Behind the Couch

When Edna is reported missing, her daughter and granddaughter travel to the remote family home to search for her. They discover the house locked from the inside, strange noises from within the walls, and a black mould quietly spreading throughout. When Edna returns the next day, disorientated and bruised, unable to remember where she has been, and claiming someone has been coming into the house, her daughter Kay is convinced she can no longer take care of herself. Over the next few days, strange events, and Edna’s worsening condition, plunge the three women into a living nightmare. With echoes of a ghost story, a haunted house film, a tale of possession, Relic is a terrifying and moving meditation on coming to terms with dementia and the gradual acceptance of decline and death. Written and directed by Natalie Erika James, and co-written by Christian White, its use of various tropes and images associated with haunted house films - an ominously overflowing bathtub, a lone figure standin...

Written and directed by Jennifer Kent, and based upon her earlier short film Monster (2005), The Babadook is a creepy, powerful meditation on grief and the effects of trauma. It tells of Amelia (Essie Davis), a woman struggling to come to terms with the tragic death of her husband, and whose young son begins to behave erratically, claiming a monster is hiding in their house. Kent utilises a striking expressionistic style throughout to convey the inner turmoil and fear of the characters, and explore themes concerning loss, grief, and motherhood. Her direction is careful, unhurried, and her pacing deliberate, all of which allows the audience to be slowly, surely submerged in the gradually increasing horror. Tensions are already high when Samuel (Noah Wiseman) asks Amelia to read him a mysterious pop-up storybook she has never seen before. The book tells of a weird creature called Mister Babadook, who torments anyone who discovers his existence. The children’s book, and the dark power i...

2009 Dir. Brett Anstey Prompted by the arrival of a mysterious package from her terminally ill grandmother, Claire drags her reluctant new boyfriend off to meet her family at their remote country home where she hopes she will discover the motivations behind the unexpected gift. Things go well until Claire’s grandmother begins rambling on about a female spirit she is expecting to come in the night to escort her body into the afterlife. That night, as a violent thunderstorm rocks the house, the family is awoken by a succession of piercing, otherworldly shrieks, which prove to be the cries of a banshee. As the terrifying sounds ring out, the dead are summoned to rise again, so beginning a waking nightmare for Claire and her family as the banshee and her army of the undead unleash their fury upon the living. The figure of the banshee in traditional Irish folklore is a tragic, sorrowful one, but also a terrifying one. She is said to appear mournfully wailing near the house of someone...

2008 Dir. Steven Kastrissios Grieving father Christian (Peter Marshall) tracks down the men responsible for his daughter’s death and discovers more about her than he ever knew. Along the way he picks up teenage hitchhiker Alice (Caroline Marohasy) who is completely unaware of the brutal and bloody revenge he is extracting. Or is she? The latest in a line of powerful and extreme Australian genre pictures such as Storm Warning, Long Weekend , Wolf Creek and Lake Mungo , The Horseman exudes a stark realism in its depiction of a grieving father turned brutal vigilante. What adds to the effectiveness of the film is that director Steven Kastrissios maintains effective restraint throughout proceedings as he ratchets up the tension to unbearable levels, before letting rip in a barbaric, bloody and highly intense climax. Head over to Eye for Film to read my full review.

2008 Dir. Jamie Blanks Suburban couple Peter and Carla (Jim Caviezel and Claudia Karvan) take a weekend vacation in the hopes of repairing their crumbling relationship. The couple show an absolute lack of respect for their surroundings and amongst other things, drop litter, constantly spray insecticides, accidently kill a baby dugong, bicker with each other and are generally unable to conceal their utter contempt for one another. As the tension between the two escalates, nature itself seems to strike back against them. Is something supernatural afoot, or is the squabbling, insular couple losing their grip on reality? Australian horror movies have been making quite an impact on the horror genre recently, though the country has a history of genre movies including classics such as Mad Max, Razorback and Picnic at Hanging Rock . More recently with films such as Wolf Creek, Rogue , Lake Mungo and Undead , filmmakers have begun to explore the darker recesses of the outback once more....

A group of tourists are forcefully nuzzled down the food chain when they encounter a giant crocodile whilst exploring the lush and eerily beautiful backwaters of Australia’s outback. Director Greg Mclean is well known to horror audiences for his grim and ultra-sadistic feature debut Wolf Creek . With Rogue , a tense and nasty giant crocodile Creature Feature, the director has turned from the horror of man to that of nature – and proves it is every bit as harrowing. With a cast of likeable characters (including Radha Mitchell, Michael Vartan and Sam Worthington), a sturdy script, seductively lush cinematography, a haunting and evocative score and a very realistic monster, Mclean has deftly side-stepped the quagmire of horrendously bad giant croc films such as Primeval and Crocodile to deliver a genuinely pulse-pounding and effective chiller that begins as an ominous ripple and ends with an almighty, blood-soaked tidal splash. Intrigued? Head over to Eye for Film to check out my f...