Reviews by Jennie Kermode

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  The Paragon (2023)

  Review preview for The Paragon

  A small film capable of generating some big laughs.

  The crippled and angry victim of a hit and run, who takes a course on how to be psychic so he can find the car that hit him and take revenge on the driver. But when his teacher draws him into her search for a mysterious crystal known as the paragon, he finds himself trapped in a parallel universe and on the run from her evil brother and his band of enslaved psychics.
• 
  Across The River And Into The Trees (2022)

  Review preview for Across The River And Into The Trees

  There’s a specificity about the relationship between Cantwell and the Countess that makes it convince.

  A war hero, struggling with his memories as his body is ravaged by heart disease, makes one last trip to Venice to face his demons and discover an unexpected source of joy.
• 
  Sting (2024)

  Review preview for Sting

  Sting is not the most original, but it features some good performances and if you’re an arachnophobe, it should provide you will all the terror you could want.

  Having raising an unusual spider in secret, 12-year-old Charlotte must face the facts about her pet - and fight for her family's survival - when the once-charming creature rapidly transforms into a giant, flesh-eating monster.
• 
  Paradise Is Burning (2023)

  Review preview for Paradise Is Burning

  With a background in documentary, director Mika Gustafson captures something that, though not always coherent, feels fresh and raw and real.

  Three sisters try to cope in the absence of parents, afraid that social services will split them up if they find out about their situation.
• 
  Scared Shitless (2024)

  Review preview for Scared Shitless

  This may present itself as a B-movie but it’s very well crafted, at every level from the dramatic to the cinematographic.

  A father and son plumbing duo face a gruesome challenge: rid a building of a toilet-dwelling creature before it unleashes itself to the rest of the world.
• 
  Charlotte (2024)

  Review preview for Charlotte

  There’s too much reliance here on pre-existing audience emotions about certain topics, and not enough effort made to forge direct connections.

  In the dead of night, a young teenager appears on Roy's doorstep, fleeing from her abusive father. Despite a few too many drinks, Roy reluctantly offers her shelter for the night. But is either of them what they seem?
• 
  Fright (2024)

  Review preview for Fright

  Dudley has a deep understanding of the visual language of the genre, and viewers who know the period well will be delighted by some of the images he presents.

  1937: young Emily is trapped in a nightmare. Chronic agoraphobia and a strange, domineering mother have turned their sprawling gothic mansion into a prison. On the brink of madness, she's haunted by lurking malevolent forces, her only hope that her missing father might save her. But as she longs for his return, she's tormented by visions of a sinister, gnarled black hand—a spectre haunting her earliest memories.
• 
  Schlitter: Evil In The Woods (2023)

  Review preview for Schlitter: Evil In The Woods

  A beautifully made but otherwise problematic film.

  Lucas returns to his native village lost in the mountains to bury his parents who have tragically died in a mysterious fire. Traumatised by his abusive father as a child, he also witnessed the death of his best friend when he was eight-years-old. But he has never told anyone the truth about what really happened.
• 
  Never Have I Ever (2024)

  Review preview for Never Have I Ever

  Heavy on ominous music from the outset, the film too often comes across like it’s trying to tell us what to feel rather than letting it happen naturally.

  Sam is having a bad day. He is battling an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, is late on a deadline for a writing gig and risks having to pay back an advance he can’t afford to. Then a chance encounter whilst drowning his sorrows sends his already bad day spinning in directions he couldn’t possibly have seen coming.
• 
  Saint Clare (2024)

  Review preview for Saint Clare

  It’s a busy story but it flows smoothly in the hands of director Mitzi Peirone, who uses the visual language of nostalgic coming-of-age movies to tell the main part of the tale, intermittently veering off into much more experimental techniques.

  The story of a Catholic student, animal lover and devout vegan who is also a sociopath with dissociative identity disorder, and a serial killer.
• 
  The Life And Deaths Of Christopher Lee (2024)

  Review preview for The Life And Deaths Of Christopher Lee

  Director Jon Spira does a surprisingly thorough job, and although he isn’t able to go into depth with much of the material, this is a solid start for those interested in exploring further.

  Genre icon Christopher Lee is brought back to life in a documentary using fresh interviews, archive material and multiple forms of traditional and cutting-edge animation.
• 
  Members Club (2024)

  Review preview for Members Club

  This is the kind of film that could easily be a disaster, but despite obvious budgetary limitations it acquits itself well.

  Wet Dreams, a middle-aged male stripper group, has hit rock bottom when they get an offer of a mysterious gig that might change everything. What they don't know is that they have become caught up in a plot to raise a murderous witch from the dead.
• 
  Video Vision (2024)

  Review preview for Video Vision

  When the film isn’t being didactic, there’s some good dialogue here.

  When an old VCR mysteriously shows up at the digitising facility Video Vision, it starts affecting one of the employees in strange ways. Meanwhile, her new romance with a trans man has her head in the clouds - until she's brought to her knees by the supernatural force that's slowly taking control of her body and mind.
• 
  7 Keys (2024)

  Review preview for 7 Keys

  McDonald is excellent.

  When Lena learns Daniel has the keys to every place he’s ever lived, she wants to use them. But what starts as a romantic tour soon takes a sinister turn.
• 
  Traumatika (2024)

  Review preview for Traumatika

  It is at its most effective when honing in on the psychological and the social, looking at how easy it is for children – and adults – to find themselves in trouble.

  Mikey’s night terrors become reality when his mother begins showing signs of demonic possession. What he’s about to experience will haunt him for the rest of his life and claim countless lives across generations.
• 
  Boutique: To Preserve And Collect (2024)

  Review preview for Boutique: To Preserve And Collect

  Levey’s enthusiasm for his subject is infectious.

  A documentary about the history of physical media, the rise of boutique specialty collector labels and the role they have played in film restoration, preservation and elevation of underrepresented voices.
• 
  The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (2023)

  Review preview for The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

  Unfortunately, despite a highly capable cast, this adaptation just doesn’t have much wind in its sails.

  On board the Russian schooner Demeter, 24 unmarked wooden crates are being transported from Carpathia to London. But as cargo animals and the crew start turning up dead, a mysterious stowaway sets out to convince the doomed sailors they’re dealing with more than just a rabies outbreak, something more in the supernatural realm.
• 
  Survive (2024)

  Review preview for Survive

  One of those films that’s always going to be at its best when watched in a group, this really packs in the action, with Dequenne’s intensely physical performance and Nicolas Errèra’s energetic score ensuring that it keeps its grip throughout.

  A yacht trip goes awry after the Earth's polarity reverses and a mum fights to save her children in a world where crazed humanity and hungry creatures from the abyss now hunt for human flesh.
• 
  Children Of The Wicker Man (2024)

  Review preview for Children Of The Wicker Man

  The popular concept of genius is thoroughly subverted here.

  A documentary about The Wicker Man and its legacy.
• 
  Shelby Oaks (2024)

  Review preview for Shelby Oaks

  Stuckmann and co-writer Sam Liz keep it all under tight control, even when the imagery suggests chaos or excess.

  A woman's desperate search for her long-lost sister falls into obsession upon realising that the imaginary demon from their childhood may have been real.
• 
  Scarlet Blue (2024)

  Review preview for Scarlet Blue

  In order to explore the mystery, viewers need to courage to engage with Alter’s visions and the maze they lead into, with Mengin using surrealist techniques and colour coding to map out this journey.

  A woman who struggles with depression, schizophrenia and a schism of communication with her mother endeavours to recover from a suicide attempt by consulting a healer who practices mystical hypnosis and lives an isolated existence in a cave.
• 
  The Daemon (2024)

  Review preview for The Daemon

  The Daemon has been billed as Lovecraftian Horror. This turns out to be less in the existentially sublime way than in the slime coming out of people’s faces way.

  Haunted by his father's suicide, Tom abandons his wife Kathy and seeks refuge at the lakeside cottage where he met his tragic end. There, tormented memories from childhood resurface, all intricately connected to an ancient, mystifying force lurking beneath the lake's depths, driving Tom inexorably towards madness.
• 
  The Secret Art Of Human Flight (2023)

  Review preview for The Secret Art Of Human Flight

  There’s a deep understanding of the ways that people can be affected by grief underlying the gentle, quirky comedy of this tale.

  While mourning the death of his wife and fending off an ambitious detective who thinks he killed her, Ben encounters a man who claims that he can teach him to fly.
• 
  Broken Bird (2024)

  Review preview for Broken Bird

  Broken Bird is primarily a character study, and Calder is its greatest asset.

  A lonely mortician who has spent her whole life looking for love finds her reason slipping away from her, her dark desires becoming more insatiable and progressively more out of control.
• 
  Strange Darling (2023)

  Review preview for Strange Darling

  A gorgeous piece of work.

  A relentless predator tracks an injured woman through the Oregon wilderness. The woman does her best to outsmart her attacker, but with each tense moment she grows weaker and less able. He’s a man on a mission, and it’s only a matter of time before he captures his prey.
• 
  Close To You (2023)

  Review preview for Close To You

  Rather than watching Sam from a distance, with curiosity, we are very much aligned with him, experiencing the world as he does, noticing the things that don’t make sense about other people.

  A young man happens to encounter with an old friend on his way back home to a dreaded family reunion that forces him to confront long-buried memories.
• 
  Satranic Panic (2023)

  Review preview for Satranic Panic

  This playful approach is an effective one, making the film very watchable and enabling Mackay to direct viewers’ sympathies with ease.

  Following the death of a loved one, best friends embark on a demon-killing spree, but there are stranger things going on than they ever imagined.
• 
  Steppenwolf (2024)

  Review preview for Steppenwolf

  Starchenko is extraordinary in her ability to develop an emotionally complex character despite the state of shock that covers everything.

  Tamara searches for her missing son in a violent town. She hires a morally questionable ex-detective to find him. His methods are cruel but she is determined to find her son whatever the cost.
• 
  Berta (2024)

  Review preview for Berta

  Segarra takes a mature approach throughout, and her preference for realism over easy wit or stylishness still leaves room for humour – even in the darkest of places.

  A woman decides to put her trauma to rest by dealing with the man who hurt her, once and for all.
• 
  Sunburnt Unicorn (2024)

  Review preview for Sunburnt Unicorn

  Against gorgeously designed and illuminated desert landscapes, director Nick Johnson’s quirky characters stand out, bold and three dimensional.

  Lost in an endless desert, an injured teenager adopts the identity of a mythical unicorn to survive surreal encounters and rescue his abducted father.
• 
  Mash Ville (2024)

  Review preview for Mash Ville

  Handsomely framed and possessed of a strong sense of style, Mash Ville is superficially beguiling.

  Someone has died after drinking the bootleg liquor brewed by Se-jong and his two younger brothers. While on a mission to retrieve their deadly booze before another person perishes from it, they come across two homicidal cultists who are terrorising the villagers.
• 
  Ouch! (2024)

  Review preview for Ouch!

  Kornfeld has a strong sense for the rhythms of this kind of comedy, and deploys them to great effect.

  A disabled man's chronic pain is explored through horror movie tropes that the people around him can't see.
• 
  Baby Assassins: Nice Days (2024)

  Review preview for Baby Assassins: Nice Days

  For fans of martial arts cinema, this is a must see.

  On a working holiday in Miyazaki, the teenage killers find themselves up against a deadly freelancer.
• 
  Mickey Hardaway (2023)

  Review preview for Mickey Hardaway

  The acting is strong all round and there’s some beautiful cinematography, mostly in black and white – all of it to a point.

  A young sketch artist agrees to a in-house therapy session with a renowned psychiatrist as his life begins sprawling out of control following years of physical and verbal abuse.
• 
  Duchess (2024)

  Review preview for Duchess

  Marshall is, first and foremost, an action director, and the various fight scenes in the film are well distributed so that we never have to wait too long before it gets back on track.

  A tough, working class petty criminal morphs into an anti-heroine to be reckoned with in the treacherous world of diamond smuggling.
• 
  Girl You Know It's True (2023)

  Review preview for Girl You Know It's True

  Njie and Ali embrace their roles with gusto.

  The story of the pop duo Milli Vanilli, who rose to international stardom before becoming the subject of scandal when it emerged that they had never sung a word on their records.
• 
  Hunting Daze (2024)

  Review preview for Hunting Daze

  Condensed and symbolic in its approach, sometimes to the point where it becomes surreal, Hunting Daze uses a small story to address big subjects.

  A young, tempestuous woman, is taken in by a group of hunters in a remote cabin. In the midst of this tough, yet endearing, male microsociety, she feels like she finally belongs. A mysterious stranger’s arrival disrupts her newfound haven.
• 
  Black Eyed Susan (2024)

  Review preview for Black Eyed Susan

  Underlying the human and not-quite-human drama here are sharp observations about the way capitalism feeds and in the process exaggerates human desires, about various ways in which workers are exploited, and about the challenges, for any individual, of trying to self-define outside of that system.

  Desperate for work, Derek accepts a job at a shady tech start-up, working intimately with Susan, a bleeding-edge BDSM sex doll meant to receive and appreciate sexual punishment as an integral part of her evolving AI.
• 
  Hell Hole (2024)

  Review preview for Hell Hole

  Too silly to be upsetting, too well crafted to be dismissed, Hell Hole strikes just the right balance and does a great job of sustaining it throughout.

  In the Adams Family's celebration of the classic creature-feature, an American-led fracking crew working deep in the Serbian wilderness find themselves at odds with government assigned environmental advisors. When they get approval to drill, the workers uncover the unimaginable: a dormant parasitic monster entombed deep in the frozen rock. Now awakened, it tears through the mining facility in search of the perfect host.
• 
  Self Driver (2024)

  Review preview for Self Driver

  It’s well handled throughout and effectively shows off Pierro’s talent for creating tension.

  Facing mounting expenses and the unrelenting pressure of modern living, a down-on-his-luck cab driver is lured onto a mysterious new app that promises fast, easy money.
• 
  Cuckoo (2024)

  Review preview for Cuckoo

  It’s Schafer’s performance that anchors it.

  On a trip to the German Alps with her father and stepmother, Gretchen discovers that the resort town where they’re staying hides sinister secrets, as she’s plagued by strange noises and frightening visions of a woman pursuing her.
• 
  Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp (2024)

  Review preview for Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp

  The composite structure of the film means that there’s plenty of plot to hold the action sequences together.

  After helping a vampire, Araragi becomes one of them. To become human again, he must recover the vampire's limbs, which have been stolen by hunters.
• 
  Caligula: The Ultimate Cut (2023)

  Review preview for Caligula: The Ultimate Cut

  It belongs on the big screen, to a world of cinematic sensation beyond lightweight blockbusters and under-financed independents.

  A complete restructuring of the 1980 film, made from previously unused material shot at the same time, this is a fictionalised take on the story of Caligula as he kills his devious adoptive grandfather and takes control of the decadent Roman Empire, spiralling into depravity, devastation and madness.
• 
  A Samurai In Time (2023)

  Review preview for A Samurai In Time

  Two things elevate it. One is Yasuda’s commitment to looking in depth at the culture of the Edo period, rather than just cribbing from past jidaigeki and trying to distract us with swordplay. The other is seasoned jidaigeki actor Yamaguchi’s wonderfully sensitive and sincere performance.

  A samurai who gets hit by lightning wakes up to find himself on a film set in the present day and starts to work as an extra on samurai films.
• 
  Hollywood 90028 (1973)

  Review preview for Hollywood 90028

  Where serial killers have elsewhere tended to be treated as powerful individuals, even as heroic in their ability to throw off conditioning, here Mark emerges as a symptom of a more deeply troubled society.

  A young photographer, travels to Hollywood hoping to make it as a cameraman in the movie business. Unfortunately, the only jobs he can find are shooting porn loops for a sleazy producer. Depressed and increasingly delusional, he begins to take out his frustrations on women he meets - by strangling them.
• 
  Infinite Summer (2024)

  Review preview for Infinite Summer

  A wistful hippy daydream which goes on to become very dark indeed, Llansó’s fable unfolds gracefully thanks to his command of the different genres that make up its constituent parts.

  Three young women's week at the beach turns into a transhumanist mystery romp in one Estonian summer.
• 
  Penalty Loop (2024)

  Review preview for Penalty Loop

  Whilst we’re still reeling, trying to figure out the rules, Araki introduces an unexpected human element.

  A man carefully plans and carries out the murder of the man whom he blames for his girlfriend's death, only to wake up with a confirmed sense of déjà-vu and his target alive and well, repeating the same routine as the day before.
• 
  The Dead Thing (2024)

  Review preview for The Dead Thing

  A grim picture of a nocturnal city where everything feels temporary.

  A young woman lost in a series of meaningless connections falls in love with a charismatic and sensitive man, who hides a dark secret that turns her affair into a dangerous obsession.
• 
  Parvulos (2024)

  Review preview for Parvulos

  Ezban does not let us look away.

  Three young brothers living in a cabin in the middle of the woods hide a dark, disturbing secret in their basement.
• 
  Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded (2024)

  Review preview for Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded

  Maguire and co-writer/director Kyle Garrett Greenberg keep it simple and it’s more effective as a result.

  An English holidaymaker has a disturbing experience when walking through a peaceful Los Angeles neighbourhood.