The Roll of the Ancient Mariner: Dice, Dice Every Where...

Of course I love dice. I'm a gamer. I have way more dice than I could ever possibly need, yet I still keep buying them. Like I said: I'm a gamer!

The latest acquisitions for my infinite dice pool are all six-siders, but are devoid of numbers.

The first is a giant - 1.5" x 1.5" per face - red, wooden "yes/no" die. Why flip a coin when you can roll a die, amirite?

Now, as gamesmaster, I can divest myself of any responsibility and blame the die.

Is there a guard coming round the corner as you try and climb through the merchant's window this evening? <rolls big red die> The die says: "yes".

Next up is a hessian bag of wooden cubes with letters on (a couple have 'yes' or 'no' on them). They are pictured below.

These are possibly a dice-based iteration of the classic Ouija board, although - deliberately - no instructions were included, so you can use them how you like.

Don't want to accidentally summon Captain Howdy in the middle of a game!!!

I'm picturing the player-characters encountering a fortune teller armed with a set of these, generating random, on-the-fly predictions that will (somehow) come true later in the campaign.

I welcome this opportunity to hone my improv skills (or lack thereof), conjuring up meaning from a splatter of random letters. It is human nature - apophenia - to see patterns in randomness.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Late Night With The Devil (2023)

On Halloween night 1977, in a bid to win the ratings war, late night talk show host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) hosted a live demonic possession on his show, Night Owls.

The (faux) documentary, Late Night With The Devil, screens the whole show, intercut with black and white, candid, behind-the-scenes footage when the talk show cuts to commercials.

It opens though with an account of Jack's rise to fame (narrated by Michael Ironside), his involvement with The (the very real) Grove, the tragic death of his wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig), and his constant struggles - and failures - to score better ratings than The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

The documentary segues smoothly into Jack's Halloween special episode of Night Owls, which opens with an obviously fake psychic, Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), who clashes with magician-turned-professional sceptic Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss).

Eventually, Christou (who might actually be sensing something) ends up projectile vomiting blood over Haig before he is taken off to get medical attention, making way for the evening's main attraction.

Then  the show (and film) introduces us to young Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), who was rescued from a brutal Satanic cult (who all, otherwise, died by fire rather than allow the FBI to take them in). Her saviour was parapsychologist author June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), who became the girl's guardian and then started working with her, trying to understand if she really was possessed by a supernatural entity.

From the get-go, Lilly is a demonic Jan Brady with a dead-eyed thousand yard stare, but once June reluctantly calls forth whatever is inside the young girl - she refers to it as Mr Wiggles - her transformation is terrifying and impressive.

Even amongst an impressive line-up of older actors, Torelli gives a bravura performance as the centre of attention, who manages to be nightmarishly creepy even when seemingly trying to be nice and not channelling dark forces from the great beyond. 

Dark secrets are laid bare, convictions are challenged, people die graphic deaths, and general shenanigans ensue.

The build-up, and pacing, directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes from their own script, is methodical and steady, giving the gradual of collapse of the Night Owls talk show into chaos and carnage a genuine sense of believability.

Perhaps this really is recently unearthed footage from a legendary episode of American '70s late night talk show folklore...

This is the stuff creepypasta and urban legends are born out of.

Kind of aiming for similar territory as our Ghostwatch (with a liberal dash of The Exorcist), Late Night With The Devil does a spectacular job of maintaining verisimilitude while seeding clues through its simple and straightforward storyline, right up until the end.

It just fails to stick the landing by seemingly breaking its format to peel back the curtain for anyone who hadn't already twigged why everything was happening.

Maybe a documentary bookend, akin to the opening of the film, digging more into Jack's background might been better, but then again the repeated image of Jack shouting into the camera "turn off your television" is still very striking (and very Invasion of The Body Snatchers).

I guess it could be classed as found footage, but don't be put off by that, this isn't hours of shaky cam as teenagers run through woods in the middle of the night, this has higher aspirations than that.

In truth, while "found footage" can be more miss than hit with me, I do have a particular soft spot for this story format sub-genre, the mockumentary presenting something supernatural as if it were real, especially when they are done well - which Late Night With The Devil is (barring that one niggle of mine).

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Horror! The Horror! The Horror!

These days I'm a sucker for horror movies, with a particular weakness for monster movies.

While my passion for the genre began with a teenage viewing of the original 1978 Dawn Of The Dead, one of my favourite franchises remains the Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

I can still clearly remember the buzz the first one generated around school when it came out in 1984.

I was 17 at the time and not as into horror movies as I am now, but the "word on the street" was - in those pre-internet, pre-DVD dark ages - that it was the "most terrifying movie anyone had ever seen ever!"

Of course, when I eventually got to see it on VHS it was quite tame; still brilliant, thrilling and gory, but nowhere near as horrific as my teenage mind had imagined, fuelled by the hyperbole of fellow teenagers who'd claimed to have seen it... and just made it through to the credits by the skin of their tough guy teeth.

Even at the time some of the mood-setting special effects seemed quite primitive, these days they look positively archaic.

I seem to recall that the first horror film my parents let me stay up to watch on television was The Omen II. That scared the crap out of me and gave me nightmares for days - but now that also seems quite tame to my cynical forty-something brain.

I guess at the time it was some 'reverse psychology' parenting to stop me pestering them to be allowed to stay up and watch 'grown-up' movies.

It must have worked because I don't recall any horror movie encounters until the height of the heady days of the tabloid-led 'video nasties' scare (in the early '80s), when it was de rigueur to go round each others' houses and dare each other to watch the latest piece of nasty that someone had acquired on video tape.

I didn't make it through either The Evil Dead or Texas Chain Saw Massacre - which is ironic as the latter would, decades later, form the backbone of my university dissertation, and both movies rate among my top horror flicks these days.

It wasn't until one of these illicit gatherings when a gang of us were watching George Romero's Dawn Of The Dead that I had my 'Road To Damascus' moment and realised I was actually rather enjoying this movie and would like to see more of the same.

But that's not to say I've become so hardened and blasé to horror that nothing has a lasting impact on me.

Here's a quick rundown of the top three horror movies that still give me the heebeejeebies:

• The Exorcist

• The Blair Witch Project

• The Amazing Mr Blunden

No real shocks with the first two. I know The Blair Witch Project doesn't do it for everyone, but it digs at me on a psychological level for some reason - I guess it's something about being lost in the woods with an unseen antagonist, and the cinema-vérité style, with the handheld camera, just makes it all the more real.

It's that level of 'truth' that also makes The Exorcist so unnerving to me. Later horror films have generally taken a lighter touch, and even been more action orientated, but The Exorcist unfolds like docudrama and, to this day, as with Blair Witch, I can't watch it without the lights on!

The final entry in this trio of terror is an unlikely one that is obviously very personal.

My gran took me to see The Amazing Mr Blunden at the town centre cinema in Tunbridge Wells when I was six - and it scarred me for life.

To be honest I can't remember much of the specifics of the film, just that it involved a ghost and a large house fire. It wasn't the ghost that got to me, it was the house fire.

To this day, I haven't watched the film again because something about it just flicked a switch in my little, six-year-old brain.

And I have no plans to... even though it appears to actually be a U-certificate kids' film and not the hideous torture porn my addled brain recalls being 'forced' to sit through Clockwork Orange style with my eyelids pinned back.

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.

The Monster aka I Don't Want To Be Born (1975)

Recently retired stripper Lucy (Joan Collins at the height of her 1970's allure) has married Italian businessman Gino Carlesi (Ralph Bates, with a wandering accent) and just given birth to baby Nicholas.

However, there's something "wrong" with the child, he's growing faster than expected and seems very aggressive.

Quickly this violence escalates from biting fingers, clawing faces, and trashing its nursery to pushing his nanny, Jill Fletcher (Janet Key) into a lake after he failed to drown her in the bath the night before!

The Carlesi's very patient paediatrician, Dr Finch (Donald Pleasence), is baffled but stresses that Nicholas is too young to be psychiatrically examined, while Gino's visiting sister, a Catholic nun, Sister Albana (Eileen Atkins), eventually comes round round to Lucy's way of thinking: that the baby is possessed by The Devil.

Earlier on, Lucy had confessed to her best friend, fellow dancer Mandy Gregory (Caroline Munro) that, after spurning the lecherous advances of her diminutive co-star Hercules (George Claydon), the dwarf put a curse on her to have a "monstrous baby".

How he is able to do this is never explained and what his connection to "The Devil" is is also handwaved; we're supposed to accept that because he is physically "Other" he has access to black magical powers or some other ableist nonsense.

Other than his 'lapse' in behaviour towards Lucy, at no other time in the 95-minute movie is he shown as being anything but a consummate, professional entertainer in a '70s Soho revue bar.

There's a sleazy veneer to the whole sorry affair that is 1975's The Monster (aka I Don't Want to Be Born aka It Lives Within Her aka The Devil Within Her) that accentuates its general awfulness.

Observe the sudden prevalence of naked female flesh during Lucy's return to the revue bar to confront her ex-boyfriend, slimy club owner Tommy Morris (John Steiner), who may actually be the child's father.

Given that when we see Lucy's act in flashback, she's wearing an enormous outfit (although, for some reason she is then shown in her lacy undies in her dressing room... three years before The Stud and The Bitch), I'd just assumed that this was one of those "cinematic strip clubs" where all the dancers keep their clothes on.

However, during Lucy's return there are a couple of dancers - Maria Lopez and Susie Lightining - auditioning for Tommy, who just casually strip off in the background.

Later, there's a random and unnecessarily protracted sex scene between Lucy and Gino... just before he gets bumped off in the most unintentionally hilarious murder I've witnessed in years.

This scene alone, which suggests that baby Nicholas has suddenly grown into a flesh-and-blood Chucky, was worth the (low) price of the Blu-Ray alone.

This moment in particular reminded me, unsurprisingly, of the disappointing HBO/Sky comedy-horror, The Baby, from back in 2022.

Luckily, ultimately, there's a book on exorcisms in the shelf of the laboratory where Sister Albana (a specialist in animal diseases... or something, it's not really important) is working and so the nun is eventually able to drive Satan out of the child.

Of course, the fact that everyone else in the house is dead by then and this act - for no readily apparent reason - also kills Hercules (who's just dancing at the revue bar and totally oblivious to all this demonic tomfoolery that's been going on), isn't even addressed as the film finishes at that point.

A sordid rip-off of The Omen, The Exorcist, and Rosemary's Baby, with phoned-in performances from most of the cast (there's an awkward scene early on between Mandy and Lucy that just sounds as though they were being poorly dubbed), The Monster definitely qualifies as being so bad it's good - primarily because of the comedy value surrounding several of the murders that the baby commits.

Clearly, some thought was put into the set-pieces, but not so much in how they would all hang together into a coherent narrative.

Even though the film is respectably short in duration, it still feels stuffed with lots of shots of people walking - or driving - through the streets of London (occasionally with 'authentic' dialogue dubbed over it), which, on one hand is a nice snapshot of this period in our recent history, but on the other highlights the paucity of actual story director Pete Sasdy had to show on screen.

Although immensely derivative (especially at that time in horror movies), there's possibly a half-decent story buried in The Monster somewhere, it's just unfortunate that everyone seems to have gone about telling it in such a half-arsed way.

UPDATE:

• JUSTICE FOR HERCULES: I was thinking more about this movie. When Hercules gropes Lucy, he has a glazed expression on his face and in my headcanon for The Monster I've decided that he was being possessed by an unseen demonic third party, which is why Hercules' random "curse" actually worked.
• JUSTICE FOR SISTER ALBANA: When the police roll up at the end (as the credits roll), they would have found the nun, the child, and a host of brutally murdered corpses. I can't believe the justice system will have much time for "the baby did it" and the Sister is probably facing a long stretch in prison or a psychiatric hospital.

The Last Exorcism (2010)

The Last Exorcism comes tantalisingly close to being one of those rare, perfect horror movies, an intelligent blend of The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project (two of the most unnerving, pure horror movies ever made, in my opinion), until it derails into silliness for the final sequence.

I can understand and see what the filmmakers were trying to do in these closing scenes because, in all honesty, up until that point, no matter how good the film was, it wasn't really saying anything new, but it was such a sudden lurch in focus that it didn't quite work.

The film - shot on hand-held camera as a documentary - follows the charismatic and charming Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a former child minister grown into a performing preacher, disillusioned with the idea of exorcisms, who agrees to bring a film crew along on his last exorcism to expose the practice as fakery.

Rev. Marcus and the camera crew travel to an isolated farm in rural Louisiana, where widower Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) believes his teenage daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell), is possessed by a demon and is slaughtering his cattle at night.

For the first half-hour of this comparatively short (83 minute) movie nothing out of the ordinary happens as we get to know Cotton, his family, his motivations and his beliefs and the groundwork is laid for future events. But after his 'phony' exorcism things start to get creepy and then escalate in wonderfully unpredictable ways as it becomes clear there is a real demon at work (one disappointment is that the scene on the cover of the DVD doesn't appear anywhere in the movie!)

In this era of Grand Guignol torture-porn it makes a refreshing change to see a horror film that uses intelligence, magician's misdirection and subtly to unnerve it audience. I was completely taken in by the fact that I couldn't guess what was going to happen next during the core of the movie and believed in the actors one hundred per cent.

All the performances are spot-on, but particularly powerful are Patrick Fabian as the 'con man' forced to re-examine his cynicism and Ashley Bell as the unnerving innocent victim, twisting her demon-wracked body in all sorts of contortions  (without the aid of special effects, I am led to believe).

Compared to, say, Cloverfield the shaking, hand-held camera isn't too intrusive and there are moments (mainly when Nell steals the camera in the night) that the film couldn't have worked any other way.

This isn't a film that relies on sudden shocks to get it scares - although there are a couple - rather it relies on suggestion and psychological manipulation, dropping hints along the way as to what's really going on, although the chances are you won't piece everything together until the credits are rolling.

For the most part, The Last Exorcism relies on subtle, edge-of-the-seat tension (in the style of The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project, as I've already said, which is why it was a shame that the ending veered off into pseudo-Lovecraftian territory with a set-up that sadly reminded me of both Hot Fuzz and K-9 And Company: A Girl's Best Friend, neither of which exactly rank as the pinnacle of horror cinema.

Stylistically, the shaky-cam/faux documentary approach certainly carries the movie, adding an air of Truth that helped sell the discrete horror, but it also rather undermined the ending - not that we needed to see everything that was going on, but frankly it made the audience all the more aware of how ridiculous the scenario was and somehow managed to undo the carefully stitched verisimilitude that director Daniel Stamm had created.

It's as though the ending actually showed too much and was almost unnecessary, which is a massive shame because, although produced by Eli Roth (and it was his name used to, rather misleadingly, sell the film), The Last Exorcism is the total antithesis of the gore-splattered horror - in the vein of Saw and Hostel - one usually associates with Roth's work.

HEALTH UPDATE: Getting There... Slowly!

I won an official Women's Euros' ball!

In the weeks since my two days of hospital tests, my GP has done a 180 on her approach to my condition and done a magnificent job of chasing up my necessary referral.

I now have an appointment with the Orthopaedics department at the end of the month... for further examination and more tests, Rachel and I presume. Still not quite the physiotherapy we were hoping for, but I guess there's a protocol for these things.

As well as the near constant pain in my spine (and often in my legs when I try to get up or sit down), it's just frustrating and depressing not being able to do the normal things I used to do without thinking (such as reorganising a shelf, picking a book up off the floor, taking a shower, put the bins out, load the dishwasher etc).

Even my reading has been impacted. Due to the discomfort caused by any suitable reading posture (unlike TV watching in my fully-extended recliner) I've hardly read a thing. While I was at the hospital the other week I read a huge chunk of Carrie, but nothing since. I've managed a couple of chapters of the graphic novel "Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?".

However, the most annoying thing is that I set aside an afternoon this week to try and make a dent in my growing pile of unread comic books... and only managed two! Each one I got about half way through and had to take a nap before resuming.

On the other hand, a wonderful distraction during this period was following the Lionesses through to their second triumphant win at the Euros. Sadly, the footie fun is all over now until the next big tournament (which I guess is the World Cup in 2027, although there will be men's international football in between).

After witnessing this marvellous moment of sporting history, I was determined to win myself a Lucy Bronze England top (she's incredible, Proper English, played the entire tournament with a broken tibia). I investigated the cost of a genuine replica top... and it was £99 plus shipping!

So that was a big no, but several major companies were running competitions for serious merch. I don't usually bother with such things, but I was really hooked on the idea of that shirt (even if it wasn't actually being offered as a prize).

In the ultimate irony (given my current condition), I won an Adidas match football through an Amazon sweepstakes.

At first I thought it would make for a good joke, and anecdote, however once it arrived this week I immediately fell in love with it. Not sure where I'm going to put it (or what I'm going to do with it) but it's an undeniably cool memento of the Lionesses victory.

My prize

Meanwhile, Rachel's dad has installed a second handrail on our stairs, which is such a boon.

I can now - sometimes - use both rails to get down the stairs,  although going up the stairs is still incredibly hard. More times than not I end up either back on my arse or doing some kind of spider-walking (Linda Blair in The Exorcist-style), using whatever limbs have strength at that moment.

The new (left-hand) stair rails installed by Rachel's dad this week

The new rail is a godsend

Obviously, I hope my puny muscles will build up (through my weekly exercise class, my own exercises at home, and the general use of my walking frame) so I can master walking up and down stairs again... rather than feeling "trapped" on whichever floor I happen to be on at the moment.

Not only has Rachel invested in a walking frame for me, but also a wheelchair - of similar design to the one we initially hired, but with a separate cushion in it.

The chair means, when I can face it, I won't have to stay indoors as much I have been... and we can actually visit places.

This is what we used to go to the cinema to see Fantastic Four: First Steps. One thing we took away from that experience is that, despite ramps and wheelchair places in their auditoriums, our multiplex is not easy for wheelchair users to navigate.

The airlock doors into the screens are so heavy (and open towards you when you are going in, as do the doors to the disabled toilets) that it was nigh on impossible for Rachel to manage the door and chair-bound me simultaneously. We found ourselves relying on the kindness of strangers to hold open the doors.

If I'd had a self-propelled chair and was, somehow, there on my own, I'd never have got through any of the doorways without the assistance of random fellow cinema-goers!

Everything is moving so slowly these days... and I'm generally not a patient person (as Rachel will tell you), but thanks to my brilliant wife, her parents, and our friends we are making some kind of progress.

Posing on the stairs: this is currently about as far up as I can walk normally,
but I shall keep trying

[REC] (2007)

It must be a nightmare trying to conjure up an entirely new idea for a horror film these days, but the Spanish writer/directors of [REC], Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, took a good stab at it.

A TV reporter (the amazingly cute Manuela Velasco) and her camerman are filming a "day in the life" documentary about a local fire crew, when the call comes in to rescue a woman trapped in her apartment.

Unfortunately this routine job turns out to be anything but when the old woman suddenly attacks and bites one of her saviours.

Things spiral out of control from there, when the people in the apartment block find they have been sealed in by the police and special forces - because of a "possible infectious outbreak".

As with Cloverfield, The Blair Witch Project, Man Bites Dog, Diary Of The Dead and probably several others I've missed, the film is entirely seen from the point-of-view of the unseen TV cameraman, making the audience very much a part of the action, limiting our knowledge of what's going on to what the reporter sees and hears.

It's superbly paced from the get-go, with events almost happening in 'real time', with thrills and spills snowballing as the 'outbreak' in the apartment block gets increasingly out of control.

Manuela Velasco

As TV journalist Ángela, Manuela Velasco is amazingly easy on the eye, and a convincing actress to boot, while the rest of the cast were clearly chosen for their 'non-film star' looks, which adds to the authenticity of the piece.

[REC] drip feeds the clues as to what's really going on, but it doesn't long for a savvy audience to grasp the fact that we're seeing a zombie outbreak up close and personal, which is why it's mystifying - and intriguing - when the plot takes a sudden and unexpected left turn into Exorcist territory towards the end.

I love films that let me figure out what's going on for myself, but this sudden shift from scientific reasoning to supernatural weirdness caught me totally off balance.

There had been mutterings from an elderly couple earlier, that hinted at there being more to this than meets the eye, but this was a major leap of faith by the film-makers that I wish had been developed slightly earlier.

Nevertheless, [REC] is a brilliant zombie flick, and a major change of pace from the usual Romero fare (not that there's anything wrong with that), so is well worth checking out if you're into zombie action horror... or just want to watch a really cute Spanish woman running around in a vest top for the better part of 75 minutes.

[REC] was remade in the States, for audiences who can't handle sub-titles, as Quarantine.

Evil Dead (2013)

A group of friends go to an isolated family cabin in the woods to help one of their number, Mia (Jane Levy), go cold turkey.

When they arrive they discover the cabin has been broken into and a foul stench - that only Mia can smell - leads them to the fruit cellar where it appears a black magic ritual has been performed in the recent past.

They also discover an ancient book down there, secured with barbed wire, bound in human flesh and written in blood.

When inquisitive school teacher Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) tries to read the book, he unknowingly unleashes demonic forces from Hell...

Evil Dead is a reworking of Sam Raimi's original 1981 "spam-in-a-cabin", horror masterpiece, The Evil Dead (and is produced by the three men at the heart of this undying franchise: Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell).

By the end of the pre-credits, scene-setting, opening I knew I was going to like this film.

While it may take visual and stylistic cues from the original (and Evil Dead II and, even The Exorcist), this "parallel universe" Evil Dead - as Bruce Campbell calls it in the extras - mixes things up nicely to keep fans on their toes. There is no analogue of the Ash character, for instance (this was one of the things in the script that sealed Campbell's involvement).

Dressed up in modern sensibilities, the movie delivers a pretty unrelenting cavalcade of carnage, only sagging momentarily as it takes a breather at the end of the second act before kicking things up a gear again for a blood-drenched finale.

Grand Guignol writ large, this is not a film for the faint of heart and while it has some moments of darkest black humour, it plays its horror straight and with conviction.

Except for the slight "cheat" on defeating the demon (the film's one major weak point in my view, in its need to conform to the "last girl" trope), the screenplay by director Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues is unforgetably brutal, gruesome and inventive.

It manages to play merry havoc with the everyday household items found in the cabin (Stanley knife, electric meat carver, nail gun and... er... chainsaw) in wince-inducing ways without resorting to stale torture porn.

By no stretch is this Evil Dead better than the original - or its sequel (which itself was pretty much a remake) - but it is a wild reinvention that both honours the '80s version and takes it in new directions.