Behind the Couch

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) 2013 Dir. Calum Waddell Backwoods: pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb) 1. Heavily wooded, uncultivated, thinly settled areas. 2. An area that is far from population centres or that is held to be culturally backward. “ West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs. ” HP Lovecraft The backwoods has long held a strange place of morbid fascination in the collective mind of city dwellers. It represents escapism – somewhere to go to negate the hustle and bustle of the concrete jungle; a place which grants...

2010 Dir. David Keating In an attempt to cope with their grief after the death of their young daughter, a couple move from the city to a remote Irish village called Wake Wood. Their acceptance as members of the close-knit community leads them to the discovery of an ancient pagan ritual practiced by the people there in order to help ease the sudden loss of a loved one. The tradition, secretly preserved for many centuries, enables the grief-stricken to bring a deceased person back from the dead for a period of three days within one year of their passing. But the ritual is bound by strict rules and conditions, which, if broken, demand a terrible price be paid… Wake Wood is the latest horror film from the legendary and recently revitalized Hammer Films. It is also this writer’s first taste of their latest output (aside from web series Beyond the Rave ), which includes The Resident  and  Let Me In.  It effortlessly evokes the spirit and eerily off-kilter tone of ...

1976 Dir. Pupi Avati Struggling artist Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) is commissioned to restore a fresco in a church in a small rural town. The fresco depicts the brutally violent death of St. Sebastian. Stefano soon learns that the painter was a madman who, with the aid of his deranged and incestuous sisters, viciously tortured people to death as inspiration for his horrific paintings. A series of increasingly bizarre events, including a couple of grisly murders, convince Stefano that someone is trying to stop him from uncovering the town's depraved past. Can he and the town's new school teacher Francesca (Francesca Marciano) uncover the secrets of the house with laughing windows before it is too late!? Stefano’s friend is also staying in town to recover from a nervous breakdown and study the local thermal springs. He warns Stefano not to talk about the fresco with anyone. Hushed warnings and dark insinuations such as these slowly conjure a heavy atmosphere pregnant with dr...

Shrooms With this week’s St Patrick’s day celebrations still ringing in your ears, why not spend the weekend unwinding and descending into the darker side of Irish culture and indulge in a few Gaelic tinged horrors… While some of these aren’t exactly Irish films, they do have connections (some more tenuous than others) to Ireland and creepy Irish folklore. Dead Meat (2004). Mixing chills with thrills, Conor McMahon's Dead Meat is an Irish comedy horror in the same vein as Shaun of the Dead or Boy Eats Girl . The first horror film to be funded by the Irish Film Board, it features a twisted tale of zombies, mad cows and cannibalism, oh my. After accidently hitting a man with their car, Helena and her husband bundle the body into their car and continue on their way. What with this being a zombie movie though, the body doesn’t stay dead and attacks Helena’s husband. Making a run for it, Helena stumbles across an isolated farm and battles a few of its undead inhabitants before...