Survive (2024)

"Well Executed French Post-Apocalypse Science Fiction"

After its UK premiere at this year's Frightfest, Frederic Jardin's really rather good French post-apocalypse movie gets a Digital release from Signature Entertainment.

Tom (Andreas Pietschmann) and his family are enjoying an ocean holiday on their boat when a worldwide apocalypse occurs. The magnetic poles are reversed causing all sea water to shift onto land and leaving the ocean beds as dry terrain. Marooned their one hope is to reach the bathysphere of oceanographer Nao (Olivier Ho Hio Hen) before, according to his instruments, the poles are to reverse again and the waters will come flooding back to their original position.

Don't worry too much about the science in SURVIVE. Instead just go with it because this is actually a very decent race against time post apocalypse thriller with some surprises along the way (which I'm not going to spoil). The landscape vistas are impressive and probably looked even more so on a cinema screen. 

It's a French movie, of course, so there's going to be urinating and nihilism but this is still a very good mashup of SF ideas, mainly riffing on Charles Eric Maine's fantastically bleak British SF novel The Tide Went Out. In fact SURVIVE is positively cheery compared with that so perhaps the nihilism comment is a bit excessive. But you can rely on there being some unexpected shocks along the way.

SURVIVE is an impressive piece of post-apocalypse cinema, so much so that it wouldn't be at all surprising if an American remake is in the works. By the time you get to the end you can imagine Roland Emmerich taking out his phone to contact Universal. Let's have a trailer:

Frederic Jardin's SURVIVE is out on Digital from Signature Entertainment on Monday 30th September 2024

Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives (2023)

"Effective One-Take German Shocker"

One of the best films from Frightfest 2023 gets a Digital release from Blue Finch.

Maria (Nilam Farooq) is heavily pregnant. As the sun is setting she arrives at the isolated country house she and her husband Viktor (David Kross) have bought with the intention of turning it into a Bed and Breakfast. Viktor is still busy at work and so she explores the property alone. In doing so she discovers a secret room in the basement filled with African artefacts and a worrying diary.

But that's not all. She's started bleeding and Viktor's father, a doctor, is on the way to the house to help her. Before he gets there Maria is witness to a horrific incident from the past, and after he arrives things get even worse.

Shot all in one take, HOME SWEET HOME: WHERE EVIL LIVES, hampered by a somewhat unwieldy title, is actually a supremely creepy ghost story, with some good scares and decent characterisation on an obviously low budget. Worth watching twice to appreciate the skill involved in getting some of the shots, because first time around you'll be too wrapped up in the what's going on. Here's a trailer:

HOME SWEET HOME: WHERE EVILS LIVES is out on Digital from Blue Finch Releasing on Monday 30th September 2024

Azrael: Angel of Death (2024)

 

"Seriously Decent Dialogue-Free Post Apocalypse Horror"

The latest film from director E L Katz (CHEAP THRILLS) and writer Simon Barrett (THE GUEST), and the best thing either of them have done since those movies, is getting a digital release from Signature Entertainment, with a disc release to follow.

In a grim post-apocalyptic world where pretty much nobody can speak, Samara Weaving manages to briefly make friends with a man before they are captured and taken to a miserable shanty town in the middle of the miserable forest in which the entire film takes place. She is tied to a chair, made to bleed and left as an offering for the burned anthropoid creatures that also inhabit the place. Samara escapes and someone else gets rather graphically ripped apart instead. 

She returns to the town where we slowly realise she has plans for the strange cult that exists there and in particular for its pregnant leader, leading to an eventual showdown amidst a conflagration.

There's a bit of explanatory text at the start of this that tells us we are in a post Rapture world and that some people have decided to render themselves unable to speak because they consider uttering words to be a sin. A scar on Weaving's neck suggests they have all undergone some sort of voluntary vocal cord surgery. The film doesn't actually need any of this and would quite likely be even more effective than it already is if there was less explanation rather than more, but it's there if you want it.

Otherwise AZRAEL: ANGEL OF DEATH is a surprisingly good, grim, post-apocalypse movie that goes in directions you don't expect, has some genuinely creepy and unpleasant scenes, and a climax that's just the right side of completely bonkers that must have made this one a hit on the festival circuit (it played at this year's Frightfest). Weaving, with her expressive eyes, is spot on casting for the lead and yes, apart from a few words in a foreign language, the film is essentially dialogue-free, instead relying entirely on its well put together visuals. Definitely worth catching. Time for a trailer:

AZRAEL: ANGEL OF DEATH is out on Digital from Signature Entertainment on Monday 30th September 2024 with a DVD and Blu-ray release planned for Monday 28th October 2024

The Hitcher (1986)

 

Director Robert Harmon and writer Eric Red's debut feature gets a stunning 4K restoration release on a disc packed with extras from Second Sight.

In danger of falling asleep driving from Chicago to San Diego, Jim Halsey (C Thomas Howell) picks up hitchhiker John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) during a thunderstorm in the hope the company will keep him awake. That act of charity quickly proves to be a disaster as Ryder reveals what he has just done to the last man who gave him a lift, and explains he plans to do the same to Halsey.

There then follows a ninety minute game of cat and mouse, all played out against the backdrop of the Texas landscape, with both Ryder and the police in pursuit of the hapless Halsey, who is now believed guilty of Ryder's crimes. The only person who believes him is Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh) but that just lines her up as a target for Ryder, too.

Essentially a series of bravura set-pieces, THE HITCHER doesn't really stand up to close examination from the point of view of logic. We never see how Ryder escapes situations, acquires items such as weapons and vehicle keys, or how he seems to know everything about everyone that he needs to. However, far from its detriment, it's this that serves to elevate THE HITCHER to the status of art film. One can imagine Bergman making a variation on its theme with Max Von Sydow in the Ryder role, a crazed, unstoppable symbol of death, or perhaps the dark side of our own personality. It's extremely well put together and Second Sight's 4K transfer only serves to show just how beautiful many of the compositions here are.

Second Sight's package comes with both UHD and Blu-ray discs. Unlike with some cases of 4K 'upgrades here, while the Blu-ray looks great, the image on the UHD 4K disc is something else again, enough so that if you don't have a UHD player and are a fan of THE HITCHER you may want to think about investing in one.

As usual, Second Sight have packed their discs to the gills with extras, which are the same on both the UHD and Blu-ray discs. These include what are essentially four (!)  commentary tracks - a new one from Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (who wrote the Arrow book on the film), plus an archival one with Robert Harmon and Eric Red, another with the cast and crew, and yet another that's a podcast on the film and features Rutger Hauer.

There are a stack of new interviews including director Harmon (41 minutes), Eric Red (41 minutes), C Thomas Howell (28 minutes), DP John Seale (10 minutes), and composer Mark Isham (15 minutes). Leigh Singer offers an entertaining 20 minute video essay that looks at the film and compares it to Spielberg's DUEL, there's an archival making of (38 minutes) plus short films from Harmon (CHINA LAKE) and Red (TELEPHONE), with a 15 minute Harmon interview about CHINA LAKE.

Finally, Second Sight's limited edition comes with a 200 page hardback book, the original screenplay, six art cards, and a box to keep it all in.

Robert Harmon's THE HITCHER is out in both limited and standard edition UHD / Blu-ray sets on Monday 30th September 2024

The Last Straw (2024)

Following its UK premiere at Frightfest Glasgow, Blue Finch are releasing this rough around the edges 1970s-era Wes Craven-style thriller on Digital.

19 year old Nancy (Jessica Belkin) is promiscuous, pregnant, and feels her life is going nowhere in the grim backwoods town where she lives. Her father (an almost unrecognisable Jeremy Sisto from Lucky McKee's MAY)) owns a roadway diner, The Fat Bottom Bistro, and has promoted Emily to manager, much to the chagrin of the other staff.

When Emily has an aggressive run-in with four louts, and ends up firing staff member Jake (Taylor Kowalski) it's just the start of a day that is going to get worse and worse, culminating in violence, mistaken identity and multiple deaths, all centred on the bistro.

THE LAST STRAW has the makings of a good film buried deep within its script. Unfortunately this is not it. Moments that should be suspenseful, shocking or touching are all handled poorly by first-time director Alan Scott Neal. Perhaps the biggest mis-step of all is in making the lead character of Nancy so relentlessly annoying and unpleasant that it quickly becomes difficult to care about anything that happens to her. Combine that with damp, grim, seedy locations and the 83 minute running time feels a lot longer. If Wes Craven had made a movie with this kind of subject matter at the beginning of his career, it might have been a classic, making THE LAST STRAW feel like even more of a missed opportunity. Here's a trailer:

THE LAST STRAW is out from Blue Finch releasing on Monday 23rd September 2024

Greedy People (2024)

"Entertaining, Quirky, Coen Brothers-Like Crime Drama"

It's time for crime in a small (and somewhat eccentric) community as director Potsy Ponciroli's GREEDY PEOPLE gets a UK digital release from Signature.

Wil (Himesh Patel) moves to the small island town of Providence with his pregnant wife Paige (Lily James) to start work as a police officer. He is partnered with sweary Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who reassures him that nothing of note ever happens in the town and that Wil should find a hobby, when Wil's not looking out for the Chinese businessman husband of the woman Terry is seeing.

When an emergency call from Virginia (Traci Lords) leads to Wil accidentally causing her death, followed by Wil and Terry discovering a wicker basket full of money at her house, the two decide to cover up the crime and keep the money. But that money was there for a reason, one which is going to lead to quite a few more deaths before the entire, complicated plot is resolved.

Originally titled THE PROBLEM WITH PROVIDENCE, like some of the movies of Joel and Ethan Coen, GREEDY PEOPLE starts off light and eccentric, with some laugh out loud moments, but gets darker and darker as the plot goes on. Gordon-Levitt is especially good as the policeman with a monstrous side lurking beneath a lackadaisical veneer. It's no FARGO but if you liked that and are in the mood for something similar this will pass the time very satisfactorily indeed. Here's the trailer:

GREEDY PEOPLE is out on Digital from Signature Entertainment on Monday 23rd September 2024

The Outcasts (1982)

"Welcome Restoration of This Irish Folk Tale"

Because, as writer-director Robert Wynne-Simmons attests in one of the extras on the BFI's new Blu-ray, THE OUTCASTS isn't really a horror film, although it does have horror elements in it. 

We're in 'pre-famine' (again according to the director) Ireland. Times are muddy and grim, especially if you only have and need to get them married off. Hugh O'Donnell (Don Foley) grudgingly agrees to the marriage of one of his, Janey, (Bairbre Ni Chaoimh) to neighbouring farmer's son Eamon (Mairtin Jaimsie). The wedding receives a visit from mysterious fiddler Scarf Michael (Mick Lally) whom people claim has returned from the dead. 

He certainly seems to have some magical powers, and takes a liking to Maura O'Donnell (Mary Ryan), Hugh's least loved daughter who is considered something of an outcast by the rest of the village. He shows her she can fly and they spend the night talking before he disappears and she returns to the village. Famine and pestilence ensue and people believe Maura is to blame for consorting with Michael. Her only salvation may lie in her becoming a true outcast, both from the village and from normal humankind altogether.

Shown on Channel 4 back in 1984 and pretty much unseen since then, THE OUTCASTS has been called 'Folk Horror' due to Robert Wynne-Simmons being the writer of 1970's BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW. It's more fairy tale than horror, but one for adults, and in the newly filmed interview here he talks of his frustration with film executives who couldn't understand that fairy tales don't have to be just for children. 

THE OUTCASTS was the first major Irish film for 50 years. Even so it was filmed in 16mm and blown up to 35mm, so even though this is a restoration expect a pleasingly grainy look to the proceedings. Other extras include The Fugitive - an early 8mm Wynee-Simmons project, THE OUTCASTS in Pictures, which is 15 minutes of the director discussing still photographs with Vic Pratt , and the five minute animation The Wanderings of Ulick Joyce. There's also a commentary track from folk horror expert Dr Diane Rogers, who talks about the film, BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW and folk horror in general. The disc also comes with an illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film

THE OUTCASTS is out on Blu-ray from the BFI on Monday 23rd September 2024