So short and direct are the vignettes, that it is difficult to describe them without spoiling the whole lot, but suffice to say that the audience are treated to the usual morality tales regarding technology and greed and some fun stories about bizarre creatures and religious cults.
Of the five directors involved, only François Message and Alexis Wawerka have previous directing credits, with one each; documentary about the Lithuanian Gay League, “We Can be Gay Today” (Message) and short “Hot Hell” (Wawerka). Yet all five bring a panache and fast moving pace to each section. Indeed, for a collaborative effort, Necrologies really has to be regarded as a success, with all parties maintaining the standard; all the stories carry the same verve and quality. There are some inventive make-up effects and some well done gore. In the story entitled “Une Affaire d’Enfer,” a grisly tale regarding the comeuppance of an unscrupulous estate agent, who is willing to do anything to force an elderly lady out of her home, scream queen fans will also spot a cameo from horror legend, Linnea Quigley.


So is Necrologies worth your time? Absolutely. As a fun, knock around 75 minutes’ entertainment, you can’t argue with it. And if a group of young (ish) people can take an (estimated) €11,000 budget and create something as accomplished as this, then they deserve, at the very least, that a few people see it.

C. First, I regret not being able to see this again and doing the review in such a quick turnaround, because it’s something that one needs to digest to get the full effect.
 
The Lodge is the next great horror movie to divide its community. Like The Witch, it will have people commenting with the “is it horror?” debate, because of its lack of outright scares. I’m here to say that there’s no question that it’s a horror movie. Thanks to a minimal (yet effective) sound design, harrowing imagery and heartbreakingly authentic performances, one could dislike it based on personal taste but they can’t deny its masterful execution. While I’m going to wait some time before I officially make this statement, I may prefer this to their first feature, Goodnight Mommy, which I also really enjoyed.
 
Like Goodnight Mommy, this features a twist and POV shift that makes it difficult to speak about major plot points throughout. I’m sure people will complain that they saw the twist coming a mile away but I don’t think that’s the point since there’s still a good amount of story to tell after the reveal. Still for the sake of any reader that hasn’t seen it yet I won’t spoil anything.
 
Fiala and Franz have spoken about their enjoyment of working with children and this is present within the film since they handle the impressionable mentality of a child better than I’ve seen in a long time. Credit has to be given to the performances of Martell and McHugh who are able to stand alongside the powerful adults they’re performing with.
 
The Lodge is one that is going to sit with me for awhile, which continues to prove that you don’t need something to rapidly spring out on screen to make an effective horror movie.
 
J. So this is one you should go into totally blind and if you’ve seen Goodnight Mommy, you know exactly why I’m making the suggestion.  There’s shit that happens that would be very easy to spoil just like these filmmakers’ last project.  The story hits the ground running with an insane and brutal and harrowing opening 5 to 10 minutes and then pumps the brakes a little in terms of pace and settles into a slow burn, tension filled masterclass.  The atmosphere is palpable in this and the setting couldn’t be more perfect.  It’s like The Shining but on a smaller scale.  The characters are in a lodge in the middle of nowhere during blizzard-like conditions and this setting is utilized in a tremendously nightmarish effect.  The performances are all wonderful too but I have to say that Riley Keough steals the show and it’s awesome seeing Alicia Silverstone in a film and role that is so different for her.  The Lodge continues the borderline art house horror phenomenon.
 
K.  The film begins with simple shots of the interior of a miniature cabin, one that represents the Lodge of the title and from that opening shot there is a quiet tension that builds and builds.  The simple setup, two kids and their soon-to-be stepmother stuck together in the family lodge for a few days in the dead of winter, leads to a constantly shifting psychological horror as reality and delusion become indistinguishable.  I’ll leave it there as far as the synopsis goes so as not to spoil anything.
 
This is an austere near-masterpiece.  Masterfully shot and directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz.  Riley Keough gives an incredible performance as Grace, the soon-to-be stepmother.  The cinematography and lighting effortlessly evoke the cold, empty feeling of the Lodge itself.  While I did wish that the third act moved at a faster pace, it was nonetheless a finely crafted film full of genuinely cringe worthy moments. 
 

A group of war veterans must defend their local VFW post and an innocent teen against a deranged drug dealer and his relentless army of punk mutants.
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​I'm not much of a partygoer. You're more likely to find me sitting on the sofa stuffing my face with pizza than at a nightclub. As such, my knowledge of the rave scene is limited to the warehouse bits in Go and that one episode of Spaced where the gang go clubbing to the A-team theme remix. I'm reliably informed that little fish, big fish and cardboard boxes figure into it somehow. That said, I'm pretty sure that a night on the dance-floor isn't meant to end with crazed zombie-mutants all over the place. Pretty sure.
 
Ravers is the second feature from director Bernhard Pucher and writer Luke Foster, and their first horror. They really knock it out of the park, giving us a film that's low-key but great fun to watch. The film follows Becky, a germaphobic investigative reporter played by Georgia Hirst (Vikings). Her horror of all things unclean is getting in the way of both her job and her love life, as her boss (Natasha Henstridge is a tiny but effective cameo) tells her she needs to get her hands dirty to truly become a reporter. When her ex-girlfriend complains about how boring Becky is, it's the final straw and she decides to go with her cousin to an illegal rave at an abandoned energy-drink factory. As you do. The party turns ugly, though, as a contaminated batch of drinks turn the dancers (or ravers, if you will) into violent zombie-mutants!
 
It's an entertainingly silly premise, one that perhaps sounds a little familiar. Tainted energy drinks cause a zombie outbreak in the series iZombie, and the mutants in the bonkers video game Sunset Overdrive were also caused by bad caffeinated beverages. Now we have a drink that turns people into zombie-mutants? Put the cans down, folks, it's not worth it. Stick to coffee.
 
Once the opening kill is out the way, the story is a little slow to get going, with a couple of scenes that are perhaps overly long and initially seem pointless (but have important payoffs later), but that's ok as it rarely feels like it drags. A lot of that is down to Hirst's excellent performance; there's something very endearing about her character, and a trait that could easily have become annoying was well-handled and treated as both a challenge and just a part of who she is. The sight of her on the dancefloor in a facemask and a parka with the hood up, surrounded by dancers, is hugely funny. We also meet the supporting players: Becky's stoner cousin Ozzy (Danny Kirrane), fellow raver Jen (Maria Volk), scumbag drug dealer Vince (Kamal Angelo Bolden) and flirty love interest Hannah (Manpreet Bambra).
 
Bambra's is another standout performance, as she shines in the scenes she shares with Becky. The chemistry between them sizzles, and they make for a very cute couple. The way Hannah handles Becky's cleanliness issues is both sweet and surprisingly sexy. Once the shit hits the fan, it's largely these scenes that make us root for the characters and hope they can get out of this alive.

 
Speaking of which: the zombies themselves. They're not actually zombies, as the film takes pains to let us know. There's some kind of interaction between the drink and the drugs at the party that sends the ravers into mutant mode, with mottled skin and crazy twitching eyes that I found really unsettling. They all crave something, not flesh, but something. You're mostly ok if you can give them what they're after; they want beer, they want drugs, they want sex, but mostly they want thumping bass and pumping beats and god help you if they don't get them. The science behind the mutation is a bit wibbly (it made my wife cry into her Chemistry PhD), but if you expect accurate biochemistry from a film about energy-drink-fuelled mutant ravers then I don't know what to tell you, man.
 
The special effects are mostly brilliant. The CGI on the opening kill is a little clunky, but it's dealt with swiftly and followed by a very funny gag that immediately makes up for it. The rest of the effects all appear to be practical, with bugging out eyes and horrible burned flesh aplenty. It takes a while to get there, but towards the end things get nasty and gooey in the best way. Becky really gets put through the wringer as a germaphobe, given how much blood and muck gets thrown around, which really helps the story; too often a writer will set up a trait like this and then forget completely about it, but this is consistent and satisfying to the end. The soundtrack is also decent, with lots of unts-unts-unts to nod your head to as you watch and a couple of great gags (the drop-the-bass moment in particular was very clever).

Ravers was very much my jam,  a fun film from beginning to end, with brilliant effects and a great lead performance. As I said, there are a couple of minor pacing issues, but nothing that spoils the fun. There's a sense that this is the beginning of a beautiful career, not just for Pucher & Foster but for Hirst, who inexplicably only seems to have two credits to her name so far. I hope they'll go far! I'll almost certainly be watching this again, with pizza and a few beers.
 
No energy drinks though, ta, think I'll pass on those for a while.
 
 
5 ginger nuts out of 5

SAM KURD ​

C. There’s a reason why a Tim and Eric episode was only fifteen minutes. On paper Butt Boy is one of those projects that shouldn’t work as a feature and there’s plenty within the final product that proves this. Not discussing the ridiculous plot but there are elements within the movie that feel forced, filler and cheap to fabricate an emotional depth. A man sucking things into his butt? I can get behind that (pun intended I guess). Forcing the cold case connection between the two driving characters? That’s where it starts to feel lazy. Unlike last year’s Here Comes Hell, there’s more clarity to which elements are purposefully bad/budgetary issues vs. flaws in execution/storytelling. Having time in between our initial reaction and then responding to each other, I’ll find sometimes I start to like something more, the same, or less. Unfortunately for this movie time has allowed for certain negatives to stick with me.
 
Now, getting that out of the way and acknowledging the justified concerns that viewers may have, I still love it on some strange, giddy level. It is exceptionally better than it has any right to be and (agreeing with Kyle) is the festival’s hidden gem. Butt Boy stands out in its originality and that’s something I’m more than happy supporting.
 
J. About the only response I have to this film is that it has stuck with me in various ways and not really any of it has to do with the butt stuff.  I find that fascinating and a little strange at the same time much like this film is.  It really shouldn’t work but it mostly does and I applaud the hell out of it for being so “out there” and pulling off something centered around a man’s cavernous ass. 
 
K.  Easily the biggest surprise of FrightFest.  Seems we’re all (mostly) in agreement again.  Acknowledging Craig’s criticisms of the sketch-turned-feature, I agree to an extent and I see where he’s coming from.  But I also appreciate seeing something new and different and not knowing exactly where something is going, which this film constantly provided.  All things considered, it’s a really impressive debut and I look forward to seeing what these filmmakers come up with next.
 

Bloodhound’s average score: 4 out of 5
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C. Based on what we’ve been watching at this festival and in general, A Ghost Waits is peak cute silliness but don’t worry, it’s purposeful. It does meander. At a technical level it’s more clunky than a lot of stuff we’ve rated a lot lower. But I gotta hand it to the movie in giving us a breath of fresh air that’ll leave a heartfelt smirk on your face. If it doesn’t then I don’t know what to tell you, maybe take a break from rewatching Cannibal Holocaust and find something that makes you stop to smell the roses.
 
J. My colleagues have pointed out some of the issues with A Ghost Waits and while I won’t say they’re wrong, if you know going in what we didn’t, you’ll have a fine time with this one.  As I previously stated, this isn’t really my thing but MacLeod Andrews’ resemblance to Leigh Whannell and the comedy bits (that work) were enough to keep me entertained.  The fact that there were some genuinely sincere, heartfelt moments and a conclusion that I wasn’t really expecting all made A Ghost Waits worth a watch in my view. 
 
K.  We’re all on the same page here it seems.  While it’s got it’s fair share of problems and shortcomings, the heart on display wins out in the end.  If this sounds up your alley, it’s worth a watch.
 
Bloodhound’s average score: 3 out of 5 ​

Two observations;

Observation one;

Some things are best experienced just the once. At Universal Studios in Florida, there's a Jurassic Park Ride. It's promoted as a lovely sedate cruise through some of the various impressive dinosaur exhibits there but, within minutes of it starting, everything went horribly wrong. Turned out that some Velociraptors and a T. Rex had escaped from their paddocks and were raising hell.  The staff assured us that this wouldn't affect our experience – but this was at best, hopelessly naïve. Criminally so, in hindsight.

It made our experience terrifying. Not only did we have to dangerously traverse a section of the park crawling with the vicious clawed bastards, but we only narrowly escaped our boat being devoured by the gaping maw of a slavering Tyrannosaurus Rex. What should have been a dream holiday was somewhat tainted by this horrifying experience.

Naively, we went on the same ride three days later. And, bugger me, if the same mishaps didn't occur again. Shoddy health and safety at best, and this in a park with thousands of visitors a day. Appalling negligence.

Observation two;

"Style over Substance," is a commonly used phrase in critique, an indication that whereas something may be visually or orally striking, there isn't a great deal of depth or meaning to it. It's designed as a barb, a word as equally weighted as "pretentious" to pour scorn on something that isn't deemed to have the necessary highbrow/lowbrow values or qualities to achieve some invisible abstracted standard.

I'll give away my age here, but in the early-to-mid-eighties only one type of music existed. It was made solely by men, a few of whom were guitar virtuosos called Mark. Some wore headbands, T-shirts only came in white, and all its various (typically middle-age) idols wore single or double – and in some rare ostentatious cases, triple denim - and keyboards were designed to be stabbed at viciously or worn around the neck.

At least only one type of music existed to me. These fretted warriors sang stoic ballads of Brothers in Arms, former capitals of Brazil, Mad Worlds and of money for nothing (and chicks for free) as well as Bricks in Walls (parts 1 and 2). The insidious agency of Stock, Aitken and Waterman did their damned best to intrude on my little world, but my sophisticated teen ears had become well trained in filtering them out.

I was a musical snob. I listened to one type of music, although was clearly refined and sophisticated enough to let that warp and shift – AOR become Soft Metal, Soft Metal hardened to Heavy Metal, Heavy Metal slunk into the talcum-powdered trench coats of Goth, Goth plunged screaming (in German) into Industrial. Madchester passed me by, as did the New Wave of the New Wave of the New Wave (or whatever bloody wave we were up to by now). The Blur versus Oasis Wars might well have been taking place in the Middle East, such was their relevance to me.

I probably used the phrase 'style over substance' to define the types of music I refused to listen to on more than one occasion, never really understanding quite what I was saying. It just sounded good, like repetitive overuse of the gag; “Condescending. It means ‘talk down to’.”

As I grow older, the phrase "Style over Substance" holds less and less meaning. The esoteric nature of it fades as it loses power. My musical tastes were forced to broaden, faced with an onslaught of songs from different genres that were simply too good to ignore, and there comes a time when you realise when there is a perfectly valid place for beauty for beauties sake, no hidden depths, no passive subtext.

I'm very aware that – in topical terms – I'm quite late to come to Climax (no pun intended). Expect cutting edge articles on Dead of Night (1945) very shortly. However, having seen it – or, more appropriately, experienced Climax – I feel compelled to write about it.

​Climax is a film that I have watched and have watched from start to end. I didn't know what to say when it had finished, other than I felt exhausted and needed a very long sleep.

Most of my thoughts were occupied with it the next morning at work, and at lunch I rang my wife and told her this.

She'd been singing the film's praises for several months, and had been nagging – no, encouraging me to watch it.

"See, I told you," she said, justifiably smugly.

Many of my thoughts have been occupied with it in the days that passed.

Climax (2018) opens to whiteness, an aerial shot of a barely dressed woman staggering through the snow. Dogs bark in the distance, almost drowning out her anguished cries of distress. She collapses in the snow, writhing arms forming a makeshift snow angel. She crawls on, before collapsing. Is that blood underneath her?  The camera, unconcerned by her still form, moves on.

End credits roll. Okay, so that just happened.

​A white-noise flecked VHS video tape plays on a television, each character – a dancer from a troupe – is given a name, and a short soundbite to describe themselves. Each describes their dreams, ambitions and aspirations, they elaborate their fears and the reasons that they dance.

The screen goes black, Supernature, the awesome 1977 track by Cerrone begins to play. The troupe emerges, like regimented troops to the battlefield, onto the dancefloor. We're then treated to a magnificent few minutes of cinema as the cast simply dance. The scene is part choreographed/part improvised, and I honestly don't think I breathed during the entire sequence. It's utterly joyous – dancers at the height of their skills and the peaks of their careers, utterly lost in the moment.

It's the Winter of 1996, and we’re witnessing a French dance troupe in an abandoned school having a tour after-party.

One thing you should not expect from Climax is characterisation. Some of the characters are so poorly defined that they're barely even archetypes – some of them barely delineated more than by the fact that we know their actual or stage names. It's interesting that we learn a lot about many of the characters simply from their dancing – we learn who the confident and flamboyant ones are, who the more retiring ones are.
​
We learn hints through eavesdropping in conversations taking place around the party. As with any large group of people thrust together for any prolonged period, there's a complex web of relationships of which we pick up only hints. There are burgeoning romances, and a lot of horny dancers who want romance. Improvised vignettes between groups of the characters reveals a little more about each of them – a lot of it revealing that a lot of the male dancers shouldn't be allowed anywhere near women, but on the whole,  we're just witnessing a party in which people are becoming increasingly more stoned and drunk. We have lesbians, gays who lust after straights, junkies, protective mothers forced out of a dance career through their decision to have a child, jealousy…

​
And then the movie hits the halfway mark, and we get the opening credits. With hindsight, it's a kind of warning – you've had your opening and closing credits, best leave now, if you know what's good for you…

Somebody has spiked the party Sangria with copious amounts of LSD, and it's starting to kick in…

I cannot of course, as a responsible adult, condone drug use – but Climax, much like the notorious Lysergic Acid Diethylamide itself, is something better experienced than talked about, so this will be relatively spoiler-light.

It kicks off with paranoia; fingers being pointed as to which irresponsible fucker drugged the party punch. With tempers flaring and moral judgements clouded by the heady stupor of powerful hallucinogens, violence ensues. Fights break out, and one dancer – Muslim and non-drinker, so clearly guilty – is thrown out and abandoned to the deluge of Winter – the first to be cast out of hell.

A lot of the ensuing tale takes place in the rooms set off the main dance floor, including the generator room, where a hysterical mother is forced to lock her screaming child up for his own safety.

As a brilliant plot device, Noé keeps bringing us back from the rooms on the periphery to the central dance floor. With every revisit, it's plunged deeper into chaos, the already tattered membrane between reality and insanity that little bit more frayed with each encounter. The lighting and soundtrack change accordingly, an effective visual and audio cue keeping track of quite how far down into Hell we've been dragged.

(Special mention here needs to go to the soundtrack, which is something that's occupied much of my Spotify habit since I first saw Climax. Burn Baby Burn, Disco Infernal – it's the playlist for the party from Hell. Aphex Twin's Windowlicker nestles neatly next to classic Giorgio Moroder, M/A/R/R/S' Pump Up the Volume shares a list with a sublime instrumental version of the Rolling Stone's Angie - and it's a work of absolute perfection).

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You begin to dread each revisit to the dance floor, the director almost holding it over you as a threat. As the character you're following drunkenly staggers back into that central chamber, a strobe lit Stygia, you fear for what is coming next.

Whereas this at-times jaded horror fan thought he'd seen it all, much like that bit at the end of Zahner’s Bone Tomahawk (2015) – the thought of which just caused at least one reader to wince and close their legs – I wasn't quite prepared for the end.

It's not particular gory or scary, but the closing scenes of Climax will stick with me for some time. Weird angles and lingering shots that went on for just-that-little-bit-too-long made me feel quite queasy and I was wanting the film to end.

But that's not a criticism; that's how you should feel.
​
It's an experience. A thrill-ride. An experimental tour-de-force by a director who has made a deliberate career out of controversy and shock  - Enter the Void (2019) and Irréversible (2002). You will take nothing away from it, no deeper meanings or hidden profundity. There are no lessons learned, nothing gleaned other than the fact you've just watched a group of people succumb to madness – and not all of them came out of it the same, or in some cases, alive.

​Style over substance, whatever. But sometimes you just crave a Pot Noodle rather than Filet Mignon, italicized for extra pretension. And, to stretch that fast food metaphor one micrometre too far, Climax certainly stuck in my gut.

It’s terrific. But I don't need to watch it again. I learned my lesson at Universal Studios. Here be Velociraptors.

Further Reading/Viewing
Criterion regularly do videos in which they invite actors and directors to pick a choice of films from the shelves in their warehouse; Noé's choices are particularly interesting and enlightening, and can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_2R7T4-78E
Even if you don't watch the film, you owe it to yourself to watch the opening dance sequence by clicking on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwkacrln26o&t=57s. Honestly. You'll thank me.