Yes, it’s that time of year once again – we’ll be heading into the festive season, which serves us up the perfect chance to look back at all the movies watched in 2021 and the real standouts there. We had a whole host of themed months as part of proceedings this annum, as well as plenty of ‘mixed bag’ months, and we’ll be looking to continue some of those specials as we push into 2022! But for now, let’s reflect on the very finest of this year…

5) OVER YOUR DEAD BODY (9/10)
Takashi Miike month was not surprisingly packed with very good films, and my first watch of Over Your Dead Body proved to be a revelation. A sort of ‘story within a story’, this intriguing take on the Japanese ghost tale presented a play that began to spill all too painfully into the real life of its performers. Probably not Miike’s most brutal or confronting, but a powerful and complex offering nonetheless – I’ve not got round to my rewatch yet, but I sure will be giving it a second viewing to unpick it further.

4) ANTIVIRAL (9/10)
And similarly, Cronenberg month featured some exceptionally fine movies, but it was Brandon Cronenberg’s contribution that stood out the most for me. Playing out like a JG Ballard story that never was, this plot felt all too real, entering the strange world of bugs and diseases extracted from celebrities being sold to superfans in a near-future world. It feels like we’re only a few years off this becoming a reality if I’m completely honest. Stark, cold and involved, this is well worth a look and follows a fine family tradition of paranoid body horror.

3) DAHMER (9/10)
A movie that genuinely surprised me, with a strong central performance by a young Jeremy Renner, and one that zoomed in on the psychology and character of Dahmer rather than the hideous nature of his crimes. The slow-burn nature of this one drew me in bit by bit until I felt absolutely mesmerised by it, and the excellent script and acting performances boosted this one up immensely too. Not what I would have expected from a serial killer flick, but ultimately all the better for it!

2) AUDITION (10/10)
This was a movie that I remembered loving on first watch – though that first watch would have been about 15 years ago. And it certainly stood up to a second viewing – another serious slow-burner and a film probably best seen knowing little about it. This one has generally gone down as one of Takashi Miike’s best films, and that’s a reputation it’s well worthy of – and you can rest assured there’s plenty of competition in that particular filmography…

1) MOEBIUS (10/10)
A film I went into knowing literally nothing about that absolutely blew my socks off. A sort of modern Greek tragedy, without one word of dialogue in its whole runtime, this was totally unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It’s seriously dark and twisted, and crosses all sorts of taboos, but was just an absolutely compelling watch. All credit to the cast for conveying this with a script without a single line of dialogue in!

So, there we have the top 5 – I’m also going to add in a couple of honourable mentions that nearly made the list…
MEAT GRINDER (8.5/10) – this Thai horror movie was just brutal and nihilistic, but still incredibly hard to take your eyes off. The lead performance from Mai Charoenpura was awesome to boot, and while it did nothing to lift my spirits, I was very impressed all told.
THE LAST SUPPER (8.5/10) – This Japanese cannibal movie was surprisingly measured, although it did have its grotesque moments. Everyone absolutely loves our lead’s mystery meat, although it’s not a mystery to us as viewers. I’d also add this one certainly had an ending I’m never liable to forget…

So there we have it, another year of Film Gutter is officially in the books! As always, we’ll be bringing you plenty more extreme horror goodness every week as we push into 2022 – who knows what fresh delights we’ll find in the next twelve months? Hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Year, and we’ll see you again in January!

A blind man tormented by the mysterious disappearance of his dog, is one day visited by a sadistic childhood friend, igniting a disturbing journey of self discovery.
Director
M.P. Wills
Writer
M.P. Wills
Stars
Rahel Romahn Matt Levett  Richard James Allen

Well, 2021 is almost at end – or at the very least, it is for Film Gutter. This has been a consistently strange year, with a lot of ups and downs, and in many regards that seems to sum up our annum of reviewing too. And we’re wrapping things up with another short film offering from the good folks at Alter, who continue to serve up a broad range of offerings of all subgenres from all over the world via the magic of YouTube. Today’s offer I again come to knowing absolutely nothing about, although the words ‘CONTENT WARNING’ after the title do tend to stand out as a beacon this is liable to be a good bet for the Film Gutter treatment. And so it proved…

The main character of Blood Orange is Eli, who has become blind in recent years and depends heavily on his dog Hugo to get around. But we kick off with an interesting frontispiece, which is beautifully narrated to boot, about a child beating the wings of his friend’s pet quail with a hammer. A no-nonsense opening for sure, and sadly the animal cruelty is going to come around again – though obviously staged, unlike the horrors of the likes of Cannibal Holocaust. Because poor Hugo has gone missing – taken by Eli’s sadistic former friend Michael, who proceeds to trim a lock of hair off the dog before burning it alive. We don’t see anything graphic, but this one is still liable to be fairly upsetting to any animal lovers out there.

Eli reports Hugo missing, but the police don’t seem to take him seriously, and his neighbours mostly seem to be complete douchebags, with one in particular taking the opportunity to soak Eli with the garden hose. It’s not long before Michael turns up, ready to revel in the success of his murderous act, even offering Eli a pipe filled in part with the literal ‘hair of the dog’. But Eli is ready for his friend’s antics, and he has a cold, refreshing slice of violence of his own to serve up…

Blood Orange is an intriguing concept, and something that I enjoyed in a cathartic sort of way – it was great to see the most awful protagonist get his comeuppance, as well as the many minor villains of the piece, and while you can’t exactly consider Eli squeaky clean he is the nearest thing we have to a hero of the piece. The outside world has this odd plasticky, unreal feel to it here, just amping up the darkness of Eli’s world that bit further, and the voiceover we have at the start and end of the film are excellent, very well written and also delivered with some real panache in order to effectively deliver both the set-up and denouement outside of the main runtime here.

Blood Orange may not be the very best short film you’re ever liable to see, but everything here is doubtless effective, and the plot is solidly delivered if not staggeringly original. The acting performances are well done, for the limited time that we have, and everyone fits the bill nicely in their parts. Ultimately there’s no real weak areas, but equally no areas that absolutely smash it out of the park – a good all-rounder, you could say.

RATING: 7/10. A quirky and entertaining offering, with a dark sense of humour riddled throughout, enhanced by some lovely voiceover. It’s hard not to find the ending satisfying given what has come before it, and that only adds to the wry touch of the macabre employed here. It almost feels like a short episode of Tales of the Unexpected or something similar, but with more of a modern spin to it. You could spend a quarter of an hour plenty of worse ways!

Jill's got the snake. Julia's got the flute. Alone, they have nothing. But together, they have a secret weapon to fight the darkness.
Director
David Mahmoudieh
Writer
David Mahmoudieh
Stars
Poppy Drayton Micah Fitzgerald Ross Francis

I’ve always been a lover of short films, and over the six years or so of Film Gutter we’ve covered more than a handful, taking in the good, the bad and of course the deeply weird. So, I figured that – with the close of 2021 almost upon us (Ed. time got away from us at the end of the month, but what is time if nothing but an construct of our minds)  – I’d take the opportunity to check out a couple of shorter offerings before closing with the now-traditional annual Top 5 list. Although given the range of particularly good films I’ve watched this year, I might have to expand to a Top 10…

Before I get into it, I’d like to give a quick shout out to the Alter channel on YouTube, where you can find Snake Dick among a whole host of other short films. They do some great work in putting really interesting material out, and if you consider yourself a lover of horror in the short form then their channel is well worth dropping by.

So, on to Snake Dick – and I hate to say it, but it’s just another one of those titles that drew me in. I’m a sucker for a film with a great moniker, and this was another classic case here. The story itself concerns Jill and Julia, who are on their travels and stop at a garage to see what they can do to fix their evidently broken-down car. The garage is combined with a diner and motel, and the minute they step out of the car they get cat-called by Hillbilly Joe and Hillbilly Earl (not the titles I gave them, but their official character names on IMDB). However, Jill and Julia have no intention of putting up with that sort of nonsense, and Jill draws a gun, forcing Joe to his knees and demanding that he squeal like a pig. Earl isn’t going to have any of that, and draws a knife in an attempt to even the odds, but Jill and Julia have one more secret weapon up their sleeves… although it’s not technically up their sleeves…

Given the runtime, this one is of course relatively light, but it was shot nicely – making good use of the limited space that it was created within – and each character comes across as believable, if we do lean back on stereotypes a touch. While it did live up to the title, it did not do it in the way I had expected whatsoever which I think is also well worth of some credit. The end of the movie, with the leads driving off into the distance with smoke climbing into the sky, made me think that this was possibly a sort of ‘calling card’ with a view to something bigger perhaps happening in time, and I’d be open to that. There’s an implication of some larger event in the world, and the strangest element of the movie could easily be expanded and offer some more explanation if granted that extra bit of runtime. Some have suggested it could even make a TV series in the reviews, and again that could be intriguing. As a standalone, it’s plenty likeable and I felt like I’d certainly be happy to check out more from this director going forward.

RATING: 8/10. This one uses some old horror tropes, sure, but it’s done well enough – and then the trope you might expect here is absolutely thrown out of the window for something far more unpredictable. It has the sense of a road movie, obviously without too much time on the road, but there could be scope to make something more of this one, and it’s still recent enough to yet hope that might happen! As I mentioned above, you can check this one our on Alter’s channel on YouTube, and I don’t think you’ll regret giving up your time to give this a watch.