USA: 2010

“Hey! Who left the front door open?”

Sequels are funny things. They’re almost uniformly made for the money, even the good ones. They’re also rigidly formulaic. The general rule of thumb is ‘Whatever worked in the first film, do it again.’. It’s the law of diminishing returns. Really about the only thing a film can do is improve the formula, not change it. So what does Paranormal Activity 2 do? Continue reading →

Australia: 2008

“Alice kept secrets. She kept the fact that she kept secrets a secret.”

In the wake of The Blair Witch Project there were an immediate glut of releases (Some of which will be coming up I’m sure) that cashed in on the ‘found footage’ craze. While it wasn’t the first film to use that conceit, it’s not hard to argue the case that BWP, as the hip kids called it, effectively gave birth to the genre or at least the genre as it exists today.

These range from good ([Rec]) to mediocre (The St. Francisville Experiment) or just so bad they remain unreleased (The Poughkeepsie Tapes).

So which is Lake Mungo?

Continue reading →

Ok friends lets put aside things like lack of updates and instead focus on what will be coming. Those of you with a calender have probably noticed that today is October 1st, and as has become tradition around these parts, October 1st generally means 31 Nights of Frights. What is it? Well it’s a horror film a day, sometimes more, and all sorts of scary content to get you in the mood for the best time of the year.

I’m going to try and avoid any repeats of previous years, though that’s getting a little harder these days. The first review will be up later today.

P.S. Given the heat in the UK right now, this does not feel like a time to be spooky at all.