Obsession (2025)

Twentysomething Bear (Michael Johnston) has a serious crush on his friend and co-worker, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), but is too awkward and shy to broach the subject of any possible romance with her.

In trying to do something nice for Nikki - replace a crystal necklace she lost - Bear wanders into a new age shop, but instead of buying a replacement necklace, he picks himself up a One Wish Willow.

The idea of this novelty item is you make a wish, then break the short willow wand, and your wish will come true.

Bear wishes that Nikki would love him more than anyone else.

That's when things start to go wrong, even though Bear gets what he wished for.

Nikki is immediately affectionate towards Bear, but as their romance develops she becomes jealous, paranoid, and possessive. 

She cranks the toxic relationship dial up way past 11, then snaps the dial off.

The chaos and carnage snowballs in increasingly weird, disturbing, and ultimately unpleasant ways as this runaway freight train heads towards its only conceivable conclusion.

Straight out the gate, you have to acknowledge that Obsession, writer/director Curry Barker's first major studio movie, isn't exactly an original idea - even he admits inspiration from a Treehouse of Terror episode of The Simpsons - but it is so incredibly well executed that you just won't care.

In large part this is due to the phenomenal performances at the heart of the piece, Nikki's escalating insanity and Bear's oscillations between trying to be a caring boyfriend and making dreadful life decisions.

I sincerely hope both Michael Johnson - who brings an air of a young Bruce Campbell from the original Evil Dead and Nicholas Brendon's Xander from Buffy The Vampire Slayer to the role of Bear - and the charismatic Inde Navarrette (previously best known as Sarah Cushing in Superman & Lois) have long careers ahead of them in horror movies, because they are both born stars of the genre.

The movie's first act (right up until Bear snaps that willow) plays out like a slow-burning, angst-ridden, slice-of-life romance, but once magic seeps into the equation things very quickly get out of hand.

Throughout, though, there is an underlying truth in the film's treatment of nascent romantic relationships (especially those circling the "friendzone") that will possibly strike a few unsettling chords - maybe even a bit too close to home - for many of its target audience. 

Much of the horror in Obsession comes from the oppressive atmosphere brought into the everyday lives of Bear and his friends by Nikki's progressively unnerving behaviour.

Yet, even during some of these, there are tragic and painful moments when the "real" Nikki surfaces, suppressing the magically-controlled side of her personality.

A powerful and shocking horror movie that plays magnificently with the "be careful what you wish for" cliché, Obsession reminded me of last year's The Monkey - without being so slapstick - in its innovative take on a simple idea.

Obsession also boasts one of the great jump scares in recent years (usually a tactic I dismiss as a cheap gimmick). It's the only one in the film but it caught me totally off guard and really worked at that particular moment in the story, signalling the epic charge into the final act.

Clever direction, a tight script, and stellar performances make Obsession a must-see for horror fans and one of my top new movies of the year.

And if nothing else, this marks the arrival of a talented new auteur, 27-year-old Curry Barker, on the horror scene as well as serving as a launch pad for breakout stars Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette.

The Dragon Chronicles: Fire & Ice (2008)

Who would have thought anything could have gone wrong with a sword and sorcery film starring Angel's delightful Amy Acker, supported by B-movie stalwarts such as Lord of The Rings' John Rhys-Davies and The Mummy's Arnold Vosloo?

Unfortunately what I failed to notice about The Dragon Chronicles: Fire & Ice, until it was too late, is that it was directed by Pitof, the man who gave us 2004's Catwoman (and not much else).

Acker is tomboy princess Luisa, whose father is the beneficent and liberal King Augustin (Vosloo) of the peaceful kingdom of Carpia.

Out of nowhere a fire dragon attacks the kingdom - the first attack in 20 years - and plagues the town for three months before Luisa decides to slip off into the woods and try to track down disgraced dragonslayer Allador...

Instead she discovers his son, Gabriel (Tom Wisdom), living rough with his manservant Sangimel (Rhys-Davis).

Sangimel is a bit of an inventor and I could accept his creation of chemical explosives, firelighters and fancy weapons but all credibility went out the window when he produced his medieval cine-projector to give an animated talk to Augustin on the life-cycle of dragons!!!

And the great plan these geniuses cook up to defeat the fire dragon? Release a more powerful ice dragon - sleeping under a glacier - to kill it!

Clearly they hadn't thought this through, but even I can see a major flaw in that plan.

However, the ultimate resolution of the situation is as wonderfully ludicrous as it is creative and kudos to the filmmakers for trying something a bit different.

The movie takes an interesting stance on dragons, presenting them as gigantic flying manta-rays constantly enveloped with their 'element of choice'.

Made in Romania, the scenery of The Dragon Chronicles is fantastic, the script less so and the cast aren't helped by some pretty shoddy lipsynching that suggests much of the movie was shot in another language (Romanian probably) and then badly dubbed back into English, like a '70s kung fu flick.

Produced by Media Pro Pictures (the Romanian company that also gave us the far superior Attack Of The Gryphon featuring another Buffyverse alumni Amber Benson) this was their first special effects/CGI film for their national television station ProTV in 2008.

There's even a novelisation of the movie available, written by award-winning Romanian children's author Stelian Turlea.

It has a similar story background to Attack Of The Gryphon, in that the action takes place between two small feuding kingdoms, but lacks the pizazz and chutzpah of its equally low-budget predecessor (dig the funky woolen chainmail armour or the painted cardboard masquerading as stained glass in the castle windows).

The Dragon Chronicles: Fire & Ice started off quite poorly and doesn't really get much better during its 82-minute duration, but there's a certain innocent naivety and charm about it that won me round in the end.

Certainly not one I'll be recommending to anyone who takes their film watching overly seriously, but as cheap beer-and-pretzel fodder for gamers and those with an interest in the genre it's a mild piece of harmless amusement, if not a classic.

Attack Of The Gryphon (2007)

Attack Of The Gryphon - or just Gryphon, as it is known in some quarters - is an American TV movie about two feuding kingdoms in the Land of Vallon that discover they need to work together to overcome a common foe.

Buffy's Amber Benson is Amelia of Lockland, a rugged, tom-boyish princess in the Joan of Arc mould, who has to team up with Prince Seth of Delphi (played by Jonathan LaPaglia, the younger brother of familiar TV face Anthony LaPaglia).

They are on quest to bring down the traitorous sorcerer Armand (Larry Drake, another familiar face - probably best remembered as L.A. Law's Benny Stulwicz), former counsellor to the King of Lockland, who has taken control of the kingdom's magical protector (a gryphon) and is using it to bring both warring kingdoms under his power.

If you can look past the feeble CGI used to give life to the gryphon, the bewildering array of accents and acting talents of the numerous performers and the obvious debt the film owes to such better known movies as Lord Of The Rings, it actually isn't that bad.

The script makes a half-decent effort at putting a fresh gloss on old clichés and while it doesn't always succeed, Benson's spunky Amelia and LaPaglia's rugged Seth are charismatic enough leads to carry the audience along... if they are willing to go on the journey.

While physically Benson is a surprising match for the role, initially it appears as though she is auditioning for a school play with her over-earnest line deliveries, but once out on the quest she settles better into the role.

Evil Armand, assisted by his two bizarrely-attired 'brides', uses more actual magic in this short film than Gandalf does in the entire Lord of The Rings trilogy and I suspect his 'magical slap' spell is employed using some kind of Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition 'at will' power, because he uses it a lot to smack our heroes and their sidekicks around in the climactic confrontation.

There's some romance, magical duels, an animated statue (obviously an actor painted grey) and even an actual, genuine, underground dungeon crawl sequence - with traps and treasure - that made the whole enterprise shine in my eyes.

Sadly, the treasure at the end of this dungeon crawl, the blade of the legendary Draconian Pike, looks very plastic - almost like one of those cheap kid's swords you find in pound stores - which rather undermines the gravitas of the moment.

Attack Of The Gryphon is only 90 minutes long and while not the 'epic' the DVD packaging proclaims, it's still a lot better than a vast swathe of the fantasy fodder that came out in the wake of Peter Jackson's Lord of The Rings.

For the fantasy roleplaying gamesmaster looking for an inspirational 'pick-me-up', it's a worthy investment of an hour and a half of your time.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026)

Picking up from the closing moments of the delightfully gonzo first movie, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come opens with blood-soaked survivor Grace MacCaullay (the ever-superb Samara Weaving) being taken to hospital.

There, she is reunited with her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton aka the MCU's Cassie Lang, daughter of Ant-Man), but they very quickly discover that the games aren't over, when both are kidnapped to the Danforth Estate, another home for the elite and filthy rich.

There the sisters are to be pawns in a contest for the surviving four families of the Satanic cult Grace faced in the first movie. The prize is now for control of the council of families and thus THE WORLD.

With the same directors - Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett - and writers - Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy - as the original, the transition from one film to the next is seamless.

While Ready or Not 2 may initially give the impression it's simply going to be going over old ground, but with two protagonists and four families of antagonists, it is so much more than that.

Once again hitting the ground running, the 108-minute continuation of the story rockets along with the same ferocity as the first movie, blending in some epic, Grand Guignol violence and dark, often dry, humour.

Supervised by Mister Le Bail's representative, the unflappable and nameless Lawyer (Elijah Wood, who you may know from a little trilogy called The Lord of The Rings), leading the charge for the bad guys are Ursula Danford (Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her sadistic twin brother, Titus (Shawn Hatosy).

While all the members of the families, in their own ways, are evil, the psychotic Titus is the most genuinely disturbing. His horrifically savage beating of one of the lead characters being the most difficult scene to watch in a movie filled with exploding bodies and gory slapstick. This exhibition of cold brutality isn't played for laughs or supernatural chills.

Supplementing these powerful performances are a couple of stand-out cameos from big name stars, whose impact on the story far exceeds their amount of screentime.

The developing bond between the feuding sisters is the heart of the film, with the plot twisting and turning around that so that the surviving characters end up somewhere totally unexpected for the grand finale.

There's nice foreshadowing along the way, although you might still be surprised by its implications.

The conclusion is very satisfying, but definitely closes the door on any possible threequels.

However, I wouldn't say no to a Kill Bill: The Whole Blood Affair-style stitching together of 2019's Ready or Not and this year's Ready or Not 2 into a single, 200-minute glorious entity, as - as is joked about at the end - both movies unfold over a handful of consecutive days.

If I had a gripe with the second movie, and it's a silly one, I just find the title is a case of a hat-on-a-hat. Make up your mind, people, call it Ready or Not 2 or Ready or Not: Here I Come. 

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is just awkward.

Dragon Quest (2009)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, for my money, legendary mockbuster-makers The Asylum are at their best when they're turning out fantasy movies.

While Dragon Quest (or Dragonquest or DragonQuest) may not be anything particularly original (it's basically another rehash of the "hero's journey" we all know from Star Wars) it's still a half-decent Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure yarn.

Reluctant, magical-dope-smoking hero Arkadi (Daniel Bonjour) learns from local wiseman Grandfather (Jason Connery) that he is actually the prophesied Keeper tasked with collecting the stones of virtue under the guidance of legendary warrior Maxim (Marc Singer) and his rather attractive protégé, the scantily-clad Katya (Jennifer Dorogi).

Katya (Jennifer Dorogi) - Dragon Quest's eye candy

It's no surprise really that former Beastmaster Marc Singer steals the show with a scenery-devouring performance that blends Mister Miyagi with Yoda and a dash of Basil Exposition.

To be honest Maxim justified the minimal cost of the DVD alone and I could easily have enjoyed 90-minutes of his solo adventures!

The Keeper has been called into action because a former colleague of Maxim's, the Darth Vader-ish Kirill (or Krill) - played by X-Files/Buffy The Vampire Slayer bad guy Brian Thompson - has summoned a wicked (CGI) dragon of smoke and fire to act as his avatar in his (generally unspecified) plans for world domination... and bolster-up his legions of anarchy-spreading Tolfar mercenaries.

There's dragons and there's questing and some other CGI beasties along the way for Arkadi and crew, some running about and some fighting and it's all wrapped up in an easily-digestible 85 minutes.

Filmed in the deserts of California and interspersed with stock, aerial footage of sweeping landscapes, Dragon Quest quickly shakes off its early fairy tale vibe and segues into full-blooded swords and sorcery territory.

While it delivers very little we haven't seen before, it does so with an innocent, cheeky charm that makes it enjoyable nonetheless if you are open-minded to what it has to offer (and let's be honest you have to be reasonably open-minded knowingly sitting down to watch a movie from The Asylum).

Azumi 2 - Death Or Love (2005)

Picking up from where the original left off, Azumi 2: Death Or Love sees the cute, young assassin and her one surviving colleague, Nagara (Yuma Ishigaki), heading off to slay the final warlord, the last of the troublesome triumvirate, whose death they believe will bring peace to Japan.

Soon, Azumi (Aya Ueto) and Nagara fall in with a Robin Hood-style bandit, Ginkaku (Shun Oguri), who happens to be the spitting image of Nachi, the beloved friend that Azumi was ordered to kill as the final part of her training (this is because Nachi and Ginkaku are played by the same actor).

Also joining their little gang is a zealous neophyte ninja, Kozue, played by the instantly recognisable Chiaki Kuriyama (from the awesome double bill of Kill Bill Volume 1 and Battle Royale).

Azumi's final mission proves to be her toughest as the last warlord, Masayuki Sanada (Toshiya Nagasawa) has gotten into bed - literally - with the head of a ruthless, and warmongering, ninja clan, a superhumanly fast harridan called Kunyo (Reiko Takahashi).

On one level Azumi 2 is more of the same as Azumi, although the blood-letting is considerably more restrained in this second film, but it still delivers a smart plot looking at honour, friendship, blind obedience, betrayal and the lengths some people will go to to see their mission fulfilled.

As before there are numerous glorious set-pieces, beautifully choreographed and shot, with the "poison spider web" in the bamboo forest being the most inventive.

While Chiaki's performance is, as usual, both memorable and menacing, the film - as with the first one - belongs to Aya Ueto, whose Azumi is one tough cookie who could give Buffy a run for her money any day. 

However, the two volumes of Azumi films share certain characteristics with the structure of Quentin Tarantino's two Kill Bill films; both have their largest and most gruesome fights at the climax of the first volume and their heroines have to carve their way through a number of sub-bosses before facing off against the final Big Bad at the end of volume two.

This final confrontation stands out not so much for the actual conflict but for the position Azumi is put in by her own side, when Sanada suggests he would be willing to withdraw his troops from the impending war if Azumi is left to face him in single combat.

Azumi 2: Death Or Love doesn't quite touch the giddy heights of the first movie, but is still a more satisfying conclusion to the tale than Kill Bill Volume 2 was to Kill Bill Volume 1.

Why Would Your Character Want To Be Resurrected?

Buffy tells Spike about where she went when she died

I'm far too cynical/sceptical and logical to be a religious person, but I'd like to be able to believe that if there was some kind of life after death it would be along the lines described by Buffy in the early sixth season episode After Life:

"Wherever I... was... I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn't mean anything, nothing had form... but I was still me, you know? And I was warm and I was loved... and I was finished. Complete. I don't understand about dimensions or theology or any of... but I think I was in heaven."

Of course, Buffy had just been yanked out of there by her well-meaning friends resurrecting her after she sacrificed her life to save the world (at the end of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Season Five), but that doesn't stop it from sounding wonderful.

Before things get too maudlin or I start waxing philosophically, let's drag this round to gaming. A lot of games fixate on their universe/world's answer to Hell (because that's a good battleground/rescue zone/artefact retrieval site), but how would you go about depicting your world's equivalent to Heaven?

In Peter Jackson's The Return of The King movie we have the famous Gandalf quote:

"No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it... White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."

Meanwhile in The Chronicles of Narnia novels there is an enormous, standing wave at the edge of the world, beyond which are the "impossibly tall" mountains of Aslan's Country (i.e. Heaven).

The final Narnia book, The Last Battle, concludes thus:

"All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before."

So let's imagine your character dies in a hard-fought conflict, and wakes up in a place like those described above (or Valhalla, if that's more their speed).

But then - back in the "real world" - they get resurrected by, or on behalf of, their companions, dragged out of this idyllic afterlife... don't you think there's a chance they'd be as pissed off as Buffy was?

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Nick's Traveller Campaign

Until the formation of the Tuesday Knights in 2008, our longest running campaign was Nick's Traveller game, which began when we were still in school.

It followed the intergalactic adventures of Jamus Dirkson (a suave, big game hunter, Roger Moore-wannabe and ladies' man, played by Steve), and his stunted, ne'er-do-well comrade, Marcus DeChambre (a psychotic, trigger-happy, bargain basement-Wolverine, mercenary/scout, played by me).

As much as I enjoyed the gun-fu, hack'n'slash of Marcus at the time, in retrospect I realised I role-played the character very poorly and Nick was extremely tolerant of my juvenile violence obsession - no matter how much it must have screwed with his carefully plotted adventures.

Pete made guest appearances every now and again - but always playing different characters as was his M.O. during that period.

This campaign ran for years and years and only came to an end because 'real life' got in the way and meant regular gaming meets were exiled to the waste bin of history.

After Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller was the first game system of any substance that I played regularly, thanks to Nick. I would hazard a guess that, with substantial breaks, this particular campaign ran for about a decade.

As a side-project Nick also invented the Grav-Ball boardgame (kinda American football in zero-G), which in later years of school became a mainstay of the after-school games club, when we created a league. I'm not sure if we ever finished a season of that, though!

Years before Eden Studios suggested framing games of their Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG as a television show, Nick was presenting us with Traveller adventures as on-going seasons of futuristic vid-casts.

Back in 2007, Nick kindly unearthed his log of our various adventures over the years, with annotations where appropriate.

Season 1

• 1. Loggerheads (an old Journal of The Travellers Aid Society adventure)
• 2. Rumpus on Ranther
• 3. Yo-ho-ho (river pirates in Apocalypse Now-style boats)
• 4. Wheel of Fortune (the first appearance of the Corsair Casino, a popular haunt, and Grav-Ball)
• 5. Hot Spot (archaeology in Vargr space...)
• 6. March or Die (... results in 'volunteering' for the Vargr Alien Legion)
• 7. Night-time on the Khanate (... from which I believe you ended up deserting!)

Season 2

• 1. The Mission (captured by Claw, the Ho Chi Minh of Vargrdom)
• 2. The Shooting Party (hob-nobbing with the local nobility)
• 3. We're Leaving on a Jet Plane (making their getaway...)
• 4. The Night After the Morning Before (... back to the casino)
• 5. Age Concern (a spot of big-game hunting)

Season 3

• 1. Unlucky for Some (fighting the Vargr invasion on an iceworld)
• 2. Dirkson's Dogfight Demise
• 3. Royal Dirk (in which Jamus becomes King of Andrex...)
• 4. King Kang: The TV Movie (a diplomatic mission to a mad Vargr ruler, which also involved rescuing the Marquessa, Jamus' recurring romantic partner [although he had to keep dodging the Marquess] from the harem)

The Mini-Series

• 1. Adventures in Baby-Sitting (a luxury liner - Pete was B'zarr, the head of security - escorting the Archduke's young niece and nephew home)
  
• 2. Day of the Knight (a hijack attempt - well, there had to be really)
• 3. Farewell to Arms, Hello New Order (the all-time quote of the game from Marcus de Chambre: 'I grab a beermat and rush into the toilet..' Dirkson is knighted on Deneb, Marcus deChambre gets proper bionic arms, aahhhh!)
• 4. Dirkson's Dirk (into the desert; velociraptors are mentioned)
• 5. Bungle in the Jungle (possibly some big game hunting to finish off?)
  

What I always loved about Traveller - besides the character generation system where you could kill off your creation before he'd even got to adventure - was the simplicity of the whole system, something sadly lacking in many of the modern inspired systems.

You had a handful of skills, rolled 2d6 for task resolution and your physical attributes were also your "hit points"... it really couldn't have been any easier.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Hatchet (2007)

Before he made Sexy Nightmare Slayers, Adam Green first became a big name in geeky households through his wonderfully OTT homage to old school slasher horror, Hatchet.

A simple set-up sees a gaggle of potential victims stranded at night in the Louisiana swamps when their "ghost tour" boat runs aground.

Lost, cold and wet they soon discover they are not alone and that the area's mythical bogeyman, Victor Crowley (Kane 'Jason Voorhees' Hodder), is after their blood.

Taking the best of the supernatural slasher genre and blending in some almost Scooby Doo-like humour - along with the requisite quotient of boobs and blood - Green drowns his audience in Grand Guignol levels of gore and mutilation that are so far fetched as to be shockingly humorous.

As much a comedy as a horror film, Hatchet is pure entertainment for horror groupies. It has no deep message or hidden subtext; it just aims to shock and amuse in equal measure by balancing each moment of graphic violence with a cheesy joke, witty one-liner or amusing pratfall.

Emphasising the movie's role as a loving, but light-hearted, homage to movies like Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday The 13th, Halloween, Candyman etc we are teased with all too brief cameos by the iconic Tony Todd and Robert Englund.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans (well, the males anyway) will also be delighted to know that Mercedes McNab (aka Harmony Kendall) not only has a large role in this as aspiring softcore porn actress Misty, but also spends at least a third of her time on camera topless.

Yes, it's that sort of film!

There's not enough originality in the personality of Victor Crowley - a Jason Voorhees-like mutant child bullied by his peers then accidentally set alight during a Halloween prank (viz. The Burning), who comes back "from the dead" (Freddy et al) with the powers of superhuman strength and indestructibility (Jason again) and a desire for revenge against mankind - but I don't think that's the point.

For me Green is simply trying to reclaim the genre, take it back to a halcyon age - but with a 21st Century budget and effects - to prevent its continued Twilightification. He's making "horror" truly "horrible" again, reclaiming the genre prerogative of  making the antagonist the audience draw, but without sinking to the sickening depths of the torture porn sub-genre.

Even the ending, while by no means original, is still perfectly in-keeping with the old school vibe of the piece... and obviously left the barn door open for Hatchet 2!

HALLOWEEN HORRROR: I Saw The TV Glow (2024)

In late '90s suburbia, a pair of isolated teens - Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine aka Jack Haven) - bond over their shared appreciation for a late night, young adult TV show called The Pink Opaque.

The show, which is woven throughout the main feature, is clearly inspired by Buffy The Vampire Slayer (it uses the Buffy font for its credits and one of the main characters is called Tara, which then echoes on a meta level when Amber Benson - who played Tara on Buffy - pops in for a brief cameo). But this is Buffy filtered through The Mighty Boosh and directed by David Lynch.

Although Buffy was the strongest influence in my eyes, there were definite shades of Twin Peaks (particularly The Return) in both the show-within-the-film and the 'real world' of Owen and Maddy: the pivotal, central scene taking place in a liminal bar while a band plays in the background (their song featuring the lyric "I Saw The TV Glow").

Just as the The Pink Opaque is about to be cancelled - on a shocking, fifth season cliffhanger - Maddy disappears, leaving behind a burning television in her garden.

Almost a decade later, she returns to find Owen, and tries to convince him that she has been "inside the show" and that their memories of watching it in her basement were false, that they were really the characters they remembered from the show.

I'd been sold on I Saw The TV Glow as a "horror picture" and had been expecting something akin to the wonderful Channel Zero: Candle Cove serving of creepypasta television from 2016.

I was wrong. While there are fleeting elements of unnerving psychological horror, especially in Maddy's powerful speech about her efforts to recreate the season five cliffhanger of The Pink Opaque (so that she could get to "season six"), the art house film's theme is an allegory for the trans experience and a meditation on the nature of reality and how that impacts identity.

The final act follows Owen as he grows into adulthood, but there is an increasing feeling that - while he represses it - he is living a lie, the whole experience with The Pink Opaque serving as a metaphor for his confused sexuality.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw The TV Glow is mesmerically shot, drifting in and out of the TV show as it skims through Owen's life like the chapters on a DVD. 

While the gamer in me was quite fixated on the mythology of The Pink Opaque (with its 'big bad' Mr Melancholy and his demonic henchbeings), the emotional performances of the two leads held my attention throughout.

I Saw The TV Glow wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I didn't mind: it's still a weird and powerful piece of 'coming of age' cinema. John Hughes this ain't!

A Tale of Two Exorcists

After Paul Schrader had filmed Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist, the studio took it away from him - because his psychological horror was not the gore-fest they'd wanted - and handed over the reins to Cliffhanger's Renny Harlin.

The film underwent a major rewrite, some recasting and an almost total reshoot and emerged on the silver screen as Exorcist: The Beginning in 2004.

Schrader's version - although highly anticipated (this was the man who wrote Taxi Driver after all) went unseen until all the Exorcist films were released together on DVD in the early 2000s.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the wait was worth it. Dominion is very rough round the edges, and while it builds slowly (like the original Exorcist - but totally devoid of the genuine fear that film still invokes after all these years) and the threat level is allowed to gradually develop as the madness of the demon Pazazu spreads out from its hiding place, nothing very substantial actually ever materialises.

And the "suddenly everything is better" ending is shameful.

Both films follow a young Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgaard), who has left the church to pursue his passion for archaeology after a crisis of faith during the Second World War.

In 1947 East Africa he investigates a mysterious, perfectly preserved, buried church... and what lies beneath.

But where Dominion goes for discreet imagery and symbolism, Exorcist: The Beginning relies on in-your-face shocks and a gruesome body count. Merrin in this film is more a shotgun-wielding, babe-snogging, tomb-robbing Indiana Jones than the conflicted priest of the earlier iteration.

The film's main female character - a doctor - changes from the 'average/normal' looking woman of Dominion into the Swedish beauty of the second (as Harlin says in the 'making of' doc: "You don't go to the cinema to see everyday people").

The African natives, who play a smaller role in the The Beginning, have also learned to speak perfect English. The language-barrier was something that Schrader had used in his version to emphasise the differences and rising tensions between the locals and the British Army occupiers.

Pazuzu itself, once it appears, has also been transformed from a floating baldy guy into a gravely-voiced, Buffyesque, butt-kicking monster with direct visual lifts from the original (something sorely lacking in Schrader's version).

Harlin's film also cherrypicks from other horror classics, for instance we get the flys from The Amityville Horror and mad priests and menacing dogs (in this case, hyenas) from The Omen.

This is The Exorcist for the Nightmare on Elm Street/Friday 13th generation, who don't like their horror to test their brains too much; but 'sadly' it's still a more exciting movie than Schrader's insubstantial meditation on the nature of evil.

Jakob's Wife (2021)

Jakob's Wife was a pet project of the iconic Barbara Crampton, who had apparently spent years trying to bring the script by Kathy Charles, Mark Steensland, and director Travis Stevens to life.

She is quoted on IMDB as saying:

"I read it and I was immediately captivated. I hooked up with Bob Portal at Alliance Media Partners and it took many years for us to develop the project and put it together."

In the film, Crampton plays Anne Fedder, the dutiful but downtrodden wife of a boorish, small town minister, Pastor Jakob Fedder (Larry Fessenden).

The film wastes no time in getting to the meat of its storyline when an attractive girl, Amelia Humphries (Nyisha Bell), disappears on her way home from an evening church service.

Then Anne has the chance to meet up with an old flame, Tom Low (Robert Rusler), who is back in town to help with the restoration of a historic gin mill.

The couple rendezvous at the rundown, out-of-town, property but just as it looks like their old romance is about to be rekindled, they are attacked by supernatural forces.

Tom is killed off swiftly, but Anne returns home later... a changed woman.

Bonnie Aarons as The Master

She has fallen under the spell of an enigmatic, asexual, vampire lord - of the old school, Nosferatu-style - known only as The Master (Bonnie Aarons, who also played the titular role in The Nun).

Once Jakob realises what's going on in his town, he is at first naturally horrified, but then his desire to exterminate the vampire threat (which he readily accepts as real) is tempered by a determination to save his wife, somehow.

The story pivots and lurches thematically and tonally, but it is Barbara Crampton's powerful central performance around which everything revolves and that holds this strange 98-minute affair together.

I think it's supposed to be a dark comedy, but this really isn't clear from the get-go.

There's a definite Fright Night vibe - and even a touch of Buffy The Vampire Slayer - to Jakob's Wife, but it has an odd habit of allowing characters to flip from 'good guys' to 'bad guys' at a moment's notice.

Jakob, for instance, isn't a particularly likeable person to begin with, and yet there are times when he's suddenly - slightly uncomfortably - thrust into the role of 'hero'.

In all honesty, the majority of the audience isn't ever going to care for him... even if, at the eleventh hour, he realises what a great catch his wife is.

And I wasn't totally sold by his transition from "thoughts and prayers solve everything" to "killing in the name of love".

Conversely, Anne switches from murderous monster to "hero" and back again several times in the tale.

Director Travis Stevens was certainly very lucky to have an actor as brilliant as Barbara Crampton as the power engine behind his movie, because it could have possibly spun totally out of control without her presence.

Jakob's Wife is a buffet, a potential melange of different tastes that may, or may not, appeal depending on your personal preferences and tolerances.

Freaky (2020)

The whole Freaky Friday/body swap concept is a tried-and-tested formula for light-hearted romps about mistaken identity and learning to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes", but slasher-comedy Freaky takes this to a whole new level by throwing a serial killer into the mix.

Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) is a sweet high school kid who, late one terrifying evening while waiting for a lift home from a football match, discovers that the urban myth of the Blissfield Butcher is all too real.

The night before the brutal deaths of four obnoxious teens had been attributed to this legendary 'mythical' figure in the town of Blissfield, but then he (Vince Vaughn) attacks Millie, and stabs her with an ancient knife - La Dola - that has come into his possession.

This ancient Aztec sacrificial blade has the magical power to swap the souls of the attacker and victim when a person is stabbed with it.

The next day, The Butcher wakes up as a teenage girl, and Millie wakes up in a squat, wearing the face of the most wanted man in Blissfield.

The Butcher adapts to his new form much faster than Millie, immediately realising it's the perfect disguise with which to continue his murder spree.

Meanwhile, Millie has to convince her friends that it's really her in this middle-aged man's body... and avoid being arrested on numerous homicide charges.

Millie and her friends learn that unless they can stab The Butcher again within 24 hours, with the same magical blade, the soul transference will be permanent.

And so the race against time begins. 

Directed by Christopher Landon, who brought us the two Happy Death Day time loop movies, from a script he co-wrote with Michael Kennedy, Freaky is a broad horror-comedy (Vince Vaughn playing a teenage girl in a man's body is brilliant).

But while there is a degree of gore - unsurprisingly - in this slasher flick, the most disturbing elements come from the threats of sexual violence delivered by stereotypical jocks when they think they have the "weak and feeble" Millie backed into a corner.

This is one of those slasher films where you find yourself, while never, of course, siding with the Blissfield Butcher, at least feeling satisfied with some of his victim choices.

The 102-minute film also does a fantastic job when it comes to pacing, to the extent that when you first believe the story is over, you suddenly realise there's 10 or 15 minutes of the film still to run... and there are more shocks to come!

Freaky is neither high art nor trash cinema, skating comfortably down the middle as a teen friendly horror flick that nails its colours to the mast from the get-go, trading largely in stereotypes to keep the action moving.

Ultimately it's a jaunty game of cat-and-mouse between two compelling leads (Millie morphs into a cross between Reese Witherspoon's Elle Woods and Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy Summers) that entertains and repulses when it needs to.

Annabelle Comes Home (2019)

Annabelle Comes Home is a masterclass in teen horror movie making.

While, on one hand, not much scarier than the best episodes of Supernatural, nor even as gory, on the other writer/director Gary Dauberman concentrated on escalating tension, menace, and atmosphere.

You always suspected a jump scare was coming, but, in truth, there were only a couple in the film, the majority were red herrings, but you never know which were which until the final 'boo!'.

The film opens with the backstory of how Annabelle came into the possession of The Conjuring's protagonists, Lorraine and Ed Warren (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) and a succinct explanation of the doll's powers (she isn't possessed, as demons don't possess objects, instead she acts as a beacon and a conduit for dark forces).

Then the story jumps forward a year, to 1972, and Annabelle is safely squirrelled away in the Warrens' locked room of evil artifacts.

The Warrens are heading out on another case, leaving their young daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace) in the care of Brady Bunch-like babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman).

At first I felt a bit cheated when I realised that the Warrens themselves would just be bookending the story of Annabelle Comes Home, but as it turns out I should have trusted Gary Dauberman to know what he was doing.

Having learned what the Warrens do for a living, Mary Ellen's best friend, Daniela Rios (Katie Sarife) drops in to surreptitiously check out the "room of cursed objects".

She is wracked with guilt over the recent death of her father, and is hoping to find a way to contact his spirit.

Instead, she is tricked into releasing Annabelle, who, in turn, unleashes as many of the trapped entities in the Warrens' secure room as she can.

The variety of spooky objects that come into play reminded me of a cross between the Friday the 13th TV series (nothing to do with Jason Voorhees) and the wonderful Warehouse 13, with the predictive television set being a particular visual highlight.

The climax, which draws in May Ellen's would-be boyfriend, Bob Palmeri (Michael Cimino), is a funfair thrill ride of spooks, monsters, and mind-trickery as a demon uses Annabelle to try and steal one of the young women's souls.

Ultimately, Annabelle Comes Home is Buffy The Vampire Slayer level teen drama and urban fantasy scares, but on a bigger budget, with enough atmosphere and misdirection to keep the audience on the edge of its seat throughout.

As always with this franchise, the film capitalises on its period setting to heighten the verisimilitude, making the jeopardy and threat wholly convincing for both the audience and the teenagers trapped inside the haunted house.

Balancing out the jump scares, there's also some laugh out loud moments, and Dauberman has a great knack of making full use of the screen, so you always have to keep half-an-eye on what's going on in the background.

Beyond question, Annabelle Comes Home is delightfully creepy and simultaneously thrilling and unnerving, making it one of my favourite entries in the ever-expanding Conjuring Universe.

While Universal may have failed to launch its Dark Universe, reinventing their classic characters for 21st Century audiences, Warner Bros and New Line Cinema were quietly building an impressive, interconnected, universe around the mythology of The Conjuring movies.

They're not all hits, but the winners outweigh the duds. Long may it last.

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Simply put, Tokyo Gore Police is quite possibly one of the craziest, most mixed-up movies I've ever enjoyed.

Merrily playing hopscotch along the line between genius and insanity, decorated with more severed limbs than you'd ever want to see and almost certainly the largest volume of free-flowing blood, there is no escaping the "gore" in the film's title.

Set in the near future, with a recently privatised police force controlling the city and freaky cybernetic mutants, known as "engineers", running rampant, Tokyo Gore Police tells the story of Ruka (Eihi Shiina) - the Force's top "engineer hunter".

The katana-wielding cutie is haunted by dreams of the death of her father (also a police officer) and is plagued by a penchant for self-harming.

The movie mixes the body horror of David Cronenberg with the dystopian future and dark humour of Robocop, but just as you think it can't get any more over-the-top it pushes the envelope that bit further like a live-action anime where literally anything is possible.

The engineers have a power which may be scientific or supernatural (but most likely somewhere in between) to transform any wound into a weapon, leading to such mind-hammering creations as phallus cannons and breasts that spray acid.

In pursuit of a particularly methodical serial killer, Ruka, begins to find herself turning into an engineer as she is simultaneously drawn into mystery of her father's murder and the police impose a major crack-down on engineers (and anyone who shows the slightest resistance to their investigations).

There are definitely shades of Buffy The Vampire Slayer in there as well, with an attractive protagonist raised to fight monsters that she discovers she has a dark connection with but as blood-splattered satires go, Tokyo Gore Police is in a class of its own.

Enduring images will be seared into brain - from the police chief's quadriplegic gimp pet to the physically re-sculpted prostitutes in the night club (the human chair is truly disgusting) - but Tokyo Gore Police isn't just about the shocks, at its heart is a solid (if a bit hackneyed) mystery-revenge story that allows the horrific action to evolve around it.

Add in some random TV adverts for self-harming knives, supersharp swords and the Tokyo Police Corporation, and you've got almost two hours of crazy that is quite happy to swing from extreme violence to the poignancy of Ruka surveying the aftermath of a slaughter by her fellow officers.

Be warned though, where Western films might cut away and fade to black, Tokyo Gore Police lingers that bit longer and, yes, the special effects are often quite primitive puppetry but that doesn't make them any the less suggestive. You don't need a multi-million pound CGI budget to get under an audience's skin.

Certainly not for the feint of heart or easily disturbed, Tokyo Gore Police makes Hollywood nonsense shock-horror franchises look like the silly little homemovies they are by not sacrificing plot and character on the altar of excess, using the gore instead to paint a picture that actually tells a story.

The Shed (2019)

Having been attacked in the woods by a Nosferatu-like vampire (Damian Norfleet), hunter Joe Bane (Frank Whaley) crawls away to a nearby shed to recuperate... and complete his transformation into a bloodsucker.

The shed stands in the garden of Bane's neighbour, 17-year-old orphan Stan (Jay Jay Warren), who lives with his alcoholic and abusive grandfather, Ellis (Timothy Bottoms).

After the vampire kills Ellis and his dog, Stan realises he can't go to the authorities as his grandfather was the only thing standing between him and another spell in a juvenile detention centre.

Thus, he confides instead in his best friend, Dommer (Cody Kostro).

Unfortunately, Dommer immediately sees the "pet monster" as a weapon to strike back at the school bullies, Marble (Chris Petrovski) and his cronies, Pitt (Francisco Burgos) and Ozzy (Uly Schlesinger).

Naturally, things don't really go well for anyone, eventually culminating in Stan and his cute ex-girlfriend Roxy (Sofia Happonen) besieged in his house by a small horde of vampires.

Slightly reminiscent of several classic urban vampire flicks, from the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie and Fright Night to Near Dark and Salem's Lot, The Shed is an innovative, tight, well-made, well-acted, low-budget, low-key monster movie that, ultimately, doesn't quite live up to its potential.

Jay Jay Warren has a certain Anton Yelchin-like quality about him and together with Sofia Happonen they make for charming, easy-going leads, while Cody Kostro's Dommer, especially when he finally gets one over on Marble and cracks, is superb.

Spanning a three or four day period, the 98-minute movie is well-paced and a believable slice of small town American life in a community where everybody knows everybody.

However, a couple of things stand in the way of The Shed being a truly great horror flick.

The first is that, for a film that isn't a Nightmare on Elm Street, it spends far too long in Stan's dreamscape, unless this is somehow connected to a previously unknown power of the vampire. Sadly, this is never explained.

Secondly, the abrupt ending feels like writer/director Frank Sabatella just suddenly ran out of ideas (or money?) and called a halt.

Too many questions, many of them practical and grounded in the real world, are left unanswered.

And there's the obvious Chekhov's Gun of Deputy Haiser (Mu-Shaka Benson), introduced early on and clearly having a grudge against Stan, who then never appears again, even after his boss, Sheriff Dorney (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) fails to return from a routine call-out.

It feels as though The Shed could have done with, at least, five or 10 more minutes of run time to wrap up its many dangling plot threats.