Reviews

Terror is contagious in Ebola Rex, the insane new horror film coming early next month from Wild Eye Releasing. If you're into indie creature features with over-the-top monsters, does it get any better than an infectious T-Rex? When watching the trailer, you can really get a feel for how ridiculous the film is (which seems to be by design), but that's always a big part of the fun when watching movies like this. Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could give a T. Rex Ebola, they didn't stop to think if they should give a T. Rex Ebola. I have seen kindergarten movies with a higher budget than this and they had the forethought to not make their production about a diseased 50 foot tall CG dinosaur.

There's no denying that Camp Crystal Lake has a dark history, one that Sean Orton tries to ignore. Despite being warned not to return to camp, Sean's desire to save the family name from him turns out to be even stronger. Sean renames the camp Trinity Pointe Camp, and with a group of friends he tries to rebuild the camp into a safe haven without trace of tragedy. But the evil that still lingers on the camp grounds has some lessons to teach them: history always repeats itself, and revenge is a dish best served cold. Despite warnings from him, he tries to save the family name from him by reopening it as Camp Trinity Pointe. He gathers a group of friends to help rebuild the camp and prevent another tragedy from occurring, but there is an evil that haunts the camp and seeks revenge.

My Special Boy, is the latest fan film to hit YouTube, following the success of the Never Hike Alone series and Voorhees.

This is an excellent reference to the pop cult classic. Excellent performances from the cast and really well directed. Feels very Tarantino!

This brilliant and bizarre film from director Kris Smith is superbly acted and icily controlled – it grips from the very first scenes. Development does not get more arrested than this. I was reminded of Alan Bennett's maxim that all families have a secret: they are not like other families. But I can't imagine any family being quite as unlike others as this.

Set Me Free has a sense of pitch-black humour and even playfulness. Lauren not understanding certain things and getting words in the wrong order (due to her unusual upbringing) can't help make you feel like it's somewhat humorous. The humour is not entirely cruel, or alienated. At one stage, there's a scene between Lauren and Ethan and she starts to understand that life isn't so dangerous and there's more to life than being indoors all the time. On a serious note, I just love how the story leads to something bigger as the minute she leaves the lighthouse. It becomes more than just a strange movie and unfolds into a detective thriller - something I did not expect.

The film is superbly shot, with some deadpan, elegant compositions, and intentionally skewiff framings of the "headless" variety that Lucrecia Martel used in her film The Headless Woman, imbibing both the sociopathy of the characters and, at one remove, the reality-TV surveillance aesthetic of the Big Brother house. Smith holds your attention with wonderfully inscrutable images, such as the lingering opening drone shot.

It is a film about the essential strangeness of something society insists is the benchmark of normality: the family, a walled city state with its own autocratic rule and untellable secrets of what's truly outside.