Why can Cane get away with such flagrant violation of both law and logic? Well, because he’s played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It doesn’t matter what role Arnold Schwarzenegger is playing; somehow, someway he’ll end up gunning down bad guys in extravagantly ridiculous action set pieces. That’s why he’s there. He could be playing a burger flipper and he’d still manage to find a rocket launcher behind the deep fryer. In fact, the inclusion of Schwarzenegger goes a long way to explaining not just the plot holes in End of Days, but the muddled mash of both the horror and action genres.  The storyline is standard religious horror: Satan millennially returns to Earth in human-form in an attempt to procreate and seed a spawn. If he does so before the clock hits the thousand-year-mark (in other words, before New Years in any new millennium), he unleashes the Armageddon. There’s a specific woman he must impregnate – for some reason or another – and Satan and his minions seek out the young lady, whilst meanwhile a group of priests attempt to assassinate her before Satan can get his hands (and other parts) on her.

However, the inclusion of Schwarzenegger dictates that action formula will follow despite a plot better-suited to horror. So – as Jericho Cane – Schwarzenegger is sucked in to the Satan spawn scenario and with him plenty of action familiars. There’s the aforementioned helicopter stunt, battles with armed assassin-priests, a fist-fight with a demonically-powered old lady and a stupefying number of shoot-outs with Satan considering he’s immune to man-made weaponry. It’s a bizarre amalgamation of both horror and action, with both the scares and thrills suffering significantly. Too much time is devoted to Schwarzenegger’s action antics to focus on any scares or generate the potentially-frightening plot. Among the scariest moments is a subway encounter with a freakish-looking albino (who then shatters into pieces like glass along with any generated scares) and a sex-scene where Satan simultaneously screws both a mother and her (of age) daughter, whose bodies morph together for some reason never explained.

On the action front, the largest dilemma is that Satan just doesn’t suit the conventions of the action genre. While a villain that presents too little of a challenge can be particularly un-thrilling, the opposite can be just as problematic: that is, a villain who has almost unlimited power. Pitting a security personnel up against the Lord of the Underworld just isn’t believable – even in the universe of an over-the-top action flick – and both plot-holes and concessions of logic become a necessity to keep the story moving along on typical action course. End of Days goes to significant lengths to make it clear that Satan – being the nigh invincible figure that he is – cannot be harmed by any weaponry, even while in his human-form. Yet this is an Arnie-action film and thus needs the requisite gun-fights, so scene-after-scene Schwarzenegger shoots at Satan with guns, and grenade launchers, and so on – and of course scene-after-scene Satan is flung to the floor, picks himself up and sets off after our hero as if he’s just been toppled over playfully rather than riddled with bullets. It’s not just repetitive, but almost entirely nonsensical. Similarly, a variety of fundamental story issues have been ignored to keep Satan from simply dicing Jericho Cane into countless pieces as he would in real life. For instance, early on in the film we see Satan in his true-form, a CGI, translucent flying-lizard that can zip through the air at high-speeds and ignite explosions. Then the next two-hours-plus is spent with Satan chasing around Schwarzenegger in a middle-aged man’s body, which is assumingly why he can never seem to catch Schwarzenegger. Why wouldn’t Satan ditch this body for a few seconds and simply blow Schwarzenegger up? In another scene Satan magically appears in Schwarzenegger’s apartment, which raises the question of why he wouldn’t just magically appear next to Schwarzenegger instead of chasing him around on foot for the entire running-length? Along with limitless power come many limitless inconsistencies, purposely designed to keep the story moving.

When it comes to scares or thrills or any of the things we as an audience normally expect of a good horror or action film, End of Days constitutes a complete failure. Nonetheless, End of Days does work on another level, a level that typically even the worst of Schwarzenegger’s films operates on.  This is the type of film where every other sentence is a one-liner and the plots lack of logic is compensated with much ensuing absurdity. Despite any attempts at genuine scares or thrills falling short, End of Days never ceases to be entertaining, and this makes up for many of its shortfalls. There’s something very hard to hate about Arnold Schwarzenegger being tossed around by an overweight old lady (albeit a possessed one) or randomly blending day-old pizza and drinking it. Plus, any movie which has Arnie telling the devil himself that he’s a “fucking choir boy” can’t be all bad. End of Days is absurd, ridiculous, and downright dumb for the most part, but it’s also quite a bit of fun. If you’re looking for an Oscar-winner, hell, if you’re looking for something semi-coherent, skip it, but if you want something that will keep you entertained for two-hours, it’s worth a watch. And despite all its flaws, that’s more than you can say of most horror films.

The young lady who is the subject of Judith is the unfortunate sister of everyone’s favorite masked psychopath, Michael Myers. In the original Halloween, her role is rather limited.  She is the victim, the object of the very young Michael Myers’ rage. As creepy music blares in the background, the camera follows Michael’s point of view as he sneaks up on his sibling as she sits, naked, unaware, brushing her hair in preparation for a Halloween party. In the new tribute film, the stylized camera angle remains the same, but the writer and director try to breathe new life into the cliched character, fleshing out her personality a bit and giving her an identity beyond hacked up pretty corpse.

The idea is an excellent one. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out quite as well on screen as it does in theory. Due to the small scale of the film, many of the actors, including Sarah Stephenson who plays the title role, are a far cry from their predecessors.  The acting is at times flat and at others, overly melodramatic. Glimmers of personality occasionally shine through, but not enough to make the viewer really care about Judith as an individual. Judith’s party preparations with her friend D’arcy (Ana Gilmore) add little to her already minimal character. The chance to develop Judith’s character is sadly squandered, lost in their rather mundane conversation about boys and Halloween decorations.

On the positive side, one stylistic departure from the original works well in Judith’s favor.  The background music, both during the credits and throughout the film itself, is excellently edited.  The choice of songs adds an eerie, contemporary feel that fits in well with the over-all atmosphere. Judith’s opening credits do a good job setting up the scene of small-town folks preparing for Halloween celebrations.  The choice of the Beach Boy’s serene, oddly haunting melody “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” lends a strange sense of foreboding to the opening shots of Judith. The meticulous attention to detail in set design not only contributes to the dark tone, but is truly a homage to the original.

If only the detail that went into creating an atmospheric setting carried over to the characters. Since the film is meant to add dimension to some minor characters, it would have been interesting to also get more of a glimpse into Michael’s story. True, this tale is meant to belong to Judith, but plenty of tantalizing hints about Michael’s madness are scattered throughout the script and the set. We see his attic room where he locks himself away, listening to loud music, scribbling dark poetry on the rafters and playing with his pet tarantula. Here, liberties are taken with the Michael Myers mythos. He seems like more of an angry, sullen teenager than a deeply disturbed child when his killing spree begins.

For a film intended to offer viewers a fresh perspective on a well-known story, Judith winds up raising more questions than offering insight about the characters and their motivation. The concept is there, but the execution is lacking. And as any Halloween fan knows, in this genre, execution is everything.

The flashback sequence which opens the film immediately highlights that this particular cannibal film is going to be radically different to the jungle adventures of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and Cannibal Ferox (1981). This sequence is set in Vietnam as Captain Norman Hopper (John Saxon) and his platoon scoure the jungle for their imprisoned comrades. The two POW’s Charlie Bukowski (Giovanni Lombarde Radice) and Tom Thompson (Tony King) are so thankful to be released that one of them takes a big bite out of Hoppers arm. Unfortunately their time as Vietnamese POW’s has resulted in them becoming cannibals. The film never adequately explains how this happens, but it doesn’t really matter because we get to see plenty of shooting and the liberal shots of a soldier using a flamethrower. This sequence is marred somewhat by the cheapskate tactic of including library footage from the Vietnam War which is clumsily edited into the film. Visually at least the film gets on a more even keel when the actions shifts to Atlanta, Georgia. Hoppers nightmares are not the only manifestation of a mind troubled about events in Vietnam. The raw meat in his fridge becomes awfully tempting to him, and when seduced by the prick tease girl next door he has a little nibble on her. Meanwhile Bukowski is walking the streets (the film implies a failure in the psychiatric profession, but doesn’t have time to develop this critique) and pretty soon he’s dining on exposed human flesh. It doesn’t take long for the old Vietnam gang to get back together and pretty soon the cannibal contagion is spreading. Its up to seasoned veteran cop Captain McCoy (Wallace Wilkinson) to make the sure the spread is contained.

This film has more in common with zombie films than cannibal films. The rabies like disease that turns normal people into cannibals is really the disease of returning Vietnam veterans. The film doesn’t make any overt statement about this, but its fairly clear that the problem is the veterans themselves. The film offers no redeeming image of those who fought in the conflict, but instead seeks to emphasise their difference. They are all psychologically scarred by the conflict, but writer Dardano Sachetti goes a step further by suggesting the time spent in Indochina has altered the physical and cellular make up of these people. In this respect Cannibal Apocalypse belongs to a sub-genre of films dealing with returning Vietnam veterans that also includes Coming Home (1978), The Deer Hunter (1978) and First Blood (1982). In the shape of John Saxon the film has a protagonist with genuine pathos who is tortured by both guilt and the realisation of his difference. Radice also puts in a great performance as Bukowski whose demise in the sewers of Atlanta is the most memorable scene in the film. The labyrinthine tunnels and passageways of the sewer system offers an effective metaphor for the strangulating atmosphere of the Vietnam jungle, but just as effective is the urban nightmare of the inner city. This is as much a film about returning veterans failure to readjust to the concrete jungle. What elevates this above much of the product being produced in Italy at the time is the brilliant action scenes and numerous shootouts. Margheriti shows a real flair in his composition of these sequences that is distinctly lacking in the quieter moments of dialogue exchange. Not as gory or as violent as many of its contemporaries Cannibal Apocalypse has nevertheless endured considerable censorship over the years. Misleading title aside this is a solid and entertaining film which has more in common with Hollywood action films than the sadistic cannibal sub-genre which it is often placed in.

“A Tale of Two Sisters” is based very loosely on a Korean folktale known as “Janghwa, Hongryeon”.  The folktale tells of two sisters who are terrorized by their brutal, sadistic stepmother. There’s no fairy godmother to save the day in either the folk story or the movie, however, and in the latter, the viewer can only watch as strange, seemingly supernatural events spiral out of control.

Right from the get-go, the sense of mystery and tragedy is palpable. When the film opens, the older sister Su-mi (Su-jeong Lim) is shown being questioned by a doctor in a mental instution. She sits expressionless as the doctor intensely quizzes her about her family. The scene dreamily dissolves into a idyllic, pastoral country scene. The contrast between the stark white-walled asylum and the lush South Korean countryside is unsettling and effective. We are then introduced to Su-Mi’s family– her distracted father (Kap-su Kim); her sweet, soft-spoken younger sister Su-yeon (marvelously portrayed by Geun-Young Moon);  and her adversary– her step-mother Eun-joo (Jung-ah Yum) who appears more Stepford Wife sinister than brutal sadist.

Even in this peaceful domestic setting, it’s obvious that something is out of place. The girls are haunted at night by strange spectres. Visitors to the home spontaneously fall into violent spasmodic seizures. Stepmom’s prized pet bird is found dead in the girls’ bed. Slowly, the secrets behind the family’s tragic, disturbing past are teased out until the situation reaches a bloody, mind-bending climax.

The ending to A Tale of Two Sisters is, in fact, rather puzzling and ambiguous. The lines between dream and reality have been blurred into a nightmarish haze. I’ll admit that it took two viewings for me to fully piece together all the strange clues scattered throughout the movie.  (The director did an in-depth interview about the symbolism behind the story, but the DVD I rented didn’t come with Cast Commentary.)  All in all, the movie is impressive in its scope– it goes beyond a typical ghost story and proves to be a surprisingly moving story about how a family copes with loss.

The film documents the efforts of Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens) in his bid to gain immortality via the entrapment of The Asphyx. The Asphyx only comes into existence at the moment of death, so this affords the film a number of interesting sequences such as Cunningham electrifying himself to the point of death. The Asphyx itself is a piece of mystical nonsense, but its importance lies in propelling the narrative forward. It functions in much the same way as an Hitchcockian MacGuffin. The film isn’t really about The Asphyx but instead about one man’s efforts to control life and death, to gain power through the manipulation and control of nature. Cunningham’s initial motivations are powered by an objective desire to ensure that society advances in a progressive and liberal fashion (his outrage at a public hanging is evidence of this). Unfortunately the objective appeal of immortality soon makes way for a series of highly subjective decisions which lead to death and tragedy. Cunningham is a tragic but driven scientist who has buried one wife, and watched his son and fiancé perish in a boating accident. His zealous determination to continue the Cunningham line and immortalise his daughter Christina (Jane Lapotaire) and his adopted son Giles (Robert Powell) soon takes over any benevolent motivations that Cunningham may once have harboured.

The accidental death of Christina plunges Cunningham and Giles into a dilemma which is violently resolved with the suicide of Giles. The cold and implacable performance of Robert Powell makes this scene something of a surprise, and its place in the narrative seems somewhat contrived and inappropriate. With his Asphyx safely away behind a combination lock, the digits of which died with Giles, Cunningham faces a life of tortured immortality. The morality of most films that deal with immortality is that the condition is a curse rather than a utopian ideal. Cunningham is punished for playing god and belongs to a long line of well to do scientists who ultimately lack the maturity to deal with the forces they have unleashed. The 1872 Victorian setting places the film firmly into the Age of Reason and the modernism that was embraced in the name of this cause. Its attitude to science and technology is a cautious one – offering brilliance and hope in the shape of Cunningham’s moving pictures, but tragedy and death in the shape of the trapped Asphyx.

The film is book-ended by two sequences in modern day London. They add very little to the proceedings, apart from an absurd final image of the hideously aged Cunningham being crushed between two oncoming vehicles. But even these tacked on moments are invested with emotion and pathos by the gerbil (the first creature made immortal by Cunningham) being the only thing to which Cunningham as an emotional attachment. The film is perhaps a little philosophically weak and fails to follow through the metaphysical issues it raises, but credit must go to Brian Comport for a screenplay overflowing with ideas. The cinematography by celebrated DOP Freddie Young is outstanding at times, and it is essential that the film is enjoyed in its original aspect ratio and in a sufficiently decent print. If you can handle the deliberate and measured pace of the film and are interested in ideas rather than actions then there will be much in The Asphyx of interest.

And there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, the movie would have been more successful if he had tried less for art-house obfuscation and more for the punch-in-the-gut terror that some moments in the movie produce. Although I didn’t love this movie, I respect it, and I think that most reviewers who dismissed it did so for the wrong reasons: they critiqued the violence, the supposed misogyny (more about that later), and the gratuitous gore. I could have stood a lot more of those things (minus the misogyny, which isn’t happening anyway) and less of the navel-gazing hand-held camera shenanigans that populate the first half of the film.

The movie begins with an absolutely gorgeous opening vignette, filmed in black and white, in which Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Defoe (both unnamed in the film) have sex in various parts of their palatial apartment to the tune of a gorgeous Handel aria. As Gainsbourg and Defoe go from room-to-room, their young son toddles from his crib, through the house, and climbs out of a window,  falling to his death. The juxtaposition of the absolutely beautiful scene, music, and sexual pleasure with the death of a young child is the first sign that von Trier is not afraid to really break the taboos of mainstream movies.

After the child’s death, Gainsbourg suffers a mental breakdown: she is filled with guilt and links her own sexuality with the loss of her child. Defoe, who happens to by a psychologist (though not a very good one, based on his methods) decides to take his wife’s mental health into his own hands. He tells her that she has to face her fears, not run from them. He makes her go to the place she fears the most, a cabin in the woods (called Eden, hmmm…) where she worked on her unfinished dissertation about medieval images of women. Von Trier’s heavy-handedness comes through in this first half of the movie, where the viewer is forced to sit through abstract conversations about fear and grief and to ponder the thuddingly obvious symbolism of Eden, death, and sexuality.  But then we get to Eden, and all hell breaks loose. In a good way.

From here, the movie goes from the usual grimy, quick-cut, hand-held camera of Von Trier’s previous movies to a more interesting and lush use of setting and camera. Von Trier creates a terrifying forest, one that looks, on the surface, to be dreamy and lush, populated with beautiful deer and animals. But even the animals are not-quite-right, and the ground burns Gainsbourg’s feet right through her shoes. The sky rains acorns and the wind blows open windows.

I won’t give anything away by discussing what happens in the cabin between Defoe and Gainsbourg, but suffice it to say that this is not a date-movie and will make both men and women cross their legs and grimace with vicarious pain. Von Trier doesn’t hold back in showing damage done to the human body and in making sexual scenes incredibly unsexy.

Ultimately, Anti-Christ is about a woman so consumed with guilt about her child’s death and so convinced of her own culpability that she takes on the misogynistic images of women from history (the woman as the witch, the vagina dentata, the woman as closer to nature, closer to the body, and therefore closer to the devil). The movie doesn’t support misogyny– the character believes herself to be the awful things that women have been accused of being. If von Trier had focused more on Gainsbourg’s own guilt and deepening insanity and less on making a grand statement about nature and evil, then he would have a truly interesting movie. Unfortunately, he feels the need to give us talking foxes and visual metaphors that don’t make sense or make sense too simply to be useful.

I have to stop and give Charlotte Gainsbourg her due for this film. The dialogue throughout the movie is awful–both Gainsbourg and Defoe speak in the careful, deadening tones of a badly-written undergrad philosophy essay–but Gainsbourg puts her all into this role. It’s hard to imagine the emotional depths she goes to, the things she has to do, and how fully she commits to the role of a woman who spends 90% of the movie insane with grief and half-naked. She makes the character neither hat-eable nor easily sympathetic–she is complicated and troubled, but not easy to categorize.

This movie is deeply flawed, but beautiful and awful and truly powerful–it’s more like an opera than a movie, all emotion and expression with little logic. If you go to it willing to overlook some of von Trier’s more tedious bits of arty exposition, it’s well worth the effort.

By the time Corman decided to divert his attentions to an adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft short story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward he already had House of Usher (1960), Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962), and The Raven (1963) behind him. It’s more than conceivable that Corman was a bit bored of Poe. But AIP were not bored of Poe and inspired by box office receipts the production company decided to market Corman’s latest horror picture as another Poe film. With a few scant lines from the obscure poem The Haunted Palace appearing on screen, Lovecraft suddenly became Poe. AIP would go on to do this a number of times during the 1960’s – Witchfinder General (1968) became The Conqueror Worm and The Oblong Box (1969) has no relation to the short story after which it was named. Lovecraft was very much the heir to Poe’s throne in literary terms and it would have been a fitting tribute if AIP could have segued from Poe into the cosmic terrors of Lovecraft. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be and Lovecraft wasn’t utilised at all in the marketing of The Haunted Palace.

Vincent Price gets the opportunity to play two characters here – the soppy and pathetic Charles Dexter Ward and the infinitely more interesting Joseph Curwen – a man who is burnt at the stake by the villagers of Arkham for his love of the black arts. Over a century after this vigilante deed Ward arrives in Arkham to claim his inheritance – a suitably gothic and eerie palace handed down to him by his warlock ancestor. After enduring the indifference of a superstitious populace Ward finds himself in conflict with the spirit of Curwen whose force of will enables him to inhabit the body of the feckless Ward and continue the plans that were interrupted a century before by the torch wielding locals. Curwen is aided and abetted in his task by Simon (a bloated Lon Chaney Jr.) in their bid to harness the cryptic powers of the Necronomicon and open a passageway for the old gods to return to our world and once again hold dominion. Chaney Jr is badly underused and apart from a few eerily lit moments adds little to the film apart from his obvious marquee value. Price on the other hand gets to ham it up and dominates proceedings, delivering his wicked lines of dialogue with the sadistic relish for which he became popular. Corman makes use of an evocative portrait of Curwen, a work of art which glares down at all who enter the palace, the burning eyes fixing Ward in their glare, communicating both control and bodily possession.

The village of Arkham is well rendered, with a number of enjoyably hysterical scenes taking place in the ironically named Burning Man Tavern. Here we get to see the mob mentality develop amid an increasing tempo of supernatural events, the least of which are two excellent revenge murders and a surreal moment in which mutated descendants of the original mob surround Ward in a bid to make him leave. Curwen’s thirst for vengeance is soon forgotten however as he successfully revives his long dead mistress (the film wastes a lot of time with this) and when Curwen finally gets around to the true purpose of his quest the film is virtually over. Curwen fails to fully carry out his revenge and Chaney Jr’s character simply vanishes from the film. We don’t see enough of the old gods, who appear almost as an afterthought as the film forgets earlier developments and rushes headlong into the typical Corman ending – a building on fire. The film benefits from first rate art direction courtesy of Corman regular Daniel Haller and an outstanding musical score from Ronald Stein. Apart from one or two major plot weaknesses The Haunted Palace is easily one of the most stylish and enjoyable of Corman’s 1960’s gothic horrors.

For me, a great horror movie produces similar feelings, though the fear is less visceral and the thrill more cerebral. Some of these on-screen simulations have the power to instill us with a sense of dread and despair that lasts long after the movie is over, but most don’t manage to live up to the hype. If the original [Rec] was as ominous and satisfying as my first rollercoaster experience, [Rec] 2 was like the wait in line before it – plenty of suspense but it left me wanting more.

It takes place immediately after the events of the first film as we follow a SWAT team that’s been called to the site of the infected apartment complex. After arriving on the scene they’re told to escort Dr. Owen (a virologist from the Ministry of Health) into the building as they carry out an “inspect and recognition” sweep of the building. It’s clear from the start that these men are doomed as even the SWAT chief isn’t sure who he’s taking orders from; but it doesn’t take long before the true nature of their mission is revealed.

We get a few different perspectives this time around since the SWAT team is equipped with cameras on their helmets, and there’s also a split in the narrative halfway through when we’re introduced to three teenagers who manage to sneak into the complex with a camcorder. These two storylines dovetail seamlessly but it doesn’t really go anywhere.

All of this does little to further the story and it feels more like a novelty trick to cover up the paper-thin characters and shoddy writing, as we see people we know nothing about get killed on-screen. Dr. Owen (played by Jonathan Mellor) was the only character I found interesting but we don’t learn enough about him.

Many of the details about the infection that were hinted at in the first movie are fully utilized here and this sequel uses almost relentless suspense and frequent shocks to keep the viewer glued to their seat. All this builds to a twisted, if slightly predictable, ending but I missed the slow burn and mysterious nature of the first film, which was the best thing about [Rec]. Once the secret behind the infection was revealed, the movie took on a far more sinister tone and didn’t give you a moment to catch your breath before the suspense was ramped up and the film sent you headlong towards the harrowing climax.

To be fair, I don’t think the duo behind [Rec] 2 (director’s Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza) were looking to leave the viewer with any lingering unease but, judging by the enormous critical acclaim they got for [Rec], I guess I was expecting something with a little more substance. Instead, this movie comes off more like a carnival ride, where the cheap fun stops soon after the film ends.

Even though I’d recommend it to anyone who’s seen the first film (which was much closer to the “real” thing), this is more of a crowd-pleaser with some predictable scares and plenty of twists and turns. It’s not as subtle or intriguing as the first movie but the thrills and scares from the first film are multiplied to create a suffocating atmosphere that rivals what we get in many modern horror films.

Discerning viewers will find plenty of flaws and inconsistencies but I don’t think director Ben Rock was aiming too high with this film – it’s a straightforward action/thriller with an alien theme and a few interesting characters. Simply turn off your brain and enjoy.

It opens with a camcorder-shot montage showing a tense group en route to Buck Lake, Arizona, where they’re hoping to find something. We then turn to Hastings Market, a grocery store, at closing time. The remaining employees are waiting for the end of their shift when a heavily armed group of masked infiltrators, led by Aaron Ritter (Carlos Bernard), takes the store hostage, refusing to let any shoppers leave and threatening to shoot anyone who tries. An off-duty cop manages to dispatch a few of the gunmen, including a guy named “Spooky”, before he’s shot himself.

The group eventually reveals their purpose: to stop an alien infestation that’s been traced to the store by their “psychic” (the now dead Spooky) and to kill the “King” so they can stop further infections. The only problem is that, without Spooky, they have no way of detecting who’s been infected or locating the “King”, and have to resort to some grisly methods before time runs out.

This has all been done countless times before and Alien Raiders really doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Apart from Aaron Ritter’s back story and the way the group formed, there’s a lot borrowed from classics like The Thing and Alien and probably a dozen other alien movies. But (judging by the title) I don’t think you’re supposed to be taking this seriously.

Many have complained that the setting of a supermarket got boring after a while but I think it worked well to create a sense of paranoia. It reminded me of Splinter (2008) in that the director used a minimalist approach to get a surprising amount of tension out of the environment he was working with. As a result, the freezer becomes a makeshift morgue, the inventory room becomes a holding cell for hostages and, towards the end, the supermarket aisles became dark, foreboding corridors as you wait for the showdown. The film is very, very dark in places, though I suppose this was to cover up the rough special effects.

Certain characters are surprisingly fleshed-out (for a low-budget flick) and the acting is good even when the dialogue makes you laugh. The fact that they got a bunch of unknown actors to deliver these lines adequately is an achievement in itself, but some of it is pretty bad. It makes the sporadic humor a welcome release in this average action/thriller.

Book of Blood is not a masterpiece. In fact it is a largely underwhelming and uninspiring film that lacks the visceral punch one is accustomed too in a Clive Barker adaptation. Instead writer/director John Harrison opts to go down the atmospheric haunted house route – aiming perhaps for the thick and cloying mood of The Others (2001) or The Orphanage (2007). It is a brave strategy in a current marketplace overflowing with sadistic torture and gut crunching mayhem. In such a film the pressure on dialogue, performance, and suspense is increased exponentially and Book of Blood falls down in all these key areas. Harrison’s screenplay conflates the Barker short stories ’The Book of Blood’ and ’On Jerusalem Street’ and part of the films unevenness comes from this clumsy attempt to fuse together two stories. The narrative proposes the idea that on a parallel plane to our own exist highways of the dead, and on these highways are intersections. The house where the bulk of the action is situated is on one of these intersections. The film is told in the form of a flashback as Simon McNeal (Jonas Armstrong – BBC TV’s Robin Hood) explains the circumstances of his transformation into a living book of blood too a man who has been paid to relieve him of his skin.

This decision to tell the story this way reduces a great deal of suspense as we approach the narrative armed with the knowledge of McNeal’s eventual fate. This leaves us with just a series of ghostly apparitions to look forward too. Unfortunately the intersection is a mess of unconvincing digital effects, and one of numerous elements of the film that are a let down. McNeal’s attempts at hoaxing the spectral events seem utterly pointless, especially in light of the fact that the house does have a genuine ghostly presence. The paranormal investigator Mary Florescu (Sophie Ward) is a dreadfully dull creation whose character trajectory from academic researcher to scribe of the undead to someone who pays to acquire McNeil’s skin doesn’t ring true, and the potential thematic value of exploring the lengths an academic might go too in order to push their heads above the parapet set by their contemporaries is fumbled by a screenplay determined to create a villain where one doesn’t really exist. The performances are ponderous and humourless which is a surprise considering the vein of black humor that runs through much of Barker’s work. Perhaps the worst crime of Book of Blood is to be completely unmemorable. Barker’s material has a habit of clinging resolutely to one’s psyche, so that short stories one might have read fifteen years ago remain festering in the subconscious. This film had the potential to stand out, but a combination of desultory performances, mishandled digital effects, and weak atmospherics, damages this film beyond repair.