Funny Games begins with an idealised, upper-middle-class family, driving through lush green woodland, beside sun-baked lakes, and playing “guess the classical composer” on the car’s audio system. The mild serenity of Handel and Mozart is then smashed by the movie’s title, appearing in huge red letters across the screen, accompanied by the most stygian piece

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Glorious 2022 Review

Fresh off its world premiere at Fantasia and coming exclusively to Shudder this week, director Rebekah McKendry’s new film Glorious is a mildly amusing slice of cosmic horror that does not quite live up to its name. Wes (Ryan Kwanten) is fleeing what looks like a bad breakup with little else but the clothes on

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Offseason 2022 Review

Offseason opens with grainy, nostalgic footage of beach holidays, set to a fairy tale musical score, before cutting sharply to a grey, desolate coastal shot, where cold waters meet unwelcoming sands beneath a vast, indifferent sky. The grim, weather-beaten island setting is its main strength, as the films protagonists explore the eerily empty town, against

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Film Moloch 2022

Moloch, the 2022 Dutch folk horror, arrived on Shudder early this month. The second feature directed by Nico Van Den Bink stars Sallie Harmsen, alongside Alexandre Willaume, and follows Betriek, a widowed mother, as she returns with her daughter to her elderly parents’ isolated cottage. Situated within the woods, on the edge of a large

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Rave 2020 aka Svartklubb

Rave (Svartklubb) is a 2020 Swedish body horror film written and directed by Nils Alatalo in his first feature-length debut after graduating from film school. The film stars Isabelle Grill from the hit transcendental folk horror Midsommar (2019) as well as Tuva Jagell from the 2015 drama Girls Lost. The local underground club is shutting

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Established in 2009, the American Genre Film Archive is a non-profit which seeks to collect, conserve and distribute genre films in order to preserve their legacy. From shot-on-video slashers and alien invasion flicks to queer oddities, the AGFA’s catalogue is fit to burst with an abundance of diverse and fascinating gems. Starting this year, 101

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Wicked World Review

In 1989 Barry Gillis released, arguably, the worse film ever made with his sci-fi horror experiment Things (1989). The mix of incoherent story, disorienting and cheap camera work along with stilted performances made it a cult classic among the ‘so bad it’s good’ crowd. Given the baffling incompetence that made-up the obscure piece of Canadian

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Prey Predator Film

It’s no secret that since the original and beloved Predator hit cinemas back in 1987, the franchise has seen a steady decline in quality, with each subsequent entry somehow managing to be less palatable than the one before. Not even IP crossovers could save it (although I’m still holding out hope for an Archie Vs

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In 2009, House of Wax’s Jaume Collet-Serra gave us the modest hit Orphan starring a pre-Conjuring era Vera Farmiga as a mother who, after the death of their unborn child, agrees to adopt a nine-year-old girl from an orphanage who turns out to be a psychopathic woman posing as a child. Years later, the film

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So, has Dario Argento finally made a real comeback? Is it any good? Yes, he has, and yes it is. Just in case you don’t know with whom we are dealing, the briefest possible summary of Dario Argento’s track record is in order. During the 1970s, he became the undisputed maestro of Italian Giallo and

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