POMO

The first “point” occurs to you in the first few minutes, in a one-second flashback from the hospital, and the second comes about an hour later. Overall, the film is a jigsaw puzzle of familiar sci-fi and thriller motifs in which you will also find improbabilities in the logic (the development of the dialogue with artificial intelligence). Or, rather, you would find them if you wanted to seek them out, which you don’t, because it’s quite nice to watch – Aja’s directing is at a high level as usual, Mélanie puts in the work, and the last quarter of the film is a sci-fi visual caress.

Surprising! This mystery is skilfully sustained by a narrative that cleverly switches between the events of three different characters, with a densely dark atmosphere, but also some surprisingly irritating and almost amateurish moments, all culminating in a particularly surprising kick in the ass for hardened genre connoisseurs.

Rose Williams is fine, but the directing in the revelation of the “terrible secret” is inattentive and full of needless things whose sole purpose is to frighten. And they don’t succeed.

In many moments, Saint Maud is a psychologically focused and visually brilliant story about losing oneself through sliding into religious madness, but which doesn’t develop into anything satisfying in the end. This is a psychological horror flick from the dark mind of a socially perceptive and intellectually highly developed filmmaker, whose aim, however, doesn’t much appeal to me.

If there’s no budget for a monster, we’ll have a female astronaut raped to death by a monster. The attractive, always thoroughly made-up female members of the space-station crew and their charismatic colleagues act as if they are at a casting call for extras, and the suspense and action are laughable. Inseminoid is very bad sci-fi B-movie.

In terms of form and acting, Strait-Jacket is a likeable old-school thriller, psychologically well told and acted, with deep trauma, axe murders, a pretty daughter and a young George Kennedy. It’s just a shame that it crosses the line into B-movie foolishness at the end with a would-be shocking twist that, in the way it negates all of the characters' previous behaviour, is basically an acknowledgement of the film’s sole and regrettably modest aim of only momentarily tricking the viewer.

This Italian slasher borrows the character of the killer from the previous year’s classic Anthropophagus, without that film’s atmosphere and tragic mystery, but rather with the simple storyline of “a monster on the run goes on a killing spree”. The intense soundtrack and the character of the priest chasing the “boogeyman” suggest inspiration in Carpenter’s Halloween, but instead of any filmmaking inventiveness, it plays on crude violence, cruelty and gory brutality. Absurd is an average though still decent Eurotrash horror flick in the context of the subgenre. **1/2

This brief shocker stands out thanks to its unique location on a remote Greek island, powerfully atmospheric soundtrack, terrifying killer and one or two extraordinarily gross bits of disgustingness, which made it a classic of the genre. Italian horror trash with courage and an irresistibly distinctive face.

A good half of It’s Alive is taken up by empty talking and unnecessary scenes. Cohen was a proficient Hollywood practitioner, and he was able to engage Bernard Herrmann and put together an attractive poster, but constructing an interesting story and engaging the viewer were beyond his abilities. The film has an original idea with a born murderous mutant and parents who struggle with remorse on the one hand and parental attachment to the child on the other hand, but none of this is utilised as a functional psychological motor for the film. And the horror scenes are B-movie cheap.

Kathryn borrowed the crew of the spaceship from Jim’s Aliens and turned them into ruthless vampires. Near Dark is a nice mix of drama, romance and vampire horror set in the American desert. The soundtrack alone brings the pain. Where did those composers get that stuff back then?!