Elevator to Insanity

d./w. Nik Box; p. Nik Box, Ameng Zang; cast: Gus Capucci, Bryony, Kurt Dirt, Rob, Yuqi Zhang

Utterly extraordinary avant garde feature from Dead Good Films Like. It’s black and white, it has no (English) dialogue and most of its 70-minute running time is a young man standing patiently in an ever-rising lift. If you’re looking for a narrative feature, you’ll loathe this. But if you appreciate the weird and experimental, you might strangely enjoy it. After about five minutes of nothing happening, a young woman gets in and travels one floor. About five minutes later, she does so again. The third time she gets in, the man tries talking to her in Greek, to no effect. Later, other things happen, including repeated brief views of a woman dancing in a corridor and a third woman who gets in the lift and lets out a single continuous scream for three minutes. Box moves his camera around enough to keep our attention, and Capucci does a sterling job as the mysterious central character. Towards the end he does arrive somewhere, trust me. Shot at the University of Central Lancashire in 2015.

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Point of Death

d./w. Steve Stone; p. Lionel Hicks, Alan Latham; cast: David O’Hara, Isabelle Allen, Lisa Gormley, Toyah Willcox, Neil Pearson, Bill Fellows

Stone follows the impressive but generic Entity and (frustratingly unreleased) psycho-thriller Schism with this relentlessly creepy nightmare. O’Hara is superb as Alex, a busy businessman who comes home to his wife and 12-year-old daughter in a state of high tension. A weird-looking storm is rolling in across the countryside, a rowan tree in the garden has died, and Alex is hearing his family say inexplicable things that they haven’t said. It’s fairly clear early on that nothing is real and the resolution was obvious and expected even before the original title, In Extremis, was changed to this clangingly unsubtle new one. Nevertheless a brilliant lead performance, Stone’s unerring direction and some great visual effects make for a thoroughly satisfying movie. Name-value actors Willcox and Pearson cameo as a patient and a doctor in the third act; Toyah also sings over the credits. Fellows is a homeless man near the start. Shot in 2015, this premiered (under its shooting title) at the East End Film Festival in June 2016.

• Released on VOD platforms on 11th February.

Crucible of the Vampire

d. Iain Ross-McNamee; w. Iain Ross-McNamee, Darren Lake, John Wolskel; p. Amanda Murray; cast: Katie Goldfinch, Neil Morrissey, Brian Croucher, Larry Rew, Babette Barat, Angela Carter, Lisa Martin, Phil Hemming, John Stirling

Enjoyable gothic potboiler of the sort they don’t make anymore, from the director and producer of The Singing Bird Will Come. Assistant curator Isabelle (Goldfinch, who is startlingly good) is despatched to a country house where building work has uncovered half a cauldron, apparently the missing 50% of one held in her university’s collection. In a monochrome 17th century prologue we saw this cleaved in two by witchfinder John Sterne. The resident family – dad, mum and adult daughter who couldn’t more obviously be a lesbian vampire if her name was an anagram of Carmilla – are all creepy, gradually transforming from eccentric into dangerous. With Morrissey as the expository gardener, 29 years after he bought a vampire motorcycle (also written by Wolskel!) and Croucher in the prologue as the cauldron’s original owner. Filmed in Shropshire in September 2016, this had a single screening in January 2017. In May 2018 Ross-McNamee edited frame-grabs into a photonovel.

Crucible of the Vampire hits cinemas on 1 February, and arrives on Dual Edition (Blu-ray & DVD) and Digital on 4 February.

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The Haunting of Borley Rectory

d. Steven M Smith; w. Steven M Smith, Christopher Jolley; p. Steven M Smith, Jon-Paul Gates; cast: Zach Clifford, Rad Brown, Sonera Angel, Garry Roost, Kit Pascoe, Jon-Paul Gates, Matthew Fitzthomas Rogers, Georgi Taylor Wills, Anastasia Cane

The late 2010s has brought us micro-genres dedicated to the ‘most haunted house in England’ and supernatural nuns. This latest title from Smith ticks both boxes and underlines his own steady improvement. Where The Howling had some fine moments, this genuinely spooky ghost tale is his first consistently good feature, easily eclipsing both North Bank Entertainment’s A Haunting at the Rectory and Proportion Productions’ The Bad Nun. Clifford (an Aussie) is excellent as an injured GI in 1944, assigned to monitor radio traffic from a country cottage. He has disturbing dreams and visions which he believes are connected with a nearby derelict rectory so calls in Borley expert Harry Price (Brown, director of unreleased 2016 horror feature Last Weekend). Excellent period detail – including some corking 1940s hairstyles – is enhanced by Peter Panoa’s terrific photography (but briefly let down by an anachronistically unshaven British officer). Shot in Devon and Essex in 2018.

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Finders Keepers

d. Adam Evans; w. Neil Morris, Gary Smart; p. Neil Morris, Gary Smart, Christopher Griffiths, Adam Evans, Stuart Conran; cast: Mark Wingett, Stanley Rawlings, Bruce Jones, Oliver Smith, Kenneth Cranham, Simon Bamford, Neil Cole, Corin Silva, Ethan McKinley

The third entry in the Dark Ditties series is the blackest of black comedies, a 45-minute gory crime thriller which feels like someone cast the Chuckle Brothers in a remake of The Long Good Friday. Two gangsters are searching for a minor accomplice who jumped out of a car with a valuable briefcase chained to his wrist. Two bickering brothers doing a spot of poaching find the briefcase and body and set about seeing what they’ve got… This is a cracking film for sure, but what makes this series so successful? It’s partly the beautifully crafted scripts and adroit direction which introduce us to fascinating, distinctive characters and their thoroughly believable relationships. It’s partly the care that is taken over all the technical aspects: the photography, sound, editing as well as production design, costumes, make-up and of course the prosthetic effects. But mostly it’s the use of solid, professional, experienced casts who imbue these characters with life. On Amazon Prime later this month, DD3: Finders Keepers is unreservedly recommended. DD4: The Witching Hour is on the way.

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All the new British horror films released in 2018

My master list contains 89 British horror features released during 2018. This is slightly down from last year's round-up, which I announced 12 months ago. (It was 107 films at the time but currently stands at 105 as I have discovered prior releases for a couple of titles). We’re still on course to hit a thousand films (since January 2000) sometime in the coming year.

So: 89 feature films. How many have you seen? How many have you heard of? I've managed to catch 38 of these so far.

As ever, I define a film as 'released in 2018' if this year saw the first chance for someone to watch the movie - whether in a cinema, on DVD, on demand or just posted on YouTube - without attending a special event. Some of these films played festivals or had other one-off screenings in 2017 or earlier years.)

Please let me know of anything I've missed, or any other corrections.

• Abduction 2: Revenge of the Hive Queen (Mol Smith)
• Anna and the Apocalypse (John McPhail)
• Apostle (Gareth Evans)
• Assassin's Revenge (Richard Driscoll)
• Attack of the Adult Babies (Dominic Brunt)
• Aura aka The Exorcism of Karen Walker (Steve Lawson)
• Await Further Instructions (Johnny Kevorkian)
• The Bad Nun (Scott Jeffrey)
• The Black Gloves (Lawrie Brewster)
• The Book of Birdie (Elizabeth E Schuch)
• Boots on the Ground (Louis Melville)
• Calibre (Matt Palmer)
• Cannibal Farm aka Escape from Cannibal Farm (Charlie Steeds)
• Caught (Jamie Patterson)
• Charismata (Andy Collier, Toor Mian)
• Condemned aka God’s Acre (JP Davidson)
• Conspiracy X (Sam Mason Bell et al)
• Curse of the Scarecrow aka Scarecrow Rising (Louisa Warren)
• Curse of the Witch's Doll (Lawrence Fowler)
• Dark Beacon (Corrie Greenop)
• Dark Highlands (Mark Stirton)
• Dark Vale (Jason MJ Brown)
• Darkness Comes (David Newbigging)
• The Demonic Doll aka The Demonic Tapes 2: The Doll (Richard Mansfield)
• The Devil's Doorway (Aislinn Clarke)
• Die Gest: Flesh Eater (Tony Newton et al)
• Dogged (Richard Rowntree)
• Dragon Kingdom aka Dark Kingdom (Simon Wells)
• Fanged Up (Christian James)
• The Ferryman (Elliott Maguire)
• Fever aka Mountain Fever (Hendrik Faller)
• Fox Trap aka Don’t Blink (Jamie Weston)
• Fractured (Jamie Patterson)
• Ghost Stories (Andy Nyman, Jeremy Dyson)
• Gore Theatre (Sam Mason-Bell et al)
• Grim Places (Jason Impey)
• Grindhouse Nightmares (Richard Driscoll)
• Habit (Simeon Halligan)
• Halloween Hell Night (David Black et al)
• Halloween in Hertford (Michael Curtis)
• Harvest of the Dead (Peter Goddard)
• Haunted 2: Apparitions (Steven M Smith)
• Haunted 3: Spirits (Steven M Smith)
• The Hell of Ween (Tom Stavely)
• Home Videos (Jason Impey et al)
• House of Salem (James Crow)
• The House of Screaming Death (Alex Bourne et al)
• The House of Violent Desire (Charlie Steeds)
• The House on Mansfield Street (Richard Mansfield)
• Jurassic Predator (Andrew Jones)
• The Legend of Halloween Jack (Andrew Jones)
• The Little Stranger (Lenny Abrahamson)
• Mandy the Doll (Jamie Weston)
• Maniacal (Sam Mason-Bell et al)
• Mara (Clive Tonge)
• Mask of Thorn (MJ Dixon)
• Matriarch aka Mother (Scott Vickers)
• Monochrome (Tom Lawes)
• Monster (Matt Shaw)
• Old Blood (Denise Channing)
• Paranormal Farm 2: Closer to the Truth (Carl Medand)
• Patient Zero (Stefan Ruzowitzky)
• Polterheist (Paul Renhard, Dave Gilbank)
• Possum (Matthew Holness)
• Psychomanteum: Tales of the Dead (Ray Brady et al)
• Pumpkins (Maria Lee Metheringham)
• Recovery (Marcus Scott)
• Redcon-1 (Chee Keong Cheung)
• The Redeeming (Brian Barnes)
• The Revenge of Robert (Andrew Jones)
• The Same Circles (Mark Garvey)
• Shadow of the Missing (Jamie Lee Smith)
• Sin (Self Induced Nightmares) (Dan Brownlie et al)
• Slaughterhouse Rulez (Crispian Mills)
• The Snarling (Pablo Raybould)
• The Spawning (Simon Riley)
• Tone Death (John Hickman, Roger Armstrong)
• Toxic Schlock (Sam Mason-Bell, Tony Newton)
• Trash Arts: Killers Vol.1 (Sam Mason Bell et al)
• Twenty Twenty-Four aka It Lives (Richard Mundy)
• Virus of the Dead (Tony Newton et al)
• The Wasting (Carolyn Saunders)
• Webcast (Paul McGhie)
• Welcome to Essex (Ryan J Fleming)
• Welcome to Hell (Sam Mason Bell et al)
• Where the Skin Lies (Michael Boucherie)
• White Goods (Bazz Hancher)
• Winterskin (Charlie Steeds)
• Writers Retreat (Diego Rocha)

Morticia

d./w./p. Nabil Shaban; cast: Jenni Young, Karen Douglas, Ricky Callan, Nabil Shaban, Sofie Alonzi, Dolina Maclennan, Andrew Dallmeyer, James Tennant

Interesting and worthwhile, despite low production values, Shaban’s only feature is a character study of a 12-year-old goth. Kylie, who prefers ‘Morticia’, is regarded as the local weirdo by children and adults alike. An able and intelligent child, her poetic school essay about wanting to become a vampire causes chaos when read out in class. She steals a paperback of Dracula from the library and reads it in a churchyard, then steals a bat from Edinburgh Zoo. Her bumptious mother and long-suffering father, a disabled Gulf War veteran, don’t know what to do with her. Eventually her romantic view of death is cracked by overhearing her dad talk about the women and children he was required to kill in Iraq. Right at the end, Dracula himself appears, probably a hallucination. Disabled actor Shaban (still fondly remembered for a role in 1980s Doctor Who) plays a psychologist. Night Kaleidoscope director Grant McPhee pops up in the credits as colourist. Shot in 2009, this premiered at a vampire film festival in October that year.

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