C. Veteran screenwriters will give advice that, while the writer should have a unique voice, each character’s voice should be distinctive. If you were to take away all the names from a script, the reader should be able to identify which person is saying what. This is where The Owners really succeeds. Its use of offbeat characters, both in personalities and physical appearances allow for it to stand out more than the plot offers, which could be easily marketed as the British Don’t Breathe (replacing a blind Stephen Lang with a polite elderly couple). The desperate thieves getting more than they bargained for is not a new idea in the horror world (nor is any idea) but it really strives to make it its own.


Acknowledging the positives, what it boils down to for me is it feels like it’d be a perfect Tales from the Crypt episode (I love the show) that’s 30 minutes, gets you in and out, with “bad” people getting their comeuppance. Not that this setup can’t be stretched to a feature but most of the movie feels like the writers and director filling time to reach that length. There’s so many points where we know that the owners are sinister, the other characters know that the owners are sinister, and the owners know that they all know they’re sinister… yet, we still have regular conversations, with no tension to keep us from not wanting to check our phones.You can have long scenes of dialogue but it still has to be engaging and push the story forward. However, there’s the realization without all the pauses the movie wouldn’t work at all.


The other issue comes with logic. Our main character (Maisie Williams) isn’t incapacitated during most of it, which has us asking why she didn’t easily get away from two elderly people (one with dementia)? They get rid of two key players early on in the movie that could have offered more dynamic and tension building. Finally, we’re given a “big reveal” at the end that’s hinted throughout the story but despite all the foreshadowing it really doesn’t pay off, playing more like an afterthought than a crucial component,


To not add more filler than is already in this, it has a solid-enough setup and characters, pockets of genuine moments within that equal out to a great 30 minutes EC comics-inspired tale but it loses all momentum in attempts to become a feature without proper planning to establish consistent tension.


J.  Some dimwitted assholes decide to break into and rob some nice old senior citizens and then shit ends up going about how you would expect.  So, not all that groundbreaking in other words.  There’s only one character in this entire thing (with a main cast of 6) who I even remotely cared about and that was mostly by default.  There’s 3 dimwitted assholes plus Maisie Williams and you want the 3 dimwits offed by about minute 15.  Thankfully, it doesn’t take all that long and there was actually one moment of downright shock, which proved the only such moment in this entire thing.  And for some reason, the last of the dimwits, Terry, just manages to get stupider and more annoying as this thing goes on.  I didn’t think it was possible but trust me, it happens.  This is one of those situations where there are no protagonists or there’s a protagonist/antagonist switch but I didn’t care so much about any of that.  I kept finding myself wondering how (initially four) 20-somethings could not over power two 70-somethings especially when the 20-somethings had weapons and the 70’s didn’t… I dunno, this thing then gets convoluted as all hell with wrapping up as the Terry character does something else completely fucking stupid and then we find out what’s been kept in the impenetrable safe.  Unlike the briefcase in Pulp Fiction we are shown what’s in the safe and left with a reaction that’s something like, “huh?” Think Don’t Breathe but not as tense or interesting.  The Owners was more humorous although I’m not sure that’s what they were going for.  Fuck, maybe they were on second thought…


K.  The Owners is really solidly crafted and written, up to a point.  I know my colleagues have surely laid out the plot already, so I won’t retread that ground but the premise of a robbery where the tables are turned and the hunters become the hunted isn’t terribly original but it certainly can be a fun setup to work with.  The first third of the movie makes good use of it, introducing characters that are at least interesting, if not very sympathetic.  The reveal that the 20-something robbers know the old couple, whose house they’ve broken into, is some of the best writing in the piece.  It deepens the proceedings and provides insight into the robbers’ motivations.  This whole section of the film, mostly confined to the basement, is the most tense and effective sequence, culminating in a wholly unexpected turn of events (and a brutally awesome practical effect).  Once the film begins to subtly suggest that the old couple are, in fact, more dangerous than their would-be captors, the film resets the slow burn tension.  But the reveals happen too quickly, though the film pretends they don’t or finds insignificant ways of prolonging the proceedings.  While the details of the old couple’s sinister ways are never quite spelled out clearly enough to support the rest of the movie.  The filmmaking style poses as clever but the writing doesn’t really back it up.  There’s also an unmotivated shift to a different aspect ratio for the last 30-40 minutes, that felt jarring and unnecessary.
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C. I think we are all in agreement that, while initially having a fresh approach to a common horror setup through interesting characters and dialogue, most of the movie seems to stall in order to reach a feature runtime. The big reveals and twists are foreshadowed too much that they become predictable and underwhelming. However, it’s still enjoyable and worth checking out when it’s available to stream for free.


J.  It’s extremely well made and if you like Don’t Breathe, you’ll find there’s enough difference here with a similar set up to satisfy your home invasion hunger.  I’d also be interested to see how many of you hated the character of Terry as much as I did by the time the credits rolled.


K.  All in all, it’s a well made film but the script is where it falters.  The actors do their best with the material but it doesn’t quite pop without the proper narrative support.  As we’ve all pointed out, the whole thing falls apart once the tables are turned and the film tries to stall us for 40 minutes, promising some big reveal that ends up being confounding rather than clever.  I’d love to see what this creative team could come up with if they had a more thought out story to bring to the screen.


Bloodhound’s average score: 2 ½ out of 5

Wendy Alden, a young secretary in Portland lacking in self- confidence becomes victim of a savage killer who has claimed the lives of a number of other women. Somehow Wendy finds the resources of courage to fight back and escape.

Director:  Julian Richards
Writers:  Brian Harper (novel), Robert D. Weinbach (screenplay)
Stars:  Danielle Harris, John Jarratt, Casper Van Dien 

Eric lives with his pregnant wife in his in-laws' house. Eric leaves his family and escapes to the mansion of the dominatrix Mistress Gise to become his slave. Eric hopes to achieve liberation by submitting to Mistress Gise.

Director: Gerard Marco (as Gerard Mas)
Writer: Gerard Marco (as Gerard Mas)
Stars:  Alejandra Aristegui, Fedra Duarte, Valeria Rowinski 

It can be tough for a kid when their parents split up. Your illusions of a happy childhood shattered, it’s hard to rebuild the bonds and trust that were once so strong between you and your parents. It can be worse when your mother finds a hunky new boyfriend to love. But sometimes that boyfriend isn’t all he appears, and that’s when things can take a turn for the sinister…

What Lies Below is the feature debut of writer/director Braden R Duemmler, and a very strong debut it is too. We follow quiet shy teenager Liberty (Ema Horvath) as she comes home from camp to spend the rest of the summer with her mother Michelle (Mena Suvari) at their family lake-house. After her parents’ messy breakup Liberty is in need of some mother-daughter bonding time but unfortunately that’s not on the cards as Michelle reveals her shiny new boyfriend John (Trey Tucker), an absolute dreamboat of an aquatic geneticist who’s studying how freshwater life can adapt to saltwater or something like that, I wasn’t paying attention because I got lost in his eyes, hot DAMN. While initially attracted to John, Liberty starts to notice creepy things about him, like a tendency to drink his own sweat and a connection to a strange otherworldly phenomenon in the link. Could it be that something monstrous lies below John’s pleasant exterior? Eh? Eh? Geddit?

If you’ve seen the trailer, it’s pretty clear that this is a creature feature. I don’t think it’s spoiling much to say that. The film takes its time getting to that reveal though, letting us get to know the trio as they try to awkwardly navigate around each other while the tension slowly builds. The story’s an interesting blend of genres, progressing from one to another as it goes. It’s a troubled-family drama first, with elements of a thriller creeping in then taking a huge leap forward as John crosses a line by touching Liberty inappropriately when alone. From there it’s solid pulse-pounding thriller, complete with ominous basement and a harrowing shower scene. So far all very The Stepfather. Once John’s secret is out we’re into full-blown horror territory, white-knuckling it through to the bleak ending.

This approach works well, taking us by the hand and leading us through the twisty-turny terror with ease. By leaning on the thriller conventions and saving the reveal for just the right moment, Duemmler keeps us on the hook but also gets to use the special effects sparingly, making them all the more effective when they do pop up. There’s a bit of a naff CGI tongue moment near the end that we could have done without, but everything else is so well-done and kept to such small moments that it’s easily forgiven. One of the best effects is the simplest – a rippling patch of red light in the lake that John walks into. It’s such a creepy visual, one that’s bound to stay with you.

What I found interesting was the way Duemmler and DOP Jimmy Jung Lu shot John. We first see him emerging from the lake like Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, all rippling muscles and perfect teeth. There’s even a shot that lingers for a moment on his speedo-clad groin. It’s easy to see why Michelle and Liberty are drawn to him when the camera caresses him in a way that’s normally reserved for women, if I understand the Male Gaze correctly. I may not, in which case please forgive me, I’m still learning! I’m a mostly straight man and I was hit with a wave of phoar that I won’t soon forget. All this serves to make his monstrous predatory nature all the more scary, as the danger concealed behind a pleasant smile is often the most threatening.

Ema Horvath is a fine lead, playing Liberty in a quiet and understated way throughout most of the film. This fits the shy awkward teen girl role, though as with a lot of Hollywood casting it’s tough to picture a pretty blonde girl as an outcast. Her chemistry with Mena Suvari is good, it’s easy to see them as mother and daughter in a rocky relationship. Suvari does a great job too, playing Michelle with a cool-mom-from-Mean-Girls facade that soon crumbles to reveal her insecure roots when Liberty challenges her over John. Trey Tucker has arguably the hardest job, as he has to be charming enough to be disarming, adorkable enough to be believable as a geneticist and sinister enough to pose a real threat. He nails this, going from alluring to malevolent like a switch has been flipped. His charm is almost enough to disarm you after the boat incident when he plays it off as an innocent reflex reaction… almost.

I do think it’s a shame that the Liberty’s friend Miley (Haskiri Velazquez) turns up for once scene and is unceremoniously dealt with almost as an afterthought. It felt like her appearance was going to ramp the conflict up and maybe turn the plot, but in the end it changed nothing and could have been cut entirely. As she’s the only person of colour in the film, the optics on this are unfortunate too.

What Lies Below is a fun, tense way to spend an evening. It won’t turn the horror genre on its head, but not every horror film has to be ‘elevated’ in order to have merit. The most important thing is that it be entertaining, and in this case it’s a big old Mission Accomplished.

By Sam Kurd 

What Lies Below stars Mena Suvari (American Beauty), Ema Horvath (Don’t Look Deeper) and Trey Tucker (The Space Between Us) and was written and directed by Braden R. Duemmler.
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Signature Entertainment presents What Lies Below on Digital Platforms 22nd February

​Us is a 2019 American horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele, starring Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, and Tim Heidecker. The film follows Adelaide Wilson (Nyong'o) and her family, who are attacked by a group of menacing doppelgängers.

The project was announced in February 2018, and much of the cast joined in the following months. Peele produced the film alongside Jason Blum and Sean McKittrick (the trio previously having collaborated on Get Out and BlacKkKlansman), as well as Ian Cooper. Filming took place from July to October 2018 in California, mostly in Los Angeles, Pasadena and Santa Cruz.

Us had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 8, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on March 22, 2019, by Universal Pictures. It was a critical and commercial success, grossing $255 million worldwide against a budget of $20 million, and received praise for Peele's screenplay and direction, as well as the musical score and Nyong'o's performance.

Assassination’s a tricky business, one that requires a lot of tools. Knives, guns, poisons – what’s the best murder weapon?

How about another human being?

Brandon Cronenberg’s second feature Possessor presents us with a world in which the technology exists to implant the consciousness of one person into another, overriding their identity and allowing them to be used like a puppet in order to commit any kind of atrocity. It’s the perfect crime: take control of an unwitting fall guy, have them do the dirty deed then get out and back into your own body via your vessel’s suicide.

Andrea Riseborough (Mandy) is Tasya Voss, the assassin in question. Her latest assignment sees her take over the body of Colin Tate (played by Catch-22’s Christopher Abbott), a former cocaine-dealer turned hopeful social-climber. Tasya-as-Colin sows discord in his life in the run-up to the assassination of Colin’s boss (Sean Bean, enjoying the chance to play a smug rich prick) and girlfriend (Tuppence Middleton), to make the murder-suicide seem like the work of a man on the edge and thus not suspicious. Unfortunately Colin proves to have a stronger personality than expected and starts to fight back. Cue lots of mind-fuckery and bizarre imagery as the two personalities clash and fight for control of one body.

First, the elephant in the room: This is a very CronenbergTM concept with themes that are no doubt very familiar to anyone acquainted with his father’s work. Identity, perception, bodily autonomy – all very familiar ground.  In many ways, this feels like a companion piece and a spiritual successor to David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, what with all the jacking in and the questiontioning of what’s real and what’s illusion. Also Jennifer Jason Leigh is in it as Tasya’s boss, a character who may not be a million miles away from an extrapolation of virtual-world-creator Allegra Geller.

This isn’t to devalue Brandon C’s work by suggesting it’s derivative, of course, far from it; in this age of social media and increased connectivity there’s such a lot of interesting ground to cover, and Possessor is a fascinating exploration of the intersection of these areas. The very first thing we see in film is a black woman who’s actions are not her own, subsumed by and carrying out the will of a white woman, who has her commit suicide-by-cop once the dirty deed is done, discarded and disposed of like a tool that’s no longer of use. The ultimate act of colonisation.

We’re also shown the flip-side of the process, what all this body-hopping does to Tasya herself. After each session she has to ground herself by holding mementos of her past, to job her memory of who she actually she is. We see how distant she’s become from the people in her life, her estranged husband and son, whom she can barely wait to get away from and escape back into someone else’s head. There’s an implied suggestion that she’s addicted to the process, and to the killing itself. Her assassinations are getting more visceral, more brutal, and she seems to crave the slaughter. The bloodier the better.

And boy is this film bloody! Right from the off Cronenberg lets us know this film isn’t for the squeamish, and the balance of shocking carnage to quietly weird introspection is just right. Just as with the fever dream in Antiviral, the bizarre body horror of facial distortion is used sparingly but effectively; Tanya’s melted visage, symbol of the identity struggle between her and Colin,  just looks hideous and gorgeous. It’s all the more impressive for being almost completely done with practical effects. The whole film looks gorgeous, shot in a chilly style that seems to keep us at arm’s length, passive observers, until it’s time to get visceral. And of course there’s lots of surreal trippy imagery to enjoy when things start to go horribly wrong.

The performances from the two leads are fantastic. Riseborough taps into an ethereal, almost alien otherworldliness that fits an assassin who operates like a ghost, almost as if Tasya has no body or persona of her own. When we see her about to visit her family, she is repeating phrases to herself over and over, almost as if to remind herself how to make small talk, but it’s not until we see her mimicking her target’s speech patterns that it really sinks in: she was doing the same thing, but with her own speech. She’s so disconnected from herself that she has to practice how to sound like herself. Abbott has the unenviable task of playing two people at once and he does a damned fine job. As Colin, his distress is palpable when he starts to come to his senses and sees what Tasya is doing to him. He’s a pretty unlikeable character, but Abbott makes him sympathetic enough that, appropriately, it’s as hard to tell who you’re rooting for as it is to tell who has control of the body sometimes.

Possessor is a brilliant mindfuck of a film, but not one that’s so impenetrable as to be impossible to follow. It’s stylish and moody, as awash with imagery and symbolism as it is with the sticky red stuff.

Thanks to the success of films like The Raid: Redemption and Shudder’s curation, Indonesian cinema has earned a lot of international attention over the last several years in the horror and gritty crime genres. With a wider audience it has allowed for the remakes of iconic Indonesian horror treasures like Satan’s Slaves and The Queen of Black Magic.

This story is about three men, who return to the orphanage they grew up in to say their goodbyes to the owner of the estate and the man who raised them, the ailing Mr. Bandi (Yayu A.W. Unru). While there, the men and their families are terrorized by a supernatural force that desires revenge for a dark secret the men and Mr. Bandi covered up.

First off, the film follows plotlines and tropes that horror fans commonly associate with Asian horror, but it does a great job in making it its own. Now it is a remake and feels like a Hollywoodized remake -- meaning they updated dialogue and gave it a sleeker look. But overall fans of those type of movies will enjoy it, as the first half is dread and tension, while the second half morphs into this almost Evil Dead approach of demonic possessions and unforgiving brutality upon all the characters, and by all, I mean even the children get torture segments. I will preface that the violence is all digital, so it loses some of its intensity, and while intense, it never crosses that line into extremity that would be off-putting for a good portion of horror fans.

Speaking of its flip of subgenres: it brings up an interesting topic that I have been wanting to discuss for some time but have not had the movie to review that connected. From a western (the hemisphere, not the genre) story approach, a lot of times we need to clearly identify what the genre is. While there are some exceptions like Bone Tomahawk or From Dusk till Dawn, which starts as a crime thriller and switches to a vampire siege movie without real hints or foreshadowing in the beginning, for the most part these are a hard sell, and reason to avoid making because they are hard to market. It seems with eastern storytelling approaches there are laxer views on genre hopping (Audition and The Wailing are a few). I am mentioning all this because as a western viewer, there is a point about 45 out of the 100 minutes in where major realizations and reveals that occur would normally happen near the end. Since these reveals happen so early on, and the mystery of what really happened is the groundwork the movie is built on, subconsciously or consciously, it feels like it must be nearing the end, but we are not officially halfway through yet. While I appreciated a great genre (or subgenre) hop, this one finds itself treading water with exposition dumps and extended scenes of supernatural torture for a bit too long just to make the feature runtime.

Another element that requires discussion comes from the characters themselves. The actors all do an incredible job and they fit within the movie, but the story primarily revolves around Hanif (Ario Bayu) and his family. This is another one of those instances where the main family (primarily Hanif and one of the children) are there to get us to the resolution, because the supporting characters are so much more compelling. The characters of Maman (Ade Firman Hakim) and Siti (Sheila Dara Aisha) steal the show as the husband and wife who were the orphans that stayed behind to take care of the place. Even though they have such little screen time there is so many wonderfully genuine nuances between them. On a side note, I was sad to hear that Hakim passed away from Covid-19 on September 14th, 2020. For the most part the roles are sparce, giving a few characters one trait to identify them: like the diet-obsessed wife, the germaphobe wife, the flirty daughter, the loving mother/wife, etc. If you could not tell from my examples there’s kind of a gender theme of which characters are more likely to be undeveloped, but it strangely plays into the dark reveal and story about “good” men. Which also is an interesting topic of conversation that the movie makes several times about orphans, commenting how a character happened to turn out “good” despite being an orphan.

In the end, The Queen of Black Magic has some plot issues, lulls, and undeveloped bits but it is worth a watch if you are in the mood for a new spooky movie with family or friends.


3 ½ out of 5

Review by Craig Draheim 

A grieving girl unravels her murdered mother’s secrets connected to a witch doctor’s curse. She wants to put an end to this haunting hex by traveling to where it originated, but her journey casts her deeper into sinister depths
Writer / Director  Reine Swart
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Stars:  Coco Lloyd, Mari Molefe van Heerden, Mary-Anne Barlow 

Found footage horror has something of a bad rep nowadays. There was a time after Paranormal Activity and [Rec] came out where everyone and their dog seemed to be making one, and the shine wore off quick. Despite some great gems (The Borderlands and Creep, anyone?), the sub-genre has never really recovered, though there’s still plenty of shakycam POV horrors around thanks to them being nice and cheap.

Enter writer-director Mark Sheridan with his feature debut Crone Wood. A young couple who’ve just met decide to go camping in the titular woods on a whim, but their romantic night descends into terror when they run afoul of a mysterious pagan cult that calls the wood their home.

It’s immediately apparent that this is a low budget film. Super low budget, in fact. Luckily, that fits the found footage aesthtic well; it’s easier to suspend your disbelief because it doesn’t look too slick, too Hollywood. Once we’re lost in the woods or exploring the creepy ruined lodge house, there’s a real Blair Witch Project vibe as every shadow feels like it could be hiding a lurking figure. Incidentally, the ruined house in question is The Hellfire Club in Dublin, where occult shenangigans may well have gone down in the 18th Century, so no wonder it’s off-putting! Sheridan makes the most of his surroundings and the darkness to deliver some solidly creepy sequences, which is great work considering it’s mostly shots of people wandering around. Not easy to thrill with that!

For the first half of the film it really does feel like two people messing around, getting to know each other and having a fun time with a camera. A lot of the credit for that is due to the leads, Ed Murphy (Vikings) as Danny and Elva Trill (Line of Duty) as Hailey. Their chemistry is great, and their playful banter makes you feel a bit like a third wheel on their unconventional date, a voyeur when things get racy, a witness when things go pear-shaped.

Unfortunately it’s not too long after things go pear-shaped that the film itself starts to follow suit. After a very tense sequence involving creeping around a house looking for a phone to call for help, things stop feeling quite so realistic. For one thing, when they’re chased off Danny goes back for the camera he’d dropped in a classic case of Put The Damn Camera Down. Why would you stop to pick up the camera when being chased by a very real imminent threat? Because we wouldn’t have the rest of the film otherwise, of course. Sheridan’s script tries to explain it away with ‘it’s all evidence for the police of the weird stuff going down’, but it’s just not a strong enough reason to ring true, especially considering Hailey correctly points out that it just catches them tresspassing in someone’s home.

From there they meet a family who can save them and help them get back to civilisation, and if you can’t tell what’s about to happen then I think maybe you’ve never seen a horror film before. There is a twist within the twist here that spins things in a different direction, however it’s still pretty predictable - I called it from the very second scene and I’m not usually very good at that! It’s a pretty dull sequence, sadly, and leads into a succession of pagan rituals and ‘so mote it be’s that feel… off. I don’t know the pagan roots of Ireland, but none of it felt authentic here. It felt Wicker Man-lite.

And that’s the big problem. The Wicker Man casts such a long shadow over folk horror that it’s hard to escape, and most of Crone Wood doesn’t seem to even try. Between the masks everyone wears (creepy at night, a bit sad-looking in the daylight), the procession through the woods, even the folk song (overlaid as soundtrack despite being played diagetically? Very jarring!), everything from the big twist onwards just makes you wonder why you aren’t watching The Wicker Man instead. There is one moment that stands out from the rest, that being a very uncomfortable rape disguised as a fertility ritual – ironically, that feels derivative of Midsommar, but doubly ironically this film first came out in 2016 so it actually predates Midsommar! Kudos to Sheridan for thinking of it first.

Instead of feeling chilled or thrilled, I was mostly left wondering how much of the paganism on show is authentic, and how much a pagan viewer might be annoyed or offended by it. By the end of the film, I was totally disengaged, which is such a shame as it had really gripped me for the whole first half.

Crone Wood isn’t a bad film. It’s just not a good one either, unfortunately. It doesn’t do much to surpass the limitations of found footage, or to bring a new angle to folk horror. It doesn’t tell a particularly original story, nor does it keep hold of your immersion through to the end. But it does have a strong beginning, with characters who feel real and interesting and are great fun to spend time with. It’s got passion, which is essential.

It shows that Mark Sheridan has great promise, and hopefully something more original from him is just around the corner.

Review by Sam Kurd