Behind the Couch

While attending a dinner party thrown by his ex-wife, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) starts to suspect that she and her new husband have sinister plans for the guests. Written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, and directed with glinting precision by Karyn Kusama, The Invitation is an incredibly taut and haunting work underpinned by ideas concerning grief, trauma, and the falsities of social conventions. An early warning sign and tone-setter comes when Will and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) hit a coyote in the road on the way to the party. This bloody encounter is a doomful harbinger of what is to come. Their conversation during the drive reveals neither of them – for their own reasons - are particularly keen on attending the party, which will reunite a group of friends for first time since Will and Eden (Tammy Blanchard) divorced after the tragic death of their young son. As Will wanders from room to room in his former home, he finds reminders and ghosts of his previous life. Th...

After the death of his mother, teenager Jeff (Edward Furlong) and his veterinarian father move to her hometown to start a new life for themselves. When Jeff befriends Drew, the stepson of the local sheriff, he learns of an ancient Native American burial ground deep in the forest outside of town that, according to local legend, has the power to raise the dead. When the sheriff shoots Drew’s beloved dog, the boys decide to see if there’s any truth to the lore, with mainly schlocky consequences…  Director Mary Lambert had wanted Pet Sematary Two to pick up the story again with Ellie Creed, the young daughter from the first film, and follow her as she returned to Maine to find out what happened to her parents. Alas, the studio (Paramount) didn’t feel confident that a teenaged girl could carry the film as its protagonist, so they cast… a teenaged boy, instead. Whereas the first film addressed the tragedy of death and the overwhelming power of grief, the sequel, like many other horror t...

When the Creed family move into their new home, they discover a pet cemetery in the woods behind their house. After a tragic accident, the grieving father learns through local folklore that another burial ground, much more ancient and deeper into the woods, has the power to raise the dead…  Based on the novel by Stephen King (and adapted for screen by the author) Pet Sematary is a rumination on death, grief and the darkness of the human heart when it wants something so much it doesn’t consider the consequences. King once admitted that of all his work, nothing scared him or troubled him as much as Pet Sematary . In the book’s introduction, he recounts the events that inspired it: ‘I simply took existing elements and threw in that one terrible what if . Put another way, I found myself not just thinking the unthinkable, but writing it down.’ Influenced by WW Jacobs’ short story The Monkey’s Paw , which is also about death, grief and the unspeakable horror that follows when a loved on...

2011 Dir. Guillem Morales Julia (Belén Rueda) and her twin sister suffer from a degenerative disease that will eventually leave them blind. When her sister's body is found hanged in the family basement, everyone but Julia assumes that she died by suicide. As she begins her tender-footed investigation to determine the true cause of her sister's death, Julia is sure that she is being watched, but she cannot see her observer. Is it a distorted result of her failing eyesight or is she only imagining things? Or could it be that the man she believes is watching her every move is invisible? Increasingly isolated after an operation – a last ditch attempt to save her sight - Julia’s nerves are fraught and her psyche seems to be completely unravelling. Is it merely her imagination getting the better of her, or is her sister’s mysterious killer now toying with her too? Julia’s Eyes is a dark and engrossing thriller that initially looks set to unravel as a vaguely supernatural spo...

2008 Dir. Fabrice Du Welz The lives of Jeanne and Paul Bellmer (Emmanuelle Béart and Rufus Sewell) are thrown into chaos when they think they see their son, thought drowned in the Southeast Asia tsunami in 2004, in a film they watch about orphans living in the jungles of Burma. They set off into an impenetrable heart of darkness in search of an elusive and perhaps unattainable truth, aided only by human traffickers who are intent on exploiting their heartache. Stranded in the middle of a strange and hostile country, the couple are besieged by a band of feral children and begin to lose sight of the hope they once so desperately clung to. ‘When someone dies a horrible death, their spirit becomes confused and angry. It becomes…Vinyan.’ Vinyan unfolds as a strange reflection of Don’t Look Now in its exploration of a couple’s grief, denial, hope and obsession as they try to come to terms with the death of their child. The story tracks Jeanne and Paul’s personal descent into the ma...