CategoryForeign
International horror: J-horror, European extremity, Latin American shocks and the films Hollywood keeps remaking.
902 stories
ForeignIndieMoviesReviews
While vacationing, Virginia (María Elena Arpón), and her pal Roger (César Burner) bump into Virginia’s former boarding school chum/former lover Betty (Lone Fleming) decide to take a train ride. Whoopie-shit you may say, but wait… Virginia gets super jealous of Roger’s interest in Betty and decides to hop of that train and goes for a stroll where she ends up wandering in the wind-swept ruined town of Berzano. While that would be creepy enough on it’s own, this location was once home to a cadre of Knights Templar in the Middle Ages… but they were executed by hanging for crimes of cavortin’ with the Devil… oh, and performing ritual, cannibalistic sacrifice… but unfortunately for our good friend Virginia, they are more of the walking dead-style of deceased… and at night they rise as rotted, eyeless, hooded cloak wearing zombie mother fuckers… and their horses too! Being the supernatural menace that they are, the knights dispatch Virginia by biting the living
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ForeignMoviesNewsTrailers
Horror continues to reign supreme at the box office, including across the globe in Indonesia. The newly released horror-comedy Agak Laen has just become the second-highest-grossing Indonesian film of all time. Deadline is reporting that the film has seen a whopping “7.35 million admissions” since its February 1st debut. The film follows 2022’s KKN di Desa Penari, which is currently in the number-one spot with an impressive 10.62 million “admissions.” With it just being released, Agak Lean may very well take the number-one spot soon. A Major Hit: Agak Laen, directed by Muhadkly Acho, stars Bene Dion Rajagukguk, Oki Rengga, Indra Jegel, Boris Bokir, and Tissa Biani Azzahra. It follows a group of individuals dealing with the aftermath of an old man’s death at a failing haunted house ride. The operators, in a bizarre twist, bury the body on-site, unknowingly transforming it into a popular attraction. Standing Out from the Crowd: While horror films often perform well in Indonesia, producer
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort Films
THE ACTIVATED MAN (U.S., 2023) Writer/director Nicholas Gyeney’s feature The Activated Man is an interesting variation on the “shadow people” subgenre. The film goes all-in on its exploration of psychic power and supernatural forces. Leaning perhaps slightly more toward tugging at the heartstrings than delivering full-blown horror, the film does serve up a decidedly frightening new character in The Fedora Man (Edward Michael Scott), whose appearance should inspire cosplay and Halloween costumes aplenty. The Activated Man is loaded with ideas, perhaps almost too many for a single film, including a late reveal that I won’t spoil here. Unemployed Ors (Jamie Costa) is suffering from depression after the loss of his dog Louie to cancer, and his police detective significant other Sarah (Ivana Rojas) is supportive of him, while she herself investigates local cases of murder–suicides, an epidemic of which is sweeping the United States. Ors begins to see ghostly visions of Louie, as well as unwelcome appearances from The Fedora
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Somewhere in director Lars Janssen’s Underground (U.K., 2023) is a good horror short, but at feature-film length, the project feels heavily padded. Ella (Maaike Tol) is about to get married, and her friends Riley (Charlotte Dawn Potter, who cowrote the screenplay with Janssen), Ziggy (Sapphire Brewer-Marchant), Claire (Nadia Dawber), and Jessica (Caitlyn Barber) are throwing her a hen party (a bachelorette party, as it is called in the U.S.), with plenty of drinking as part of the festivities. Their wacky (to this point) evening gets them kicked out of a taxi cab by the driver, and the friends are left to their own devices on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. Armed only with their smartphones, the quintet gets into further trouble when one of them falls down a hole, and the others come to her aid and find themselves trapped in a bunker. Underground starts off by introducing us to the protagonists, which at first is a
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort Films
THE FOREBODING: FRACTURED (U.K., 2024) In director Kemal Yildrim’s short The Foreboding: Fractured, four university friends go camping in the woods, which is never a good idea when it comes to horror movie characters. Neither is telling scary stories by the campfire, but that happens here too. The elements are set for some forest-bound fear fare, and though I will avoid going into spoiler territory, suffice it to say that what the quartet runs afoul of is not a slasher nor a cryptid, but something of the supernatural variety. The ensemble cast — Eve Kathryn Oliver, Alexander Staunton-Hill (who also wrote the screenplay), Olivia Bennett, Peter Tilley, and Sienna Shih — all turn in fine performances playing believable characters, and Yildrim does an admirable job of setting an eerie atmosphere and building suspense. SOUR MILK (U.K., 2024) A homeless shelter offers a terrifying choice for a young woman in writer/director Joe Duncombe’s Sour Milk. Cassie’s (Molly Grainger) first night at
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Director Andrew Cumming’s U.K. feature Out of Darkness (originally titled The Origin) is a magnificent-looking slice of survival horror set in the Stone Age, complete with a language devised just for the film (with English subtitles provided). There’s no denying the power of the majority of the film, but its climax and aftermath will surely leave audiences divided. Adem (Chuku Modu) is the leader of a small group of prehistoric people who have been wandering in search of a safe place to live that provides abundant food. The group — which also includes Adem’s young son Heron (Luna Mwezi), Adem’s pregnant mate Ave (Iola Evans) and his brother Geirr (Kit Young), elderly Odal (Arno Luering), and stray Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green) — is near starving, and some are beginning to doubt Adem’s ability to lead. One night, a mysterious, as-yet-unseen presence grabs Heron, and Adem becomes solely focused on finding his son, though the others feel that leading them into the
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort FilmsThriller
Following are reviews of four of the offerings that screened as part of the 2024 Final Girls Berlin Film Festival’s Folk Horror short-film block. Nian Short chiller Nian (U.S., 2023), finds a Chinese American schoolgirl (Lauren Mei in a delightful performance) standing up to a racist bully with the help of a Chinese demon mask and the supernatural assistance of the titular mythological punisher of naughty children. Director Michelle Krusiec delivers a crisp commentary on racism and bullying that nails its fantasy aspects, with a nice amount of heart behind it. Days of Spring Writer/director Arianne Hinz’s Days of Spring (Netherlands, 2022) is a disturbing peek into the secretive world of a small group of young Dutch girls who surrender their individual wills to the group. Eleven-year-old Roos (Anoek Neervort) has invited her friend Ella (Maeve Hickey) to join the group but begins to question herself when the demands of the girls grows increasingly extreme, including animal sacrifice. Beautifully lensed
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesNewsSci-FiThrillerTrailers
Be transported to a world where humanity and nature collide in a thrilling new sci-fi film, The Animal Kingdom. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Thomas Cailley, this story dives into a future where genetic mutations trigger extraordinary transformations, blurring the lines between humans and animals. The Plot Thickens: The film centers around François. He is a desperate husband fighting to save his wife, who has succumbed to this mysterious condition. She undergoes disturbing changes. François and his teenage son Emile team up with a determined police officer (Adèle Exarchopoulos) in the search through a nearby forest. A place where mutated creatures roam. A Cast of Award-Worthy Talent: Roman Duris brings depth and emotion to François’s desperate struggle. Paul Kircher stars as Emile, who experiences the challenges of navigating this altered world alongside his father. Adèle Exarchopoulos adds her captivating presence as the police officer, bringing both strength and compassion to the investigation. Accolades: The Animal Kingdom garnered critical acclaim. It received
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ForeignMoviesNews
I’m not often shocked when it comes to stars pulling publicity stunts. But the case of Bollywood actress Poonam Pandey has me floored. While I understand the drive to call attention to health issues, faking your death from a Cancer you don’t have is just infuriating. The actress and model posted a message on her Instagram account recently, telling her 1.4 million followers that she had died of Ovarian Cancer, only to make a video a few days later revealing she is alive and well. Not cool. While she wanted to bring Ovarian Cancer and shed light on the illness, there are much better ways to do it. The Announcement: Below is the post that started it all. You can watch her video reveal here. Fans are Pissed: A lot of Pamdey’s fans/followers were outraged, and rightfully so. As someone who is a Cancer survivor and has lost multiple family members to it, I find her actions deplorable. “Worst publicity
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Police Officer Fui-On Shing (Tsu Hsiang, The Killer, A Better Tomorrow) is having himself quite the day. After visiting a Buddhist temple that forewarns him of ill luck headin’ his way sooner rather than later, he ditches his pregnant wife Chu (Siu-Fung Wong) to follow up on a lead on a bank heist supplied to him by his teenage orphan sidekick/ridiculous individual par excellence Power Steering (Wai-Kit Tse). After a chase, Shing gets the drop on the criminals at a construction site, but ends up getting a palette of rebar dropped on him instead. Left for dead, a magic cat sits on him (I have no idea) after which he is struck by lightning. As it would with anyone, both of those things result in his super-powered zombie resurrection… and he’ll stay a member of the walking dead as long as he keeps shocking himself with electric jolts. Along the way he gets mixed up with Power Steering’s kinda girlfriend
Continue reading →
More from Foreign
ForeignIndieMoviesReviews
While vacationing, Virginia (María Elena Arpón), and her pal Roger (César Burner) bump into Virginia’s former boarding school chum/former lover Betty (Lone Fleming) decide to take a train ride. Whoopie-shit you may say, but wait… Virginia gets super jealous of Roger’s interest in Betty and decides to hop of that train and goes for a stroll where she ends up wandering in the wind-swept ruined town of Berzano. While that would be creepy enough on it’s own, this location was once home to a cadre of Knights Templar in the Middle Ages… but they were executed by hanging for crimes of cavortin’ with the Devil… oh, and performing ritual, cannibalistic sacrifice… but unfortunately for our good friend Virginia, they are more of the walking dead-style of deceased… and at night they rise as rotted, eyeless, hooded cloak wearing zombie mother fuckers… and their horses too! Being the supernatural menace that they are, the knights dispatch Virginia by biting the living
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesNewsTrailers
Horror continues to reign supreme at the box office, including across the globe in Indonesia. The newly released horror-comedy Agak Laen has just become the second-highest-grossing Indonesian film of all time. Deadline is reporting that the film has seen a whopping “7.35 million admissions” since its February 1st debut. The film follows 2022’s KKN di Desa Penari, which is currently in the number-one spot with an impressive 10.62 million “admissions.” With it just being released, Agak Lean may very well take the number-one spot soon. A Major Hit: Agak Laen, directed by Muhadkly Acho, stars Bene Dion Rajagukguk, Oki Rengga, Indra Jegel, Boris Bokir, and Tissa Biani Azzahra. It follows a group of individuals dealing with the aftermath of an old man’s death at a failing haunted house ride. The operators, in a bizarre twist, bury the body on-site, unknowingly transforming it into a popular attraction. Standing Out from the Crowd: While horror films often perform well in Indonesia, producer
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort Films
THE ACTIVATED MAN (U.S., 2023) Writer/director Nicholas Gyeney’s feature The Activated Man is an interesting variation on the “shadow people” subgenre. The film goes all-in on its exploration of psychic power and supernatural forces. Leaning perhaps slightly more toward tugging at the heartstrings than delivering full-blown horror, the film does serve up a decidedly frightening new character in The Fedora Man (Edward Michael Scott), whose appearance should inspire cosplay and Halloween costumes aplenty. The Activated Man is loaded with ideas, perhaps almost too many for a single film, including a late reveal that I won’t spoil here. Unemployed Ors (Jamie Costa) is suffering from depression after the loss of his dog Louie to cancer, and his police detective significant other Sarah (Ivana Rojas) is supportive of him, while she herself investigates local cases of murder–suicides, an epidemic of which is sweeping the United States. Ors begins to see ghostly visions of Louie, as well as unwelcome appearances from The Fedora
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Somewhere in director Lars Janssen’s Underground (U.K., 2023) is a good horror short, but at feature-film length, the project feels heavily padded. Ella (Maaike Tol) is about to get married, and her friends Riley (Charlotte Dawn Potter, who cowrote the screenplay with Janssen), Ziggy (Sapphire Brewer-Marchant), Claire (Nadia Dawber), and Jessica (Caitlyn Barber) are throwing her a hen party (a bachelorette party, as it is called in the U.S.), with plenty of drinking as part of the festivities. Their wacky (to this point) evening gets them kicked out of a taxi cab by the driver, and the friends are left to their own devices on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. Armed only with their smartphones, the quintet gets into further trouble when one of them falls down a hole, and the others come to her aid and find themselves trapped in a bunker. Underground starts off by introducing us to the protagonists, which at first is a
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort Films
THE FOREBODING: FRACTURED (U.K., 2024) In director Kemal Yildrim’s short The Foreboding: Fractured, four university friends go camping in the woods, which is never a good idea when it comes to horror movie characters. Neither is telling scary stories by the campfire, but that happens here too. The elements are set for some forest-bound fear fare, and though I will avoid going into spoiler territory, suffice it to say that what the quartet runs afoul of is not a slasher nor a cryptid, but something of the supernatural variety. The ensemble cast — Eve Kathryn Oliver, Alexander Staunton-Hill (who also wrote the screenplay), Olivia Bennett, Peter Tilley, and Sienna Shih — all turn in fine performances playing believable characters, and Yildrim does an admirable job of setting an eerie atmosphere and building suspense. SOUR MILK (U.K., 2024) A homeless shelter offers a terrifying choice for a young woman in writer/director Joe Duncombe’s Sour Milk. Cassie’s (Molly Grainger) first night at
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Director Andrew Cumming’s U.K. feature Out of Darkness (originally titled The Origin) is a magnificent-looking slice of survival horror set in the Stone Age, complete with a language devised just for the film (with English subtitles provided). There’s no denying the power of the majority of the film, but its climax and aftermath will surely leave audiences divided. Adem (Chuku Modu) is the leader of a small group of prehistoric people who have been wandering in search of a safe place to live that provides abundant food. The group — which also includes Adem’s young son Heron (Luna Mwezi), Adem’s pregnant mate Ave (Iola Evans) and his brother Geirr (Kit Young), elderly Odal (Arno Luering), and stray Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green) — is near starving, and some are beginning to doubt Adem’s ability to lead. One night, a mysterious, as-yet-unseen presence grabs Heron, and Adem becomes solely focused on finding his son, though the others feel that leading them into the
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort FilmsThriller
Following are reviews of four of the offerings that screened as part of the 2024 Final Girls Berlin Film Festival’s Folk Horror short-film block. Nian Short chiller Nian (U.S., 2023), finds a Chinese American schoolgirl (Lauren Mei in a delightful performance) standing up to a racist bully with the help of a Chinese demon mask and the supernatural assistance of the titular mythological punisher of naughty children. Director Michelle Krusiec delivers a crisp commentary on racism and bullying that nails its fantasy aspects, with a nice amount of heart behind it. Days of Spring Writer/director Arianne Hinz’s Days of Spring (Netherlands, 2022) is a disturbing peek into the secretive world of a small group of young Dutch girls who surrender their individual wills to the group. Eleven-year-old Roos (Anoek Neervort) has invited her friend Ella (Maeve Hickey) to join the group but begins to question herself when the demands of the girls grows increasingly extreme, including animal sacrifice. Beautifully lensed
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesNewsSci-FiThrillerTrailers
Be transported to a world where humanity and nature collide in a thrilling new sci-fi film, The Animal Kingdom. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Thomas Cailley, this story dives into a future where genetic mutations trigger extraordinary transformations, blurring the lines between humans and animals. The Plot Thickens: The film centers around François. He is a desperate husband fighting to save his wife, who has succumbed to this mysterious condition. She undergoes disturbing changes. François and his teenage son Emile team up with a determined police officer (Adèle Exarchopoulos) in the search through a nearby forest. A place where mutated creatures roam. A Cast of Award-Worthy Talent: Roman Duris brings depth and emotion to François’s desperate struggle. Paul Kircher stars as Emile, who experiences the challenges of navigating this altered world alongside his father. Adèle Exarchopoulos adds her captivating presence as the police officer, bringing both strength and compassion to the investigation. Accolades: The Animal Kingdom garnered critical acclaim. It received
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesNews
I’m not often shocked when it comes to stars pulling publicity stunts. But the case of Bollywood actress Poonam Pandey has me floored. While I understand the drive to call attention to health issues, faking your death from a Cancer you don’t have is just infuriating. The actress and model posted a message on her Instagram account recently, telling her 1.4 million followers that she had died of Ovarian Cancer, only to make a video a few days later revealing she is alive and well. Not cool. While she wanted to bring Ovarian Cancer and shed light on the illness, there are much better ways to do it. The Announcement: Below is the post that started it all. You can watch her video reveal here. Fans are Pissed: A lot of Pamdey’s fans/followers were outraged, and rightfully so. As someone who is a Cancer survivor and has lost multiple family members to it, I find her actions deplorable. “Worst publicity
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Police Officer Fui-On Shing (Tsu Hsiang, The Killer, A Better Tomorrow) is having himself quite the day. After visiting a Buddhist temple that forewarns him of ill luck headin’ his way sooner rather than later, he ditches his pregnant wife Chu (Siu-Fung Wong) to follow up on a lead on a bank heist supplied to him by his teenage orphan sidekick/ridiculous individual par excellence Power Steering (Wai-Kit Tse). After a chase, Shing gets the drop on the criminals at a construction site, but ends up getting a palette of rebar dropped on him instead. Left for dead, a magic cat sits on him (I have no idea) after which he is struck by lightning. As it would with anyone, both of those things result in his super-powered zombie resurrection… and he’ll stay a member of the walking dead as long as he keeps shocking himself with electric jolts. Along the way he gets mixed up with Power Steering’s kinda girlfriend
Continue reading →
