News

Australia’s Umbella Entertainment has announced the New Extremity Collection: Volume 1, a Blu-ray box set featuring four provocative French films: High Tension, Anatomy of Hell, Frontier(s), and Martyrs.

2003’s High Tension (also known as Haute Tension and Switchblade Romance) is directed by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes), who co-wrote with Grégory Levasseur. Cécile de France, Maïwenn, and Philippe Nahon star.

Best friends Marie and Alexia decide to spend a quiet weekend at Alexia’s parents’ secluded farmhouse, but their idyllic getaway turns into an endless night of horror.

Special Features:

Audio Commentary by Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur Audio Commentary by film hustorians Josh Nelson and Alex Heller-Nicholas (new) Haute Horror: Making of High Tension 2003 Documentary 2003 Interview with Cécile de France 2003 Interview with Maïwenn 2003 Interview with Phillippe Nahon Head Case: Final Girls, Fabulism and Amour Fou in Alexandre Aja’s High Tension with Anton Bitel (new) Stills Gallery...

Mike Flanagan knows how to get under our skin. The horror auteur gravitates toward themes that deal with generational trauma and cyclical grief, entwined with supernatural manifestations of such visceral emotions. His Netflix horror hits offer a variety of scares: series like "Midnight Mass" mix religion-tinted bouts of vampirism with acute human loss, while his rendition of "The Fall of the House of Usher" maps the disintegration of a generational legacy marked with greed, betrayal, and pain. Apart from helming effective horror films like "Hush" and "Oculus," Flanagan has also adapted seminal literary works, including Stephen King's "Doctor Sleep" and "Gerald's Game," which the director has invested with inimitable depth.

As someone so well-versed with the inner machinations of the genre, is Flanagan easily spooked? Maybe not anymore, but horror movies "scared [him] too much" as a child, until he came to appreciate the terrifying ability of the written word...

Laïla Marrakchi talks Atlas Workshops strawberry picker drama ‘La Más Dulce’

Moroccan director Laïla Marrakchi broke out internationally in 2005 with debut feature and Cannes Un Certain Regard selection Marock, a Casablanca-set love story between a Jewish boy and Muslim girl, which she followed with the 2013 female-focused family drama Rock The Casbah.

The Paris-based, Casablanca- born director has not made a feature film in seven years, however, having become caught up in the high-end drama boom, taking directing credits on French language series Marseille, The Bureau, The Eddy and most recently L’Opera, set against France’s iconic Le Garnier Opera house.

Stars: John Lynch, Craig Conway, Antonia Thomas, Jumayan Hunter, Morjana Alaoui, Beth Winslet | Written by Steve Clark, Josh Golga, Rob Green, Billy O’Brien, G.P. Taylor | Directed by Billy O’Brien

Review by Andrew McArthur

British horror is not particularly good at hitting the middle ground – it normally finds itself at either extreme end of the quality spectrum: from painfully awful to groundbreakingly brilliant. Sitting comfortably at the low-end of this spectrum is sci-fi horror The Hybrid.

The Hybrid follows a group of mercenaries tasked with infiltrating a subterranean military research facility. However, there they uncover far more gruesome horrors than they were expecting.

Three ingredients which normally make a good sci-fi or horror film are tension, scares or disturbing imagery, and at the very least a self-aware humour. If one of these factors is missing, proceedings are usually redeemable thanks to either of the other two. I can’t...

Stars: Morjana Alaoui, Mel Raido, Craig Conway, Patrick Toomey, Stephanie Thomas, Natalie Louise Garcia | Written by Craig Conway, Shaun Robert Smith | Directed by Shaun Robert Smith

Evie (Morjana Alaoui) has started a new life England, to escape her past. She finds herself caring for John (Mel Raido), a former rock star and tetraplegic. When he’s not making her life a complete misery with his insults, he’s still his usual drinking, drug taking partying self. He even gets regular “treatment” from his former nurse – Molly (Stephanie Thomas) from time to time. What is already a complicated situation becomes even worse for Evie when John’s scumbag friend Dougie (Craig Conway), tries to assault her. With all of this going on and all the built up stress, not to mention the lack of support she receives from the agency that hired her, Evie’s past is seemingly coming back to...

Genre festival reveals masterclasses and film programme.

Horror Channel FrightFest (Aug 25-29) has unveiled the line-up of events and movies for its 2016 edition, set to be held at the Vue cinema in London’s Shepherds Bush.

Screen will host a panel on the future of the UK horror film industry, followed by the first Screen International Horror Rising Star Award [click here for the shortlist].

There will also be a horror writing master class with writer-director James Moran; a women in horror symposium; a special effects demo from maestro Dan Martin; and a discussion by filmmaker Paul Davis – who made John Landis approved doc Beware The Moon - marking the 35th anniversary of An American Werewolf In London.

The festival is also set to screen H.G. Lewis’ 1963 gore classic Blood Feast, which is getting a 4K restoration from Arrow.

The FrightFest audience will be the first in the UK to see The Neighbor, directed by Marcus Dunstan (The Collection).

The festival will also...

In 2008, writer-director Pascal Laugier contributed to the realm of New French Extremity — a movement defined by such unrelenting bloodbaths as Claire Denis’s Trouble Every Day and Alexandre Aja’s High Tension — with Martyrs. While lesser films of its ilk received the dreaded “torture porn” label, Laugier’s shocking revenge picture gained cult admiration by padding its wrenching depictions of child abuse, hardcore gore, and ghastly (if not inventive) body horror with a provocative reflection on the meaning of suffering. Like many popular overseas horror selections, the film has received an American remake that may not resonate quite as much.

Directed by Kevin and Michael Goetz (Scenic Route), and based on a script by Mark L. Smith (who, as the co-writer of The Revenant, knows a thing or two about grueling violence), the new Martyrs begins much like its predecessor: with a little girl named Lucie (Ever Prishkulnik) escaping an...

It’s what most horror films are known for: the gore that splatters on the screen. But when done right, the flying viscera becomes more than just gallons of red stuff, it becomes a chilling reminder of the fragility of the human body and of the ingenuity of filmmakers in making our most twisted fears and fantasies into a stomach churning reality. Grab your barf bag!

*****

Antichrist (2009)- His and her pain

As far as horror sub-genres go, torture porn is up there with found footage as the most understandably reviled by audiences. With Antichrist, Lars Von Trier attempted to write a film that dealt with his personal demons. Confessing that he had been suffering from depression while writing the screenplay, Trier ended up bringing torture porn to its logical conclusion by taking the title of the sub-genre all too literally and creating a macabre near-masterpiece out of trashy genre origins.

I'll give this to my teachers: When they assigned torture porn, they didn't do half-measures. I knew of Martyrs by reputation, with the reputation being a mix of "One of the goriest films ever," and "Gaaaaaahhhhh." And that got me excited because this was coming from die-hard horror fans; people who have seen the worst of the worst and they were still affected by this film. I was ready to jump in with both feet by watching it in my darkened apartment right before going to bed. Instead of making me afraid of possible nightmares, Martyrs helped me drift off to sleep by being so boring. [Spoilers and gory images ahead] The film had a promising start by looking like it would be an examination of the horror of child abuse filtered through a supernatural lens. As a child, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) was tortured by mysterious kidnappers, and her only friend at the asylum was...

In an odd turn of events, this list has a number of films that don’t have English-language titles. They just go by whatever the original title was. Good for us. What we do see in this portion of the list is a few movies that weren’t really created specifically to be horror films, but their themes and visuals made it so. In addition, we have some heavyweights of non-horror cinema creating horror films that push the genre all the more upward. “Thinking man horror,” if you will.

20. Le locataire (1976)

English Language Title: The Tenant

Directed by: Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski has made one of the greatest horror “trilogies” of all time with 1965′s British production Repulsion, 1968′s American production Rosemary’s Baby, and 1976′s French production The Tenant, completing his “Apartment Trilogy.” Unlike the other two, Polanski actually stars in The Tenant as Trelkovsky, a reserved man renting an apartment in Paris.

Stars: John Lynch, Craig Conway, Antonia Thomas, Jumayan Hunter, Morjana Alaoui, Beth Winslet | Written by Steve Clark, Josh Golga, Rob Green, Billy O’Brien, G.P. Taylor | Directed by Billy O’Brien

Review by Andrew McArthur

British horror is not particularly good at hitting the middle ground – it normally finds itself at either extreme end of the quality spectrum: from painfully awful to groundbreakingly brilliant. Sitting comfortably at the low-end of this spectrum is sci-fi horror Scintilla.

Scintilla follows a group of mercenaries tasked with infiltrating a subterranean military research facility. However, there they uncover far more gruesome horrors than they were expecting.

Three ingredients which normally make a good sci-fi or horror film are tension, scares or disturbing imagery, and at the very least a self-aware humour. If one of these factors is missing, proceedings are usually redeemable thanks to either of the other two. I can’t count the...

The Hybrid Trailer. Billy O’Brien‘s The Hybrid / Scintilla (2014) movie trailer stars John Lynch, Morjana Alaoui, Craig Conway, Antonia Thomas, and Beth Winslet. The Hybrid‘s plot synopsis: “From a torturous cell in Africa, Abel Powell is released and given the chance to regroup his team of skilled mercenaries for [...]

Continue reading: The Hybrid (2014) Movie Trailer: Alien & Human DNA Spliced Together...

All sorts of goodies have emerged in promotion of Scintilla now that the flick has found both UK and Us distribution. Mongrel Media has acquired all rights for North America, and Metrodome will be bringing the flick to the UK.

eOne had previously acquired rights for France, German-speaking Europe, Scandinavia, and South Africa.

Directed by Billy O’Brien, Scintilla stars John Lynch, Craig Conway, Antonia Thomas, Jumayan Hunter, Morjana Alaoui, and Beth Winslet.

Synopsis

An elite team of mercenaries is chosen to carry out a covert operation deep in a former Soviet state. They must first battle the ferocious armed militia at ground level before descending through a maze of tunnels inhabited by dark, menacing creatures. When the team members arrive at an underground laboratory, they discover the purpose of their mission: A genius scientist has been genetically splicing alien DNA with human, and the results of this revolutionary work must be secured.

UK horror/sci-fi film Scintilla has some new artwork and a pretty effective trailer to share. Look for more soon on this tale of mercenaries who discover a radical scientist's shocking creations and must save future generations from a human race genetically spliced with alien DNA.

Scintilla is directed by Billy O’Brien (Isolation). Producers include Lionel Hicks and Craig Conway for Forefront Features and Liquid Noise Films with co-producers Doug Abbott and John Wolstenholme.

The film’s ensemble cast is comprised of John Lynch, Morjana Alaoui, Ned Dennehy, Craig Conway, Beth Winslet, Antonia Thomas, and more.

Related Story: First Details, Images, and Behind-the-Scenes Videos from New UK Horror/Sci-Fi Project Scintilla

Scintilla - Trailer - The best home videos are here

Synopsis:

A double cross left mercenary Jim Powell (Lynch) in a hellhole African prison. Now his release has been paid for by a corporate sponsor, but only so...

Just in time for the upcoming American Film Market comes the sales art for the latest UK import Scintilla from Billy O'Brien. Check it out right here and look for more from Afm all week and then some.

The film’s ensemble cast stars John Lynch, Antonia Thomas, Morjana Alaoui, Ned Dennehy, Craig Conway and Jumayn Hunter.

Synopsis

A double cross left mercenary Jim Powell (Lynch) in a hellhole African prison. Now his release has been paid for by a corporate sponsor, but only to be given a new, even more dangerous job. Powell is hired to lead a team deep into a former Soviet state, now in the grip of an illegal uprising. Here they must infiltrate an armed militia base and get into the secret tunnels which lies underneath. Half a mile underground in this former Soviet nuclear bunker there is a secret bio-tech laboratory. Paid for by...

Shock has released a first look at the poster for the UK horror/sci-fi film Scintilla.  Billy O'Brien directs, John Lynch, Antonia Thomas, Morjana Alaoui, Ned Dennehy, Craig Conway and Jumayn Hunter star.

The synopsis:  A double cross left mercenary Jim Powell (Lynch) in a hellhole African prison. Now his release has been paid for by a corporate sponsor, but only to be given a new, even more dangerous job. Powell is hired to lead a team deep into a former Soviet state, now in the grip of an illegal uprising. Here they must infiltrate an armed militia base and get into the secret tunnels which lies underneath.  Half a mile underground in this former Soviet nuclear bunker there is a secret bio-tech laboratory. Paid for by unlimited Oligarch dollars it houses one very special scientist: Dr. Mathesis Irvine. 

Read more...

The Toronto International Film Festival® has announced the addition of 3 Galas and 19 Special Presentations to the 2013 Festival programme, including a further 12 World Premieres. Representing countries from around the world, the Gala and Special Presentations programmes offer a lineup of diverse titles and genres.

Toronto audiences will be among the first to screen films by directors Fred Schepisi, Alberto Arvelo, Reha Erdem, Dexter Fletcher, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, Megan Griffiths, Arnaud Larrieu and Jean-Marie Larrieu, Kevin Macdonald, Arie Posin, Charlie Stratton, Nils Tavernier and John Turturro.

The 38th Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5 to 15, 2013.

Galas Blood Ties

Guillaume Canet, France/USA North American Premiere

New York, 1974. 50-year-old Chris has just been released on good behavior after spending several years in prison. Waiting for him reluctantly outside the prison gates is his younger brother, Frank, a cop with a bright future. Chris and Frank have always been different, yet blood...

Who knows what horrors are contained within the Earth. Unless you have one of those nifty Total Recall remake elevators, there's just no way to know. Luckily for us monster movie fans, some poor souls are about to find out for themselves.

Screen Daily reports that Av Pictures’ Cannes slate includes in-demand sci-fi thriller Scintilla, which eOne has picked up for multiple territories. Billy O’Brien directs the story of a disparate group of mercenaries hired to a lead a special unit deep into a former Soviet state to retrieve data from an underground militia base. John Lynch, Morjana Alaoui, Ned Denehey, Beth Winslet, and Antonia Thomas star in the thriller, now in post-producution.

The production designer is Skyfall and Prometheus art director Paul Inglis. Av has a promo in Cannes.

Also new to Av’s slate is horror Let Us Prey (previous story here), currently in pre-production. Liam Cunningham...

Art Director Melanie Light dropped us a line today with the first details of a new project she's working on entitled Scintilla from Av Pictures. Read on to learn more and to see some stills and behind-the-scenes videos of the filming taking place now in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England.

From the Press Release:

Av Pictures and producers Lionel Hicks and Craig Conway have concluded a multi-territory deal with eOne for sci-fi thriller Scintilla. The distributor has acquired the film for France, German-speaking Europe, Scandinavia, and South Africa.

Scintilla follows a disparate group of mercenaries hired to a lead a special unit deep into a former Soviet state to infiltrate and retrieve data from an underground militia base. All is far from what it seems when a top-secret biotech lab and its unearthly creations are discovered.

The film’s ensemble cast stars John Lynch, Morjana Alaoui, Ned Denehey, Beth Winslet,...

Special Mention: The Fake Trailers from Grindhouse (2007, USA): The four fake trailers featured in the otherwise disappointing Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double-feature: Machete by Robert Rodriguez, Werewolf Women of the SS by Rob Zombie, Thanksgiving by Eli Roth and Don’t by Edgar Wright-are all very entertaining trips down horror/exploitation film memory lane and are easily the best part of the film.

****

2) Other Notable Horror Films Of The 2000’s:

This list focuses on films that are partially successful and even touch on brilliance at times but ultimately don’t pull everything together to fully deliver on their promise.

Intacto (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2001, Spain):

This film about a group of people blessed with supernatural good luck has a great premise, several great scenes-the revelation of the plane crash early in the film, the blindfolded race through the trees and the Russian roulette climax-plus the welcome presence of...

Horror is one of those genres that many have a love/hate relationship with. Often mistreated, Horror seems to attract the hackiest writers and film-makers and as such many Horror movies released today are exercises in the drab and formulaic. Far from producing truly great scares contemporary Horror often commits the worst sin in Cinema: predictability.

In general, audiences today are some of the smartest and most discerning in the medium’s history. Even a layman, with little academic or practical experience in film can produce a verbal reading that is often on the money. This is a tough crowd to unleash a movie on, especially from a genre that is so rife with established conventions and clichés.

And yet we cannot get enough. It’s the same reason that a traffic jam forms around a vicious road accident; as a species we are morbidly fascinated with death and destruction.

The horror movie remake arena continues to grow as yet another foreign flick gets the green light to move forward.

The French horror movie Martyrs by Pascal Laugier's will get an American horror remake thumbs up via the the producers of Twilight. The director of 'The Last Exorcism', Daniel Stamm has been tapped for the film as well.

Martyrs tells the story of Lucie and Anna, two orphans who develop a strong bond with each other, until one of them seeks revenge on a family who may or may not have abused her as a child. Director Daniel Stamm had the following to say about the movie: "Martyrs is very nihilistic. The American approach [that I'm looking at] would go through all that darkness but then give a glimmer of hope. You don't have to shoot yourself when it's over."

Stamm has denied any rumor that says Twilight starlet Kristin Stewart will star in the remake.

One heck of a fantastic French film from 2008 was Pascal Laugier's 'Martyrs'. The brutal tale of abuse, torment and torture...it was visually exciting and bleakly raw. So, of course, logic dictates it must demand a remake!? Booooo. There was obviously going to be a bit of a blacklash when the announcement that an English-speaking remake was in the pipeline but will this latest news calm the haters a little? German director Daniel Stamm has just been signed up to the project. Stamm recently gained some note-worthy feats with the Eli Roth produced horror 'The Last Exorcism' and it will be very interesting also to see who he has in mind to take on the roles of Anna and Lucie, played brilliantly by both Morjana Alaoui (below) and Mylene Jampanoi in the original....

Twilight producer Wyck Godfrey has said that he wants Kristen Stewart to star in his remake of French-Canadian thriller Martyrs. Godfrey revealed in an interview with FEARnet that Stewart is his top choice for the project. "I would love for Kristen to do it," he said. "We're doing it for an American audience with an American cast, the script we've written for it is awesome." Martyrs centres on a young woman who sets out to take revenge on the people who kidnapped and abused her as a child. Mylène Jampanoï and Morjana Alaoui starred in the original for writer-director Pascal Laugier. Godfrey (more)...

It has taken me seven weeks to collect my thoughts about the only film, among thousands, to ever burrow its way beneath my pale-though-gen y-jaded skin. Even the most extreme of the French Extremist Wave seems to have a wink and nod somewhere within texts and yarns and yards of innards—and umbilical cords, Yet it is difficult to identify a definitive Starting Point—was it the jaw dropping violence of Haute Tension (2003)? The horrific Jaws-esque unseen-force-of-terror of Ills (2006), if you count Ht as fraud? Perhaps we’ve all been duped and they’ve been doing it since 1960’s wildly unnerving Eyes Without A Face—incidentally the same year of Psycho—iconic for its shocks and the rule-making and breaking of virtually all American horror species to follow—yet I’d throw it out there that Eyes…, with its own quiet graces and familial transgressions, keeps me awake, haunted by subtle beauty,...

The most talked-about, shocked-about and divisive movie at the Cannes Film Festival last year wasn’t an entry in any of the competitive strands. It was only screened twice in the marketplace, and quickly became the hottest topic of every conversation. Those who loved it absolutely loved it; those who hated it felt it marked a nadir in extreme degradation, the ultimate in so-called “torture porn” and the end of cinematic civilization. But for this Fangorian, Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs is the clearest indication yet that today’s French horror is the only platform allowing a currently all-too-safe genre to find its excitement, power and strength again.

Laugier’s esoteric development of an everyday tabloid headline into a Clive Barker-esque underworld nightmare is a challenging, disturbing and thoroughly uncompromising work. It couldn’t be further from the tired, old-style mainstream scary movie that too many purveyors seem to think is all that’s required.

Issue #87

March 2009

I want to know who it was that invented the term “torture porn”. Something tells me it was one of the “mainstream” press outlets like Variety or The Hollywood Reporter. My curiosity comes from the endless parade of films that either jump on the label or try their damndest to avoid it being applied, even though in my eyes it’s a very specific sub-genre of films that can be called “torture porn”, and most of them I don’t want anything to do with.

So it bothered me a bit when Rue Morgue labeled Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs “transcendent torture porn” on their latest cover because to me it feels like it cheapens the film. I have not seen it, however, so who knows; maybe it’s the best label one could apply, despite the obvious negative connotations it has for me.

The cover article, written by Kier-la Janisse,...

In the spirit of the recent Academy Awards, Brian Solomon from The Vault of Horror blog put together The 2008 Cyber Horror Awards ballot, which was sent out to the usual group of horror bloggers as detailed here.

Out of all of the nominated films, the only one I haven't seen is Martyrs (and some of Repo! - more on that in a bit). From what I've heard, I may have voted very differently had I been able to see this film. With this in mind, I suggested that the French film Inside (with it's 2008 DVD release in the U.S.) should be on this year's ballot and Martyrs (with it's U.S. DVD release coming up in a few weeks) should be on next year's ballot, but I was overruled.

With that, here are my selections, the nominees and the winners from the 2008 Cyber Horror Awards Ballot.

Ray Harryhausen Award...

DVD art has finally been revealed for the U.S. release of Pascal Laugier's "Martyrs" from Genius Products on April 28. Meanwhile, Laugier is at work on a new project called "Dogs." First the DVD art, which can be seen below. The film stars Morjana Alaoui and Mylene Jampanoi. Diretor Pascal Laugier also helmed "House of Voices." Click here for a ton of stills. Laugier, meanwhile, is set to helm "Dogs," a film about a war veteran trapped in a desert shack surrounded by starving, hungry dogs.

Before it crashes and burns in an extended heap of steaming, stinking pretentious crap, Martyrs amply demonstrates that Pascal Laugier is a very talented director. As a writer, not so much.

Up until that point, Martyrs precariously teeters on the edge of insanity, a pile-driver of stomach-cramping tension and hair-raising, incredibly bloody violence and despair. Morjana Alaoui and Mylène Jampanoï star as two young women who were imprisoned and tortured as children. One of them breaks into a home where a happy family is enjoying a leisurely Sunday morning breakfast. The calm morning is transformed into a hellish nightmare of screaming shotgun blasts and punishment appears to have been meted out today for the terrifying sins of yesterday. But from somewhere in the country house an animalistic cry emerges, and the two young women have miles to go before they sleep.

Last was the premiere of the French horror film Martyrs at the Midnight Madness portion of the Toronto International Film Festival. After the film ended, most of the sold out crowd stayed for a special Q+A session with Director Pascal Laugier where things took an interesting turn. One of the audience members called out Laugier and dissed his film. What resulted? A good old fashioned butt-whooping. Inside you'll find the full question and answers session (spoilers follow), along with a fun little behind-the-scenes video starring the ladies of Martyrs, Morjana Alaoui and Mylene Jampanoi. The story a girl who emerges from a yearlong abduction and forms a bond with another girl while in recovery.