CategoryForeign
International horror: J-horror, European extremity, Latin American shocks and the films Hollywood keeps remaking.
902 stories
ForeignMoviesReviews
Haxan definitely realizes the Devil is in the details; quite literally as Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 silent masterpiece that attempts to document the origins of witchcraft and it’s propagation down through the ages. After a lengthy history lesson on the mystical beliefs of years past, the film kicks into creative high-gear with a vignette (the film is comprised solely of these pieces instead of a traditional narrative) examining the ghoulish goings-on in a witch’s cottage; a fantastic piece of set design featuring effective use of contrasting warm and cool tints, as well as rich lighting that creates deep shadows where one can imagine evil forms lying coiled waiting to unleash all manner of mischief. Yet for all that sweet, sweet darkness we also get a streak of humor as we are witness to the outrageous results of the witch’s potions on a monk whom a woman lusts after. Also in the segment we get grave-robbing (for science purposes forbidden by the
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesNewsTrailers
This December, director Jerome Pikwane’s frightening fictional account of the mythological creature The Tokoloshe debuts on digital platforms and disc. In the film, Busi, a young destitute woman with dangerously repressed emotions, lands a job as a cleaner at a rundown hospital in the heart of Johannesburg. Desperate for the money so she can bring her younger sister to Johannesburg, she must cope despite the predatory and corrupt hospital manager. When Busi discovers an abandoned young girl in the hospital, who believes she is tormented by a supernatural force, Busi must face her own demons from her past in order to save the child from the abusive monster that pursues them both relentlessly. The film from writers Richard Kunzmann and Jerome Pikwane, stars Petronella Tshuma, Kwande Nkosi, and Dawid Minnaar. The Tokoloshe arrives on December 3, 2019.
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ForeignMoviesReviews
After a piece of sheet music makes a young girl chuck a hairdryer into her mamma’s bath water we cut to a (mostly) female rock n’ roll outfit performing a song with almost the exact same melody as Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name… and thus we begin the headlong plunge into cinematic insanity known as Paganini Horror! So that band? Well their management think they suck as of late… now if only they had something new they could play that would really appeal to every eager earhole world wide! Well as fate and a cameoing Donald Pleasence would have it, they are brought just such a piece; a forgotten work from the legendary Italian Violinist Paganini… I wonder if that could be that shit we saw earlier… nah! Anyway; our heroines trek out to a remote castle to film some slick-ass fright flick style “video clips” for their new masterpiece and before long are plunged into a
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesParanormalReviews
1998’s Ringu is the fright flick phenom that started a J-horror wave that spread across continents, and today I’m going to be putting my putrid peepers on a whole mess of them preternatural pictures, so gather the fuck ’round! First up is the “original” Ringu (this is technically the third film adaptation of Kōji Suzuki’s 1991 novel), who’s plot goes a lil’ something like this: After a gaggle of teenage girls begin dying seemingly from extreme fright, investigative reporter Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), an aunt of one of the victims, begins to believe the tales of a cursed video tape she has been researching may be involved. Discovering the girls rented a cabin before their demise, our heroine treks out there and actually finds the damn tape… which of course she watches, even though she knows the evil within will most likely come a-callin’ on her soon. And what an “evil” it is; namely a tortured ghost of a mutant
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Special guest coauthor: Chris Weatherspoon The 23rd Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), the largest genre film fest in both its home of South Korea and of Asia as well, took place about a month earlier than its preceding editions (running June 27–July 7 this year) and delivered one of its strongest lineups in recent memory. BIFAN boasted horror, thriller, action, and other genre films of all stripes from around the world. Following are our thoughts on five of the fest’s offerings. Chris Weatherspoon: Irish horror-comedy Extra Ordinary is the feature debut for writing/directing team Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman. Comedian Maeve Higgins (Inside Amy Schumer) stars as Rose Dooley, a bumbling spinster who earns her living as a driving instructor; however, Rose is far from being an ordinary, lonely middle-aged woman, as the movie’s title notes. Rose has the ability to communicate with the dead and to exorcise ghosts, but a childhood incident has left her traumatized, and for
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoForeignMoviesNewsStreaming TVThrillerTrailers
This past September writer-director Ping Lumpraploeng‘s creature feature The Pool took home the award for “Most Fun Movie to See with an Audience” at Fantastic Fest. Now, it has just debuted on Amazon Prime. The film centers on a man (Theeradej Wongpuapan) and his girlfriend (Ratnamon Ratchiratham) who become trapped in an empty swimming pool with a deadly crocodile. Check out this action-packed flick on Amazon Prime now.
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesNewsThrillerTrailers
Lennert Hillege and Guido van Driel‘s acclaimed Dutch action-thriller Bloody Marie is headed to theaters and On Demand this November. Ahead of its arrival, we have a brand new brutal clip. Shortlisted as one of the nine films in contention to be the Dutch entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, the film is anchored by a head-turning performance by German actress Susanne Wolff (Styx). Marie, once a successful graphic novelist, lives in the Amsterdam red-light district. She drinks too much and gets into one conflict after another. A horrific incident in the house next door forces her to take action and get her life back on course. Bloody Marie will hit select theaters November 1st and will be available On Demand Nov 11th, from Uncork’d Entertainment.
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesNewsThriller
Lennert Hillege and Guido van Driel‘s acclaimed Dutch action-thriller Bloody Marie is headed to theaters and On Demand this November. Shortlisted as one of the nine films in contention to be the Dutch entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, the film is anchored by a head-turning performance by German actress Susanne Wolff (Styx). Marie, once a successful graphic novelist, lives in the Amsterdam red-light district. She drinks too much and gets into one conflict after another. A horrific incident in the house next door forces her to take action and get her life back on course. Bloody Marie will hit select theaters November 1st and will be available On Demand Nov 11th, from Uncork’d Entertainment.
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Sister Gertrude (Anita Ekberg) is your average, everyday nun… you know, a real cock-hungry, morphine addicted, chain smoking, medically negligent bitch on wheels… the ushe… When ol’ Gert gets a wild hair that she has cancer, she seems to lose her goddamned mind, and goes on a drug fueled tear through the hospital in which she works. If she isn’t kinda/sorta causing patients to die, using her days off to have sex with randos on the street, or having the occasional major psychotic break; then she’s “forcing” Sister Matthieu (the stunning Paola Morra) to have a lesbian tryst, or having hallucinations about murder… hallucinations that lead to there being actual corpses! Enter: Dr. Patrick Roland (Warhol darling Joe Dallesandro), who becomes suspicious of our sinful Sister and starts causing some serious static for our habit-wearin’ anti-heroine… but is that justified or has Gertrude been merely a pawn in someone else’s game? Based on a true story… like for real! Sadistic,
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Surely riding on the shit-hot success of that legendary legend Jaws: The Revenge or the announcement of an upcoming sequel to Alligator; Italy birthed Killer Crocodile… a film that features a killer crocodile (I mean c’mon, it’s right there in the title folks)… and a fuckin’ huge one to boot! When a group of youngish(?)… they could be anywhere from twenty to forty depending on the light and angle… environmentalists go fucking around in a toxic waste dump of a swamp (created by the one/two punch of a crooked judge and a shady corporation), one of their group ends up in a rather devoured state thanks to the fucking school bus sized mutant croc that calls that monstrous marsh home sweet home! As you can guess, the group want to protect the beast (environmentalists, remember?), no matter how much of a murder machine the bastard obviously is. Let me tell ya, keeping that lethal lizard alive isn’t going to be
Continue reading →
More from Foreign
ForeignMoviesReviews
Haxan definitely realizes the Devil is in the details; quite literally as Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 silent masterpiece that attempts to document the origins of witchcraft and it’s propagation down through the ages. After a lengthy history lesson on the mystical beliefs of years past, the film kicks into creative high-gear with a vignette (the film is comprised solely of these pieces instead of a traditional narrative) examining the ghoulish goings-on in a witch’s cottage; a fantastic piece of set design featuring effective use of contrasting warm and cool tints, as well as rich lighting that creates deep shadows where one can imagine evil forms lying coiled waiting to unleash all manner of mischief. Yet for all that sweet, sweet darkness we also get a streak of humor as we are witness to the outrageous results of the witch’s potions on a monk whom a woman lusts after. Also in the segment we get grave-robbing (for science purposes forbidden by the
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesNewsTrailers
This December, director Jerome Pikwane’s frightening fictional account of the mythological creature The Tokoloshe debuts on digital platforms and disc. In the film, Busi, a young destitute woman with dangerously repressed emotions, lands a job as a cleaner at a rundown hospital in the heart of Johannesburg. Desperate for the money so she can bring her younger sister to Johannesburg, she must cope despite the predatory and corrupt hospital manager. When Busi discovers an abandoned young girl in the hospital, who believes she is tormented by a supernatural force, Busi must face her own demons from her past in order to save the child from the abusive monster that pursues them both relentlessly. The film from writers Richard Kunzmann and Jerome Pikwane, stars Petronella Tshuma, Kwande Nkosi, and Dawid Minnaar. The Tokoloshe arrives on December 3, 2019.
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
After a piece of sheet music makes a young girl chuck a hairdryer into her mamma’s bath water we cut to a (mostly) female rock n’ roll outfit performing a song with almost the exact same melody as Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name… and thus we begin the headlong plunge into cinematic insanity known as Paganini Horror! So that band? Well their management think they suck as of late… now if only they had something new they could play that would really appeal to every eager earhole world wide! Well as fate and a cameoing Donald Pleasence would have it, they are brought just such a piece; a forgotten work from the legendary Italian Violinist Paganini… I wonder if that could be that shit we saw earlier… nah! Anyway; our heroines trek out to a remote castle to film some slick-ass fright flick style “video clips” for their new masterpiece and before long are plunged into a
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesParanormalReviews
1998’s Ringu is the fright flick phenom that started a J-horror wave that spread across continents, and today I’m going to be putting my putrid peepers on a whole mess of them preternatural pictures, so gather the fuck ’round! First up is the “original” Ringu (this is technically the third film adaptation of Kōji Suzuki’s 1991 novel), who’s plot goes a lil’ something like this: After a gaggle of teenage girls begin dying seemingly from extreme fright, investigative reporter Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), an aunt of one of the victims, begins to believe the tales of a cursed video tape she has been researching may be involved. Discovering the girls rented a cabin before their demise, our heroine treks out there and actually finds the damn tape… which of course she watches, even though she knows the evil within will most likely come a-callin’ on her soon. And what an “evil” it is; namely a tortured ghost of a mutant
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Special guest coauthor: Chris Weatherspoon The 23rd Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), the largest genre film fest in both its home of South Korea and of Asia as well, took place about a month earlier than its preceding editions (running June 27–July 7 this year) and delivered one of its strongest lineups in recent memory. BIFAN boasted horror, thriller, action, and other genre films of all stripes from around the world. Following are our thoughts on five of the fest’s offerings. Chris Weatherspoon: Irish horror-comedy Extra Ordinary is the feature debut for writing/directing team Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman. Comedian Maeve Higgins (Inside Amy Schumer) stars as Rose Dooley, a bumbling spinster who earns her living as a driving instructor; however, Rose is far from being an ordinary, lonely middle-aged woman, as the movie’s title notes. Rose has the ability to communicate with the dead and to exorcise ghosts, but a childhood incident has left her traumatized, and for
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoForeignMoviesNewsStreaming TVThrillerTrailers
This past September writer-director Ping Lumpraploeng‘s creature feature The Pool took home the award for “Most Fun Movie to See with an Audience” at Fantastic Fest. Now, it has just debuted on Amazon Prime. The film centers on a man (Theeradej Wongpuapan) and his girlfriend (Ratnamon Ratchiratham) who become trapped in an empty swimming pool with a deadly crocodile. Check out this action-packed flick on Amazon Prime now.
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesNewsThrillerTrailers
Lennert Hillege and Guido van Driel‘s acclaimed Dutch action-thriller Bloody Marie is headed to theaters and On Demand this November. Ahead of its arrival, we have a brand new brutal clip. Shortlisted as one of the nine films in contention to be the Dutch entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, the film is anchored by a head-turning performance by German actress Susanne Wolff (Styx). Marie, once a successful graphic novelist, lives in the Amsterdam red-light district. She drinks too much and gets into one conflict after another. A horrific incident in the house next door forces her to take action and get her life back on course. Bloody Marie will hit select theaters November 1st and will be available On Demand Nov 11th, from Uncork’d Entertainment.
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesNewsThriller
Lennert Hillege and Guido van Driel‘s acclaimed Dutch action-thriller Bloody Marie is headed to theaters and On Demand this November. Shortlisted as one of the nine films in contention to be the Dutch entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, the film is anchored by a head-turning performance by German actress Susanne Wolff (Styx). Marie, once a successful graphic novelist, lives in the Amsterdam red-light district. She drinks too much and gets into one conflict after another. A horrific incident in the house next door forces her to take action and get her life back on course. Bloody Marie will hit select theaters November 1st and will be available On Demand Nov 11th, from Uncork’d Entertainment.
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Sister Gertrude (Anita Ekberg) is your average, everyday nun… you know, a real cock-hungry, morphine addicted, chain smoking, medically negligent bitch on wheels… the ushe… When ol’ Gert gets a wild hair that she has cancer, she seems to lose her goddamned mind, and goes on a drug fueled tear through the hospital in which she works. If she isn’t kinda/sorta causing patients to die, using her days off to have sex with randos on the street, or having the occasional major psychotic break; then she’s “forcing” Sister Matthieu (the stunning Paola Morra) to have a lesbian tryst, or having hallucinations about murder… hallucinations that lead to there being actual corpses! Enter: Dr. Patrick Roland (Warhol darling Joe Dallesandro), who becomes suspicious of our sinful Sister and starts causing some serious static for our habit-wearin’ anti-heroine… but is that justified or has Gertrude been merely a pawn in someone else’s game? Based on a true story… like for real! Sadistic,
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Surely riding on the shit-hot success of that legendary legend Jaws: The Revenge or the announcement of an upcoming sequel to Alligator; Italy birthed Killer Crocodile… a film that features a killer crocodile (I mean c’mon, it’s right there in the title folks)… and a fuckin’ huge one to boot! When a group of youngish(?)… they could be anywhere from twenty to forty depending on the light and angle… environmentalists go fucking around in a toxic waste dump of a swamp (created by the one/two punch of a crooked judge and a shady corporation), one of their group ends up in a rather devoured state thanks to the fucking school bus sized mutant croc that calls that monstrous marsh home sweet home! As you can guess, the group want to protect the beast (environmentalists, remember?), no matter how much of a murder machine the bastard obviously is. Let me tell ya, keeping that lethal lizard alive isn’t going to be
Continue reading →
