A solid, quiet but unremarkable French zombie film.
Author: gffreviews
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Attack of the Bat Monsters
A glorious revelling in the creature feature B-movie.
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The Wanderers: The Quest of the Demon Hunter
A film about a vampire-hunter with an unintelligible Elvis drawl hunts a vampire chick in Transylvania. Running time was twice as long as it needed to be, maybe more.
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Kissing Candice
An Irish film about a lassie whose epilepsy may or may not be giving her psychic visions, and a local gang of drooges who are responsible for the disappearance of a young boy. That being said, it feels like the film’s about nothing. I got bored very early in (although it felt long enough for me) and there was nothing to regain my attention for the rest of the film.
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Ghost Stories
Just walked home in the dark in knee-deep snow after pure shiting it at a horror movie at the GFT. That’s hardcore filmcore. Although not as hardcore as the GFF staff, some of whom slept overnight in the cinema so they could open – bravo!
The director was supposed to be there since it was the premiere but he got stuck in Preston because of the snow and had to send a video introduction filmed on his phone from inside the train toilet. Pity he couldn’t be there, because he would have seen the most die-hard horror fans who’d trekked through the worst snowstorm in a decade to be there, all shiting it and shrieking at his movie.
Ghost Stories is very very good. It is a fucking great movie. It’s basically composed of three short stories that are wrapped up together in the last act. It is one the best ghost story type horror movie I’ve seen in ages. Properly gets a good chilling vibe going, an eerie M. R. James feel, old school.
The first story stars Paul Whitehouse, excellent in this dramatic role. From this first I knew I was gonna love this movie. It builds expertly utter creep. There are a few jump-scares, and there are a few loud-for-scary exchanges, but the film is so much more than that. It builds a total atmosphere of look-over-you-shoulder, can’t-watch-now suspense, that by the time you see anything, you would jump out of your seat regardless of how loud or quiet it was. There is virtually no gore or overdone makeup grossness. This film just lives by its piano wire-tight tension. I realised this movie had got me when I was watching Paul Whitehouse venture down into the darkness, and I heard myself think in my head, “I’m afraid”.
Definitely go see this at the pictures when it comes out in August. It is definitely a movie to see with someone you can jump with and then laugh. I pure let out the terror moo on a couple of occasions. Fucking A!
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Vampire Clay
Just out of Vampire Clay, which does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a Japanese movie about man-eating clay, and that’s all you really need to know. It’s got the weird silliness and creepiness of Round The Twist, with aspirations to the special effects of something like The Thing or Evil Dead. It also weirdly reminded me of 80s Doctor Who horror episodes, but I’m not totally sure why.
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Beast From The East
The snow defeated the cinemas, but it didn’t defeat me! Home safe and sound after helping a woman push her car up a hill and stepping in a snow bank right up to my knee.
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My Friend Dahmer
A dramatised biopic of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s teenage years. I’d say it’s probably best to come to this movie with no idea about who Jeffrey Dahmer is, and just see it as a character study of a disturbed young man missing opportunities to reach out for help. Otherwise, it is a bit unsettling watching such a sympathetic portrayal of a man who committed some of the most horrendous murders.
What’s good about the movie is it doesn’t really mention the murders until the end, on a black screen right before the credits, and then with no details about nature of the deaths. What I could have done without is the jaunty soft rock play-out music still going over the information.
By not really referencing the murders, the film can simply be a drama about teenage alienation, and the lack of communication and emotional support within male teenage friendships.
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The Charmer
An engaging film about an Iranian guy who tries to get his green card in Denmark but seducing women in the hopes of marrying them.
It’s an interesting look at race and gender and power. For him, these white women hold his life in their hands, they can decide if he stays and prospers here or gets deported back to Iran. They have all the power. For the women, he uses them, betrays them and humiliates them, it completely destroys one woman and her family. He has all the power. There’s no easy way to reconcile this.
It’s also a love story, with a sympathetic if morally ambiguous main character, whose past sins are steadily catching up with him.
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How Victor “The Garlic” Took Alexey “The Stud” to the Nursing Home
A Russian comedy (not often you get to say that).
Viktor is a supreme dobber who discovers that the father he assumed died in prison is in fact living with a spinal cord injury in a flat across town. His father is an even bigger dobber than him, so Viktor decides to pap him off to a nursing home and claim the flat for himself. But all does not go to plan.
It’s a road trip redemption movie, with a lot of farcical humour and a soundtrack of thumping Russian rap.