The Sleeping Room

2014
Dir. John Shackleton

A rather curious hybrid, John Shackleton’s Brighton-based The Sleeping Room is part psychological horror, part ghost story. It tells of Blue (Leila Mimmack), a young call-girl with a troubled past who strikes up an unlikely, and forbidden friendship with one of her clients, a young man restoring an old house by the seafront.

When she inadvertently discovers she has ties to the old house, which used to be a brothel, and a possible shared history with its devious and debauched tenants, she desperately attempts to reconcile herself with a dark family secret.

Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my full review.

Popular posts from this blog

Satranic Panic (2023)

Image
When Max is murdered by a mysterious demon-worshipping cult, his partner Jay (Zarif) and best friend Aria (Cassie Hamilton) set out to avenge his death. Directed by prolific Aussie filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, and co-written by Mackay, Cassie Hamilton and Benjamin Pahl Robinson, Satranic Panic is a low-budget, character-driven, comedy-horror road movie. Quite similar in tone to Mackay’s previous feature, T-Blockers , Satranic Panic also unfurls as a love letter to schlocky b-movie horrors and features transgender characters who make a defiant stand against intolerance. And demons. Retaining most of the crew from T-Blockers , including cinematographer/editor Aaron Schuppan, composer Alex Taylor and sound designer Roisin Gleeson, Mackay’s approach is as bold as it was on her earlier film, but with slightly higher production values. While Satranic Panic is still a very low budget affair, it’s just as much a labour of love and exhibits an equally off-kilter yet exuberant tone. The low b...
Read more

Cat People (1942)

Image
The first in a series of moody, literate horror films produced by Val Lewton in the 1940s, Cat People is an evocative example of how effective the ‘less is more’ approach to horror can be. Directed with effective restraint by Jacques Tourneur, the film is a masterpiece of mood and atmosphere. By electing to suggest the horror rather than show it outright, Cat People remains an eerily atmospheric and psychological chiller to this day. One of the first horror films to reference psychoanalysis, it plays out as a dark tale of sexual anxiety and coded lesbianism. It tells of Irena (Simone Simon), a young Serbian woman working as a fashion designer in New York City, who meets Oliver (Kent Smith), a draftsman in a ship building company. After their somewhat impulsive marriage, their relationship becomes strained when they fail to become sexually intimate. This is because Irena believes she is descended from a race of Satanic cat people, doomed to transform into a ravaging panther when arous...
Read more

Behind the Scenes of Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D

Image
Asia bares her fangs... Dario Argento is currently ensconced in shooting his adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel, 'Dracula'. Filming began in Hungary (where Argento previously filmed Phantom of the Opera and produced Michele Soavi's The Church ) in June and the film stars Rutger Hauer (as Van Helsing), Thomas Kretschmann (as Dracula), Marta Gastini (as Mina) and Asia Argento (as Lucy). A few on-set photos have found their way online courtesy of Asia Argento…  According to Alan Jones’s on-set reports , filming has gone well thus far and the shoot has proved something of an Argento ‘family’ reunion. Working with him again are the likes of special effects artist Sergio Stivaletti (who has worked on the majority of Argento's films since Phenomena in 1985), cinematographer Luciano Tovoli (who also lensed Argento’s gothic masterpiece Suspiria and edgily reflexive giallo Tenebrae ), production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng ( The Stendhal Syndrome,...
Read more