September 2008 - Horrorphile

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Horrorphile - September 2008

In My Skin

September 30th 2008 00:37

After watching French filmmaker Marina de Van's movie In My Skin I've come to the conclusion she has some serious issues. It appears she has gone to some lengths to purge these inner demons through her film; a very disturbing and frequently ghastly portrait of one woman's slide into an horrific obsession that mutates into a form of madness.

Esther (Marina de Van) is a successful corporate business analyst. She has a boyfriend, Vincent (Laurent Lucas) and she enjoys a healthy social life. But one night at a party while wandering in the yard she stumbles and accidentally lacerates her leg rather badly. At first she is unaware of the injury, but later on while going to the bathroom she notices blood over the carpet and realises it is her own. She studies her wounds, fascinated by the extent of her injuries, curious as to why she didn't feel any pain.

Marina de Van as Esther

After she's had the injury treated and stitched her boyfriend is a little perturbed that she continued to party on and even went to another bar for drinks before going to the hospital. Marina is more fascinated than concerned. She finds herself privately picking at the stitches and feeling the gouges running down her flesh. As a kind of relief from the pressures of her office work load (which often carries over into extra-curricular time), she sneaks away and toys with her damaged self.

Esther studies her accidental injury

It isn't long before she makes the decision to add further injury to herself; by using a sharp piece of metal, Marina slices wounds further up her leg along her thigh. She keeps the bits of skin wrapped and in her purse so she can play with them easily. Her work colleague Sandrine (Léa Drucker) invites her over one night and discovers Marina's nasty injuries. She is appalled.

In My skin Laurent Lucas and Marina de Van

Esther's boyfriend Vincent (Laurent Lucas) is concerned

At a public baths Marina announces to Sandrine she's been given a promotion, much to Sandrine's chagrin. Several male colleagues attempt to throw Marina in the pool, and she panics. Sandrine does nothing to help, and this drives a wedge between the two women, their friendship is over.

In My Skin Lea Drucker and Marina de Van

Esther tells Sandrine (Lea Drucker) of her promotion

At an important business dinner with two clients and her boss Marina quickly descends into her own psychological world, which is obsessed with her own body and its boundaries. While the three others converse she begins to secretly stab and pick away at her arm with her steak knife. She imagines her entire arm is a separate entity from her body. Eventually she has to excuse herself to go to the bathroom.

After a near soaking Esther realises Sandrine's contempt

While her relationship with her boyfriend suffers Marina's relationship with her own body intensifies. It reaches critical mass during a shopping excursion, where Marina becomes lightheaded, her focus wavering. She purchases cameras and razorblades and holes up in her own apartment. It is here that she will take her self-mutilation obsession to extreme measures.

Writer/director Marina de Van has worked with famous French director Francois Cluzon co-writing several of his movies. In My Skin is her debut feature. It is quite possibly one of the most confronting films I have ever seen. I'm a gorehound, but there were several times during this movie that I had to cover my eyes. The combination of the mood and tone of the movie and the sound effects. It's not that the special effects make-up is that extraordinary, but very cleverly Marina de Van manages to show just enough to warrant an extreme reaction in the viewer.

Esther takes to herself with frightening ease

Esther descends into a very disturbing state of mind that is a kind of auto-vampirism/auto-cannibali sm. Her inner demons, her emotional instability, her psychological perspective on humanity and communication all collide within her mind and manifest themselves in her ability to cross the threshold of pain and embrace her own controlled disfigurement as a form of escape and release from the overwhelming social pressures that are bombarding her on a daily basis.

Esther finds solace in the taste of her own blood

Her self-mutilation takes on a sensual exploration that is both carnal and destructive; it is as if she is combing sex and death and controlling them, keeping them both at arm's reach (so to speak), leaving herself balancing on a precarious edge. She can't get enough of her self (literally), yet knows it is inevitable that her behaviour and actions can only go so far before it is too late to stop. But she can't help herself.

Esther's hunger becomes all-consuming

In My Skin is a very difficult movie to recommend as it is truly tough viewing. But it is brilliantly made, and superbly acted. The overall tone and approach to the subject matter reminds one of the style, intent - even the pitch black humour - of the two maverick Davids; Cronenberg and Lynch. If you're at all squeamish stay well away, but if you appreciate intelligent drama that deals with the fragility and perversity of the human condition then In My Skin is strangely rewarding. But be warned, the movie finishes hypnotically and abruptly. In My Skin doesn't offer a rationale behind Esther's behaviour, which is the film's strength and weakness; it only suggests we are an inherently lonely race, constantly looking for love and acceptance, and often searching in the darkness, flailing blindly.

In My Skin is an existential-visceral horror movie in every sense of the words.

In My Skin DVD is courtesy of Siren Visual, many thanks!

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The Eye (2008)

September 29th 2008 00:56

Remakes are being made sooner and sooner after the original. There are six years between The Eye (2002) and this Hollywood remake, but there is less than a year between the Spanish [rec] (2007) and its American take Quarantine (2008). It’s all too close for comfort.

French directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud made the exceptional terror tale Ils (aka Them, 2006). Now Hollywood wants a piece of their action, so they were headhunted to direct the remake of the Pang brothers’ dark spectres flick The Eye (2002). It’s kind of unusual having a Chinese movie being remade by two French men in English for an American audience.

Jessica Alba as Sydney

The Eye (2008) is also a vehicle for rising superstar Jessica Alba (one stand-in, one stunt double, one personal assistant, two security guards), the next generation Angelina Jolie (although not nearly as nutty, but probably just as high maintenance). I’m not entirely sold on Ms. Alba’s acting chops, but she fills out a pair of tight jeans better than most of her female colleagues (terribly sexist thing to say I know, but when the star of a movie is as stunning as Jessica Alba, you can’t help but notice everything about her, from her bee-stung lips to the sassy boots on her feet. But I digress …)

Alessandro Nivola as Dr. Faulkner

Jessica plays Sydney, a young woman blind since the age of five (after an accident fooling with firecrackers with her older sister, played by always reliable Parker Posey). Sydney is an accomplished violinist and is about to receive a cornea transplant. It all goes smoothly, until Sydney starts to see strange and unsettling things.

The Eye (2008) Jessica Alba and Parker Posey

Sydney is driven home from hospital by sister Helen (Parker Posey)

While recovering in hospital following the eye surgery, and in the middle of the night, Sydney sees (albeit with blurry vision) the dying old woman in the bed next to her get up and follow a dark silent figure out of the ward. Sydney is perturbed and she follows, only to encounter a nightmarish vision. The next morning Sydney is informed the old woman passed away in the night.

Fernanda Romero as Sydney's ghost reflection Ana

When Sydney is released and is settling back into her apartment she deals with another two frightening incidents; one involving her neighbour’s young boy wanting to find his report card, and another involving a hideous, floating man in the building’s elevator. After Sydney has a psychological meltdown in a ghostly Chinese restaurant, she realises she is privy to the realm of the dead; those who have been taken unnaturally or in violent circumstances.

Sydney encounters the supernatural world ...

With the help of her specialist Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola in sleepwalk mode) Sydney travels to Mexico to find what more about her eye donor, a young woman named Ana (Fernanda Romero). Because it is Ana’s reflection Sydney sees in the mirror, not her own.

... some of whom are rather scary

I suppose if you haven’t seen the HK original then watching the remake of The Eye would be quite enjoyable. It’s been tamed for a horror-dreaded PG-13 rating, with the directors trademark long takes and unerring ability to sustain tension being muted. There’s nothing that stands out to say, hey, hot Euro talent is directing this! If you didn’t know they were at the helm, the movie would seem like any other competent, but pedestrian supernatural thriller with high production values.

Sydney has a nightmarish spectral vision of herself

There are a couple of nicely executed “Boo!”s, but as several of the deleted scenes indicate, the more disturbing and grotesque imagery was left on the cutting room floor to safely obtain the wider-audience PG-13 rating which obviously producers wanted. Bollocks to that I say! Horror movie should never, ever be diluted in order to satisfy a wider audience. Exactly what makes them so powerful is partly due to word of mouth creeping through the ranks; “Have you seen ...? Sweet Jesus, it’s terrifying!”

The Eye (2008) Fernanda Romero and Jessica Alba

Sydney tries to guide Ana's ghost out of purgatory

There is a neat sequence when Sydney challenges herself (ie the reflection of Ana) in the mirror, and another when Sydney is threatened by a ghost woman in a café and the spectre leaves a handprint in the spilt sugar on the table (it breaks continuity, but it looks pretty cool). However the major gripe I have with the remake is the compromise with the movie’s fiery finale. Once again Hollywood gets cold feet.

After the Mexican/American border Sydney foresees catastrophe

I noticed the editor, Patrick Lussier (who has just completed directing a 3-D remake of My Bloody Valentine), doubled as visual consultant. Is that to steer the directors back toward a Hollywood style of mise-en-scene, incase they started going all Euro on the movie?? Did Takashi Shimazu (Ju-on: The Grudge) or George Sluizer (The Vanishing) have similar short leashes?

If nothing else Jess gives great hair

The Eye remake is not a badly made movie; it just doesn’t jump out at you and seize you by the throat like it should. The directors have made a pedestrian follow-up to an instant cult classic, and they’ve failed to re-envision the original with any true sense of individual character. The Pang brothers’ original vision doesn’t have everything laid out for the audience, it requires the audience to do a little thinking for themselves. Hollywood on the other hand has to spoon-feed its audience, and screenwriter Sebastian Gutierrez (a director in his own right) has spelt it all out. It’s a shame the producers (all fourteen of them!) have shackled a couple of directors with style to burn with their particular chastity belt.

Here's the trailer:

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The Eye

September 25th 2008 00:39

Hong Kong twin brothers Danny and Oxide Pang are directors with style to burn. Danny also works as an editor (he cut the influential Infernal Affairs, remade by Scorsese as The Departed), and Oxide directed Ab-normal Beauty (2004). Generally they do movies together, and The Eye (2002) was their breakthrough movie, a ghost story reminiscent of The Sixth Sense (1999) but oh so much better.

Its original Cantonese title is Gin Gwai (or Jian Gui in Mandarin), and it’s a HK/Thailand co-production, with additonal UK financing. But the Pang brothers work in an Asian-Euro crossover-style, which makes their movies easily digestible to a wider audience. The DVD (from Eastern Eye) edition I own has the credits in English, yet the movie’s dialogue is in Chinese and Thai (with a few lines in English).

Sin-Je Lee as Mun

Mun (Sin-Je "Angelica" Lee) is a young blind woman who has just received a cornea transplant from an unknown donor. The operation enables her to see for the first time in as long as she can remember. Everything seems hunky dory, Mun befriends a young tuma-suffering girl Yingying (Yit Lay So) at the hospital, and Mun’s mother and sister seem happy that she can finally be able to move forward in life entirely on her own.

Dr. Lo (Edmund Chen) prepares Mun for a whole new world

But all is not good. Mun’s vision is being affected by spectres. She sees ghostly figures; some are genuinely terrifying, while others appear more mundane and peripheral. She witnesses a dark figure assisting an elderly woman from the ward, and later realises the woman had died and she was watching the woman cross to the other side.

Yit Lay So as young Yingying

Mun’s visions become more and more unsettling and nightmarish, with a young boy, the victim of suicide, plaguing her. Mun’s personal physician, Dr. Wah (Lawrence Chou) becomes increasingly concerned for her well-being, despite his superior, Dr. Lo (Edmund Chen) expressing doubt over her sanity. At the request of Mun’s distraught family Dr. Wah travels with Mun to Thailand to track down the cornea donor, a young woman named Ling, but not before Mun makes the startlingly discovery that the face she sees in the mirror is not her own …

Mun feels secure around Dr. Wah (Lawrence Chou)

They meet with Ling’s heartbroken mother (Sue Yuen Wang) who tells them of Ling’s tragic life; cursed as a village witch-girl, and after failing to save the village from a fire, Ling committed suicide. Because she has Ling’s eyes Mun is cursed with seeing dead people with issues, trapped in a limbo. But she is also “blessed” with foresight, and it this foresight which comes to an explosive head during the movie’s final ten minutes.

Mun's vision treats her to some scary experiences ...

The Eye crackles with disquieting slow-burn ferocity. Like Ringu (1998) it builds and releases, builds a little more, then exhales again, rises further into the darkness, and finally comes full circle. The opening sequence to The Eye is also the closing sequence; it forms its own poetic sphere. The cinematography is lush, with great mise-en-scene, and excellent editing. The music is a little over-the-top, even kitsch in a few scenes, but the dramatics prevent any cheese from ruining the taste of coppery fear.

Sin-Je Lee is excellent as Mun, displaying a vulnerability and great emotional depth. I wasn’t so convinced by Lawrence Chou as the doctor, he barely looked out of his teens, but his performance carried him through. Yit Lay So as Yingying provided solid support in the movie’s first half.

Mun enters Ling's spectral bedroom

As in all good Asian horror, there are several superbly engineered scare scenes, you just can’t bet a great ghostly apparition for sheer palpable terror! The Pang brothers are skilled in using just the right amount of CGI to provide the effect required without over-playing their hand. The more subtle the creeping unknown is the more powerful the apprehension and dread becomes.

The plot of The Eye appears to come to a conclusion, but moves into an unexpected, and brilliantly executed, finale which brings together all the stories key elements, and as I mentioned earlier, ties the movie’s main thread together. It’s a beautifully told story. I’m very keen to see how David Moreau and Xavier Palud (the brilliant directors of Ils aka Them) have re-envisioned the remake starring Jessica Alba. Keep your eyes peeled, I’ll be reviewing that tomorrow.

A victim from the movie's scorching finale

Here's the US trailer:

Here's the infamous elevator scene in its entirety:

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THE ART LAIR - IX

September 23rd 2008 23:59

Well, I’ll be damned! I missed my monthly descent into The Art Lair. There was no August selection, I’m afraid. The horror! The horror! Lock me in the iron maiden and throw away the key! No! Wait a minute! Not that you were probably aware of the absence, but hey, what does it matter? These bones ain’t goin’ nowhere …

So, keeping the marrow to the point, here’s a selection of fantastic drawings as white as bone and as black as midnight on a moonless night … but with a hint of crimson, ‘cos that’s the kind of twisted person I am, heh heh heh … and you relish it, I know, I know
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Captivity

September 23rd 2008 00:43

Great poster, shame about the movie. Very sexy leads, shame about the movie. Intense first fifteen minutes, shame about the remaining seventy or so. Yup, Captivity (2007) is a train wreck, but like all horrific crashes, you can’t help but watch. Is it gonna get worse? Oh yes.

Legendary B-man Larry Cohen, the dodgy schlockmeister who made It’s Alive (1973), Q – The Winged Serpent (1982), and The Stuff (1985), provided the story and co-wrote the screenplay. Roland Joffé, who made a highbrow splash when he helmed The Killing Fields and The Mission, is the director. This lame excuse for a horror movie is a big fall from grace for Joffé. Perhaps it looked good on paper, but I get the impression there were a lot of dirty fingers in this dirty little pie

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The Burning

September 22nd 2008 01:16

“… Don't look; he'll see you. Don't breathe; he'll hear you. Don't move; you're dead!”

One of the original video nasties banned in the UK between 1984-1992, The Burning (1981) was also one of the many slasher flicks that followed in the wake of Friday the 13th (1980), and along with The Prowler (1981) and My Bloody Valentine (1981) it's one of the better ones. Whereas Halloween (1978) was more of an atmospheric mood piece, a "character study" of the boogeyman, most of the movies that came out after Friday the 13th had a much higher body count, more elaborate deaths, and were generally a lot more violent. But they were had poorer production values for the most part, the acting was shoddier and the direction was uninspired

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George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

September 19th 2008 02:45

Please excuse the lengthy purge of this post, but it’s been a while coming. Diary of the Dead (2007) was to get a theatrical release down under back in February, but the most attention it’d received was a screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, with the bucket of goodies bonus of having writer/director George A. Romero himself introducing the screening and holding a Q&A afterwards. Damn, I’d have liked to have been there for that, as I have a few questions for the man myself. I tried getting my list to him belatedly via his publicity team, but to no avail.

Although zombies had been around in cinema for quite some time it was Romero’s low-budget black and white 16mm independent film Night of the Liviing Dead (1968) that injected a whole new life (or death, to be a smartass) into the concept of the undead. The movie did phenomenal business on the then very popular midnight movie circuit (think grindhouse cinemas and drive-ins). He followed Night with Dawn of the Dead (1978) and took modern horror to a new level of mordent tone and graphic violence

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Ils (Them)

September 18th 2008 00:33

A mother and daughter are driving along a stretch of forest road on the outskirts of Bucharest, Romania. They are arguing and the mother loses control of the van which skids across the road and bumps into a power-pole. They’re not hurt, but the van conks out and won’t start again. Mother gets out and raises the bonnet to see if she can fix the problem. She tells her daughter to hit the ignition, which she does but to no avail. Again she guns the motor, and nothing. Then no sound at all. The daughter calls for her mother but only silence, so she gets out to check, and her mother has vanished. The girl calls for her, and wanders into the undergrowth, but there is neither hide nor hair of her. Strange noises emanate from the dark, clickings and vocal sounds. The girl becomes scared and retreats back to the van, and she is terrorised by two or more darkly-clad figures who attempt to break into the van.

Sande (Maria Roman) wonders where her mother vanished

This is the frightening prologue to Ils (Them) a French/Romanian movie released in 2006, written and directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud, which received wide critical acclaim, and have had many movies since trying to emulate, most notably the American home invasion horror The Strangers (2007, which I haven’t managed to see yet). Thankfully I’d managed to avoid any spoilers about Them, and only knew that it relied less on special effects and more on atmosphere, sound effects and suspense. Having watched the movie alone, late at night, I can safely say it is one of the eeriest and unsettling horror movies in years

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À l'intérieur (Inside)

September 17th 2008 00:47

Are you craving a little extreme horror? Have you been feeling a little short-changed by all the anemic and gutless horror movies flooding the shelves? Did you find the Hostel and Saw movies all too bloody predictable, with not enough conviction, no real passion, even. Well, you need to watch the French film Inside (2007). It is a grueling and utterly compelling 80-minute rollercoaster ride of abject horror and desperation. But, I must stress; this is not a movie for pregnant women.

Inside screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival this year, however it is very unlikely this movie will receive a theatrical release. It’s distributed by the Weinstein brothers’ Dimension Extreme division, so it will probably surface on DVD down under some time over the coming months. But being a salivating horrorphile I got my copy fast-tracked from overseas

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Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!

September 16th 2008 00:34

Recently I saw The Square (2008), the Australian modern noir tale co-written by Joel Edgerton and directed by brother Nash, and it rocked my socks off. About time Australia got back to the nitty-gritty. Prior to The Square I’d championed Greg Mclean’s Rogue (2007), the Jaws in the Outback flick which inexplicably, and unfortunately, failed to do anywhere the same box office as Mclean’s first feature, the much darker Wolf Creek (2005).

Despite Rogue's poor business, it is quite apparent that genre filmmaking is making a significant return in the local film industry. So it is fitting that a documentary gloriously reveling in the heyday that was genre filmmaking in Australia during the 70s and 80s has finally been made. And as the title suggests, this is a story that hasn’t been told before, mostly due to the fact that the vast majority of these movies were only seen by a minority at drive-ins and the high-brow critics would prefer to leave them under the rock they crawled out from

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Debate Battle! RIDLEY SCOTT'S ALIEN: To remake or not to remake?

September 14th 2008 23:36

... That is the question. Actually I’m playing Devil’s advocate with this debate battle because as you probably know Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) is probably my favourite horror movie of all time. My all-time favourite top position actually alternates between Alien and John Carpenter’s seminal stalk’n’slasher Halloween (1978), ‘tis curious that my two faves were probably shooting almost at the same time.

The brilliant opening sequence depicting the ship waking up and the crew emerging from hypersleep

But for now Alien is number one. As far as atmosphere, mood, tone, production design, cinematography, music, acting, and special effects; Alien is top of its game. However all of this doesn’t mean anything when Hollywood executives are sitting around discussing what new old movie can they plunder to re-envision, re-design, re-package and sell to the Y-Generation who are arguably the most ravenous, demanding and impatient bunch of kids that ever was. They want it here, they want it now, they want it fast, and they don’t care where it came from.

The first look at H.R. Giger's marooned alien craft

If you really want to analyse Alien it's essentially a B-movie concept glammed to the condensation-dripping rafters. Critics will stipulate that it rips off It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958). From another angle it can be viewed as a kind of haunted house story set in space. The premise was penned by Dan O’Bannon, and was originally called Star Beast. After O’Bannon got the movie green-lit the story was tweaked by executive producer Ronald Shushett. O’Bannon, an actor-cum-designer who co-starred in John Carpenter’s legendary “existential” cosmic surf Dark Star (1974), delivered a tight, dynamic, no bullshit screenplay to Walter Hill, who was acting as one of the producers. Director Ridley Scott, fresh from the arthouse success of his period drama The Duellists, was signed on, and the movie began shooting on expensive and elaborate sets in Shepperton Studios, UK. The rest, as they say, is history

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Katasumi (In a Corner) & 4444444444

September 12th 2008 00:47

I’m a fan of J-Horror. Despite dozens of J-Horror titles being released straight-to-DVD the two cinema benchmarks, the Ringu series which started in 1998 and the Ju-on series which started in 2000, are blueprints in the J-Horror universe of supernatural terror and spectral nightmares. Hollywood had to have a piece of the action and so had the first two Ringu movies remade as The Ring (2002) and The Ring Two (2005) and the third and fourth Ju-on movies remade as The Grudge (2004) and The Grudge 2 (2006).

Takashi Shimizu, who directed not only the first four Ju-on originals, but also both the American remakes had the genesis of his tenebrous Ju-on brilliance in two short films; Katasumi (In a Corner) and 4444444444. It is in these two 3-minute films that we are introduced to the yurei (long dark-haired female ghost played by Takako Fuji) and the small white-face boy (Yuya Ozeki). Both these characters are instrumental to the nightmarish realm of the Ju-on features movies

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Rabbit and The Owl

September 11th 2008 00:23

I discovered a couple more exceptional and bizarre short films I just have to share. Thank God for the internet, otherwise most of us would never get to see some of these short strokes of genius.

The first film, Rabbit, is an eight-minute animated fable of the consequences of greed. An age old tale, but told in a new and nightmarish way. The filmmaker, Run Wrake, has used 1950s illustration cards originally designed to teach children to read. Two young and resourceful kids chance – rather morbidly - upon a magic idol that delivers them jewels, and of course, they imagine themselves to be kings and queens. But innocence will soon be irreparably changed. What results is a lesson to us all in classic horror fashion

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Inseminoid

September 10th 2008 02:24

Ahhh, those were the nights. The Sunday double features back in my home town, Wellington, New Zealand at the Plaza cinema theatre on Manners Street. I was around fourteen or fifteen. Lying at the box office that I was sixteen (as you do) to watch shlocky horror movies back to back. As close to the American grindhouse experience as New Zealand got I’m sure.

I saw numerous “cult classic” movies around that time like Scanners (1981), Dead & Buried (1981), Blood Beach (1981), Galaxy of Terror (1981), The Beast Within (1982) … and Inseminoid (1981). They don’t make ‘em like that any more. One can argue, thank God for that! But the dirty romantic in me loves to indulge in them every now and again. There’s something intrinsically captivating about those deep trash movies, a certain joie de vie – or should that be joie de morte - about them that movies after the early 80s don’t possess

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A Boy and His Dog

September 9th 2008 01:19

Based on a novella by Harlan Ellison and directed by actor-cum-director L.Q. Jones, A Boy and His Dog (1975) is one of numerous self-styled quirky sf films of the same period; along with THX-1138, Silent Running and Dark Star it presents a future narrative that is streaked with nihilistic satire, tinged with poetic melancholy and laced with dark humour: I’d love to say the future’s so bright I gotta wear shades, but in this projected reality humankind has become a rather pathetic existence.

It is 2024, some years after World War IV (which lasted five days) reduced most of the civilized world to a wasteland. Vic (Don Johnson) is a solo, drifting across the desert landscape scavenging for food and hoping to get laid. His trusted side-kick is his dog Blood (Hollywood canine actor Tiger from The Brady Bunch, voiced by actor/musician Tim McIntire), who has a nose for the female kind and for trying to keep Vic out of trouble, which comes in the form of marauding rover packs of hungry, violent thugs

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Terminus

September 8th 2008 01:13

Terminus (Latin for “boundary stone”) is a fantastic, dark and nightmarish comedy about the self-destructive nature of the human mind and the dangers of urban isolation. The synopsis is described as "A colossus made of concrete pilings follows a lonely man (Rob Carpenter) throughout the city of Montreal as he goes about his daily life on the subway, at the doctor’s office, and elsewhere. All the while, a strong, foreboding sense of mental anxiety builds as the man is ultimately driven to extreme ends resulting in tragedy."

Terminus (2007) is an eight-minute film directed by Trevor Cawood and co-written with his brother Jason that deals with "demons" and inexplicable torment, with the movie ending as a cycle starts again. It’s a vicious circle brilliantly realised and executed. I can’t wait to see what Trevor Cawood will make as his first feature

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