Review: A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place is genuinely stressful, edge-of-your-seat and scary.

It centres on a family who are living in a Walking Dead-esque post-apocalyptic era caused by the arrival of creatures who use their keen sense of sound to hunt. It means the family have to live in a permanent state of silence. From using sign language and talking in barely audible tones to using sand to muffle the sound of their footsteps.

And it’s a combination of this silence and the added factor of innocently careless children which maintains high levels of anxiety throughout the film. There are times when you want to scream so bad, but you daren’t make a sound. It’s less about the jump scares and more about keeping you in a constant state of suspense. Cinematically, the film makers have the tension nailed.

Likely to be one of the best – if not the best – horrors of the year.

My rating: 8/10

IMDB rating: 8.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 95%

Image sourced from Rebecca Barray / Flickr / Creative Commons

Review: The Ritual (2017)

The Ritual is dark and different. One of the better horrors I’ve seen for a while. You can always rely on the British.

So the story goes, four men go off hiking for a weekend to commemorate the death of one of their friends. And weird stuff starts happening. Peppered with bleak humour, typical of a bunch of British blokes, the film is less about the jump scares and more about the creepy.

I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say there is an underlying moral to face up to your inner demons, and as a result the film lends itself to frequent flashbacks, which can get a little annoying at times. But the filmography which sees them woven into present day is a triumph. The film also has an element of ‘seeing too much’, but meh, I enjoyed it all the same. It’s worth a watch.

My rating: 6/10

IMDB rating: 6.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 70%

Image sourced from Pixabay / Creative Commons / No attribution required

Review: Mother! (2017)

I’d been tempted by Mother! ever since I saw the trailer. An all-star cast featuring Michelle Pfeiffer, Ed Harris and Jennifer Lawrence, plus some clear thriller-style scares. I expected great things.

But while it does take a turn for the shocking and gruesome, it’s also absurd. Later on I found out that everything in the film is symbolic, but hats off to anyone who can guess what it all means, as nothing is disclosed. It’s clever, but frustrating.

So the storyline goes, a young wife (Jennifer Lawrence) has completely re-furbished the home she shares with her husband (Javier Bardem) after a fire when a stranger (Ed Harris) knocks on their door.

I enjoyed it, but probably not as much as I would have if the symbolism and absurdity was left out.

My rating: 5/10

IMDB rating: 6.7/10

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 69%

Image sourced from Jennifer Lawrence Films / Flickr / Public Domain

Review: 10 Cloverfield Lane (2015)

I’d heard mixed reviews about 10 Cloverfield Lane, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Despite having the same director and with a similar running title to Cloverfield, the premise is completely different. A young woman wakes up after a car crash to find herself in an underground bunker with two men who claim that there has been a chemical attack. John Goodman leads with a fantastic performance as a paranoid and tempermental apocalyptic theorist who built the bunker underneath his farm.

The whole idea of being stuck underground with two random men, as a woman, is my worst nightmare, so very quickly I was drawn in by the sinister nature of her situation.

But it isn’t your typical ‘captive’-style story. The film then takes you on a nail-biting roller coaster leaving you guessing the real motives of the two men and the truth about the attack. The truth is revealed at the end of the film in an explosive and unexpected showdown – it will leave you like WTF!

I have to say, I really enjoyed it and I think it’s thriller/horror style would appeal to most.

My rating: 7/10

IMDB rating: 7.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 90%

Image sourced from Bago Games / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed)

Review: Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Bone Tomahawk isn’t what you would call a classic horror film – more like a western/horror hybrid. In fact there isn’t really much horror until the end, but it makes for a great build up without being slow.

Let’s face it, Kurt Russell was born to do Westerns and, if this film is to go by, he’s not half bad in horrors either. Playing the sheriff, he heads up a team of townsmen who set off to rescue a woman who has been kidnapped by a tribe of cannabalistic natives. The woman’s husband, played by Patrick Wilson, who you will recognise from other horror/thrillers like The Conjuring, Insidious and Hard Candy, goes along with the group despite having a broken leg which presents all sorts of problems along the way.

What makes this film is the decent cast and character development in true Western style. The script is peppered with dark sarcastic one-liners, but the pacing and foreboding cues never let you get too settled in the dialogue to forget about the reason for the townsmen’s journey. By the time the group reach their grisly destination, you realise you have developed a fondness for each character making the dangerously high stakes even higher.

The unique merge of two genres makes it a good option for your friends who ‘don’t like horrors’, but the gore factor is strong enough to satisfy horror fans. I can’t really say any more without leaking spoilers, but it’s definitely worth a watch.

My rating: 7/10

IMDB rating: 7.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 89%

Image sourced from Caliber Media Company / dimland radio 2-27-16 show notes / dimland  / Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed)

Review: Eden Lake (2008)

Eden Lake is one of those films where you need to get up halfway through to make a cup of tea just to remind yourself that what you’re watching isn’t real – although it may as well be. It cleverly echoes all of those child crime stories that stick in your mind weeks after seeing them headlining the news and plays on the British middle class’ fears of kids hanging on street corners.

So the story goes, a loved-up couple travel to a secluded lake for a romantic weekend when a gang of kids turn up with their Rottweiler and start playing loud music and being a nuisance. From there the story takes a darker turn.

Unlike so many other dark thrillers where you find yourself screaming at the screen ‘JUST KICK IT IN THE FACE’, Eden Lake leaves you with no such frustration. In almost, if not every, instance the characters do exactly what any well-wishing movie watcher would tell them to do, but it rarely pays off.

The film also benefits from a quality star cast led by Michael Fassbender and Jack O’Connell, although they weren’t quite as famous when Eden Lake was released. O’Connell, most famous for his role as Cook in Skins, is at his very best playing the villain – a chav with a cruel depravity akin to Game of Thrones’ Ramsay Bolton. Not to forget that Kelly Reilly, who has since played alongside Robert Downey Jr. in the Sherlock Holmes films, plays a fantastically strong, but credible female lead.

And finally it’s British and British horror is the best, although I am biased.

My rating: 9/10

IMDb rating: 6.8/10

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 80%

Image sourced from Annie Mole /  Creative Commons Attribution

Review: Goodnight Mommy (2014)

Anyone who sees the trailer for Goodnight Mommy will agree that it’s pretty unnerving.

As soon as I saw it I was desperate to watch the full film as the whole concept seemed completely unique from anything I had seen before – the idea of two little boys left isolated with their mother, the one person who is supposed to protect them, with whom something is clearly very wrong.

Based in Austria (with English subtitles), the mother appears to be some sort of B-list TV presenter who returns home to her two sons after undergoing facial cosmetic surgery – and she is weird.

The trailer itself is representative of the first hour of the film, with lots of slow building, unsettling scenes and nail-biting moments all amplified by the silence and isolation of the house’s location on the edge of a forest.

Then a major twist is introduced and, if I’m honest, I felt a bit mislead more than anything else. There are still some well-put-together gore scenes that will make you squirm.

Maybe I built up this film too much in my mind before seeing it, but I stand by my gut feeling that without the twist we would have been on to a winner. There are certainly worse horrors out there, and few are as aesthetically filmed as this one, but I’d recommend going in without any expectations and enjoying it for what it is.

My rating: 5/10

IMDB rating: 6.7/10

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 85%

Image sourced from spot 30 segundos buenas noches mama edit / Bf Distribution / Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed)

Review: The Witch (2016)

I’ve been waiting for The Witch to come to cinema for some time, ever since I’d heard ‘the horror film of the year’ being bandied about. I wasn’t disappointed.

The film follows a farming family of puritans in 1630 New England who are exiled from their village and forced to set up home in a secluded spot on the outskirts of a forest. This bleak, isolated setting gives a you a feeling of melancholy hopelessness from the very beginning and a premonition that not all will end well. It also offers a refreshing step away from the classic haunted house plot line and allows for new kinds of scare moments.

The atmosphere in this film is a big part of what makes it creepy. It is a slow build, but, at just 1 hour 32 mins, it doesn’t drag. Fans of films, like The Conjuring or The Grudge, should be warned that it’s not a jump-a-minute horror, but the scares you do get are gritty and have a very real substance. While in most horrors scares come in the form of a surprise ghost appearance which predominantly lack in consequences, in The Witch you are in no doubt that what will happen is very sinister. There’s a scene with a raven that will make you wince.

My only word of warning is that you will need to turn the sound up and pay close attention to what is being said – the olde English can be a bit tricky to hear at times.

Otherwise, a much welcomed feature-length debut from Robert Eggers. I’m certainly looking forward to see what he pulls out of the bag next.

My rating: 7/10

IMDB rating: 7.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 90%

Image sourced from Robert Eggers interview / The Witch 2016 / The Macguffin / Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed)