British Film Institute - Attack from Planet B

Relic (2020, Australia / USA) BFI London Film Festival 2020 Review

8th November 2020Ren Zelen

There is horror and pity in witnessing the mind of a loved one as it unravels and fragments. This is the misfortune of Kay who is called by concerned neighbours when her elderly mother Edna disappears from her isolated home in the woods. Taking her own daughter Samantha with her for moral support, they set off to the old family house to see what might have become of Grandma Edna. The first feature from Japanese-Australian Natalie Erika James’, Relic manifests its horrors slowly, perhaps influenced in part by the bleak emotional mood of J-horror family drama.

“Everything decays.”

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Possessor (2020, UK / Canada) BFI London Film Festival 2020 Review

20th October 2020Ren Zelen

If David Cronenberg was the prime mover of the horror sub-genre known as ‘body horror’, his son Brandon is taking it to the next level. With Possessor, his second feature after debut Antiviral, Brandon Cronenberg starts with a scene that braces you for the bloodletting that will come… A young woman stands in the bathroom of a hotel and stabs a long metal electrode into her skull as blood seeps around the wound. Her face runs through a gamut of emotions as the electrode fulfils its mysterious purpose in her brain.

“You have a very special nature. One we have worked hard together to unlock.”

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Shirley (2020, USA) BFI London Film Festival 2020 Review

15th October 2020Ren Zelen

For some people, confronting a house full of ghosts might seem a more benign situation than braving a pack of judgemental housewives, especially in the 1950s, an era haunted by impossible standards for women. Finding herself amongst the snooty wives of academics, Shirley Jackson must often have been the target of their gossip and probably preferred to imagine herself trapped in ‘Hill House’. Jackson reputedly cultivated an interesting, if fearsome, persona – prickly, idiosyncratic, unkempt, contemptuous. She was tolerated in academic circles, being a successful author in her own right.

“Let’s pray for a boy. The world is too cruel to girls.”

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The Lighthouse (2019, Canada / USA) BFI London Film Festival 2019 Review

31st October 2019Ren Zelen

There can be few things as psychologically damaging as being trapped in solitary confinement with someone you hate. For his follow-up to The Witch, Robert Eggers delivers a grim, hallucinatory story about two men shut up in a lighthouse tower, going slowly mad in their mutual loathing. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are Tom Wake and Ephraim Winslow – arriving to work for a month-long shift at a remote, rain-lashed lighthouse, somewhere off the coast of 19th century Maine. Wake is a veteran lighthouse keeper (wickie), as salty a sea dog as one might wish to meet…

“There is enchantment in the light.”

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Knives Out (2019, USA) BFI London Film Festival 2019 Review

24th October 2019Ren Zelen

I have to admit, straight off the bat, that I’m an absolute sucker for Agatha Christie-type whodunnits, so too is self-confessed fan, writer/director Rian Johnson, as he admitted during his talk at the recent BFI London Film Festival. He certainly demonstrates his love for the genre in his spirited and inventive homage, Knives Out. Johnson knows that half the fun lies in our recognition of the rules of the game, so he immediately provides his audience with a rambling, labyrinthine, old house in the countryside, full of curiosities and knick-knacks, a wealthy patriarch, and a large family with many secrets.

“Everyone has a motive. No one has a clue.”

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London Korean Film Festival 2019 Celebrates A Century of Korean Cinema

19th September 2019WitchFinder

The London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) has launched its full programme of films and events for the upcoming 14th edition, taking place from 1st-14th November in London before embarking on the annual tour 18th-24th November.

“Korean cinema continues to excite global audiences with a steady stream of titles that satisfy both artistic and commercial appetites.”

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“Everything decays.”

“You have a very special nature. One we have worked hard together to unlock.”

“Let’s pray for a boy. The world is too cruel to girls.”

“There is enchantment in the light.”

“Everyone has a motive. No one has a clue.”

“Korean cinema continues to excite global audiences with a steady stream of titles that satisfy both artistic and commercial appetites.”

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