Statik (2017) - Horror Video Game Review (PSVR)

So technically Statik isn't horror despite what I may have said in the reviews title, it does have an air of bizarre mystery about it, while sometimes it hints at awful things. This is an exclusive PSVR puzzle game that makes ingenious use of the PS4 controller to create atmosphere.

The plot is pretty obtuse but what is clear is that you are a test subject for Dr Ingen at an undisclosed laboratory. You are given a series of puzzles to solve, in each test you awake strapped to a chair with a strange device locked over your hands. By interacting with this device from the inside you complete a series of tests on it, once successful you are knocked out, awaking in either a room to be surveyed with weird questions, or inside a tank where you are given puzzle parts to make up some sort of cube.

It is going to be hard to explain just how clever and unique Statik feels. Each of the 10 or so levels gives you a different device to solve, this is done by using pretty much all the buttons on the PS4 controller. Each button or stick corresponds to a part of the device on screen, each device has three different sides that all have different functions upon it. So one time for example the buttons can set dials, other times rewind and fast forward cassette tapes. In each level you are expected to work out the answers for yourself, there is no hint system and all the answers are already subtly around you. Sometimes solutions to puzzles are contained within the set dressing of the room you are in, such as a poster on a wall (for a shape based puzzle), or as colour coded objects (for when you have to put in a colour combination lock). Other times it is the device itself that gives you the hints such as one that had a screen of static on it that would clear when pointed in the right direction. There are all sorts of ways you are forced to use your brain with memory puzzles, shapes and sound ones among others. Sometimes I would nearly be pulling my hair out in bafflement only to then have a Eureka! moment and feel like the cleverest person in all the land. The fact that you are always left to your own devices rather than spoon fed answers I always thought was fantastic.

February (2015) - Horror Film Review

All year long I had heard people saying how good a film called The Blackcoat's Daughter was yet I could just not find this anywhere. Luckily I realised the film is actually called February everywhere outside of the U.S, not only that but it had been sat gathering dust on my Netflix list for quite some time.

February takes place out of sequence quite a lot of the time, yet despite this it isn't actually that hard a film to follow. During half term at an American Catholic boarding school two students are left behind due to their parents not turning up to collect them. Kat (Kiernan Shipka) is worried her parents died in an accident due to a nightmare she had, while Rose (Lucy Boynton from I Am the Pretty Thing That Live in the House) purposely gave hers the wrong date so that she would have time to tell her boyfriend she is pregnant. Kat's behaviour starts to become very strange with the usually meek girl acting out of character which concerns Rose. Meanwhile in a separate storyline Bill (James Remar from Dexter) offers stranger Joan (Emma Roberts from American Horror Story) a lift with him and his wife after seeing the girl waiting for a bus in the cold winter night.

I loved the way February was set out, it creates mini cliffhangers, and has little chapters that play with time. Sometimes it shows the same timeframe but with another character's perspective, sometimes it runs stories concurrently that don't take place together. An example is a phone rings and a character goes to answer it, then future events happen and it is only later on in the film it goes back to the phone call scene and shows it in full. It does this with various characters in a variety of ways. Stripped to its bare bones this is a film about demonic possession, whether that be actual, or down to mental illness, but it skirts away from a lot of the usual tropes (with the exception of one scene) and has that angle put on the back shelf with it insinuated by how characters have started acting.

Bloody Zombies (2017) - Zombie Horror Videogame Review (PSVR)

Before I can get on with my review of Bloody Zombies it is essential I mention a few things which have certainly coloured my enjoyment with the game, and which have influenced the path of what I am about to say. Firstly I didn't complete the game, I reached the final level but it was just too damn hard to beat. This goes onto my second knowledge bomb; I only played this game in single player, as with every single scrolling beat-em up ever made the fun increases the more players you have. I did try and play online with other people but the servers for Bloody Zombies are pretty dead. My final footnote is that I played this in VR, going the other way I feel this would be a lot more bland outside of the virtual world.

Zombie apocalypse has come to the U.K but it has been contained within the boundaries of London thanks to the K.R.O.N.O.S Corporation who have built huge walls around the capital. A year since the outbreak occurred four survivors; Teller, Mick 'The Brick', Rei, and Eddie happen upon each other just as a K.R.O.N.O.S copter crashes in the street. They are informed by a transceiver they find in the wreckage that they need to use a homing beacon to locate the key cards of 4 key members of the company in order to get into the H.Q where the cure for undead apocalypse awaits.

Bloody Zombies is a classic style 2D scrolling beat-em up that has up to four players fighting through the over run streets of London. The graphics are cartoon like and reminded me quite a bit of the hand drawn style of The Dishwasher series of games. Each level takes place in a different location as is the way, these include a graveyard, a train, London bridge, the Natural History Museum, a night club and more. It was cool to have a game entirely set in London and made for some detailed environments. There is variation in the levels in that your not just fighting your way to the end, but occasionally have little missions to do. In the night club for example you have to destroy the speakers to stop zombies being attracted by the noise. At other points you have to survive against waves of enemies as you try to use switches and raise bridges.

Oni-gokko (2011) - Short Horror Film Review

Yesterday was American Virus and today is another short horror that was written and directed also by Shane Ryan. Oni-gokko (Tag) is an eight minute long Japanese horror, now I have a history with those as I consider the anthology box set; Tales of Terror (that is made up of 33 Japanese short horror films) to be the scariest, nay, the most terrifying item I own. To this day I haven't been able to bring myself to rewatch it, but that's a story for another time. This doesn't join that exclusive club, but there is something about this that leaves an impression.

The plot isn't totally explained, or rather it is left to the viewer to fill in some gaps. From what I can tell a teenage girl (Miki played by Eri Akita) is seemingly being haunted by the vengeful spirit of her sister Aki (Mariko Wordell) who holds her responsible for her death when she was just six years old. Aki wants her sister to prove just how sorry she is for her past sins...

I loved the mystery behind this, the fact that events are so open to interpretation means it stuck with me. The death of Aki in the past for instance, just how much was her sister to blame, there are so many questions about that. There is also a possibility that Aki is just a figment of Miki's guilt riddled mind, and that her self harm is a response to that guilt. Just because this features Japanese actresses this doesn't mean it follows the vogue of what occurs in that countries films, instead Ryan gives his own spin with a spirit that is less black and white. Wordell comes across as pretty sinister with the emotionless look on her face, her performance is helped no end by the use of light and shadow to really make her seem out of place, my favourite shot had her spinning in a circle while the lighting dims and brightens briefly. It was a bit strange that the spirit was not that of a little girl but it did add to the oddity to have Aki grown up.

American Virus (2015) - Short Zombie Horror Film Review

I am getting sent a lot of short horrors for review at the moment which is never a bad thing really. As I have stated on many occasions before having such a limited time to tell a story really forces you to be creative in what you build. American Virus is a POV zombie film that I enjoyed, but which did feel more like a clip from a larger film than one that feels self contained.

A virus that turns its victims into flesh hungry crazies has been unleashed on America, but unlike the norm it has been successfully quarantined. That is until a small grassroots terrorist gang decide to escalate events themselves by stealing a sample of the virus with the aim to spread the infection to the whole country.

It was cool to see a couple of notable people have worked on this film, the biggest draw I guess being the daughter of Clint Eastwood; Kathryn Eastwood who not only stars as the main antagonist, but also co-wrote this with Shane Ryan (Red Oedipal, Ted Bundy Had a Son) who himself also co-stars and directs this. Tommie Vegas (Party Night) also makes an appearance that was nice to see. It was interesting to get a film shot from the perspective of the bad guys, though aside from the broadcast message the group have filmed for the media a lot of this camera work is very shaky and indie in that it is people running around. There is kind of a message here about the half life existence of the daily grind for the average person, but there wasn't too much time to fully explore that. There are a few different techniques used here, this includes editing that shows events out of order, black and white sequences, and news report style parts.

For me the music was the least effective part, it was all very dramatic and serious, but did come across as a bit generic. In terms of visuals though this was attractive enough when shaky cam footage wasn't being used, and the zombie/infected make-up featured plenty of great looking blood. American Virus also featured the best on screen kiss I have seen for a while, love really does make people act crazy! With a guerrilla type feel this zombie short feels different enough, and at just five minutes long left me wanting more. American Virus is to show up as a segment in upcoming zombie anthology Virus of the Dead that is due for release 2018.

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Sightings (2017) - Short Horror Film Review

Another week and another short horror film from Andrew J.D Robinson (Placebo, A Walk Home Alone, Something Scary), this time it is Sightings that clocks in at just two minutes long. I would say in terms of effectiveness as a horror this was the best one of Robinson's I have seen yet, it gave me genuine chills.

Two sisters are consoling themselves about their other sister who has gone missing, however due to inserts of a corpse it seems the viewer knows more than they do...then they get a fateful phone call. At 120 seconds that is a nice little story, I confess I got so caught up in this that I totally forgot this was so short and so the ending took me by surprise. Sightings is made in a clever way, giving the viewer more information than the characters on screen (though could possibly be aspects of a dream one the two had). Throughout we get inserts of both a girl walking down a lonely path, and of a corpse (that has wonderful make-up effects on it). I was impressed with the quality of this and how relevant each shot was to the overall message.

The ending is very effective, it gave me proper goose bumps due to the simple repetition of a key dialogue line coupled with the music stabbing ominously. For me it was this ending, and the inserts that made Sightings work so well. There is very little dialogue here, what there is is all relevant and important (plus hints at a supernatural possibility).

 It takes skill to be able to tell a story in such a short span of time, this was an effective little horror that worked without the need for lazy jump scares, or unoriginal topics. It's freely available to watch on YouTube so check it out below and see what you think.

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Horror News November 2017 - They Live Inside Us, Mortal Remains, Lilith, Alpha Delta Zatan film news and Steep Steps, Anthony Vincent music news

For the first time in over five years I have two weeks off of my day job, as I tend to favour just a week. Maybe it will be a bridge too far as I left my department in a battle damaged state, but regardless I intend to do a heck of a lot of stuff for my blog (as well as clean my very messy HQ). I have books to read, both digital and physical, I have video games to play, and lots of horror films to work my way through. Hoping to build up a surplus of blog posts to use for rainy days. Any way enough about me, here is another round-up of news.

The people behind the well made horror anthology series The Witching Season have announced they are planning to make a feature film. This film is going to be an adaptation of They Live Inside Us which is about a writer who spends the night in a haunted house in hope of getting inspiration for his latest work. I have actually seen that one but no idea when or how as I haven't mentioned it on this blog before. They say of this 'The feature film will be based on the same general concept as the short film, but the longer run time will allow us to expand and polish the idea into something very unique and powerful'. There is currently an Indiegogo campaign going to raise funds to fund the making of this film with a host of rewards available to backers. That page can be found here, it's worth a visit if only to check out the original short They Live Inside Us.

Next up a fun music mash up by Electronic Production duo Steep Steps who have had the ingenious idea to mash up the Game of Thrones theme tune with the 80's synth of Stranger Things. The near two minute track is called 'Game of Thrones (in The Upside Down)' and there is a fun music video for it that has the two flitting between two worlds as they perform.



Keeping with music comes the gloriously silly '12 Songs in the Style of The Nightmare Before Christmas' by 10 Second Songs' creator Anthony Vincent. Over this four and a half minutes Anthony covers such classics as Michael Jackson's Thriller and Rob Zombie's Dragula and gives them a Danny Elfman orchestral twist. This is quite funny and had me giggling quite a lot. I was so impressed by this mash-up style that I subscribed to his YouTube channel as he covers a whole host of songs in the style of famous bands.



Shockumentary Mortal Remains is the debut feature of Cryptic Pictures and examines the cryptic life of Karl Atticus; a notorious filmmaker from the 60's and 70's whose works have seemingly been erased from history, and who himself was found dead in mysterious circumstances. This was filmed over a three year period and includes interviews with historians and horror aficionados, including Eduardo Sanchez (co-director of The Blair Witch Project). The trailer certainly makes this seem like something worth watching. Mortal Remains is now available on Amazon, GooglePlay, YouTube, iTunes and Vudu. It is due to hit Netflix next year.



A teaser trailer for upcoming horror Lilith has been released. This movie is about a couple; Heidi and Steve who are travelling cross country in a RV on a vacation where their path crosses with a young woman named Lily. This meeting brings with it all sorts of terror and mayhem. This indie film features actors that include among them Jessica Cameron (Truth or Dare) who was also the executive producer here, Carlo Mendez (Parks and Recreation), Ryan Kiser (Truth or Dare), and Ali Ferda (An Ending). It looks to be a bloody piece so may be one to keep an eye on.



Finally a trailer for gay slasher Alpha Delta Zatan is now out. This film from Together Magic Films and Reel Nightmare Films is now playing on Amazon Video US.UK and in over 100 countries on Vimeo On Demand. This is about a frat house that includes among its members a mask wearing killer, and was designed as a role reversal on the traditional female focused sorority slasher films, featuring as it does an all male cast.

Machine Baby (2014) - Short Horror Film Review

Machine Baby is a stylishly shot short horror that really is something quite surreal. This award winning piece (GenreBlast Film Festival award for 'Best WTF Short Film') was written and directed by Sean Richard Budde and has recently been available to freely watch as part of Bloody Disgusting's World of Death series (episode 125). I shall be including the short below my review, at just 10 minutes it is worth a gander.

A paparazzo (Sean McGill) is outside the home of a beauty pageant contestant manager (Christian Gray) where he is secretly taking photos in an effort to find out just why the manager's clients are always so successful. Hearing a strange noise from the basement he sees something quite unexpected, however he is caught by the manager and chucked off the property. Coming back armed with a video camera he is determined to get his scoop, however the price may be too high...

This is a darn weird film but one that uses some interesting tactics to feel unique. The start is near perfection in the disorientating fashion it starts. There was a epilepsy warning at the beginning that I paid no heed to, but the introduction of a strobe light that gets more and more intense, coupled with a song that gets stuck on a small loop, married to the visuals of the manager whispering something to his on stage Miss California client made me feel quite dazed and almost unwell! It was a memorable beginning and was nice to see things stay almost as strange for the rest of this.

The Last Witch (2015) - Horror Film Review

There was a period a few years back where I really fell out with the found footage horror genre. I felt it had run it's course and there was nowhere else for the genre to go. Then something awesome happened, there seemed to be a second wind for found footage with no end of good to great movies coming out (Be My Cat: A Film for Anne for example). Then there is The Last Witch; a Spanish horror from young director Carlos Almón Munoz that very much represents what I grew to dislike about these types of films.

Three friends; Mario (Alfonso Romeo), Eduardo (Jorge Gallardo), and Sandra (Paula Pier) have decided they are going to make a documentary in the hopes of making it big on YouTube. They decide to base it on the Terrassa witch trials that took place between 1615 and 1619 in Spain. Six women were convicted of being witches and sentenced to death by hanging, however while five of the women were indeed killed it is unknown what happened to the sixth; Joanna Toy. The trio decide they are going to investigate her home in order to try and work out what happened to her, a bad move it turns out, due to the legend that after 400 years have passed the spirit of Joanna Toy will return for her revenge against the hunter's ancestors. That would be fine, but not only has that exact amount of time passed, but Sandra also happens to be a descendant of one of the people who brought the witches to twisted justice...

I wanted to like this film, I really did, but it falls into so many tropes of the old style of found footage that I couldn't help but be constantly disappointed. This feels like a lower budget version of The Blair Witch Project, but with none of the scares that film had. Here you get shaky camera work, corrupted camera footage, running around in the dark and plenty of being lost in woodland. They even have a similar set up; two men and a woman camping in the woods in exploration of a legend about a local witch. Where this does stand out is that the Terrassa witch trials were actually a real world thing, there were indeed five women who were hanged, and there is no evidence today of just what happened to the sixth witch Joanna Toy. It isn't the first found footage to have horror based on a real event (Hungary's Bodom that was to do with the Lake Bodom Murders springs to mind as one example), however it is neat that research was done to make the film seem more realistic.

All the Devils Are Here (2014) - Horror Film Review

All the Devils Are Here (previously known as Sleepwalkers) is directed and written by Ryan Lightbourn (Roid Rage) and was filmed on a budget of $30,000 over a two week period. Despite the low budget and swift filming time this is a quality production and features some great looking special and practical effects both for the creatures and the victims they kill.

Five college students have headed out to Florida to the remote holiday home of one of the group. These students include jock Kyle (Ben Evans) and his girlfriend Amy, nerdy Evan (Tommy Goodman), English Owen (Ben Owen) and Kate (Ansley Gordon). Here they intend to celebrate spring break together but instead find themselves at the beginning stages of a deadly zombie/vampire outbreak. Soon they team up with some locals and a couple of escaped convicts to try and survive the night against their relentless foes...

Ryan states that this film was made as an ode to straight to video horror films of the 80's and early 90's and that does show in the film, especially with the soundtrack that is ripped straight out of the 80's. There was a timeless feel about All the Devils Are Here for the most part, indeed I thought it was set in the past for quite a while until a character pulls a mobile phone out their pocket. It couldn't be much of a homage without a cheesy montage or two and there are a few here, I loved the early ones of the friends driving around in their yellow jeep, then when things get real there is a neat little montage of them preparing the house they are at for attack. The camera work on the other hand is all modern in style, it is crisp and clean, a nice compliment to the visuals; much of this takes place in the lazy sunshine of a nostalgic era with some nice saturation used. I did find that the final third that takes place at night was a lot harder to see what was going on. At times it seemed a bit too dark, but this did help immensely with having the already great special effects and make-up effects look even better. The camera had a habit of being a bit too close up to characters when they were fighting which I think contributed to the few moments when I struggled to make events out.

Murder Made Easy (2017) - Horror Film Review

After a week or so of just putting up posts about my own stuff it was about time I returned to items that had been sent for my perusal. So today I watched David Palamaro's indie thriller Murder Made Easy. I should admit that my expectations were pretty neutral for this one, I knew the general gist of the film so assumed it would be pretty bland. However this award winning horror (won the Indie Spirit Award at the 2017 Women in Horror Film Festival) does something really quite clever and unique.

It is a year since Joan's husband Neil died of a heart attack (Joan played by Jessica Graham) and she and her friend Michael (Christopher Soren Kelly) have arranged a night to remember with several close friends. The two are soon revealed to be sociopaths and have planned to kill their guests in retaliation for crimes they had committed against Neil. They have arranged a series of staggered dinner dates to take place over one night, each guest is first confronted over their past transgressions and then murdered and hidden away in time for the arrival of the next one. However with the two finding themselves so adept at killing can they really trust each other once their fool proof idea has come to pass?

Murder Made Easy is a very simple idea, I don't mean that it is lazy, obvious or too bare bones, instead the fact this is an indie project is brought to the forefront. I kept thinking during my time with this that this would be excellent as a stage play. The majority of this revolves around the interactions Joan and Michael have with their guests and the eccentricities that each of the new people bring to the screen. Both Graham and Soren Kelly play straight people, cold and calculated who are quite subdued for the most part. Each of the people who turn up are the opposite, larger than life people such as Angela (Sheila Cutchlow) who is obsessed with the books she has written, idiotic indie film maker Damien (Daniel Ahearn), ultra strict vegan Cricket (Emilia Richeson), and the theatrical Marcus (Edmund Lupnski). At first when Marcus appeared I didn't like the acting Lupnski brought to the role, it seemed too over the top and silly, but then I realised this is actually perfect, he and the others put so much into their characters, make them seem so outlandish and crazy that it goes together fantastically. You get the sense that these people are lesser prey to the killers, something that goes with the controversial thesis Michael had written about the strong deserving to rule the weak however they seem fit. There were elements of Crime and Punishment in this thinking, a vibe that only gets stronger later on.

What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) - Adventure Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

What Remains of Edith Finch is another game in the so called 'walking simulator' genre, seen previously with Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and Gone Home. I've wanted to play this for a long time so seeing it in a Halloween sale I snapped it up and played through the whole game in one sitting. Sometimes quality is better than quantity and that is the way here with an experience that took me around 2 hours to see everything.

You play as Edith Finch; the last of her line who has travelled back to the creepy family home she grew up in. The Finch's are said to be cursed with none in Edith's family dying of natural causes. She has gone back to the home as when her mother passed away she left Edith a key that is hinted will reveal the secrets of her family. Whenever someone died their bedroom was sealed up as a sort of memorial, as such new additions kept being built on top of the original building. With her key Edith finally gets access to these locked away rooms, and as she works her way through the maze like house she discovers exactly what happened to each of her cursed family.

I really enjoyed my time with What Remains of Edith Finch and I loved how the game is laid out. In the present you explore the ramshackle building, but each new room you get to you are then transported back in time to play out the last moments of one of the deceased. These all take place as interactive stories and range from the farcical to the fantastical to the harrowing. There are no punches pulled in that a fair few of these have you taking the role of a child, one even has you as a baby. Knowing that death awaits at the end of each of these you can't help but feel sad and sorrowful, yet the way these play out are pretty stunning at times. A guy working in a cannery for instance escapes the tedium of his daily grind by imagining himself in a fantasy kingdom where he has gone on a great voyage. While you control his hand dealing with the fish in his present, you also control him as a 3D avatar that is exploring a world. Another standout story was set within the confines of a horror comic. A story about a fatal home invasion is shown via cell-shaded panels and with John Carpenter's Halloween theme tune playing in the background. Elsewhere a hungry girl imagines herself as various animals scouting the land for food, you hunt leads you to human prey.

Jigsaw (2017) - Horror Film Review

The first Saw film is a classic of it's type, I still state that to this day, I hadn't seen anything quite like it and that twist; boy was that twist cool! I enjoyed Saw II but already I could see cracks starting to show in just where the films could go. I ducked out of the next three films in the series coming back for Saw VI and was not impressed with what I found; a ridiculous and convoluted story that featured multiple protegees of the allegedly dead original Jigsaw killer John Kramer (Tobin Bell). While I enjoyed the actual torture game part everything around it was very confusing to me. Finally was Saw 3D (Saw: The Final Chapter) that purported to be the death of the franchise but ended unsatisfactorily. So hearing it was returning with a new name I admit to being interested to see where things would go now. This movie needed to be a shot in the arm and bring it with it new ideas, and a new attitude, but while I did enjoy Jigsaw it really is just more of the same.

The convoluted storyline is all but thrown out, to be honest I'm not sure if this is a semi re-boot or a continuation. So John Kramer the notorious Jigsaw killer has been dead for 10 years, but it seems a new game is being played. Five strangers awaken in a converted barn where they are forced to partake in a series of brutal and deadly games due to past sins they had been hiding. Meanwhile bodies start turning up all over the city, they appear to be the work of a copycat killer as far as Detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) and Detective Keith Hunt (Cle Bennett) are concerned, but medical coroner Logan Nelson's (Matt Passmore) studies of the deceased seem to turn up more and more conclusive evidence that John Kramer is somehow (and inexplicably) still alive...

One thing I have always liked about the Saw franchise is how the stories always have clever beats to them, nothing is ever quite as it seems and so it was fun to see that is again the case here. At times I wasn't sure if this was a prequel or a sequel to the other films in that Kramer's origins are explored once again in a way, yet obviously takes place 10 years after he died. The reveal was as always neat and unexpected though I kind of figured a little bit of it out even if my calculations were a bit off. Like the others I have seen it was the game itself that was the more interesting part. I remember the series being very wince inducing but here it seems a lot more neutral when it comes to showing scenes of tortures, the camera never greedily focuses on the torture aspect but really doesn't shy away from showing some fantastic looking effects for the dead. There are some awesome looking corpses here and the camera never attempts to hide these away. An early one of someone whose head was sliced in half vertically looked great, later someone is turned into mincemeat, another person has their head opened up like a melon. The five victims were not an interesting bunch, sure they all had secrets to tell but when a few of these victims all turn out to have wronged Kramer at some point in the past I had to roll my eyes a bit. It is farcical how many people in that guy's life caused him legitimate pain and suffering, seemingly every single person he ever interacted with in his whole existence at some point did some evil act such as kill his dog, burn down his mailbox, or cut him up in traffic! The list is freaking endless and done to death.