Behind the Couch

Written, directed, co-edited and produced by French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, The Substance is a vicious and gruesome body-horror satire about ageing, identity and the impossible standards women are held to by a society obsessed with youth and beauty. It has divided critical opinion, with some lauding it as a feminist horror masterpiece, and others accusing it of pandering to the male gaze (those lingering shots of Sue's body in her fitted Lycra leotard), and exploiting old horror tropes (rendering the female body – especially older bodies - a source of terror). It tells of Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a faded film star, who, on her 50th birthday, is fired from her hit aerobics TV show by her producer, who wants to replace her with a younger host. A despairing Elizabeth decides to try a new experimental drug that will create a younger replica of herself, with deeply horrifying results... When Elizabeth's replica, Sue (Margaret Qualley), finds success and fame as her replac...

Isaac, a brooding drifter suffering from memory loss, agrees to look after Olga, the niece of his acquaintance Moe. A troubled woman prone to bouts of catatonia, Olga lives in an old, ramshackle house on an isolated island in the middle of a dark lake. Isaac agrees to wear a chained harness that prevents him from going into certain rooms. He gradually comes to learn of the unsettling history of the house and the unquiet dead it harbours within its walls... Written and directed by Damian McCarthy,  Caveat  is steeped in the Gothic tradition. With distinct echoes of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, it is ripe with a lingering atmosphere of morbidity and decay. McCarthy's screenplay toys with themes such as psychological rot, dark family secrets, and the aftermath of unspeakable violence and cruelty. The story unfolds within the creepy confines of the lonely, mouldy house, with myriad forbidden rooms, hidden passageways and concealed bloody secrets. The house itself is cut off from c...

Oíche Shamhna shona duit. To celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, my dear friend Marie – a writer and folklorist based in Missouri - has put together a podcast exploring first-hand paranormal experiences that took place on Halloween. The stories and accounts are shared from r/Paranormal , The Fairy Census , and the Dúchas Schools Collection (part of the National Folklore Collection UCD Digitization Project).  Between the stories, one of which is read by yours truly, Marie explores some of the history and folklore surrounding the traditions of Halloween, or Samhein, as it was known in Ireland where it originates from. An important festival in the ancient Celtic calendar to mark the end of summer, Samhein (Irish for November), is the night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead becomes thinnest, allowing souls of the deceased to pass through into our world and roam freely. The night we call Halloween in English, is Oíche Shamhna: literally Samhain (November) Eve. To list...

Written and directed by Aislinn Clarke, Fréwaka (from the Irish ‘Fréamhacha’, meaning ‘roots’) is a chilling Irish-language folk horror that not only draws inspiration from Ireland’s rich well of creepy folklore, traditions and mythology, but serves as a startling rumination on the cruel, ill-treatment of women throughout its history. It tells of Shoo (Clare Monnelly), a troubled care worker sent to a remote village to care for Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain), an older agoraphobic woman who claims the Na Sídhe – sinister, malevolent faerie folk - abducted her on her wedding night decades before...  Head over to Eye For Film to read my full review of this dark and haunting work. 

Desperate for a hit single, Kate (Jasmine Maimone) and her all-girl rock band acquires a piece of unpublished music by Niccolò Paganini – the 19th Century composer said to have sold his soul to the Devil. They hire an isolated villa to record the music and shoot a video, but end up opening a gateway to hell and conjuring the ghost of Paganini, who stalks and murders them with his bladed violin. Written and directed by Luigi Cozzi ( The Black Cat ), and co-written by Daria Nicolodi (who also portrays Sylvia, the caretaker of the mysterious villa), Paganini Horror is an obscure Italian schlocker that combines tropes of the Haunted House film with supernatural slasher cinema. Its central premise of a rock band playing forbidden music which opens a portal to hell, firmly places it in the realms of Heavy Metal horror, sitting alongside cult titles such as Trick or Treat , Black Roses , The Gate and Rock and Roll Nightmare . Heavy Metal horror is a filmic sub-genre that emerged in the ...

1815. Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald, two orphaned teenaged sisters, seek refuge at an isolated trading fort in the snowy Canadian wilderness. They soon learn that the fort is under siege from werewolves lurking in the surrounding woods. After Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) is attacked and bitten by the lycanthropic son of the fort's factor, she begins to change. Her sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) seeks a cure while trying to keep them both safe from the men in the fort, whose mistrust of the sisters is stoked by a bloodthirsty, wrathful minister. Directed by Grant Harvey, Ginger Snaps Back is a period piece (no pun intended) and a prequel to Ginger Snaps (2000), the story of a young woman who, on the night she first menstruates, is attacked by a werewolf and begins to transform into a monster. It was followed by  Ginger Snaps Unleashed (2004), which follows the plight of Ginger's sister, Brigitte, as she struggles to find a cure for her own latent lycanthropy. Written by Chr...

When Julia moves with her husband to Bucharest, she notices a stranger always watching her from the building across the street. She begins to suspect this same stranger is following her and is the serial killer who has been terrorising the city and preying on women after dark. Written and directed by Chloe Okuno, Watcher is a tightly-wound, highly effective chiller; a truly modern horror that takes a simple premise - and universal, relatable anxieties - and expertly spins it into a web of paranoia and quiet terror. From the outset, Julia (Maika Monroe) is rendered an outsider. In the taxi from the airport, her half-Romanian husband Francis (Karl Glusman) and the driver converse in Romanian, unintentionally excluding her. When they get settled in their new flat, she finds herself alone much of the time. Her husband works long hours, she doesn’t yet have a job (we learn she left behind a promising acting career in the States), she doesn’t know anyone in the city. She begins to feel adri...

Dear, you should not stay so late, / Twilight is not good for maidens; Should not loiter in the glen / In the haunts of goblin men. Goblin Market , Christina Rossetti Of all the strange figures found in folklore and fairy tales from around the world, the goblin is one of the most fascinating. A mischievous and malevolent creature, the goblin is often depicted as diminutive, but extremely cunning and devious, sly and cruel. Human encounters with goblins appear in stories as far back as the Middle Ages. Such stories usually portray the creatures as threatening and dangerous, playing malicious, harmful tricks on those unfortunate enough to cross their path. Head over to YouTube to check out the latest instalment of Ghosts With Goblin , in which my good friend, Marie Robinson - a Missouri-based folklorist - takes a look at first-hand accounts of goblin sightings. Reports come from folklore, the Fairy Census, and various online forums dedicated to the paranormal and supernatural. I prov...

Maya and her boyfriend Ryan are driving across the country so she can attend a job interview. When they stop off in a small town, their car breaks down and they’re forced to stay the night at an Air B&B in the surrounding woods. After dark they are menaced and brutalised by three masked strangers.  A reboot in the form of a prequel that could also be a remake, The Strangers: Chapter 1 is the first in a new trilogy of films set to follow the exploits of the three titular antagonists. Taking its lead from Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street Trilogy , the films have been shot back to back and are set for release in fairly quick succession. As the first instalment, Chapter 1 sets the scene and unfolds in an enjoyable if perfunctory way (it's very much a re-tread of the original 2008 film). The main issue is, it sticks too closely to the blueprint of the first film (hence it feeling like a remake), and when a number of moments from the original are replicated, they just don't muster t...

Adapted from Alexis Laipsker’s novel, and written by Annelyse Batrel and Ludovic Lefebvre, The Soul Eater is the latest offering from Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, who burst onto the scene with the infamous Inside (2007), a major title in the New French Extremity wave at the turn of the 21st century. Their work since, including blistering titles such as Livid (2011), Among the Living (2014) and The Deep House (2021), has demonstrated their willingness to push boundaries and step outside of convention. Theirs is a wholly distinctive approach to genre. Part gripping police procedural, part Gallic Gothic shocker - with shadowy traces of Folk Horror present in some striking imagery - The Soul Eater follows two detectives who are sent to the sleepy French mountain town of Roquenoir. Elizabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen), an inspector in the National Police, is investigating a series of gruesome murder-suicides, and Franck de Rolan (Paul Hamy), a cop from the other French polic...

Written and directed by Mathieu Turi, The Deep Dark may not be a direct adaptation of the work of HP Lovecraft, but it is certainly a love letter to him, and its narrative unfurls within a world in which the Cthulhu mythos exists (with nods to the Necronomicon, Cthulhu, the Great Old Ones and the ‘mad Arab’ Abdul Alhazred). Set in Northern France in the 1950s, it tells of a group of miners who are tasked with escorting a professor deep underground so he can collect data for his research. It soon becomes evident, however, that the professor has an ulterior motive, and the discovery of an ancient crypt unleashes a primordial evil... Many of Lovecraft's stories tell of the existential horror experienced by his characters whose discovery of forbidden knowledge reveals unspeakable, incomprehensible truths about human existence, throwing everything we thought we knew into question. Inter-dimensional doorways are conjured and all manner of unknowable cosmic horrors lumber/crawl/slither t...

Directed by RKSS (Roadkill Superstars, aka trio François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell) and written by Alberto Marini, this merciless slasher features a cast of idealistic Gen Z activists who are violently picked off by a deranged security guard after they sneak into a huge furniture store to stage an environmental protest. While it touches on some very current social topics - environmental activism, nonviolent civil disobedience, social media, and arguably even corporate employee vetting processes - at heart, Wake Up is an old-school slasher, with a simple premise that is well executed (sorry!). Extraneous frills like characterisation, motivation and backstories are trimmed right down, leaving a lean, mean, cat-and-mouse narrative, with brutal violence and a certain sense of hopelessness running throughout. When the store closes in the evening, the gang come out of hiding to spray graffiti and deface displays with bags of blood procured from a butcher. They film eve...

As a filmic genre, horror has always contained subtle Queer undertones and themes. Even before explicit representation was accepted, queerness was present in subtextual form. From the work of out gay filmmaker James Whale in the 1930s (including Frankenstein  [1931] and The Old Dark House [1932]) and the coded lesbian characters of Dracula's Daughter  (1936) and Cat People  (1942), through to the pansexuality of Dracula (1958), the internalised homophobia of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2  (1985) and the genderqueer Cenobites of Clive Barker's Hellraiser (1987), horror has always discreetly (and not so discreetly!) featured stories of the marginalised and the outsiders, vilified and rejected by society, 'othered' and rendered monstrous.  Published in September last year, Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator is a ground-breaking academic study of the relationship Queer people have with horror films. Author Heather O. Petrocelli is an interdisciplinar...

Head over to YouTube to check out the latest instalment of Ghosts with Goblin , a series dedicated to the exploration of ghost stories and real life encounters with the paranormal and supernatural (selected and read from www.yourghoststories.com ). Written, presented and produced by my good friend Marie Robinson, each episode relates to a particular theme, and relevant aspects of science, folklore, psychology and parapsychology are discussed. This week's episode focuses on spooky encounters with apparitions without faces, spectral women in black, and various crossroad phantoms. 

“It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story.” Jerome K. Jerome, Told After Supper (1891)  The peculiar British tradition of sharing ghost stories at Christmastime is an old one. Historically, December 25th has a close link to pre-Christian solstice festivals that regarded mid-winter as a significant time when the light dies, the nights grow longer, and (similarly to Samhain) the veil between the world of the living and the dead becomes wispy. The earth sleeps, ready to reawaken in spring. Early Christian beliefs held that souls in purgatory ‘were most active on the day before a holy day, and thus more likely to intrude into our world’ (Kirk, p7, 2020). During the dark nights of Yuletide, Christmas Eve is one of the longest nights of the year in the northern hemisphere. The tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas, particularly on Christmas Eve, dates to the Victorian period, a time of great scientific and technological advancement. Perhaps the more people came to underst...

Written and directed by Julie Ducournau, Raw tells of veterinary student Justine (Garance Marillier), who is subjected to a series of humiliating and cruel initiations by the older students. Among the degrading rituals, Justine, a lifelong vegetarian, is forced to eat raw meat by her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf). This act awakens within Justine an insatiable bloodlust and craving for human flesh… Raw is an unsettling, full-blooded odyssey of self-discovery and actualisation told from a fiercely feminist vantage. It stalks similar territory to titles such as Ginger Snaps and The Company of Wolves in its unwavering exploration of female sexuality (which historically has been shamed or out-rightly denied by patriarchal discourse). Indeed, there are several irresistible parallels with  Ginger Snaps , not least the complex, often toxic bond between the sisters, and the intense cravings Justine experiences as her body reacts to her new appetites. And, like the Fitzgerald sisters,...

UFO sightings, encounters with fairy folk and glimpses of shape-shifting dogs are but some of the subjects featured on the latest instalment of Ghosts with Goblin . Head over to Goblin Kwain on YouTube to listen to my friend Marie and I as we read a few spooky tales of paranormal encounters... 

When they move to a quiet suburban neighbourhood, the Ferals appear to be a very normal family. However, they have a dark secret concerning their teenaged son Philémon, and as he begins to fall for his neighbour Camila, his thirst for human blood becomes harder to resist, threatening the family's well rehearsed cover... Read my full review at Eye for Film . 

It Follows is a deeply unsettling, yet beautifully produced coming of age creeper. The story of a young woman (Maika Monroe) who is relentlessly stalked by an unknown supernatural force after a sexual encounter, it taps into primal fears such as death, abandonment, betrayal, and social ostracism. Hailed as a modern horror classic, it entrenches itself in the logic of grim and bloody fairy tales in which youngsters must fend for themselves and use their wits to outsmart and survive an evil adversary. A brand new 4K UHD/Blu-ray release by Second Sight Films boasts a plethora of rich, full-bodied bonus features for the connoisseur and casual viewer alike. Read my full review of the bonus features over at Eye for Film. Read my review of It Follows here . 

Based on a 19th century Gothic novella by Aleksey Tolstoy (previously adapted for cinema by Mario Bava as a segment in his 1963 anthology, Black Sabbath ), The Vourdalak is the debut feature film from French writer-director Adrien Beau. It tells of the Marquis d'Urfé (Kacey Mottet Klein), an emissary of the King of France who seeks shelter with a family when he becomes lost travelling through Eastern Europe. The family are anxiously awaiting the return of their patriarch, Gorcha, who has gone to capture an outlaw. Before leaving, he forewarned his family that if he does not return within six days, he has been killed and, if he reappears, they must refuse him entry to the house as he has become a vourdalak; a walking corpse returned from the grave seeking the blood of its loved ones... Head over to Eye for Film to read my full review.

Convinced she has only one more day to live, Françoise and her friend run away from their convent boarding school and hitch a lift to a party in a vast chateau in the middle of the woods. Here, amid decadence and occultist dalliances, she encounters various lost souls, including a sullen party guest who claims to be a vampire, as she struggles with fiery, prophetic visions and a sense that time is running out. Read my full review at Eye for Film .

My dear friend Marie Robinson, a writer and folklorist from Missouri, has recorded a new video for Ghosts with Goblin , her YouTube series dedicated to eerie folklore, ghost stories, urban legends and tales of the paranormal. The latest instalment is an exploration of harbingers of death from around the world, including the Welsh Gwrach y Rhibyn (Witch of Rhibyn) and the Irish Death Coach (Coiste Bodhar, meaning 'silent coach'). Join us, as we delve into and read spooky accounts of people's experiences with harbingers of death... You can watch/listen here . 

A city couple relocating to a home in the forest discover a commune on the neighbouring land is home to a cult of sasquatch worshippers harbouring sinister secrets...  Head over to Eye for Film to read my full review.

Written and directed by Jennifer Dick, and adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Gothic novella, Jekyll and Hyde is the latest production from Glasgow based theatre company, Bard in the Botanics. It tells of Gabriel Utterson, a solicitor who investigates a series of strange, horrifying occurrences involving the renowned Dr Henry Jekyll, and a murderous brute named Edward Hyde. Utterson eventually discovers that the two men are one and the same, as Jekyll's primal, violent urges are made flesh in the form of Hyde. Performed by a cast of three against the backdrop of the stunning Kibble Palace, an ornate Victorian glasshouse in Glasgow's botanical gardens, Jekyll and Hyde stars Stephanie McGregor as Gabriel Utterson, Adam Donaldson as Henry Jekyll, and Sam Stopford as Edward Hyde. As Utterson, McGregor guides us through the story, remaining an anchor throughout, as her investigations eventually lead to the horrifying truth about her friend Dr Jekyll. The chemistry betwe...