The West’ to the horror films of other nations and the Asian horror scene in particular, even if it was often through Hollywood remakes. Their popularity and the burgeoning internet had people seeking out the originals of many of these films, and if Ring was one of those, then they wouldn’t have been disappointed.

I’ve been lucky enough with my random number generation (I swear, my collection has some real stinkers) to have two good films for my first two reviews. So you know now that I think it’s good, but how good? Well, as much as I would like to give Ring full marks, I just can’t quite do it. The main characters are great, the concept is compelling and creepy, and the film has an inevitability and urgency about it, but yet it does this, whilst somehow feeling too slow at times. I also felt a bit of a disconnect with the other characters we learn about surrounding the tape and its origins. I didn’t know enough about them, to really care about them, which is a shame and is something which I felt would have lifted the film.

Therefore I’m going to award Ring, 4 Towels out of 5. This is a great horror film. Creepy, suspenseful and ultimately important.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

At this point in time I have yet to see the Gore Verbinski version, I watched the 1998 film way back in the early 2000’s but never saw the remake. Perhaps it’s that film that people are referring to with regards how scary it is, or maybe it’s just early 2000’s sensibilities, because although I found it creepy there wasn’t anything that terrified me. Of course the iconic scene where the girl Sadako emerges from the TV is excellent and the jerky way she moves disturbing but perhaps I have been spoilt by the similar scenes in Ju-On: The Grudge. The scariest part of the film for me was when they were in the well looking for Sadako’s corpse. The idea of feeling around in the dark, in stagnant well water, looking for a dead girl just gives me strong nope vibes and was one of the highlights of the film.

I wasn’t a fan of the inverted colours bits to represent characters being killed by Sadako, it felt a bit gimmicky and my personal feeling is that they should have just had the characters scream then cut to the next scene.

I’ll expand a little on my feeling that I didn’t care enough about Sadako and her mother Shizuko. We discover that both Sadako and her mother had some level of psychic ability. Sadako’s father Dr. Heihachiro Ikuma exploited Shizuko’s abilities but the resultant negative media reports drove her to commit suicide. Sadako herself was much more powerful, even killing a man who called her mother a fraud. She was ultimately killed by being thrown down a well by her own father.

So we have a mother committing suicide (By jumping into a volcano of all things) and a young girl murdered by her own father, surely that makes for some emotional scenes right? Well, not really, we don’t ever really meet them, it’s like we are reading about them in a book, it all feels very detached. This is where the film could have really been improved for me, If I had cared about Sadako in particular and then discovered her fate then this film would have been a 5 for me.

This spoiler section seems very negative but honestly it’s all relatively minor. This film is so influential to the genre that I felt I had to go into more detail about why it didn’t get top marks.

The scene where Reiko awakes to find her son watching the tape is where the film really picks up. For me, less to do with Yoichi being involved in the curse, again he’s a character we don’t spend a huge amount of time with, but because it raises the stakes for Reiko and Ryūji. They’re now fighting not only for them but for their son, and their increased desperation adds to the emotion of the subsequent scenes.

The reveal that Reiko and Ryūji, were wrong about the way to end the curse was excellent. The whole time that Sadako is emerging from the TV to kill Ryūji you’re saying to yourself, why? He tried just as hard as Reiko, surely Sadako isn’t that petty! This is the death you care about, it all feels so unfair! We discover that an earlier scene where Reiko made a copy of the tape and showed Ryūji is what saved her, you have to make a copy and to show somebody else, therefore keeping the curse going.

As the film ends and Reiko drives towards her father’s house, video player at her side, asking him for a favour, we’re left wondering, who is going to be the sacrifice? Her father? A great end, to a great film.

1 – Welcome to Summerisle (The Orphanage)

As you step onto the moss covered dock, a woman in archaic Victorian garb approaches you. Her dark blonde hair falls to her shoulders in curls and her eyes, a piercing blue framed by dark shadow, stare intently into your own.

Welcome weary traveller, welcome to our beautiful island. I am Lady Summerisle.

How was your journey? Not everyone enjoys flying, and fewer still a landing on the water, but it really is the only way, the mists, you see.

Your room is prepared at The Green Man, our finest Inn, and a hot meal of local fare; and then a welcome rest in a comfy chair and a tipple of your choice, you shall not want for anything. You are, after all, our guest.

Now you are fed and watered and sat cosy by the fire. I hope you will indulge me. I’d like to tell you a story, a ghost story. Do you believe in ghosts? I do hope so, for this story is true, and it happened right here on this island. Out on the west coast, near the lighthouse, was a home for little boys and girls with no parents of their own. Now you wouldn’t think there’d be many children like that on an island this size, but you’d be wrong, or at least you would have been…

Come, bring your chair a little closer to the fire, that’s it. Are you ready? Good.

Despite my love for all things horror, the creepy and the spooky, I’m a sceptic when it comes to ghosts and spirits. I’m not flat out disbelieving in them, and don’t dismiss people when they’ve had their own experiences. Having said that it did seem a little like fate when The Orphanage, the film which less than 24 hours earlier I had taken from the shelf, placed on the sofa beside me, but ultimately not watched, was the film chosen by random number generation out of a possible 94.

Now the only question is, was fate, or the spirits, being kind?

The Orphanage, or El Orfanato, directed by J. A. Bayona, is a Spanish film released in 2007. It follows the lives of Laura, Carlos and their 7 year old son Simón. They have moved into the abandoned orphanage where Laura grew up and they plan to re-open it as a home for disabled children. Simón has the active imagination of a child with no playmates, he makes his own, but are his imaginary friends just that, or something more?

I’m going to leave it at that as far as a synopsis, the back of the box goes into more detail but it’s difficult to say much about the film’s story without spoiling it.

The acting in this film is excellent, the characters feel real and their relationship to each other feels natural. Belén Rueda, who plays Laura, is particularly great and makes you feel every emotion. The atmosphere, from the fantastic location, to the cinematography, to the music, does an equally good job of making you smile, or creeping you out, as it does at making you cry, something which I do very rarely but did watching this as it has some truly upsetting moments.

I found The Orphanage to be one of those rare films that had me thinking about it for days afterwards. It’s very affecting, something which many horror films fail at. If you’re looking for a Boo! Ghosts! story then this probably isn’t the film you’re looking for. It’s described as a ghost story, and it has its fair share of the supernatural, but ultimately I would describe it more as a psychological horror, concentrating on the themes of loss and grief. This is what makes The Orphanage a true horror film, it’s all too real at times.

I’m pleased to be able to say that The Orphanage is not just one of the best horror films I’ve seen, it’s one of the best films. I like it when a film has an impact on my thoughts outside of its runtime, this certainly did. Part of me felt unsure about the high score I’m about to award this, it is the first film after all, but no, this isn’t about awarding half marks and it isn’t about comparing films to one another, it’s about how I feel about a particular film. Therefore, in the spirit of, and entirely influenced by, Adam Pranica, I’m going to award this film a score out of 5 of something representing this film.

The Orphanage receives 5 Seashells out of a possible 5. Maximum points! As a horror fan, or just a fan of films in general, you owe it to yourselves to watch this.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad. I’m generally going to keep these sections to a similar length as the main review rather than going over everything that happens.

One of the first big reveals in this film is the fact that Simón is ill, and not with a disease you might expect for a 7 year old, he has HIV. It never explains how he contracted it, but that’s also not particularly relevant to the story. It seems to be there to heighten the tension when he goes missing as he’s supposed to take medication every day, so every day they don’t find him is a day he is becoming sicker. It also fits with the idea that those close to death are closer to spirits and so see them when others don’t, though advances in medicine perhaps make this less effective than at the time of release.

I felt they did a great job with the supernatural side of the film, it’s never too overblown and manages to keep it at a level where, should you wish, you can perceive it as a manifestation of grief rather than actual spirits.

An honourable mention goes to excellent creepy old lady Benigna who does a great job of being extremely suspicious and odd, right before she’s mown down in one of the most unexpected and surprisingly gruesome scenes, but then as it turns out she murdered a bunch of kids so we’re not too torn up about it.

What did leave me torn up was the big reveal when Laura finally finds Simón. In a somewhat hidden basement Laura finds Simón, still dressed as he was at the party 9 months ago, dead and somewhat decomposed. She realises with horror that he had been hiding down here and during her frantic search for him, Laura had pushed some heavy supports up against the only exit, trapping him down there. Laura had heard her Son’s desperate attempts to get out, before hearing the crash of him falling to his death from the staircase, we witness the earlier scene from Laura’s point of view and at the time we, like her, think it’s ghosts making the noises. This…this was the scene that truly made this a film I’ll remember for a long time, the absolute anguish, leading to her subsequent suicide, of Laura realising she had inadvertently killed her own son. That, is true horror.