The BBC has had numerous successes with dark dramas centred around family secrets and the weight of the past haunting the present day.  However, these dramas have always had both feet firmly planted in the realms of reality, as dark and twisted as they may be their sense of dread and tension always came from the actions of the mundane world that we all know so well.  While it could be argued that many of those past dramas could be classed as horror, the creators were never brave enough to go "full horror", until now.  

Lydia Wilson stars as Matilda, a talented young cellist, whose life is turned upside down minutes before the most important concert of her career. Looking for answers to a mystery that has been buried in her family Lydia travels to a Welsh town determined to unravel why she is connected to the tragic disappearance of a toddler 23 years ago.  

Requiem, airing on 02 Feb on BBC1,  is just what fans of horror and supernatural drama have been waiting for.  Written and created by Kris Mrksa Requiem wastes no time in setting the tone for the rest of the series with a compelling opening scene filled with ghostly going ons and hints of long-buried secrets.  On the surface, the opening scene to Requiem could easily have been part of a Midsummers Murder episode; a landed gent dressed all in tweed falls to his death at his country mansion is something we have seen countless times before in cosy dramas.  However, the viewer is put in no doubt, thanks to an effective spooky handling of this opening scene; we are not in the safe and pleasant land of the traditional murder mystery.  

Drawing on the unground swell of interest in Folk Horror, Requiem successfully blends supernatural elements into the more traditional framework of a BBC drama; we have haunted mansions, secretive Welsh communities, long forgotten secrets, prophetic dreams, and hints at something stirring in the dark corners of the Welsh town.  

None of this may seem particularly original to the well-read or well-watched horror fan, and you will spot the references and influences in almost every scene, but this doesn't take away from the effectiveness of Requiem as a powerful and compelling drama.  Mrksa handling of these elements is assured and respectful of the genre, forgoing the typical route of jump scares galore, Mrksa has woven a tight story that prefers to find the scares from atmosphere and tone rather than loud bangs and faces jumping out of the shadows.  One scene involving Matilda's mother is particularly effective at invoking a sense of dread, and just when you think it is going to go one way (think red raincoat), Mrksa takes a sharp left turn to provide an unexpected shock.  It is these touches that lift the script from something that we have seen before into some fresh and captivating.  
Even his handling of the cliched insular village wary of outsiders is dealt with just enough originality to stop prevent the viewer from thinking that they have seen it all before.  Hopefully, Mrksa will continue this throught the subsequent episodes.  

Aiding the strong writing are two exceptional performances from the lead actors.  Lydia Wilson is a revelation, with her icy blonde hair and fragile looks she is the perfect modern-day successor to the Hammer Horror heroines.  Her performance as a woman whose life has been shattered is exceptional, a strong and convincing one filled with subtle layers.  

While Lydia's performance is exceptional, it is Joel Fry's turn as Hal that is the real eye-opener.  Having only ever seen him in comedic roles such as Plebs, you cold, like myself, be forgiven that he had a limited range as an actor, which is a shame as his rather good in here.  His role could easily have fallen the down the hole of comedy foil, and while he does provide light relief from the more emotionally intense scenes, he never overplays it, allowing Hal's relationship with Matilda to develop into a very natural and convincing friendship.  

Overlaying the script and acting performances is a wonderful
soundtrack filled with haunting cello music.  The music cues are pitch-perfect, hinting at what is to come without ever taking over from what is happening on the screen.  

Based on episode one Requiem is shaping up to be powerful, and chilling supernatural drama.  There are enough scares to please fans of horror, yet it handles it in such a way that it shouldn't put off those who think horror is a dirty word.  It's a hard thing to pull off, but Mrksa handles it with great success.  Shows like Requiem have sadly been missing from terrestrial Tv schedules for far too long; hopefully, based on the strength of this opening episode, it will mark the return of intelligent supernatural drama. 
 
The six-part series Requiem starts on BBC One on 02 February at 9pm.

This week  Youtube video reviewer Matrenox takes a look at Kolchak: The Night Stalker.  

​Kolchak: The Night Stalker is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974–1975 season. It featured a fictional Chicago newspaper reporter—Carl Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin—who investigated mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly those that law enforcement authorities would not follow up. These often involved the supernatural or science fiction, including fantastic creatures.

The series was preceded by two television movies, The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973). Although the series lasted only a single season, it remains popular in syndication. In early 2017, until Labor Day 2017, it aired Sunday evenings on MeTV. It is often cited as the inspiration for the popular series The X-Files.[1] Following the success of The X-Files, the franchise was resurrected in 2005 in a second television series with a new cast and characters, as well as subsequent novels and comic books. It was a ratings bomb and was quietly cancelled after just 13 episodes were aired.

Matrenox is a Horror Reviewer, Writer, and Live Action Cartoon Based on YouTube.


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​I have found that with horror films in particular there are so many excellent ones that people miss out on because they can’t be bothered with subtitled offerings due in some cases to the belief that there will be Hollywood remakes in English at some point. Although that’s a known quantity it’s not necessarily smart thinking because certain films are so much better in the original version. I think Playground stands very little chance of a remake as I doubt Hollywood would touch it, and I’m pretty sure that even the most twisted British film studios would also give this one a very wide berth if they want to remain in business as it states in the blurb that it is based on a terrifying true story, and although the film is Polish it is quite possible that they are referring to the notorious British murder case in 1993 in which Robert Thompson and Jon Venables brutally tortured and murdered two year old Jamie Bulger.

Playground has a rather mundane beginning, nicely showcasing the young stars of the film as they prepare to start the day in routine fashion and fairly normal surroundings. There’s a palpable sense of something seriously wrong here though with the three main characters being fleshed out in a believable fashion with one being a shy and plain little girl with a crush on her classmate, the object of her desire living with (and abusing) his disabled dad and the third one being his friend who is a bit of a rebel with a cruel streak who likes to film the stuff he does. Nothing outstandingly horrific happens for the first third of the film but there’s enough character development to suggest that when it kicks off it could be somewhat vicious.

The ‘End of Term graduation ceremonies’ are simple and straightforward, children winning prizes, mostly sitting around bored waiting for the teaching staff to finish talking. The end of term is perhaps the last chance the young girl has as she has fallen in love but wants to know if the boy feels the same way, so she arranges to meet him at some ruins. What happens next is masterful acting and unfortunately true to life. Without going into too much detail the object of her affection doesn’t feel the same way. He has his friend with him who films their encounter on a mobile phone. It’s nasty but mostly verbal bullying and the girl leaves more psychologically upset than physically harmed.

This is where things get seriously disturbing. When the girl leaves, the boys head off elsewhere, walking through the town where for some reason everyone is standing still and looking at them. They head off to a shopping mall, where they muck about for a bit, just loitering, but then they see a young boy sitting in a coin-op ride-on machine outside a shop. As with the Bulger case they abduct him, take him by railroad tracks and with gut-wrenching realism they kill him. It’s not filmed in a sensationalist manner, it’s all rather ‘matter of fact’, which adds to the horror as it’s all so routinely presented as to appear somehow normal, if something that evil ever could be.

Mercifully the murder of the child is shown at a reasonable distance so although you can clearly tell what is happening you don’t have the gore going on, so it’s not the ‘torture porn’ sort of scenario a lot of films use. The special effects team on this film are top notch, if I had just seen this particular footage and nothing else it would look as if someone caught a real murder on camera. It doesn’t go on for long, but it’s very disturbing stuff, which leads me to wonder why the film was made.

I know there’s an enormous market for gruesome stuff, I’m a fan of it, but sometimes there are Film Gutter offerings such as ‘Let the Right One In’, ‘The Human Centipede’ and ‘A Serbian Film’ to name a few, which can satisfy the darker desires while still remaining obvious entertainment. So I’m somewhat ripped in two by this because although well shot and definitely well-acted I cannot see any way in which Playground is entertainment. If anything I’d say it has more of a documentary feel to it.
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I normally watch things three times, but with this film once is enough, so if watching a little boy being beaten to death is your sort of thing then you know what to do.

Ginger Nuts of Horror is proud to announce a new partnership with Youtube video reviewer Matrenox.  We shall be hosting a number of her informative video reviews over the coming weeks.  Today we present her comparative review of the 1958 version of The Fly against the 1986 remake.  

Matrenox is a Horror Reviewer, Writer, and Live Action Cartoon Based on YouTube.

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BY JOE X YOUNG 

 
Don’t, just don’t okay! Don’t do it, you’ll regret it, trust me, I wouldn’t lie to you.
 
It is 1955 and Frances Day is being dragged down a hallway by some lumbering brute whose head is entirely bandaged, she is semiconscious and coming around rapidly. Within the first few minutes things take a turn for the brutal with Francis fighting back, defeating her captor and smashing his head in with a rock, it seems as if she’s hitting him so hard and so often that it would be hard to believe there was anything left of his head.

As it is set in the 50s there’s some very clipped English being spoken, which may have sounded perfectly correct from a BBC newsreader back in the day, but now just comes across as comically theatrical. A quarter of an hour into the film it’s already set up a little bit of back story through flashbacks, some intrigue and the problematic amount of gore, I say problematic because the characters we meet thus far are unconvincing with Francis being joined by a Professor who can’t remember much of what’s going on and appears to be there as some sort of comic foil to the extraordinarily calm killing machine called Frances. I’m puzzled as to the film’s intentions, with some of Britain’s finest comedy actors taking part it being comedy horror might be why things are presented how they are as the acting style is reminiscent of “The Comic Strip Presents” back in the 80s, however it isn’t actually a comedy, or if it is, it’s missing every comedy beat by an extreme distance.

Half an hour into this and it has escalated from being just plain dull to somewhat reminiscent of old Doctor Who episodes. There are more bandage headed things on the prowl in the corridors, I think the attempt with them is to have the feel of the nurses in Silent Hill, these have none of the impact, especially as Frances dispatches them reasonably quickly and easily. She is accompanied by the Prof, who gets into a fight with one of them in what is one of the most ridiculous punch-ups ever committed to film.

I’m not going to say that this film is bad; it would have to improve significantly to qualify for that. At the 45 minute stage there is finally believable and normal acting delivered by Bruce Payne. Unfortunately Bruce cannot save this as his scene is soon followed by one introducing Lee Latchford-Evans, formerly of the pop group ‘Steps’, whose acting is only slightly less wooden than Treebeard from Lord of the Rings. The story, the acting and the general mood leaves much to be desired though in all truth the cinematography and sound are fine, and the special effects although minimal are well handled. I am one hour into the film, with 40 minutes left and it appears to be stuck in a cycle of walking a couple of corridors, confronting a bandage head, smashing his head to pulp and moving on with all the characters doing exactly what they did 20 minutes ago. It’s like being made to watch a cheap video game.

Laura Swift as Frances Day has enough physical presence and fighting capability to assert herself as a good female action role model, but in this she is very much swimming against the tide. Ah! I’ve now seen one of the bandage heads without a bandage and am doing a rethink on the whole special effects thing as it’s one of the most poorly made masks I’ve seen in five decades of watching horror movies. There are cosplayers on you tube doing better than that for fun. It’s not getting any better.
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Sorry, but this film really is/was utter shit. The ending is a major let-down, supposed to be some big scary reveal but is actually just laughable and not in a good way. The aforementioned comedy actors have negligible bit part roles which in all honesty could have been played by anyone with as much competence. When I saw Ade Edmondson, Julian Rhind Tutt, Sally Phillips and Bruce Payne were in this I assumed it would at least be halfway decent but now I know better. The basic premise is promising enough, but the film fails on every possible level to live up to that promise, so all that is left to say is that it is as always your choice whether you see this or not, so if you are that way inclined then go for it. It’s available from uncorked entertainment on VOD January 2nd.