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South African Horror ‘Breathing In’ Gets A Stunning New Trailer Ahead Of World Premiere

From the director of Gaia, Jacob Bauer comes the new South African horror film Breathing In. A new trailer has been unveiled ahead of its World Premiere this October at The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, giving us a look at this stunning film. The film is set in 1901 in South Africa. As the Second Anglo-Boer War rages on, a wounded General seeks refuge in the tiny home of a woman and her young daughter. As the hurt man settles in, he begins noticing that something is off about the two women, particularly the daughter, and before long, he’ll learn the real reason why they’ve invited him and how they’ve survived on their own for so long. An adaptation of the beloved South African play of the same name, Jaco Bouwer, director of the SXSW smash Gaia, delivers a tense single-location chamber piece that steadily ratchets up the tension before revealing its ultimate chilling endgame. Michele Burgers, Sven Ruygrok, Jamie-Lee

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Oct 16, 2023

Arrow Obtains French Horror ‘Pandemonium’ (Trailer)

Genre distribution company Arrow Video has just announced that they have acquired UK and North American rights to Pandemonium, the stunning French macabre tale from the creative mind of filmmaker Quarxx. The film follows Nathan (Hugo Dillon), an ordinary man on a journey he never expected. After realizing he has died at the scene of a car crash, Nathan descends into the depths of hell, where he is doomed to experience the pain of tortured souls along the way. Drawing on themes found in Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost, Pandemonium is a multi-textured existential fantasy with signature notes of visceral horror, disturbing fairy tales, wry comedy, and dark thriller. This twisted tale is directed by Quarxx (All the Gods in the Sky) and stars Hugo Dillon (AKA, November), Ophélia Kolb (Call My Agent!), Albanian star Arben Bajraktaraj (Besa) and rising talent Manon Maindivide (Drops of God). The film made its world premiere at Neuchâtel and went on to screen

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Oct 15, 2023

Spoiler-Free Film Reviews: GODS OF THE DEEP and THE VEIL (H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival)

Gods of the Deep (U.K., 2023) Last year, prolific director Charlie Steeds’s Freeze played Portland’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and this year his new film Gods of the Deep had its world premiere there. Steeds makes practically all manner of horror films, and his recent one-two punch of Lovecraftian horror is some of his strongest work yet. Gods of the Deep finds Jim Peters (Derek Nelson of Freeze) carrying on the research of his father, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. He is invited by a corporation that he mistrusts to join a crew that will take the highest-tech submersible ever developed to the depths of the ocean to explore what looks like an ancient man-made structure. Subterfuge, action, cosmic horror mayhem, and creature-feature creepiness abound as the crew makes a discovery of unexpected life deep in the ocean. Steeds works miracles with his budgets, and though the special effects in Gods of the Deep sometimes show that the budget might

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 12, 2023

The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra: A Horror Film Like You’ve Never Seen Before (Trailer)

A new kind of creature feature is born in the unique and weirdly charming film The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra. After becoming an award-winning festival favorite, it is now coming to the US this October. “After a mysterious mold starts spreading across the surface of an abandoned mattress, a sentient creature begins to take shape from within. Feasting on its unsuspecting victims’ vertebrae while they rest, the creature grows stronger, finding nourishment not only in the bones and sinew it assimilates but also in the hopes, fears, and emotions of all those it encounters.” Written and directed by Syeyoung Park, the Korean film stars Jihyeon Park, Hyein Moon, and Seokyoung Haam. The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra arrives on InidiePix Unlimted and in virtual cinemas on October 20, 2023.

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Kelli Marchman McNeely
Oct 11, 2023

Spoiler-Free Short Film Reviews: MOTHER TONGUE, JANELLE’S BABY, and IHRUQAX (A Night of Horror International Film Festival)

Mother Tongue (Australia, 2023) Jade (Amelia Foxton, who wrote the screenplay) and Alex (Chiara Gizzi) want to have a baby together, and Alex desperately wants to have it herself rather than adopting, but the couple has run out of almost all options. Almost all, because director Glen Fraser’s Mother Tongue being a horror comedy, the couple can always turn to the dark arts as a last resort. For their journey into the diabolical, they seek the assistance of Brian (Stephen Hunter), who seems to be on the flighty side but proves that he is indeed an occult practitioner. In another classic horror-comedy case of “Be careful what you wish for,” the trio finds itself in quite a gruesome mess. Foxton’s screenplay is rich with both dramatic and comedic looks at parenting and expectations surrounding pregnancy and its difficulties, and delivers the goods in the occult department, too. Foxton and Gizzi are terrific in their portrayals of the frustrated couple, and

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 10, 2023

Spoiler- Free Film Review: Aberrance (2022)

Baatar Batsukh is a cinematographer making his directorial debut with the Mongolian horror film Aberrance, which he also lensed. The movie is rich in beautifully framed shots and loaded with visual style, bolstering a plot that tries at times to be a bit too surprising. Selenge (Selenge Chadraabal) and Erkhmee (Erkhembayar Ganbat) are a couple who take a break from city life to spend time at — where else but? — a remote cabin in the woods. Something is off between the pair, though, as Erkhmee seems dominant and possibly abusive, which doesn’t go unnoticed by their lone neighbor (Yalalt Namsrai). Meanwhile, Selenge is obviously suffering from trauma, and the claustrophobic environment is only making matters worse. Batsukh, working from a screenplay that he cowrote with Byambasuren Ganbat and Erdene Orosoo, has a keen visual eye, and incorporates everything from cameras attached to actors (with bobbing motion not unlike what you would get using selfie sticks) to unique angles to

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 5, 2023

Spoiler-Free Film Review: SUBURBAN TALE (Fantastic Fest)

Director Stephen Alexander’s Suburban Tale (AKA Tamso; India, 2023) is a dark, brooding film that becomes increasingly disturbing as it continually reveals new puzzle pieces throughout its running time. Its original Indian title Tamso means “from darkness,” which is quite fitting. Radhika (Rashmi Somvanshi, who also produced the film) is the estranged daughter of a family. Other extended family members refer to her as “that woman” and make it clear that they do not want her anywhere near the wedding preparations that are happening, although her father calls her back home because he wants her to watch over the youngest member of the family, a boy who seems to be possessed by a demon. When the boy, who emits a poisonous gas and snarls and rages, attacks the bride-to-be, Radhika is left alone in charge of him — and matters grow increasingly eerie and deadly. Alexander paces the film nicely, slowly divulging information as to why Radhika is shunned by

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 4, 2023

Spoiler-Free Film Reviews: DID I? and SAVING GRACE (A Night of Horror International Film Festival)

DID I? (United States, 2023) When viewers first meet Genevieve (Alexandra Pica), the main character of director Sarah Tice’s DID I?, she wakes up disoriented, disheveled, and mysteriously bruised. She is also having a tough time at work, where she is an editor and aspiring writer. We learn that the relatively mild-mannered and introverted Genevieve is struggling with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), and her alter Stevie, who is no fan of Genevieve’s therapist Rachel (Raven Wynn), has a decidedly wild side to her. Tice, who cowrote the screenplay with Zachary Beckler, does an admirable job of focusing on more realistic depictions of DID rather than just presenting the sensational, though naturally any horror or thriller film attempting to tackle mental issues walks a fine line. The third act packs a highly disturbing, harrowing wallop that reveals the reason for Genevieve’s trauma. Tice, who worked with a microbudget, does fine work that belies the film’s meager budget, including digital wizardry, quick

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 27, 2023

Spoiler-Free Short Film Reviews: STOP DEAD, MERGER, THE DAM, and RIDE, BABY, RIDE (A Night of Horror International Film Festival)

Australia’s A Night of Horror International Film Festival has a bounty of fear-fare shorts from around the globe on tap. Here is a look at four of the selections that run less than 10 minutes each. Stop Dead (United Kingdom, 2023) Director Emily Greenwood, working from a screenplay by David Scullion, has crafted a highly atmospheric short that sets up an intriguing premise worthy of a feature-length treatment. Police officers Samantha Hall (Sarah Soetaert) and partner Nick Thompson (David Ricardo-Pearce) are stuck on a country road at nighttime because of a flat tire. A young woman (Priya Blackburn) suddenly appears, refusing to heed Hall’s order to stop, telling the officers that if you stop, you die. This supernatural shocker boasts solid production values, good performances, taut direction, and some fast-paced editing that helps the world building and ratchets up the suspense. Merger (United Kingdom, 2022) Working late in a dark office is rarely a good thing to do, but in

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 25, 2023

Spoiler-Free Reviews: STRANGE DARLING and THE WAIT (Fantastic Fest)

STRANGE DARLING (2023) Do yourself an immense favor and learn nothing more about the plot of writer/director JT Mollner’s Strange Darling than what I am about to tell you. This film absolutely requires being gone into as cold as possible for maximum effect. The film opens with a preamble about a serial killer’s path through the United States, and then cuts to a coke-snorting man (Kyle Gallner) in a pickup truck chasing down a bloodied woman (Willa Fitzgerald) in a Ford Pinto. She totals the car and runs into the woods, with the rifle-toting man following in pursuit. Mollner takes the concepts of a cat-and-mouse thriller and first-date-gone-wrong horror and over the course of six nonlinear chapters, toys with viewer expectations to mind-blowing effect. The film is beautifully shot by actor Giovanni Ribisi in his debut as a director of photography, with several scenes depending on pure, dialogue-free cinema, which he pulls off swimmingly. Fitzgerald and Gallner are both magnificent

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 25, 2023

More from Foreign

South African Horror ‘Breathing In’ Gets A Stunning New Trailer Ahead Of World Premiere

From the director of Gaia, Jacob Bauer comes the new South African horror film Breathing In. A new trailer has been unveiled ahead of its World Premiere this October at The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, giving us a look at this stunning film. The film is set in 1901 in South Africa. As the Second Anglo-Boer War rages on, a wounded General seeks refuge in the tiny home of a woman and her young daughter. As the hurt man settles in, he begins noticing that something is off about the two women, particularly the daughter, and before long, he’ll learn the real reason why they’ve invited him and how they’ve survived on their own for so long. An adaptation of the beloved South African play of the same name, Jaco Bouwer, director of the SXSW smash Gaia, delivers a tense single-location chamber piece that steadily ratchets up the tension before revealing its ultimate chilling endgame. Michele Burgers, Sven Ruygrok, Jamie-Lee

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Oct 16, 2023

Arrow Obtains French Horror ‘Pandemonium’ (Trailer)

Genre distribution company Arrow Video has just announced that they have acquired UK and North American rights to Pandemonium, the stunning French macabre tale from the creative mind of filmmaker Quarxx. The film follows Nathan (Hugo Dillon), an ordinary man on a journey he never expected. After realizing he has died at the scene of a car crash, Nathan descends into the depths of hell, where he is doomed to experience the pain of tortured souls along the way. Drawing on themes found in Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost, Pandemonium is a multi-textured existential fantasy with signature notes of visceral horror, disturbing fairy tales, wry comedy, and dark thriller. This twisted tale is directed by Quarxx (All the Gods in the Sky) and stars Hugo Dillon (AKA, November), Ophélia Kolb (Call My Agent!), Albanian star Arben Bajraktaraj (Besa) and rising talent Manon Maindivide (Drops of God). The film made its world premiere at Neuchâtel and went on to screen

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Oct 15, 2023

Spoiler-Free Film Reviews: GODS OF THE DEEP and THE VEIL (H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival)

Gods of the Deep (U.K., 2023) Last year, prolific director Charlie Steeds’s Freeze played Portland’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and this year his new film Gods of the Deep had its world premiere there. Steeds makes practically all manner of horror films, and his recent one-two punch of Lovecraftian horror is some of his strongest work yet. Gods of the Deep finds Jim Peters (Derek Nelson of Freeze) carrying on the research of his father, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. He is invited by a corporation that he mistrusts to join a crew that will take the highest-tech submersible ever developed to the depths of the ocean to explore what looks like an ancient man-made structure. Subterfuge, action, cosmic horror mayhem, and creature-feature creepiness abound as the crew makes a discovery of unexpected life deep in the ocean. Steeds works miracles with his budgets, and though the special effects in Gods of the Deep sometimes show that the budget might

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 12, 2023

The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra: A Horror Film Like You’ve Never Seen Before (Trailer)

A new kind of creature feature is born in the unique and weirdly charming film The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra. After becoming an award-winning festival favorite, it is now coming to the US this October. “After a mysterious mold starts spreading across the surface of an abandoned mattress, a sentient creature begins to take shape from within. Feasting on its unsuspecting victims’ vertebrae while they rest, the creature grows stronger, finding nourishment not only in the bones and sinew it assimilates but also in the hopes, fears, and emotions of all those it encounters.” Written and directed by Syeyoung Park, the Korean film stars Jihyeon Park, Hyein Moon, and Seokyoung Haam. The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra arrives on InidiePix Unlimted and in virtual cinemas on October 20, 2023.

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Oct 11, 2023

Spoiler-Free Short Film Reviews: MOTHER TONGUE, JANELLE’S BABY, and IHRUQAX (A Night of Horror International Film Festival)

Mother Tongue (Australia, 2023) Jade (Amelia Foxton, who wrote the screenplay) and Alex (Chiara Gizzi) want to have a baby together, and Alex desperately wants to have it herself rather than adopting, but the couple has run out of almost all options. Almost all, because director Glen Fraser’s Mother Tongue being a horror comedy, the couple can always turn to the dark arts as a last resort. For their journey into the diabolical, they seek the assistance of Brian (Stephen Hunter), who seems to be on the flighty side but proves that he is indeed an occult practitioner. In another classic horror-comedy case of “Be careful what you wish for,” the trio finds itself in quite a gruesome mess. Foxton’s screenplay is rich with both dramatic and comedic looks at parenting and expectations surrounding pregnancy and its difficulties, and delivers the goods in the occult department, too. Foxton and Gizzi are terrific in their portrayals of the frustrated couple, and

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 10, 2023

Spoiler- Free Film Review: Aberrance (2022)

Baatar Batsukh is a cinematographer making his directorial debut with the Mongolian horror film Aberrance, which he also lensed. The movie is rich in beautifully framed shots and loaded with visual style, bolstering a plot that tries at times to be a bit too surprising. Selenge (Selenge Chadraabal) and Erkhmee (Erkhembayar Ganbat) are a couple who take a break from city life to spend time at — where else but? — a remote cabin in the woods. Something is off between the pair, though, as Erkhmee seems dominant and possibly abusive, which doesn’t go unnoticed by their lone neighbor (Yalalt Namsrai). Meanwhile, Selenge is obviously suffering from trauma, and the claustrophobic environment is only making matters worse. Batsukh, working from a screenplay that he cowrote with Byambasuren Ganbat and Erdene Orosoo, has a keen visual eye, and incorporates everything from cameras attached to actors (with bobbing motion not unlike what you would get using selfie sticks) to unique angles to

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 5, 2023

Spoiler-Free Film Review: SUBURBAN TALE (Fantastic Fest)

Director Stephen Alexander’s Suburban Tale (AKA Tamso; India, 2023) is a dark, brooding film that becomes increasingly disturbing as it continually reveals new puzzle pieces throughout its running time. Its original Indian title Tamso means “from darkness,” which is quite fitting. Radhika (Rashmi Somvanshi, who also produced the film) is the estranged daughter of a family. Other extended family members refer to her as “that woman” and make it clear that they do not want her anywhere near the wedding preparations that are happening, although her father calls her back home because he wants her to watch over the youngest member of the family, a boy who seems to be possessed by a demon. When the boy, who emits a poisonous gas and snarls and rages, attacks the bride-to-be, Radhika is left alone in charge of him — and matters grow increasingly eerie and deadly. Alexander paces the film nicely, slowly divulging information as to why Radhika is shunned by

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 4, 2023

Spoiler-Free Film Reviews: DID I? and SAVING GRACE (A Night of Horror International Film Festival)

DID I? (United States, 2023) When viewers first meet Genevieve (Alexandra Pica), the main character of director Sarah Tice’s DID I?, she wakes up disoriented, disheveled, and mysteriously bruised. She is also having a tough time at work, where she is an editor and aspiring writer. We learn that the relatively mild-mannered and introverted Genevieve is struggling with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), and her alter Stevie, who is no fan of Genevieve’s therapist Rachel (Raven Wynn), has a decidedly wild side to her. Tice, who cowrote the screenplay with Zachary Beckler, does an admirable job of focusing on more realistic depictions of DID rather than just presenting the sensational, though naturally any horror or thriller film attempting to tackle mental issues walks a fine line. The third act packs a highly disturbing, harrowing wallop that reveals the reason for Genevieve’s trauma. Tice, who worked with a microbudget, does fine work that belies the film’s meager budget, including digital wizardry, quick

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 27, 2023

Spoiler-Free Short Film Reviews: STOP DEAD, MERGER, THE DAM, and RIDE, BABY, RIDE (A Night of Horror International Film Festival)

Australia’s A Night of Horror International Film Festival has a bounty of fear-fare shorts from around the globe on tap. Here is a look at four of the selections that run less than 10 minutes each. Stop Dead (United Kingdom, 2023) Director Emily Greenwood, working from a screenplay by David Scullion, has crafted a highly atmospheric short that sets up an intriguing premise worthy of a feature-length treatment. Police officers Samantha Hall (Sarah Soetaert) and partner Nick Thompson (David Ricardo-Pearce) are stuck on a country road at nighttime because of a flat tire. A young woman (Priya Blackburn) suddenly appears, refusing to heed Hall’s order to stop, telling the officers that if you stop, you die. This supernatural shocker boasts solid production values, good performances, taut direction, and some fast-paced editing that helps the world building and ratchets up the suspense. Merger (United Kingdom, 2022) Working late in a dark office is rarely a good thing to do, but in

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 25, 2023

Spoiler-Free Reviews: STRANGE DARLING and THE WAIT (Fantastic Fest)

STRANGE DARLING (2023) Do yourself an immense favor and learn nothing more about the plot of writer/director JT Mollner’s Strange Darling than what I am about to tell you. This film absolutely requires being gone into as cold as possible for maximum effect. The film opens with a preamble about a serial killer’s path through the United States, and then cuts to a coke-snorting man (Kyle Gallner) in a pickup truck chasing down a bloodied woman (Willa Fitzgerald) in a Ford Pinto. She totals the car and runs into the woods, with the rifle-toting man following in pursuit. Mollner takes the concepts of a cat-and-mouse thriller and first-date-gone-wrong horror and over the course of six nonlinear chapters, toys with viewer expectations to mind-blowing effect. The film is beautifully shot by actor Giovanni Ribisi in his debut as a director of photography, with several scenes depending on pure, dialogue-free cinema, which he pulls off swimmingly. Fitzgerald and Gallner are both magnificent

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 25, 2023
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