Behind the Couch

Written and directed by Mariama Diallo, and inspired by her own experiences as a student at Yale, Master tells of two Black women struggling to navigate life at a predominately white university ‘as old as the country.’ Their experiences of casual racism, micro-aggression, and tokenism, play out against a backdrop of whispers of an ancient vengeful witch who haunts the campus… With its combination of shivery supernatural horror and real-life horror, Master is a powerful, unsettling and at times distressing watch. Gail (Regina Hall) and Jasmine (Zoe Renee) not only encounter suggestive supernatural menace lurking in the dark corners of the vast, spooky university buildings, but every-day menace in the form of racist adversity from colleagues and fellow students. Gail has been appointed the first black 'Master' (while it has uncomfortable connotations of slavery, it's an esteemed faculty position overseeing halls of residence) of the university. Tellingly, when she arrives ...

Directed by John Fasano and written by Cindy Cirile (credited as Cindy Sorrell),  Black Roses tells of the eponymous metal band, fronted by the darkly charismatic Damian (Sal Viviano), who begin their world tour with several special concerts in the small town of Mill Basin. Naturally the local teens are psyched to see their favourite metallers, but their parents and the town authorities are concerned because of the band’s reputation as heavy metal hell-raisers. Turns out these parental fears are not unwarranted, as the band are actually demons whose music corrupts listeners and transforms them into minions of chaos and evil. As the town’s youth run wild and succumb to the band’s diabolical influence, it’s up to an open-minded, down-with-the-kids high-school teacher to crash the concerts and try to save the day.  Stage-diving onto screens hot on the heels of  Hard Rock Zombies  (1984),  Trick or Treat  (1986) and director Fasano’s own feature debut  Ro...

Self-help author May (Brea Grant) is stalked and attacked in her home one night by a masked figure. The intruder returns to attack her again the following night. And again. And again. He returns, without fail, night after night. The authorities are unable to help and the people in May’s life appear weirdly indifferent. With no one to turn to, May is forced to take matters into her own hands to regain control of her life.  Written by and starring Brea Grant, and directed by Natasha Kermani, Lucky is not only a tightly wound chiller, it also serves as an arresting social commentary on violence against women; specifically attitudes to violence against women in wider society. Recent research disturbingly reveals there is a woman killed every three days in the UK. A news feature in The Guardian earlier this year described an ‘epidemic of violence against women’ in England and Wales, and said a radical shift was needed to address this deeply rooted problem and how police tackle these...

On the surface, handsome investment banker Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) appears to have it all. Behind the façade of his immaculately groomed and besuited physique, however, lurks a narcissistic psychopath with an increasingly uncontrollable bloodlust. Directed and co-written by Mary Harron and based upon the controversial 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho is a dark, satirical examination of the heartless, capitalist excess of 1980s America. Harron, who co-wrote the screenplay with Guinevere Turner, opts to tone down the intense violence of the novel and up the satire, as they focus attention on ridiculing the Wall Street executive lifestyle, social conformity, toxic masculinity and the mindless consumerism of the time. Harron’s cool, detached direction not only ensures the seemingly disparate elements of horror, comedy and satire effortlessly blend, but allows the excess of the period to speak for itself. Violence, when it occurs, is either offscreen or shocking en...

Written and directed by Mary Harron, and adapted from the YA novel by Rachel Klein, The Moth Diaries tells of Rebecca (Sarah Bolger), a teenager at an all-girls boarding school who begins to suspect that the new student, Ernessa (Lily Cole), is a vampire. Throughout, Harron re-works and updates many Gothic traditions and tropes, adding a rich depth to proceedings and evoking a suitably haunting atmosphere.  While the story can be read as an updated interpretation of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Gothic novella Carmilla (1872), Harron’s screenplay places first and foremost the ever-shifting relationships and dynamics between the group of friends. New girl Ernessa might be a vampire, but Harron doesn’t let that detract from the realigning allegiances between friends sparked by her arrival at the school. Ernessa serves as a catalyst, driving a wedge between best friends Rebecca and Lucy (Sarah Gadon). Harron’s script delves into the intensity and complexity of the friendships forged at the boar...

A knowing blend of demonic-possession horror, teen comedy, rape-revenge narrative and coming of age satire, Jennifer’s Body tells of the complex friendship between two girls, one of whom becomes possessed by a succubus demon and begins devouring her male classmates. From its first line of dialogue, ‘Hell is a teenage girl’, it unravels as a razor-sharp and satirical dismantling of societal gender roles and stereotypes, sexual politics and an examination of the horrors and anxieties of growing up a young woman. Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, it plays with familiar tropes and offers something that still feels remarkably fresh. Indeed, since #MeToo and #TimesUp, its central themes are as relevant as ever.  At the heart of Cody's screenplay is an exploration of a complicated and toxic friendship. Jennifer (Megan Fox) and Needy (Amanda Seyfried) have been friends since they were children. There’s a strong co-dependency between them, the complexities of which becom...

Actress and producer Heather Langenkamp is best known for her role as Nancy Thompson in Wes Craven’s classic chiller A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Directed by Arlene Marechal, I Am Nancy  is an exploration of Langenkamp's experience portraying the heroine and of the impact of the film and its antagonist, Freddy Krueger, on pop-culture. It follows Langenkamp as she attends horror conventions around the world and talks with fans about what attracts them to horror, specifically the A Nightmare on Elm Street films , and what the characters of Nancy and Freddy mean to them.  The film follows on from  Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy , a 2010 documentary chronicling the entire  A Nightmare on Elm Street  franchise, which was executive produced and narrated by Langenkamp, who felt a number of issues were not explored in enough depth. By questioning why heroine Nancy was eclipsed by villain Freddy Kreuger, Langenkamp’s own investigation touches upon w...

Written and directed by Pollyanna McIntosh (a familiar face in horror having starred in titles such as White Settlers [2014], Tales of Halloween [2015] and The Walking Dead [2017-2018]), Darlin’ is a powerful, socially minded sequel to Lucky McKee’s 2011 film The Woman (which stared McIntosh as the formidable titular character). It picks up the story several years later, but also works well as a standalone film, as it follows the journey of a feral girl who is rehomed in a strict Catholic boarding school where a predatory bishop attempts to civilise her to gain publicity for his failing church. Meanwhile, the woman (McIntosh again, who resumes the role here with similar conviction) leaves a bloody trail of violence as she gradually tracks down her daughter, creating a further strand of tension. While McKee’s film depicted its protagonist being beaten and physically abused into submission and ‘civility’, with Darlin’ , McIntosh adopts a much more psychological approach in her explo...

Written and directed by Neasa Hardiman, Sea Fever unfurls as a slow-burning, dread-fuelled nautical tale of terror. As a mandatory requirement for her studies, introverted marine-biology student Siobhán (Hermione Corfield) joins the close-knit crew of a fishing trawler as they head out from the west coast of Ireland. They become marooned out on the Atlantic when they encounter an unfathomable life-form that ensnares the boat. As members of the crew (which include Dougray Scott and Connie Nielsen) gradually succumb to a deadly infection caused by contact with the parasitic creature, Siobhán must win the trust of the increasingly paranoid crew and find a solution before it’s too late.  With its central themes of isolation, infection and paranoia, Sea Fever echoes sci-fi horror classics such as The Thing (1982), Alien  (1979) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), but Hardiman’s approach - grounded in realism and science - well developed characters, and favouring of insidio...

A group of carnival sideshow workers are abducted and forced to fight for their lives against a gang of killer clowns as mysterious, bewigged oligarchs in aristocratic period garb wager bets on who will survive. 31 is a film about violence as entertainment and death as spectacle. It’s a film about the depths of human depravity. It’s also about survival and the things rational, sane and civilised people will do when they are backed into a corner and forced to fight for their lives. While it riffs on the likes of similarly themed films such as The Most Dangerous Game (1932), The Running Man (1987) and Death Race (1975), it is all, obviously, presented in Rob Zombie’s inimitable and furiously violent style. Like so much of Zombie’s film work, 31 has strong echoes of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), though more so of its sequel (1986), both stylistically and in its fiendishly warped sense of humour. Film scholar Robin Wood once said The Texas Chain Saw Massa...

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 ...

2012 Dir. Ciarán Foy An agoraphobic young man teams up with a renegade priest to save his baby daughter from a gang of seemingly demonic youths. Citadel [sit-uh-del] noun 1. A fortress that commands a city and is used in the control of the inhabitants and in defence during attack or siege. 2. Any strongly fortified place; stronghold. Right from the get-go, with its depictions of a run-down council estate in Glasgow, having fallen into decline and become a shadowy place of menace, writer/director Foy establishes an atmosphere of dread and creepy tension. With its opening scene, in which Tommy (Aneurin Barnard) watches helplessly as a group of hooded youths attack his pregnant wife, unable to do anything as he’s stuck in the rickety lift of the tower block where they live, Foy ratchets up the tension good and tight. And rarely lets go. Effortlessly playing on contemporary social fears and anxieties, such as the breakdown of community, the failure of welfare systems set up to ...

2012 Dir. Paul Hyett During the Balkan War, Angel (Rosie Day), a young deaf girl, watches in horror as her family are murdered by the militia. She is then abducted and put to work in an isolated house specialising in supplying kidnapped women to military personnel for sex. Unbeknownst to her captors, Angel is able to move around the house between the walls and under the floors, watching, learning, and planning her escape. When she witnesses the brutal rape and murder of her friend, Angel can no longer retain her rage and sets out to escape. But not before seeking bloody justice… The Seasoning House is a gruelling and powerful against-all-the-odds tale of survival and revenge. While the subject matter is highly grim, writer/director Hyett’s measured approach works to handle it with surprising delicacy, and resists the urge to stray too far into outlandish exploitation. While events are at times certainly exaggerated, the true horror emerges, fully formed, from the brutal, unspe...

...The Dead Will Deafen You! Last night Belfast’s Waterfront Hall played host to a special screening of George A. Romero’s satirical zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead . The screening was part of the Belfast Film Festival and featured a live score performed by none other than Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin. Dawn of the Dead tells of a group of people caught up in an ever-increasing pandemic of the dead returning to life and devouring the living. Seeking refuge in a shopping mall, they attempt to fortify the place while they await rescue. Events take a turn for the worse however, when their sanctuary is pillaged by malevolent humans and the group soon realise they have more to worry about then the marauding zombies outside… Describing the experience of seeing Claudio Simonetti and his band perform the score for Dario Argento’s Suspiria live last year as 'sensory overload', doesn’t do it justice. Nothing can prepare you for the experience of hearing the band perform live, an...

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...