Amygdala (2022) - Short Horror Film Review

Amygdala is a short fifteen minute award winning Danish language horror film that has been shown at various film festivals around the world, and which has now been released on YouTube. Written and directed by Kenneth Lykkehus Truelson (Sticks, The Hitchhiker), it tells a dark story that felt like a companion piece to a larger film.

The short is set against the backdrop of a Denmark that is experiencing a nationwide viral outbreak that leaves its victims homicidally violent. Simone (Emma Katrine Sjøberg) is at home looking after her ill younger sister, Frederikke (Pernille Svendsen), with their mother having not returned after having left the house to visit a neighbour. That night, Simone is startled to see a strange figure standing outside the house (Kim Sønderholm - Harvest, Sinister Visions), and even more so when he breaks in.

The film covers a lot of ground from the opening news report playing out on a radio, that creates the impression of a The Crazies type situation. With Simone's teenage sister ill, it became apparent where this would likely end up. While the intruder is clothed in darkness and never fully shown on camera, it was still cool to see Sønderholm back on screen, in the early days of this blog I couldn't seem to move without him turning up in various films I had been sent for review. The characters were all fine, but with a short run time I never got any kind of impression of what the characters were like. Special effects were at a minimum, but there was one suitably bloody effect used for when a character gets glass in their foot, and a decent amount of blood when it was called for. While the story wasn't too surprising, it was dark, and had a couple of unexpected moments to it.

Bleak and moody, Amygdala told its story in an effective way. I thought the use of light and shadow was well done, and its self contained story was paced nicely. The film can currently be seen on YouTube.

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Vivarium (2019) - Horror Film Review

As a member of the Fright Meter Awards committee I was in a group chat discussing what films should be up for nomination and someone mentioned Vivarium. After a little look into this I was quite intrigued about the set-up and so felt I needed to check it out. According to the trivia section on IMDB, Vivarium is Latin for 'place of life' and also refers to a simulated habitat for plants or animals, both of which fit in with the creepy story unfolding here. This was directed by Lorcan Finnegan who co-wrote the story with Garret Shanley, their previous film, Without Name I quite enjoyed.

Gemma (Imogen Poots - Green Room, 28 Weeks Later) and her boyfriend, Tom (Jesse Eisenberg - Zombieland, Zombieland: Double Tap) are looking for a house to move into together and so they decide to check out a local estate agents. The weird agent working there (Jonathan Aris - Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) insists they follow him to a brand new housing estate which he promises them will be where they will find their perfect home. They follow him deep into the development, which is a series of streets of identical looking houses, and are soon given a house to look around in. While their attention is elsewhere the man vanishes, and chalking it up to just an odd experience they go to leave. Bizarrely they are unable to find their way out of the estate, their every attempt resulting in them back at the house, eventually the petrol in their car runs out and they are forced to spend the night in the house. After many days spent trying to escape they come to realise they are trapped. It is not long after that they discover a box in the street outside their home, which appears to contain a newborn baby inside. With no way to leave, the couple are forced to live at the house, kept alive by mysterious food parcels which keep turning up, while caring for a child whose rapid aging suggests a species that is not human...

On first reading up about this it sounded like a suburban version of In the Tall Grass, with the fields of grass replaced with the labyrinthian like housing estate. For the film's first act that is an apt comparison, yet the arrival of the child changes things up. The child (mainly played by Senan Jennings - Brute) is both annoying and sinister. It is clear from the films opener of a baby cuckoo being reared by a different species of bird that a similar thing is going on with the couple. The boy always appears to be imitating what he thinks a human should be acting like, the most creepy moments come when he nearly perfectly imitates Gemma and Tom's voices and conversations. This middle act of the film nearly outstayed its welcome, the mystery of why they are trapped fades into the background. As Gemma becomes more and more caring towards the child, Tom becomes obsessed with digging a hole, convinced he will discover answers by what he finds at the bottom. Both actors give a good impression of just what being trapped in such a situation would be like. As the film progresses both characters get more and more depressed and haggard looking, the monotony of their situation grinding them down.

Faces of Snuff (2016) - Horror Film Review

My goodness, after a literal never ending two hours and fifteen minutes watched over three days I have finally managed to get to the end of Faces of Snuff; an anthology film made up of a crazy amount of snuff films. Snuff films are real life videos that show people being killed on camera, this movie of course features no actual deaths but instead an unending amount of pretend ones which work to various degrees but are all just so pointless.

I try to go into films with no knowledge of what they are about so initially I didn't even realise this was an anthology. Contained within must be at least fifty short films, many not lasting more than a few minutes, a lot without sound and many designed to look like they were filmed on Super 8 or handheld camera. Most of these have utterly no plot to them and most of these feature women being tortured, killed and sexually abused. Now before I go on to the review proper I am going to have a shower to symbolically wash away some of the filth I have witnessed...