Black Death (2010)

Fourteenth Century England is in the grip of the bubonic plague and bishop's envoy Ulric (Sean Bean) is leading a band of grizzled mercenaries to investigate rumours of an isolated village that has mysteriously remained untouched by the plague.

Driven by the belief that this 'miracle' is the work of an evil necromancer with the ability to raise the dead, they recruit novice friar Osmund (Eddie Redmayne) to guide them through the marshes that form the final stage of their journey.

However, all  are quite unprepared for what they find in the nameless village.

With strong overtones of Apocalypse Now (and its inspiration Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad), and a sprinkling - because of its powerful religious motivations - of The Wicker Man, Black Death is a flawed gem.

While Bean growls his way through charismatically as the grizzled anti-hero Ulric (a fine addition to a portfolio that embraces Richard Sharpe, Ned Stark and Boromir) and Eddie Redmayne - star of the excellent Medieval drama The Pillars Of The Earth as well as many laudable movie appearances - is great as the conflicted priest, the film has issues with its pacing.

The award-winning Black Death is suitably grim and gritty visually, but misses opportunities on its journey to the village to further explore the horrific, apocalyptic world director Christopher Smith (of Creep and Severance - not that one, the 2006 film - fame) has crafted.

Ulric's party of coin-hungry soldiers are a gloriously dirty, stinking, vicious bunch of veterans, torturers and murderers, but they are also complex individuals rather than just cookie-cutter thugs, even though they are secondary characters on Osmund's journey of self-discovery.

There is a wonderful, unnerving scene when the travellers meet a party of flagellants heading in the opposite direction down river, but we could have done with a few more moments like this before the final act.

The film then features a drawn-out epilogue, detailing the aftermath of the events that take place in the village, which is just a shade too long and overbalances the narrative as it repeats the point it is making a couple of times.

But this doesn't stop Black Death from being a powerful indictment of the 'brainwashing' power of organised religion and the excesses it can drive someone to if they believe 'God' is on their side.

Ultimately, neither the believers nor the non-believers come out of this in a particularly good light, but at least the film raises the issue in the first place.

Those looking for some kind of medieval torture fetish fare will be disappointed. Although not overly gory, Black Death isn't without its moments of blood letting, yet the few instances of torture - or suggested torture - aren't depicted graphically.

Conversely, the one real extended fight scene - a battle between bandits and Ulric's men in the woods - is more akin to a barroom brawl (with swords, maces and whatever-comes-to-hand) than any sort of elegant or stylised swordplay.

Perhaps too much information is relayed to the audience through voice-over and exposition as well (the 'explanation' of what's going on to Osmund, in the misty marshes, is heavy with atmosphere but maybe a bit of an infodump of something we probably could have worked out for ourselves).

It's a pity that the end result of Black Death doesn't quite reach the film's ambitions, because it has the look and mood down perfectly, managing to be psychologically unnerving as well as viscerally exciting and mentally challenging.

Little-Known Stop-Motion Monster Movies

Rare VHS oddities. Forgotten fantasy films. Handmade monsters hiding in places you’d never expect.

Today we’re digging into some obscure and little-seen movies that delivered surprisingly great stop-motion creatures, from demonic vultures and clay dinosaurs to cyberpunk war machines and prehistoric monsters.

Thanks to the excellent SirBootis Flicks channel for this selection.

Join The Hunt For Matthew Nichols

Two decades after her brother mysteriously disappeared on Vancouver Island, a documentary filmmaker sets out to solve his missing person's case. When a disturbing piece of evidence is revealed, she comes to believe he might still be alive.

As a fan of folk horror, I like the look of this, but the trailer gives me the impression that the filmmakers have either never seen or heard of The Blair Witch Project or have watched it way too much.

The film does come with a really neat interactive website that looks like a real timesink (again, rather Blair Witchy).

Hunting Matthew Nichols is on target to open in US cinemas on April 10.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Wicker Man (1973)

To balance up the sins of that awful Nic Cage rehash, I thought this was as good a time as any to revisit the peerless 1973 original of The Wicker Man.

Dour, puritanical, West Highland Police sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) receives an anonymous letter, telling him about the case of a missing girl - Rowan Morrison.

She was supposed to have disappeared on the secluded Summerisle, a remote Hebridean island famed for its popular and unusually abundant fruit produce.

However, when he arrives there, the islanders claim never to have heard of the girl. Even the woman Howie believes is her mother, post mistress May Morrison (Irene Sunter), denies that she's her daughter.

Realising that this investigation isn't going to be an open-and-shut case, Howie takes a room at the island's Green Man Inn, where he meets the landlord's lovely daughter, Willow (Britt Ekland, dubbed by Annie Ross).

Struggling to come to terms with the girl's disappearance evolving into a question of semantics, humourless Howie of the 'fun police' grows increasingly frustrated with the islanders' pagan ways of public nudity, dogging, fertility rituals, singing (there's so many songs in The Wicker Man it could be classed as a musical), dancing etc.

Finding a grave for the missing girl, Howie gains permission from the island's head honcho, the charismatic Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), to exhume her body... only to find that Rowan's coffin doesn't contain her body.

As May Day draws near, Howie begins to suspect that Rowan isn't really dead, but being held hostage to be used in a pagan sacrifice to ensure that the island's crops don't fail as they did the year before.

Of course, we all know that the machinations of the islanders are far more sinister than that, leading to the classic - and well-known - climax (that doesn't involve bees).

It was my late father who introduced me to The Wicker Man and therefore it has always held a special significance for me.

I watched the director's cut, which had been shown on Film 4, so it had all the bits that had been cut out of the original release (just in lower quality, which is a shame because it makes those scenes draw attention to themselves for the wrong reasons).

Surely, there must be technology now that could restore these low-quality scenes to the standard of the rest of the film? That would be worth sacrificing a few virgins for, right?

It's been too long since I've seen The Wicker Man, despite it being one of my favourite movies (not just in this genre, but of all-time), and I was reminded just how many moments were lifted from it for the more recent remake... and yet that still managed to get so much wrong.

Not a scary horror per se, The Wicker Man is disorientating and unnerving, and its very lack of overt supernatural elements gives it a terrifying verisimilitude that makes you wonder if perhaps such events could still occur in modern times.

And it's always worth being reminded of this:

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Wicker Man (2006)

To quote the late, great Edward Woodward from the original Wicker Man:

What have I just watched?

I'm not sure what made Neil LaBute think he could - and should - remake The Wicker Man, one of the finest rural horror movies ever captured on film, or why he thought Nic Cage would make the perfect stand in for Edward Woodward.

Now, I'm a big fan of Cage, particularly when he's allowed to go completely off the hook (cf. Mandy), but in this unnecessary reboot he's kept too restrained and uptight, almost constipated, as the bee-allergic Edward Malus.

A former motorcycle cop, coping with PTSD after he failed to save a young woman and her daughter from a car fire, Edward receives a mysterious letter (hand written with a wax seal and no stamp - so, not strange at all in this day and age) from his ex-fiancée, Willow Woodward (Kate Beahan), telling him that her daughter has gone missing.

Willow's back living on the secluded, private island where she was raised, which, when he gets there, Edward discovers is a farming commune, a matriarchal cult led by the enigmatic Sister SummersIsle (Ellen Burstyn).

Except for Willow, the islanders aren't pleased to see Edward or help him in his investigations, claiming either that Willow's daughter, Rowan (Erika-Shaye Gair), never existed or died in a tragic accident.

Learning that the island is also home to many, many bee hives, Edward gets the general runaround, being led a merry - and totally random - dance by the natives, until the inevitable Wicker Man climax of the piece.

This will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the original (which, like the chestburster in Alien, has become a pop culture meme that reaches way beyond geeks and horror movie buffs).

The use of papyrus font in the opening credits didn't bode well, but I was determined to grin and bear it, to see if this version of The Wicker Man was truly as awful as everyone said.

Honestly, there could have been a half-decent horror film in the bones of LaBute's Wicker Man, if he had had the courage to make it its own thing and shed the allusions to the peerless original.

As it stands, it brings nothing new to the party and elements like the "Easter Egg" of Edward's first name and Willow's surname just come across as a bit crass and heavy-handed (like a big sign saying "oooh, aren't we clever?").

The weirdness of the islanders is so arch and on-the-nose that it's as if Edward has landed  somewhere between The League Of Gentlemen's Royston Vasey and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, an over-the-top parody rather than a serious attempt to replicate the unnerving and atmospheric horror of the original Summerisle.

The pacing is plodding and pedestrian to begin with, interlaced with some hilariously awful dialogue, as evidenced in the truly bizarre "oh god, not the bees" scene.

And the fact that the film requires an epic infodump in the final sequence to explain to Edward what's happening was the icing on a particularly drab cake.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Antrum - The Deadliest Film Ever Made (2018)

As I've said many times I have a particular weakness for stories about cursed media, such as Cigarette Burns, Archive 81, Deadwax, The Hills Run Red, etc but the conceit of these movies tends to be that we, at most, see and hear only glimpses of the cursed object while our protagonists track it down and, invariably, suffer the fate of all those who have pursued it in the past.

The unique gimmick of 2018's Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made is that we, the audience, are seeing the entire movie for ourselves, bookended by a pair of mockumentary segments, establishing the terrifying backstory and provenance of this "unique" print of a legendary 1970s Bulgarian (?) movie called Antrum that has left a trail of death in its wake.

In a sense, we are now the protagonists in the story of this artefact, "daring" to watch it despite its existential reputation.

The central movie-within-the-movie, while occasionally horrific and tense (because we keep expecting something to happen due to the manufactured reputation attached to what we are now watching), is essentially a grim, but possibly grittily mundane, nightmarish tale about a couple of children, Oralee (Nicole Tompkins) and Nathan (Rowan Smyth), on a camping trip.

The film opens with their beloved family dog, Maxine, being put down by a vet.

Nathan is traumatised by this, especially when his mother (Kristel Elling) suggests that Maxine has gone to Hell (for reasons we discover later in the film).

So Oralee hits upon the idea of taking her younger brother out into some spooky woods (clearly inspired by Japan's infamous Aokigahara forest) to dig a tunnel down to Hell to rescue the soul of Maxine.

Oralee has it all planned out as a therapeutic exercise, but her scheme goes awry as strange things start to happen and they stumble across a farm belonging to a pair of degenerate, white trash individuals (Dan Istrate and Circus-Szalewski) who like to capture people and cook them inside a giant brass effigy of Baphomet.

Although the role of the cannibals isn't particularly protracted, I still felt this was the weakest element of the film, a peculiar random encounter with shades of Texas Chain Saw Massacre meets the grisly realism of Man Bites Dog, jumbled in with the demonic terrors (imagined or otherwise) that the siblings were also contending with.

While this story on its own is a powerful thriller, with strong horror elements, the overriding unease of the film comes from what has supposedly been done to the print of Antrum that we are watching.

The documentary portions of the larger film acknowledge that there are subliminal images and symbols cut into the movie print, but there are plenty of other details (from Midsommar-style "faces" in the background of scenes to words scratched onto the negative) left for us to discover on our own, along with occasional odd jump cuts and auditory strangeness that really gets under your skin if you let it.

A puzzle box of a picture, where you find yourself searching for clues to the bigger picture while still being invested in the story of the two siblings in the woods, Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made has definite shades of The Blair Witch Project and a soupçon of additional David Lynch weirdness about it.

Actually a Canadian horror film written and directed by David Amito and Michael Laicini, Antrum deserves praise for its hardcore attempt to establish a verisimilitude around the supernatural print of this supposedly cursed movie.

If you allow yourself to buy into this, even if just for the 95 minute running time of the movie, this has the potential to stay with you for the longest time... and don't be surprised if find yourself tempted to watch it again to see if you missed anything.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Hagazussa (2017)

Imagine David Lynch remade The Witch, but set it in 15th Century Austria and you might have some idea of what to expect from the totally weird Hagazussa.

For the first half-hour of this glacially-paced movie young Albrun (Celina Peter) nurses her sickly mother Martha (Claudia Martini), who is seemingly dying of the plague, in an isolated shack up in the snowy Alps.

Then the story jumps forward in time and Albrun is all grown-up (Aleksandra Cwen), a full-time goat-herder with a child of her own (Gerdi Marlen Simonn) to care for, although there is no sign of the father.

Shot with a Lynchian obsession for misty landscapes, wind through tree branches, and extreme close-ups of nature, Hagazussa is unrelentingly grim, atmospheric, folk horror.

Just when you think the story can't get any darker, it goes there.

Major kudos to Aleksandra Cwen who pretty much carries the bulk of the movie on her own - with the aid of her amazingly expressive eyes, which writer/director Lukas Feigelfeld makes great use of when the subject matter crosses that line where suggestion is the only way to go.

Like The Head Hunter, there is minimal (German) dialogue (with English subtitles), so it's left largely to the viewer to piece together a narrative that suits the visuals.

Albrun and her mother have been shunned by the nearby community as "witches", but with the intervention of the local priest, Albrun is befriended by local woman Swinda (Tanja Petrovskij).

However, this takes an unexpectedly unpleasant turn.

Now, my reading of what I witnessed in Hagazussa is that the plague that then comes to the community is Albrun's revenge, but the ultra-grim events that follow are the price she has to pay for the black magic.

The multiple taboo-busting, potentially triggering, nastiness that unfolds in the final third of the 102-minute film makes The Witch look like a Carry On film in comparison.

This certainly isn't a movie for those who think jump scares are the height of horror movie craftsmanship or embrace frenetic slasher flicks as the "one true way" for the genre.

Playing heavily with the paranoia of isolation, as well as Lovecraftian fear of the unknown heightened by religious indoctrination,  Hagazussa is unnerving and horrific, rather than frightening.

You're more likely to feel a bit nauseous than scared. 

This is art house horror, plunging deeper and deeper into the dark pit of the human soul on a more cerebral than visceral level (not that that there isn't viscera on display!).

Hagazussa takes the idea of the "slow burn" to excruciating new lengths, but definitely gets under your skin if you're willing to surrender yourself to it.

Right up until the final moment. Then, bizarrely, taking a leaf out of low-budget '80s fantasy, everything randomly ends in inexplicable fire.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Gretel & Hansel (2020)

In an unsettling, timeless, fairy tale reality, during a period of pestilence, young Gretel (Sophia Lillis) and Hansel (Samuel Leakey) are driven out of their home by their deranged, widowed, mother (Fiona O'Shaughnessy), and told to fend for themselves.

Wandering through the neverending forest, they meet a helpful huntsman, (Charles Babalola), who directs them towards a community of wood workers who will take them in.

However, before they get there, they are distracted by the sweet smell of cake coming from a lovely, isolated, house, where they encounter a kindly old woman (Alice Krige), who offers them food and board.

Soon, they have fallen under the spell of the woman's generosity, even though Gretel - who is gifted with 'second sight' - is initially quite cynical and paranoid.

Gretel's mood seems to change, though, when the woman reveals herself to be a witch and starts teaching Gretel how to master her craft.

Unfortunately for Gretel, Hansel has started to get itchy feet by this point and wants to move on.

Then he disappears.

We all know the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, and Rob Hayes's script captures the mood of this old story perfectly, building on it and tying in Gretel's journey into womanhood and the 'burden' of being a surrogate mother to Hansel.

Tapping into similar vibes as both Hagazussa and, to a lesser degree, The Witch, Gretel & Hansel is a languid, lyrical, art house rural horror yarn that most definitely won't appeal to everyone.

The primary emphasis is on mood and atmosphere, focussing largely, as it does, on just the main three characters (the lovely Jessica De Gouw, from Pennyworth, Arrow, and Underground, does pop up as a different face of the witch on occasion).

Beautifully directed by Oz Perkins, rather than an epic action film, Gretel & Hansel is a small coming-of-age narrative told through the slightly disorientating lens of magic realism.

There's no particular depth, beyond what is obvious, but that's no bad thing when retelling a well-known fairy story in this grounded style.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Lovely, Dark, and Deep (2023)

Socially-awkward Lennon (Krypton and Barbarian's Georgina Campbell) lands a position as a backcountry ranger in the (fictional) Arvores National Park.

The massive park is known for the large number of people who go missing there, including Lennon's sister when they were youngsters.

Lennon is determined to find out what is really going on in the dark and creepy liminal spaces of the heavily forested park, but encounters a conspiracy of silence among her work colleagues.

Head-strong and determined to march to the beat of her own drum, Lennon disobeys a direct order during a hunt for a missing person (who she actually ends up rescuing, thus attracting the ire of whatever is lurking in the darkness) and finds herself on five days notice.

It is during these final days of her first season in the park that things start to get really strange.

I had high hopes that Lovely, Dark, and Deep would be a solid blend of two of my favourite horror sub-genres: rural horror and cosmic horror, but ultimately it falls into a well-trodden formula seen in so many similar movies.

While it's thankfully not as grating as a pretentious Ben Wheatley rural horror outing, early Blair Witch and Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes soon give way to obtuse, clichéd and random imagery. 

There's an overly-long nightmare sequence that has Lynchian aspirations, and is clearly meant to be the closest we'll get to an explanation of events, but much of it ultimately comes off as being weird for weird's sake.

The film, written and directed by Teresa Sutherland (who wrote the far-superior The Wind) clearly has good intentions; there's an interesting idea buried in there but as a story it's poorly told.

The cycle of sacrifice to the hungry and unknowable spirits that inhabit the woods is a really novel concept, but is hidden among a lot of unnecessary distraction padding out the 87-minute run time. 

Clearly there isn't enough of the main plot, as written, to satisfactorily fill the movie's duration and so atmospheric artistry is called upon to inflate what is there.

On one hand there actually was much to admire in Lovely, Dark, and Deep but on the other was the inescapable fact that it was thin fare, reminiscent of so many other movies - both better and worse.

Hellbender (2021)

Lonely teenager Izzy (Zelda Adams) lives in an isolated house on a wooded mountain with her mum (Toby Poser).

They have a fun life, foraging in the woods, making rock music as a White Stripes-like combo called H6llb6nd6r, painting, and homeschooling.

But Izzy wants to meet other kids of her own age.

She believes her mother is shielding her from people because she has an immune deficiency disease, but the audience very quickly learns that Izzy's mother is actually a powerful witch.

She's a Hellbender, a powerful demonic-witch that gains power from the fear coursing through the blood of their prey.

Stealing away from her mother's smothering protection, Izzy makes friends with some local teenagers, but when they are partying, she gets coerced into drinking a Tequila shot with a wriggling earthworm in it.

Consuming the flesh of a living creature triggers Izzy's latent Hellbender powers, causing her to freak out.

On one hand, her mother is pleased that Izzy has discovered her legacy, but now she has to teach her daughter how to marshal her powers responsibly.

Unfortunately, Izzy is drawn to the allure of power.

Hellbender is a small, but mighty, character study, written and directed by, and starring, the incredibly talented Adams family.

The character chemistry is real because Toby Poser, wife of director John Adams, is really the mother of Zelda Adams, while Zelda's sister Lulu plays the first friend Izzy makes, Amber. John also pops up on screen as Amber's uncle.

With the script credited to John, Zelda, and Toby, and the latter two listed as directors alongside John, the development of Hellbender was clearly an organic process.

But just because this is a family affair - and their band, H6llb6nd6r, provides the soundtrack to the movie - doesn't mean Hellbender is a low budget am dram debacle.

The film is a cracking, psychedelic, surreal, folk horror tale powered along by escalating tension and terror, splattered with buckets of blood, and inventive special effects.

Early on there are Carrie vibes to the proceedings, but while the inciting incident does involve Izzy's peers, this isn't your typical teen-centric splatterflick, instead concentrating primarily on the relationship between mother and daughter.

A coming-of-age story with a difference, in a very real sense we're seeing a "monster" movie from the perspective of the monster.

Great thought has clearly gone into developing the mythology of the Hellbenders, from the source of their powers, through their grisly blood-magic, to their method of reproduction.

Building to a magnificent climax, for me the film was slightly let down by its open-ended denouement, where I'd rather hoped for something more definitive.

But then again, that feeds into the concept of this being a creature feature told by the creatures.

With an 86-minute running time, and small cast, the pacing of Hellbender is perfect from the get-go to the icky finale.

With a traditional antagonist becoming the protagonist, and no real antagonists to worry about, and by staying laser-focused on its central characters, with no distracting sub-plots, the end result is a truly memorable experience. 

I cannot wait to see what this unique troupe of cast and crew conjure up next, because they clearly have an affinity with horror movies, and their familial trust allows them to push their stories in interesting directions.

The Borderlands (2013)

I am my own worst enemy. Despite frequently voicing my dislike of found footage films, I still picked up British horror flick The Borderlands because it featured an actor I'd heard of before (a rarity in most no-budget found footage films).

Gordon Kennedy (from Robin Hood and countless other British TV shows) is Deacon, a member of a team of investigators from the Vatican who investigate claims of miracles. In this case they are sent to an old, but recently reopened, church in the West Country where the young village priest, Father Crellick (Luke Neal) is making claims of supernatural activity.

Deacon has been saddled with non-religious technical assistant, Gray (Robin Hill), who starts off as the single most obnoxious and annoying character you could imagine, but by the end of the film transforms into an almost sympathetic character.

The film suffers from many of the usual faults of the found footage genre, with the most insulting being the belief that it doesn't need to explain what's happening because "that's just what was shown on the film".

Quite early on there's an implied animal cruelty sequence that nearly made me turn the film off in disgust - not that you see anything, but the sounds are revolting. I'm glad I stuck with it, especially as this barbaric act by the local hooligans turns out to be a red herring that the film could have done without.

But it does demonstrate the importance of audio in the story. Much of what follows is a lot less on-the-nose.

As Deacon's investigations progress, there are strong hints about a backstory to what is occurring and dark practices that have gone on at the site in the past, but the climax of the piece, while a visual thrill ride, doesn't tell us anywhere near enough to figure out what it is we are supposed to be seeing.

Sadly, this isn't the only weakness in The Borderlands. For example, there is no rational explanation for why - after a shocking suicide - Deacon returns to the church to further his investigations... in the middle of the night!

Then, when Deacon's mentor, Father Calvino (Patrick Godfrey), is flown in to assist our heroes,  they again, return to the church - which appears to have no working lights - as the sun is setting.

Ultimately, the found footage/shaky-cam gimmick is a hindrance to the story writer/director Elliot Goldner is trying to tell. I strongly believe that if this story had been shot as a straight horror movie it could have been another worthy addition to the canon of unnerving British rural horror.

But as it stands, the only real shocks come from a couple of cheap jump scares, which undermine the moments of actual tension and some of the subtler attempts to send chills down the spine of attentive audience members.

There's clearly a bigger story here than we are shown - particularly the influence that whatever is under the church is having on the nearby village - but it's only ever hinted at when it should have been brought to the forefront.

A Field In England (2013)

During the English Civil War, an alchemist's cowardly assistant, Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith), is tasked with tracking down rogue alchemist O'Neill (Michael Smiley) after the villain made off with some occult tomes that belonged to Whitehead's master.

Caught up on the periphery of a battle, Whitehead falls in with a trio of deserters who are making their way across a field towards a tavern - little realising that one of these men, Cutler (Ryan Pope), is actually in league with O'Neill.

The men are captured by O'Neill - with Cutler's aid - and forced to help him in his search for buried treasure. Only, instead, they unearth "terrifying energies trapped inside the field".

On paper this set-up sounds promising and reading the critical response to the film (courtesy of the film's Wikipedia page) I knew I was in for something a bit out of the ordinary.

What I got instead was a pretentious 'student film project' with inflated ideas about its own self-importance.

I find it truly mind-boggling that "serious film critics" have no problems slagging off Hollywood blockbusters that are meant to be pure entertainment but sit them in front of drivel like A Field In England and they will pontificate on its "challenging nature" and "audaciousness" until the cows come home rather than simply saying: that was a load of shit.

As an indicator of how shallow the film actually is, at one point we're hit with the stunningly original revelation that the real treasure in the field was not gold but the friendship that had developed between the men. Pass the bucket, please, I think I'm going to throw up.

It's not as if A Field In England is even that well made.

There's some very poor editing choices (particularly when - for no explained reason - the men are suddenly having a tug-of-war match with an unseen opponent, who may have been an intricately engraved post but this is never entirely clear) and the hallucinogenic sequence that comes in at about the hour mark - and seems to go on forever - is quite clever in parts but ultimately serves little purpose beyond giving the viewer a headache. Woe betide anyone with photosensitive epilepsy who accidentally watches this (there is a warning at the start of the film).

Let's not even dwell on the moments when suddenly all the actors stand stock still - in obviously 'very important' poses - like children playing statues when the music stops.

And that bit in my plot summary above about the "terrifying forces trapped inside the field", I only got that that from the blurb on the back of the Blu-Ray. You certainly don't get that from the film. The men eat some magic mushrooms, go a bit loopy (cue strobing, kaleidoscopic flashing imagery) then someone off-camera turns on a giant wind machine that blows over O'Neill's tent!

Things happen without explanation that we are, presumably, supposed to view as "highly significant" but instead just come across as daft as they have no context (such as the fellow who comes back to life and alerts O'Neill to where his friends are hiding, then the next thing you know he's attacking O'Neill).

But talking of things happening without explanation there's no real justification for shooting the film in black and white - except to go some way (but not far enough) to masking its £300,000 budget. It also only involves five actors on screen for 99 per cent of the movie (there's a brief cameo from The Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt at the start) and all the action takes place in a single field.

In a nutshell, this has to be the biggest waste of 90 minutes of my life I've endured in a long while. I simply can't recommend A Field In England to anyone as there is nothing here that hasn't been done better elsewhere.

I was hoping for a minimalist slice of magic realism or avant-garde horror to add to my library of very British rural horror films that I so adore, but instead I got a headache and a nagging sense that I'd just been conned out of the cost of a Blu-Ray.

• You can read about some of the background behind the making of this "revolutionary" movie on The Independent website here.

Pet Sematary (2019)

Overworked Boston ER doctor Louis Creed wants to spend more time with his family.

So he gets a job at a university and moves, with his wife, Rachel (Amy Seimetz), eight-year-old daughter Ellie (Jeté Laurence), toddler Gage (Hugo Lavoie/Lucas Lavoie), and Church the cat, to rural Maine.

In the woodlands at the end of their garden they discover the local "pet sematary", which is doing roaring business with the road that passes by the front of their property being a popular route for high-speed commercial haulage.

This is rather awkward as Rachel has problems explaining the concept of death to Ellie, as she blames herself for the death of her disabled sister.

Unfortunately, Church is run over by a lorry within days of the family moving in.

Friendly neighbour Jud (John Lithgow) shows Louis to a place beyond the 'pet sematary', deeper in the woods, where they bury the cat.

And the next day Church returns.

However, Louis quickly discovers it hasn't come back as the friendly family pet they remember.

As Jud - who had a similar experience with his family dog when he was younger - says: "Sometimes dead is better."

But then, on Ellie's ninth birthday, tragedy strikes the family and Louis is driven to an act that will their change their family forever.

Released digitally in the UK this week, Pet Sematary is, of course, not only an adaptation of the famous Stephen King novel, but a remake of the 1986 movie.

This new version, directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, from a screenplay by Jeff Buhler of Matt Greenberg's story based on King's novel(!), certainly tightens up some of the messy storytelling of the original (such as limiting the ghostly presence of Victor Pascow to, largely, a disembodied voice, while Rachel's visions of her sister are most definitely disturbed nightmares).

But there's still the central issue of why Jud would ever share his knowledge of the place where the dead can be brought back in the first place, because - as we saw in the first iteration of this cinematic tale - there's not a single jot of proof that these resurrections ever have a happy ending.

While I liked the Derry road sign Easter Egg, I felt that the potential "folk horror" aspect of the rural tale, as suggested by the children's parade to the 'pet sematary' (a striking element of the trailers and featured on the poster above), was a missed opportunity.

It turns out that the pet funeral procession was never utilised again; in truth the main characters don't even really interact with it.

Beyond letting the Creeds know about the cemetery at the end of their garden (which they could have found anyway), it serves simply as an excuse to give Ellie a scary mask for the final act.

Kudos though to young Jeté Laurence who turns in a terrifying performance at the climax of the movie - for instance, her conversation with her father, when he puts her to bed after her bath, is genuinely chilling.

And while it's the sort of ending I usually appreciate, I was unsure of the need for the nihilistic turn the story took in its closing scenes (unless that's the direction the original novel took).

I guess it's to show the dangers of bringing humans back from the dead, instead of just animals.

And potentially setting up a more apocalyptic, zombie-style, sequel...

The Toll (2020)

A jet-lagged traveller from Chicago, Cami (Jordan Hayes, who has a look of Kate Mara about her), lands at Hamilton International Airport in Canada in the middle of the night.

She has flown up to visit her dad who lives on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, but her flight was delayed by a storm, so she now has to hail a rideshare to complete her journey.

The overly chatty and socially awkward driver, Spencer (Max Topplin, who has a bit of Tim Key, from recent Alan Partridge series, about him), kind of gets on Cami's nerves, but she really starts to freak out when his GPS sends them off down a dark road she has never travelled before.

However, checking Spencer's route, Cami accepts that this is an alternate way to her dad's place.

Only shortly after that, when they are heading down a pitch black country road, they are suddenly spooked by someone seemingly stepping out in front of the car.

But when they check, there's no one there.

Unfortunately, getting back into the car, Spencer discovers it won't start and they are stranded.

Both he and Cami, separately, decide to walk and look for help, but whichever direction they go, they end up back at the car.

That is just the beginning of their night of terrifying weirdness.

All credit to writer-director Michael Nader, The Toll does a phenomenal job of slowly building tension, then easing off, then escalating matters once again.

Nader's track record has primarily been with short films, and while this certainly has the feeling of a well-contained short horror film, it doesn't drag its heels or feel padded.

Beginning as a very modern psychological horror, with Cami's growing paranoia about being 'trapped' in a car with a peculiar stranger, the story then takes a dramatic supernatural turn that increasingly reminded me of the unusual occurrences in As Above, So Below.

For the first half an hour, of this 75-minute movie, we're just with Cami and Spencer, and the strained atmosphere feels so unnervingly real.

It's the early hours of the morning, they're alone in some dark, spooky woods, without phone service, with only Spencer's bow and arrow for protection (he's a bow hunter, who keeps his equipment in the boot of his car, much to Cami's initial horror). 

It isn't until they cross paths with a local that they learn they have somehow been drawn into the parallel world of The Toll Man, a paranormal entity who - attracted by a scent of death around our protagonists - demands a payment in blood before he will let them resume their journey.

There's maybe one or two minor jump scares, but mainly The Toll relies on the psychological weapons in its arsenal, as well as such tricks as shadows moving around in the darkness behind the main characters.

Increasingly they are pulled through a series of surreal nightmares that seem determined to undermine the couple's recently developed confidence in each other, trying to force one to kill the other.

These mind-games are a supernatural spin on Jigsaw's challenges in the Saw franchise, testing the mettle of Cami and Spencer, served up by an unseen - and unheard - antagonist à la Death in the Final Destination franchise.

The dynamic between the two main characters swings back and forth, eventually going to a very dark place at the climax of the film.

While other characters do pop up, largely in the nightmare sequences, it's Jordan Hayes and Max Topplin that carry this great little Canadian fright feast.

And after watching this: I'm never getting in an Uber ever again!