Category: Horror

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Film Review: A Short Vision – 8/10

Sometimes when it is a Sunday night and your girlfriend has been out all day and you have spent too long staring tensely at the cat and you are waiting for Match of the Day 2 to start and Monday is breathing down your neck like a two headed dragon, you may find yourself tumbling down the rabbit hole that is the more weird corner of the web. It is here that I discovered A Short Vision…

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Amazingly broadcast in prime time on both the BBC in the UK and the Ed Sullivan Show in the US in 1956, A Short Vision is a strange animated short about the end of the world. Packing in a lot of nightmarish imagery and disorientating repetitively primitive language as well as some unsettling rudimentary animation and a screeching score, it is impossible to imagine this ever being shown on any channel at any time in this day and age, never mind when people are just sitting down to enjoy their smiley faces and turkey dinosaurs.

The message is more than simply ‘nuclear war is bad’ and I ended up watching it a few times such is the haunting nature of the subject matter. Still very much pertinent and perhaps even more shocking than when first released, A Short Vision is a good if odd way to spend six minutes of your time.

Watch it here:

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Film Review: ABC’s of Death 2

While the first ABC’s of Death film had more disappointing segments than good ones, it did at least have a few interesting directors on board in Ben Wheatley (Kill List), Adam Wingard (You’re Next), Ti West (The Sacrament) and Jason Eisener (Hobo With A Shotgun). The most famous contributor on offer for the sequel is probably the surprising entry from one half of The Mighty Boosh, Julian Barrett – One of a number of British directors to work on the project.

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Film Review: The Gift – 7/10

What it lacks in Katie Holmes’ breasts, The Gift makes up for in tense thrills…

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The Gift contains a typically fine performance from Rebecca Hall but it is the cat and mouse game between Jason Bateman and Joel Edgerton that rightly takes first billing. Edgerton wrote and directed The Gift as well as starring and he gives an excellent performance in what is obviously a passion project for him. If you watch Edgerton’s confident turn in another 2015 success Black Mass compared to his more socially awkward character here, you will see the amount of range that he possesses and the flexibility of his acting skill.

The stalker tale is a typical horror trope but The Gift isn’t out to break new ground, only to tell a good story and tell it well. The performances in general are far superior to that of the average horror flick, with Fargo‘s Allison Tolman rounding off a talented cast.

The Gift is not really a horror film in reality. It is more a tense thriller and whilst Jason Bateman is an odd choice for such a straight character, he takes his opportunity to play against type here. Bateman made me change my mind about who was the protagonist and who was the antagonist numerous times throughout The Gift which is also a testament to Edgerton’s writing.

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Joel Edgerton or Murray from Flight of the Conchords?

Indeed this is Joel Edgerton’s movie. Aside from the gripping script and the focused direction, Egerton puts in a sympathetic but offbeat turn as Gordo in a role unrecognisable compared to his recent fare.

The Gift is in many ways old fashioned in it’s story and style but it is a modern twist on a familiar fable that will appeal to a mass audience. Caps off Joel Edgerton.