Given its intriguing premise and the quality of production director Olivia Wilde brings to the film, it’s unfortunate that the ambitious psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling doesn’t quite deliver on its promise as a mystery thriller or as social commentary. Set in the 1950’s, the film sees young married couple Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles) living in the
Read moreMacedonian-Australian writer/ director Goran Stolevski’s creepy, impressionistic and at times very unsettling, You Won’t Be Alone, mixes a grittily realistic depiction of early 19th Century European provincial life with supernatural horror. The film plays a little like a sinister fairy-tale with elements of Robert Eggers’ The Witch, the ‘wild girl from the forest’ sub-genre, Candide/Bad Boy Bubby-like tales of an
Read moreSome might have deduced from the movie poster – which features individual shots of the large, sharply dressed ensemble cast – that quirky murder mystery comedy, See How They Run is a homage to Agatha Christie’s whodunnits. This very likeable, if slightly tepid film is actually based around Christie’s phenomenally long-running play The Mousetrap. Set in London in 1953, the
Read moreBefore it makes a bizarre misstep in its finale, Fall effectively mixes vertiginous Cliff-hanger-like ‘dangling over the edge’ thriller with a ‘young woman exorcising personal demons through physical ordeal’ drama reminiscent of the Reece Witherspoon film Wild and the Blake Lively film The Shallows. In the old ‘establish the emotional baggage’ sequence, our sensitive yet ballsy rock climbing heroine Becky (Grace
Read moreThe inevitable challenge for any film sequel is to live up to the expectations raised by the original. When that sequel arrives many years after the first film, so that the original has come to be seen as a minor classic or at least a childhood favourite, the sequel’s task is that much tougher. This is one of the problems
Read moreBodies, Bodies, Bodies is an occasionally clever but mostly annoying, collision of whodunit thriller and millennial culture making it a cacophony of catchphrases and social media references occasionally interspersed by killings. The film employs the familiar set up of a group of friends – in this case mostly loud, obnoxious, twenty-something rich kids – converging on a sprawling mansion for
Read more