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Joseph Perry

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Spoiler Free Reviews: 100 Liters of Gold and Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 2025)

Once again, our coverage of Bucheon International Film Festival (BIFAN) reviews is cowritten by Film Festival Editor Joseph Perry and Guest Contributing Writer Chris Weatherspoon. A man of the world, guest reviewer Chris Weatherspoon has lived in South Korea for “quite a bit.” A huge fan of all cinema, Chris also works locally in the entertainment industry, and knows what he is talking about . . . alright!? 100 Liters of Gold (Finland/Italy, 2025); review by Chris Weatherspoon Official BIFAN synopsis from program notes written by Kim Byeonggyu: 100 Liters of Gold is a comedy of drunkenness and a farce of hangovers. Middle-aged sisters Taina and Pirkko, who live in a small village in southern Finland, are brewers of sahti, a traditional Finnish beer. Tasked with preparing 100 litres of sahti for the wedding of their younger sister Paivi, who has returned to their hometown, they accidentally end up drinking all the beer themselves. With only 48 hours left until

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jul 21, 2025

A Terrifying Trio: Three Recommendations for Romford Horror Festival

Romford Horror Festival is renowned for curating a terrific lineup of fear fare each year that ranges from mind-blowing new independent films to well-respected classics. This year’s edition runs February 27–March 2 at Lumiere Cinema in Romford, U.K. Following are three offerings from the fest for which I have had an early viewing and consider well worth a watch. Descriptions from Romford Horror Festival’s website are in italics, followed by my thoughts on the films. Psychopomp Synopsis: Amidst a super virus that ravages most of the world’s population, a tenacious microbiology student (Brian K. Millard) leads a small team through a rogue planned exposure. But the human trials end tragically, taking his friends’ lives one by one and leaving potential treatments untested. As he becomes more and more isolated, the line between what’s real and what’s not begins to blur. I’m a hard sell on genre films inspired by — and often made during — COVID-19 lockdown, mainly because of

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 26, 2025

Spoiler-Free Reviews: WITTE WIEVEN and STOMACH IT (Screamfest)

Witte Wieven (Heresy) (Netherlands, 2024) Director Didier Konings tackles patriarchal oppression of women, religious hypocrisy, and the search for self-identity in his beautiful looking folk horror Witte Wieven (Heresy). The story is set in a small rural Dutch village in the Middle Ages, where religion makes the rules that favor men and also where women unable to bear children have little to no use. Devout couple Frieda (Anneke Sluiter) and Hikko (Len Leo Vincent) have been unsuccessful in trying to have a baby, and even religious leader Father Bartolomeus (Reinout Bussemaker) has been unable to help. Village butcher Gelo (Leon Van Waas), who has recently been punished for what the film hints at as sexual assault on one of the village women, is released. His advances toward being able to make Frieda pregnant turn into a rape attempt in the nearby woods, during which Frieda is saved by a supernatural entity. When villagers accuse her of being in league with

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 17, 2024

Spoiler-Free Review: BAAL (Beyond Fest)

Official synopsis: A twisted new tale from Joseph Sims-Dennett (BFI London Film Festival Selected Observance). Grace returns to the small town she grew up in to find the brother, David, is missing. Deciding that she must reunite her family, she follows a lead which takes her deep into the wilderness. Lost, injured and alone, soon her only hope is another hiker who is communicating with her via her radio. Grace makes her way closer to this mysterious hiker — however, suspicions start to grow about their true identity. As the darkness becomes ever more menacing and a threatening presence begins to consume Grace, who can she really trust? Writer/director Joseph Sims-Dennett builds an engrossing air of mystery in his new Australian feature Baal, which finds Grace (Meg Clarke in an outstanding lead performance) returning after a very long absence to her childhood home to sort out matters after her father dies. She also begins a search for her brother David

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 11, 2024

Spoiler-Free Reviews: 1978 and SOLVENT (Dark Nights Film Festival)

1978 Codirectors Luciano and Nicolás Onetti craft a marvelously macabre fright-fare outing with 1978 (Argentina, 2024). Set in Argentina in the titular year, and specifically during both a military dictatorship and the World Cup match between that country — which hosted the event in Buenos Aires — and The Netherlands, the film uses the dark history of torture, brutality, and murder by the regime of that time as its setting. Government representatives torture political dissidents for information regarding other members of their groups, but when they accidentally kidnap the wrong group, the hell that they have brought to so many is about to be visited back on them in gruesome, blood-soaked ways. Unflinching in its depictions of political horror and unrelenting in its presentations of supernatural terror and violence, 1978 delivers visceral shocks and grisly set pieces galore. The Onetti brothers deliver a feature that combines strong political and philosophical themes along with hard-hitting horror. Solvent Johannes Grenzfurthner’s Solvent (Austria,

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 8, 2024

Spoiler-Free Reviews: TOUCHED BY ETERNITY and HEAVIER TRIP (Fantastic Fest)

Touched by Eternity Writer/director Mārcis Lācis serves up an intriguing, amusing feature with his Latvian philosophical horror dramedy Touched by Eternity. Fatso (Andris Keišs) longs for immortality, though why he desires that isn’t clearly evident, as he pretty much keeps to himself in his trailer, listening to broadcasts about seeking eternal life. When vampires Egons (Ivars Krasts) and Carlos (Edgars Samītis) come calling, seemingly offering him what he pursues, his simple lifestyle is upended and he is suddenly faced with existential questions about mortality. Lācis blends the thoughtful, the horrific, and the humorous quite nicely, and Keišs leads a solid cast as a simple everyman who dreams of the unattainable until his dream is offered to him as a reality — though quite a different, blood-spattered one than he had originally imagined. Thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining, Touched by Eternity is a unique slice of genre cinema well worth seeking out. Heavier Trip Finnish/German/Norwegian/Lithuanian coproduction Heavier Trip — the sequel to

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 7, 2024

Film Adaptation of Nicholas Vince’s One-Man Show I AM MONSTERS! Receives Exclusive Limited Edition Blu-Ray Release

Actor Nicholas Vince, best known for his roles as the Chatterer in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser and Kinski (Moon Face) in Nightbreed, is the subject of his own one-man show I Am Monsters!. The film adaptation of this stage show is now available for preorder, with the first 500 Blu-rays copies in a Signed Collectors Numbered Limited Edition that boasts a slipcover designed by celebrated graphic artist Graham Humphreys. Following is the official press announcement. PREORDER NOW! “In this extraordinary confessional, Nick charms and chills us, mingling the witty and the nightmarish”. (Clive Barker) Nicholas Vince’s movie adaptation of his one-man show I AM MONSTERS! gets the Deluxe treatment with a special 500 signed limited-edition Blu Ray, which will be available to pre-order from Oct 1, 2024. The Blu Ray extras will include four postcards, slipcover designed by celebrated graphic artist Graham Humphreys, four short films written / directed by Nick, a four-page booklet. and an exclusive interview, hosted by Emmerdale

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 4, 2024

Pigeon Shrine FrightFest Halloween 2024 Lineup: From Time Travel to Serial Killers and Beyond

London’s Pigeon Shrine FrightFest Halloween film festival is the place to be for fright-fare fanatics! The event features horror and science fiction features with world, international, and U.K. premieres aplenty. Following is the official press announcement. Following the success of its spectacular 25th Anniversary August five-day event, the UK’s most popular genre film festival returns to the Odeon Luxe West End in Leicester Square. Taking over both screens on Friday 1st November and Saturday 2nd November, the Halloween special will feature nine premiere titles from six countries, spanning Europe, North America, South America and Asia, making it a truly spine-chilling display of global talent. Each film will be screened twice. Tickets Opening the event is the UK premiere of Sam Yates’s MAGPIE, a darkly intense psychological thriller which thrives in its classic neo-noir atmosphere, eliciting tension that is seconds away from permanently snapping. Daisy Ridley delivers a tour de force performance as a neglected wife on the edge, and will

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 4, 2024

Spoiler-Free Review: THE SEVERED SUN (Fantastic Fest)

Writer/director Dean Puckett’s The Severed Sun (U.K., 2024) is an engrossing work that takes folk horror elements and sets them in an ambiguous time period — the story could be taking place in the past but a couple of items suggest that it could also be set in an isolated rural area in the present day. The Pastor (Toby Stephens) leads a village of followers who must adhere to his religious moral code. The upstanding reputations of the men of the village must be upheld, even if it means covering up or ignoring their physical and mental abuse toward family members. When the pastor’s daughter Magpie (Emma Appleton) decides to no longer take such abuse from her husband toward his sons and her, she kills him, and some of the other flock members are suspicious of her claims of the death being an accident. Magpie grows further away from the strict religious regiment demanded of the Pastor’s followers to the

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 30, 2024

Spoiler-Free Reviews: WHAT HAPPENED TO DOROTHY BELL? and FACES (Fantastic Fest)

What Happened to Dorothy Bell? An interesting investigation of familial trauma and mental illness through a horror lens, What Happened to Dorothy Bell? uses a combination of vintage-style footage (not found footage, to clarify, although the approach is similar) and present-day proceedings. Protagonist Ozzie (Asya Meadows) was attacked when she was a child by her titular grandmother (Arlene Arnone Bibbs). Now a young adult, Ozzie searches for answers to why that happened and also about her grandmother’s disappearance. As might be expected with a family as the focus in a horror film, skeletons lurk in the closet and the supernatural may well be at play. What Happened to Dorothy Bell? has the feel of a gateway horror film, with its surprises and shocks not approaching very scary levels nor reveling in gory effects work. Lingering shots of rooms in which something may or may not happen in the background and noises from other rooms make for most of the suspenseful

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 27, 2024

More from Joseph Perry

Spoiler Free Reviews: 100 Liters of Gold and Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 2025)

Once again, our coverage of Bucheon International Film Festival (BIFAN) reviews is cowritten by Film Festival Editor Joseph Perry and Guest Contributing Writer Chris Weatherspoon. A man of the world, guest reviewer Chris Weatherspoon has lived in South Korea for “quite a bit.” A huge fan of all cinema, Chris also works locally in the entertainment industry, and knows what he is talking about . . . alright!? 100 Liters of Gold (Finland/Italy, 2025); review by Chris Weatherspoon Official BIFAN synopsis from program notes written by Kim Byeonggyu: 100 Liters of Gold is a comedy of drunkenness and a farce of hangovers. Middle-aged sisters Taina and Pirkko, who live in a small village in southern Finland, are brewers of sahti, a traditional Finnish beer. Tasked with preparing 100 litres of sahti for the wedding of their younger sister Paivi, who has returned to their hometown, they accidentally end up drinking all the beer themselves. With only 48 hours left until

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jul 21, 2025

A Terrifying Trio: Three Recommendations for Romford Horror Festival

Romford Horror Festival is renowned for curating a terrific lineup of fear fare each year that ranges from mind-blowing new independent films to well-respected classics. This year’s edition runs February 27–March 2 at Lumiere Cinema in Romford, U.K. Following are three offerings from the fest for which I have had an early viewing and consider well worth a watch. Descriptions from Romford Horror Festival’s website are in italics, followed by my thoughts on the films. Psychopomp Synopsis: Amidst a super virus that ravages most of the world’s population, a tenacious microbiology student (Brian K. Millard) leads a small team through a rogue planned exposure. But the human trials end tragically, taking his friends’ lives one by one and leaving potential treatments untested. As he becomes more and more isolated, the line between what’s real and what’s not begins to blur. I’m a hard sell on genre films inspired by — and often made during — COVID-19 lockdown, mainly because of

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 26, 2025

Spoiler-Free Reviews: WITTE WIEVEN and STOMACH IT (Screamfest)

Witte Wieven (Heresy) (Netherlands, 2024) Director Didier Konings tackles patriarchal oppression of women, religious hypocrisy, and the search for self-identity in his beautiful looking folk horror Witte Wieven (Heresy). The story is set in a small rural Dutch village in the Middle Ages, where religion makes the rules that favor men and also where women unable to bear children have little to no use. Devout couple Frieda (Anneke Sluiter) and Hikko (Len Leo Vincent) have been unsuccessful in trying to have a baby, and even religious leader Father Bartolomeus (Reinout Bussemaker) has been unable to help. Village butcher Gelo (Leon Van Waas), who has recently been punished for what the film hints at as sexual assault on one of the village women, is released. His advances toward being able to make Frieda pregnant turn into a rape attempt in the nearby woods, during which Frieda is saved by a supernatural entity. When villagers accuse her of being in league with

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 17, 2024

Spoiler-Free Review: BAAL (Beyond Fest)

Official synopsis: A twisted new tale from Joseph Sims-Dennett (BFI London Film Festival Selected Observance). Grace returns to the small town she grew up in to find the brother, David, is missing. Deciding that she must reunite her family, she follows a lead which takes her deep into the wilderness. Lost, injured and alone, soon her only hope is another hiker who is communicating with her via her radio. Grace makes her way closer to this mysterious hiker — however, suspicions start to grow about their true identity. As the darkness becomes ever more menacing and a threatening presence begins to consume Grace, who can she really trust? Writer/director Joseph Sims-Dennett builds an engrossing air of mystery in his new Australian feature Baal, which finds Grace (Meg Clarke in an outstanding lead performance) returning after a very long absence to her childhood home to sort out matters after her father dies. She also begins a search for her brother David

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 11, 2024

Spoiler-Free Reviews: 1978 and SOLVENT (Dark Nights Film Festival)

1978 Codirectors Luciano and Nicolás Onetti craft a marvelously macabre fright-fare outing with 1978 (Argentina, 2024). Set in Argentina in the titular year, and specifically during both a military dictatorship and the World Cup match between that country — which hosted the event in Buenos Aires — and The Netherlands, the film uses the dark history of torture, brutality, and murder by the regime of that time as its setting. Government representatives torture political dissidents for information regarding other members of their groups, but when they accidentally kidnap the wrong group, the hell that they have brought to so many is about to be visited back on them in gruesome, blood-soaked ways. Unflinching in its depictions of political horror and unrelenting in its presentations of supernatural terror and violence, 1978 delivers visceral shocks and grisly set pieces galore. The Onetti brothers deliver a feature that combines strong political and philosophical themes along with hard-hitting horror. Solvent Johannes Grenzfurthner’s Solvent (Austria,

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 8, 2024

Spoiler-Free Reviews: TOUCHED BY ETERNITY and HEAVIER TRIP (Fantastic Fest)

Touched by Eternity Writer/director Mārcis Lācis serves up an intriguing, amusing feature with his Latvian philosophical horror dramedy Touched by Eternity. Fatso (Andris Keišs) longs for immortality, though why he desires that isn’t clearly evident, as he pretty much keeps to himself in his trailer, listening to broadcasts about seeking eternal life. When vampires Egons (Ivars Krasts) and Carlos (Edgars Samītis) come calling, seemingly offering him what he pursues, his simple lifestyle is upended and he is suddenly faced with existential questions about mortality. Lācis blends the thoughtful, the horrific, and the humorous quite nicely, and Keišs leads a solid cast as a simple everyman who dreams of the unattainable until his dream is offered to him as a reality — though quite a different, blood-spattered one than he had originally imagined. Thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining, Touched by Eternity is a unique slice of genre cinema well worth seeking out. Heavier Trip Finnish/German/Norwegian/Lithuanian coproduction Heavier Trip — the sequel to

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 7, 2024

Film Adaptation of Nicholas Vince’s One-Man Show I AM MONSTERS! Receives Exclusive Limited Edition Blu-Ray Release

Actor Nicholas Vince, best known for his roles as the Chatterer in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser and Kinski (Moon Face) in Nightbreed, is the subject of his own one-man show I Am Monsters!. The film adaptation of this stage show is now available for preorder, with the first 500 Blu-rays copies in a Signed Collectors Numbered Limited Edition that boasts a slipcover designed by celebrated graphic artist Graham Humphreys. Following is the official press announcement. PREORDER NOW! “In this extraordinary confessional, Nick charms and chills us, mingling the witty and the nightmarish”. (Clive Barker) Nicholas Vince’s movie adaptation of his one-man show I AM MONSTERS! gets the Deluxe treatment with a special 500 signed limited-edition Blu Ray, which will be available to pre-order from Oct 1, 2024. The Blu Ray extras will include four postcards, slipcover designed by celebrated graphic artist Graham Humphreys, four short films written / directed by Nick, a four-page booklet. and an exclusive interview, hosted by Emmerdale

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 4, 2024

Pigeon Shrine FrightFest Halloween 2024 Lineup: From Time Travel to Serial Killers and Beyond

London’s Pigeon Shrine FrightFest Halloween film festival is the place to be for fright-fare fanatics! The event features horror and science fiction features with world, international, and U.K. premieres aplenty. Following is the official press announcement. Following the success of its spectacular 25th Anniversary August five-day event, the UK’s most popular genre film festival returns to the Odeon Luxe West End in Leicester Square. Taking over both screens on Friday 1st November and Saturday 2nd November, the Halloween special will feature nine premiere titles from six countries, spanning Europe, North America, South America and Asia, making it a truly spine-chilling display of global talent. Each film will be screened twice. Tickets Opening the event is the UK premiere of Sam Yates’s MAGPIE, a darkly intense psychological thriller which thrives in its classic neo-noir atmosphere, eliciting tension that is seconds away from permanently snapping. Daisy Ridley delivers a tour de force performance as a neglected wife on the edge, and will

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 4, 2024

Spoiler-Free Review: THE SEVERED SUN (Fantastic Fest)

Writer/director Dean Puckett’s The Severed Sun (U.K., 2024) is an engrossing work that takes folk horror elements and sets them in an ambiguous time period — the story could be taking place in the past but a couple of items suggest that it could also be set in an isolated rural area in the present day. The Pastor (Toby Stephens) leads a village of followers who must adhere to his religious moral code. The upstanding reputations of the men of the village must be upheld, even if it means covering up or ignoring their physical and mental abuse toward family members. When the pastor’s daughter Magpie (Emma Appleton) decides to no longer take such abuse from her husband toward his sons and her, she kills him, and some of the other flock members are suspicious of her claims of the death being an accident. Magpie grows further away from the strict religious regiment demanded of the Pastor’s followers to the

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 30, 2024

Spoiler-Free Reviews: WHAT HAPPENED TO DOROTHY BELL? and FACES (Fantastic Fest)

What Happened to Dorothy Bell? An interesting investigation of familial trauma and mental illness through a horror lens, What Happened to Dorothy Bell? uses a combination of vintage-style footage (not found footage, to clarify, although the approach is similar) and present-day proceedings. Protagonist Ozzie (Asya Meadows) was attacked when she was a child by her titular grandmother (Arlene Arnone Bibbs). Now a young adult, Ozzie searches for answers to why that happened and also about her grandmother’s disappearance. As might be expected with a family as the focus in a horror film, skeletons lurk in the closet and the supernatural may well be at play. What Happened to Dorothy Bell? has the feel of a gateway horror film, with its surprises and shocks not approaching very scary levels nor reveling in gory effects work. Lingering shots of rooms in which something may or may not happen in the background and noises from other rooms make for most of the suspenseful

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 27, 2024
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