Behind the Couch

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...

Akin to titles such as Cujo (1983), Crawl (2019) and Bait (2012), Burning Bright is a high-concept horror about a young woman and her autistic brother who are trapped in a house with a ravenous tiger during a hurricane. After a brief set up, which establishes the fraught family dynamics (mother recently died, stepfather is struggling financially, daughter Kelly desperately wants respite from her responsibilities so she can attend college) director Carlos Brooks cuts straight to the chase. From the moment Kelly (Briana Evigan) realises there is a wild animal in the house and finds herself in a situation that threatens to eat her alive, the tension never abates. Using low-level camera work to suggest the POV of the stalking predator, Brooks exploits the limited space of the family home to crank up the claustrophobic suspense and offer some incredibly striking imagery. Kelly not only needs to evade the tiger herself, but also keep safe her younger brother who can’t fully comprehend th...

Coming 10 years after Bryan Bertino’s haunting home invasion horror The Strangers (2008), this belated sequel offers the same taut suspense and chillingly downbeat domestic horror as its predecessor. When a family of four stop off at an eerily deserted trailer park for the night, they fall prey to three masked psychopaths. Those who admired The Strangers will find much to enjoy in this lean, mean, terrific exercise in nerve-wrecking tension. Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my full review.

1997/2007 Dir. Michael Haneke A middle class family are taken hostage in their holiday home by two young men who force them to play sadistic games for their own amusement. Throughout Funny Games , director Michael Haneke strives to reawaken and stimulate audiences who have become accustomed to stylised cinematic violence and graphic imagery. The film not only assumes the form of a devastatingly cruel home-invasion narrative, but a scathing and darkly humorous critique on violence in modern cinema. Haneke explores, in typically cold and unrelenting fashion, contemporary audiences’ craving for violence and sadistic imagery, and the role we play when watching such films, forcing us think about how we interact with screen violence. It’s an isolating yet utterly involving film. Working as a reflexive commentary on audience expectations and violence in cinema, and an exercise in unrelenting suspense, it exhibits an acute self awareness as it keenly subverts conventional notions of ...