Seven Tales are releasing new British horror film THE SPIRIT LOCK on digital. It’s directed by Steven Fierberg who has a stack of cinematographer credits but will probably be best known to readers here as being the DP of Renny Harlin’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 4: THE DREAM MASTER.
Karl Mellor (Joe Anderson) and his wife Vanessa (Yasmin Al-Khudhairi) are convinced there is something horribly wrong with their son Kit (Stefanos Paraskevopoulos), to the point where they believe he may be possessed. They turn to the church but Father Bailey (Tim Downie) can find no evidence for concern, in fact the boy can handle a Bible and quote from it better than most children his age.
Karl isn’t reassured, and turns to a dodgy bloke in a pub car park from whom he buys the Spirit Lock of the title - a device that can apparently draw a demon out of someone and cause its destruction. But Karl is also warned that the device may not work in the way he wants.
Director Fierberg isn’t the only one with genre credentials in THE SPIRIT LOCK. Star Joe Anderson was also in 2008’s THE RUINS (“I can’t feel my legs!”), the remake of THE CRAZIES and Darren Lynn Bousman’s ABATTOIR (2016), and look down the crew list and you'll find one of the first assistant directors is Peter Manoogian - the same Peter Manoogian who directed the Empire classic ELIMINATORS. The location - a gloomy old country house in Norfolk - and the Spirit Lock device itself all add to the atmosphere, but the script is very slight, such that you quickly get the feeling this would have worked better as a 30 minute segment in an anthology movie, or TV show like Tom De Ville’s Urban Gothic or even Night Gallery. But if you’re looking for something creepy that might remind you of the kind of thing Dan Curtis used to put in his anthology movies then you might want to give THE SPIRIT LOCK a look.
Steven Fierberg’s THE SPIRIT LOCK is out on digital from Seven Tales on Monday 7th September 2026
No comments:
Post a Comment