Behind the Couch

As the director of Night of the Living Dead (1968), George Romero will be remembered as one of the major pioneers of the modern horror film. A truly groundbreaking work, it was released just eight years after Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), and like that film,  Night of the Living Dead similarly suggested that monsters can live right next door to us. Indeed, Romero took this notion one step further by suggesting that it is us who are the monsters. Several sequels followed, all of which provided socio-political commentary against the backdrop of a world where the dead return to life and consume the living, an examination of the human condition, and how ordinary people faced with extraordinary, unprecedented events struggle to survive. The horror in these films stems from the things people do to themselves and each other when the world as we know it comes shuddering to an end and humanity fragments and literally eats itself. Following on from Romero's previous Dead film, the am...

2015 Dir. Kyle Rankin If there’s one subgenre of horror that has surely reached saturation point, it’s the zombie film. Yet time and again, it proves to be a robust and continually relevant aspect of horror cinema, with its ability to speak of various social and political issues and its knack for cross-pollination with other genres. Following on from the likes of Warm Bodies (2013), Boy Eats Girl (2005) and Shaun of the Dead (2004), Night of the Living Deb is the latest amalgamation of typical zombie movie conventions with those of the romantic comedy. A zom-rom-com, if you will. While it doesn’t really offer viewers anything they haven’t seen before it still endears with its misfit characters, witty script and quirky sense of humour.  Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my full review . 

2014 Dir. Alexandre O. Philippe Depending on your opinion, Danny Boyle either has a lot to answer for, or has not been given nearly enough credit for the popularity of zombie themed entertainment throughout the last decade. 28 Days Later arguably kick-started the current interest in zombie movies, and while it isn’t strictly speaking a 'zombie' film, Boyle took a fairly typical zombie movie template and fashioned a dark and breathlessly taut film which poked at the same slagheap of ideas and themes (infection, social collapse, global catastrophe) as George Romero’s earlier flesh-ripping classics. Shaun of the Dead quickly followed, and its success convinced studio honchos that zombies were hot again. This prompted them to, for once, throw money at George Romero, who is largely responsible for the overriding popular perception of zombies today anyway, to help him make Land of the Dead , a belated follow-up to his ‘Dead trilogy’. In the few years since then, zombies hav...

...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...

2005 Dir. Rick Bota When a tough investigative journalist begins researching a bizarre underground cult, dabbling in necromancy and the resurrection of the dead, she becomes embroiled in a nightmarish world in which her very soul is at stake… The seventh film in the franchise, Deader wasn’t actually written as a Hellraiser film. An existing spec script by Th13teen Ghosts co-scribe Neal Marshall Stevens had elements of the Hellraiser mythology added to it by Tim Daly (co-writer of the dreary Hellseeker ). And it sort of shows. Much like Inferno and Hellseeker , it feels cobbled together in a lazy attempt to keep the franchise afloat; the overtly ' Hellraiser ' moments a clunky afterthought. That said, it’s certainly a marked improvement on the prior instalment, and at the heart of proceedings twitches a genuinely interesting concept - an underground goth cult experimenting with suicide, necromancy and resurrection. These are themes that were dealt with in Barker’s o...

1985 Dir. Stuart Gordon When the eccentric Herbert West (a manic Jeffrey Combs) arrives at Miskatonic University, Arkham, he and a fellow medical student become embroiled in strange experiments to reanimate dead tissue. With horrific consequences. Based on H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West – Reanimator , Stuart Gordon’s film is perhaps one of the most successful adaptations of the author’s work, and it triggered a resurgence of cinematic interest in the work of Lovecraft throughout the 80s and 90s. The film is an outrageous blend of splattery special effects, pseudo-sci-fi concepts, comic violence, pitch black humour and vivid horror. At times it boasts a similar madcap tone to Sam Raimi’s earlier splat-stick classic, Evil Dead , as Dr West’s increasingly desperate and ludicrous attempts to reanimate corpses reach feverish intensity. The idea to make Re-Animator stemmed from Gordon’s belief that there were not enough Frankensteinian stories. He believed pop-culture had...

Over the past few years Scandinavian horror has been making quite the mark on genre cinema, with filmmakers finding ways to surprise audiences and subvert expectations with titles like Let the Right One In, Not Like Others and Cold Prey . Some even mine spooky Nordic folklore for frights — think Marianne and Trollhunter — lending their films a unique tone quite unlike anything else around. The latest Scandiwegian chiller, Wither , has been touted as the Swedish Evil Dead , and with good reason. Gratuitous splatter FX aside though, it fails to offer much in the way of ingenuity, its set-up all too familiar to horror audiences. Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my full review . While you're there, why not check out our coverage of other titles screening at this year's Fright Fest.  

2012 Dir. Randal Plunkett When Robert (Conor Marren) awakens deep in the woods with a head wound and no memory of how he got there, he attempts to find help while memories of the recent past come flooding back to haunt him… Director Randal Plunkett’s brief but powerful tale hits the ground running and immediately draws us in with its sinister atmosphere and quietly smouldering tension. The early on sense of isolation and danger, together with the juxtaposition of the beautiful, sun-dappled woodlands and the macabre discoveries made within them, is a potent mix. The main focus of the narrative is Robert’s cautious, increasingly desperate exploration of his immediate surroundings, and his gradual realisation that something is wrong. Very wrong. Stumbling along old country lanes – like those ones in old Irish tales on which the devil is said to have been glimpsed - as the quiet around him relentlessly encroaches, he eventually happens on an old deserted farm; the only sound coming...

2012 Dir. Paco Plaza As the families and friends of Koldo and Clara gather to celebrate the happy couple’s wedding, the party soon descends into a nightmarish bloodbath as partygoers, seemingly infected by a strange virus, begin feeding on each other with ravenous bloodlust. [REC] Genesis exhibits a much more playful tone than its predecessors, and while it may be a prequel, it isn’t an origin story documenting the viral demon-possession scourge that rips through the prior instalments. It doesn’t really add much to the mythos of the series aside from presenting a similar situation to that in the first film. In fact, the events depicted in its narrative run in parallel with those of the other films. At one stage we catch a glimpse of reporter Angela from [REC] as she makes her original broadcast from the building where the first film was set. Also adding to its distinction, is its ditching of the use of the ‘found footage/camcorder-horror’ narrative so brilliantly utilised in...

1981 Dir. Gary Sherman This original and atmospheric horror flick comes courtesy of the director of cannibals-in-the-London-Underground shocker Death Line and the chaps responsible for penning such classic genre titles as Alien , Return of the Living Dead and Total Recall (Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett). It should come as no surprise then that it unravels as a rather unconventional and off the wall yarn with more than a few surprises up its bloodied sleeve. When a number of vicious murders occur in the sleepy seaside town of Potter’s Bluff, Sheriff Gillis (James Farentino) suspects that something sinister is afoot. The further he submerges himself in the investigation, the more he realises that all is not what it seems in Potter’s Bluff, nor has it been for some time… Opening with a shot of a black and white photo of the town that dissolves into live action, Dead and Buried immediately evokes contemplative notions of yesteryear and its roots in the past. This concept und...

2010 Dirs. Howard J Ford and John Ford When the last evacuation flight out of war-ravaged West Africa crashes off the coast, the sole survivor – an American military engineer – teams up with a Ghanaian soldier searching for his son. The pair try to reach the last remaining military airport in an attempt to escape a zombie plague sweeping across the sun-burnished continent – dodging attacks from the hordes of living dead as they go. Eschewing the usual zombie movie title ('something' of the 'something' dead), the simply titled  The Dead adopts a more thoughtful approach to the lumbering zombie sub-genre, and aligns itself more with the likes of Romero than Resident Evil . Despite the ultra-low budget it is filmed in the most breath-taking manner. Opening with a scene that suggests this could be the Laurence of Arabia of zombie films (man emerging slowly from stifling wilderness), the film instantly establishes its quiet, reflective mood. Beautifully photographe...

2011 Dirs. Luca Boni and Marco Ristori Another month, another zombie flick; Eaters: Rise of the Dead follows the tried, tested and arguably tired formula of pitching a small band of apocalypse survivors against the marauding undead. Somewhat typically, it opens with a montage of news footage documenting the spread of a mysterious virus, a zero birth rate, the threat of nuclear intervention from governments and the fall of civilisation as we know it. When we pick up with the main characters Alen and Igor (Guglielmo Favilla and Alex Lucchesi), post-apocalypse is full-steam ahead. They are two of a number of survivors hiding out in an abandoned building outside the city. Shades of Romero’s Day of the Dead echo through these scenes as the group; largely made up of military men, tussle with boredom and fatigue, while a shady scientist searches for a solution. In terms of the zombie movie, Italy really jumped on the band wagon after George Romero’s seminal classic, Dawn of the ...

2003 Dir. Brian Yuzna Surviving the collapse of the crypt he was cornered in by a horde of his reanimated corpses, Dr Hebert West continues to conduct his grisly experiments. He is eventually arrested and imprisoned but continues his research. When a young doctor named Howard Phillips begins work at the prison, he teams up with West to help bring his experiments to the next level. Hell breaks loose and copious blood is spilled when several of the reanimated corpses break free and wreck havoc in the prison. Creative carnage and grisly mutations ensue. Stuart Gordon’s transgressive and splattery adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s Herbert West: Re-Animator was one of the defining horror films of the Eighties. Fiercely independent, unconventional, awash with splashy effects and boasting the darkest, severed tongue-in-cheek humour imaginable, Re-Animator still wields its grisly power and effectiveness today. It was followed by the Brian Yuzna directed sequel Bride of Re-Animator , which...

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...

As some of you may know, Aaron over at The Death Rattle has been busy all week, posting about the work of George Romero. Romero’s work is generally considered to be groundbreaking, genre-redefining stuff; he’s often credited with reinventing modern horror cinema with his morbidly bleak masterpiece Night of the Living Dead . Throughout the years he is a filmmaker who has consistently proved he has a unique and singular vision, effectively realised with each cinematic offering. So head over to The Death Rattle to check out Aaron’s guide to Romero’s Top 13 movies, a Poll of the Dead and various guest posts from the likes of B-Movie Becky from The Horror Effect , Carl Manes from I Like Horror Movies , and Richard of Doomed Moviethon . There’s also a little something on Romero’s mold-breaking vampire tale Martin , by me. But don’t let that put you off.