J*A*S*M

Olympic level in the discipline of "inducing a feeling of deep inner turmoil". I haven't seen something so often beautiful, yet repulsive and disturbing in a long time. And my apologies to A24 for wrongly suspecting it of producing a straightforward war blockbuster. It's, of course, another auteur film, just the way we like it.

What starts as a very slow genre film demanding a patient viewer, with a very likeable sinister atmosphere, turns into a sequence of authentically scary scenes just before the halfway point. I enjoyed it. But then one plotline climaxes and the story takes a bit of a turn, and you suddenly realise that you are watching something more ambitious and sweeping than you had initially thought. And at that moment you regrets watching it with not very good English subtitles, because you get a bit lost in it :D So my advice at the moment is to wait for better language support, I'll definitely watch it again then to catch some details. Still, I suspect there hasn't been a better Asian horror film of this calibre since The Wailing.

I feel like a bit of an oddball for rating an obviously authentically loved by all bizarre film as low as I do, but I just don't see it there. And I've given it a chance twice! First time a couple of weeks ago, I gave up after 15 minutes, thinking it must have hit me in a bad mood. Today, the second time, I made it to the end, but no. I didn't laugh once, and I'm not even sure what I was supposed to laugh at. When you get the Teletubbies stoned and dress them in black and white, you get stoned black and white Teletubbies. They're still Teletubbies, not an independent film masterpiece.

Very, very bad. I'm surprised that the ratings here are quite high above 50 percent. Sterile and unimaginative direction, a painful script (dull characters, confusing rules, predictable twist). Baghead strikes me as an amateurish film whose makers have somewhere scrounged just enough money to give it at least a technically decent facade.

Much better than one would expect from an unsolicited prequel to a seventies classic. Nell Tiger Free follows up the gorgeousness of Servant, and Arkasha Stevenson makes a positive debut as a feature director. Stylistically, The First Omen is much more distinctive than competing mainstream studio horror films. Thus, the biggest problem is that, as a direct plot predecessor to the original The Omen, the film has a clearly laid out course and defined boundaries within which it can play. The scope for surprise is severely limited, though it must be admitted that even with the cards thus dealt, they do their best (for example, the explanation of why the bad guys are trying to manufacture the Antichrist is, for my money, totally awesome).

In the end, I think it's totally fine, the final third is where the film defends its right to exist. In the end, Immaculate is pure B-movie crap, even though it initially looks like it might have higher ambitions. Once the cards are dealt and laid out, things get pretty intense, with the film going a little further than usual in Hollywood in the last scene, and for that, thumbs up. The craftsmanship fine, the acting is fine, the locations are fine.

A new addition to my favourite sub-genre of films in which the main character loses his security of being as a result of an inexplicable phenomenon and has to cope with it somehow. They have managed to turn a great idea into a functional film for little money, brimming with a paranoid atmosphere and an escalating sense of hopelessness. There aren't many "horror" scenes as such, but the "horror" at its core is stronger and more impressive than the vast majority of pure genre films. The first half is better than the second half, and I agree with the criticisms of others that the film is not very successful in finding its footing at the end.

The film delivers what the trailer promised - it offers neither a hair more nor a hair less. A seamlessly filmed, comedy-horror gory showdown between a bunch of thugs and a little vampire ballerina in an old-fashioned family mansion. My enjoyment is practically spoiled by a couple of things that basically stem from the fact that the Radio Silence duo have done something almost identical before (and better). Ready or Not remains unsurpassed, having offered a more likeable and charismatic protagonist in particular, as well as slightly more imaginative plot motifs. Abigail is four-fifths of the way through, behind the viewer who saw the trailer. It's not until the very end that a few twists happen that you don't necessarily expect.

Damn, I was almost sure I'd be more excited. After watching it, the hype bubble burst pretty loudly. The grit of the film is a pastiche of 70's TV shows, with a retro atmosphere that feels authentic. I was hoping it would realistically work as a horror film, but unfortunately, there's only a trace amount of horror. Plot-wise, the film doesn't surprise much, especially considering the few opening minutes of explanation. And for me, it kind of incomprehensibly and bizarrely fails to even stick to its concept, dropping out a couple of times. As a result, I find Late Night with the Devil to be at most an enjoyable, noteworthy little genre flick. Not a major work by any means.

Where John Wick is all about fancy choreography and nicely shot bombastic action, Monkey Man adds a more human hero with motivations closer to my own, animalism, an unadorned and attractive setting in India, mysticism, and thought-provoking social themes (even if those are only lightly pitched). Yeah, I can enjoy an "action movie" in this form. Audiovisually top notch, a fantastic directorial debut.