The most recent addition to the canon (although it was made in 2006) is the ultimately disappointing Zombies of War (as it’s known in the UK on DVD; Horrors of War elsewhere). Many of the reviews on the Internet Movie Database have referred to ZoW as being referential to the ‘classic’ B war movies of old, but, you know, arguably there’s not much call for this sort of approach these days, (unless you’re Tarantino), so as someone states, why bother?

ZoW has a plot that is pure cliché, as admittedly do pretty much all of the Nazi/war zombie films (with the exception of Dead Snow): the war is going badly for the Germans; they do some occult research; make a few scientists do some taboo research on prisoners and willing, brainwashed volunteers – the result being ‘secret super soldiers’ that they are convinced will change the course of the war. Except they won’t, we all know that, as a team of Allied troops are parachuted in behind enemy lines to nip the esoteric experiments in the bud.

The Germans in ZoW have absolutely no chance when you consider there are only two or three of these super soldiers dotted around the countryside as far as the viewer can tell. They take a couple of shots to the head to put down, and, oh yes, the US infantryman who is attacked and turned by a werewolf (!) early on in proceedings, ends up being very influential in the final battle. In fact, you don’t come across a zombie until about forty minutes into the film, the first few scenes of action being wholly and strangely lycanthrope-orientated and set in the same stretch of woods, despite hours of marching.

Can one recommend a film based upon some of its ideas alone? Not in this case unfortunately, although something in me does like the idea of partisan werewolves attacking Nazi zombies; and a bigger occult picture is hinted at, but I guess, budgets dictated otherwise. ZoW could have been a fun experience, given a much bigger budget, better and tighter storyline and directed by an auteur such as Tarantino or his mate, Rodriguez.

ZoW has obviously been re-titled to take advantage of chumps like me who snap up anything zed-related, so it is my important duty to advise you to avoid at all costs, not just because of the lack of convincing acting, the average special effects, but mainly because Zombies of War doesn’t know what it is.

Zombies of War, 2006

Directed by John Whitney and Peter John Ross

Many years from now, as the Earth becomes a nuclear battleground for ownership of its failing resources, the Elysium is sent into deep space with a cargo of 60,000 sleeping people and the DNA of most of the planet’s flora and fauna; a modern ark, maintained by several crews who will be woken-up in turn as the years pass, bound for the single planet that has been identified as earth-like, Tanis; their mission, to start again.

Astronauts Bower and Peyton, from Team 5, wake from their hyper-slumbers into a world of claustrophobic darkness: the Elysium is shutting down, its reactor gradually slowing and the power drained from all but the most basic of functions. Added to this is the memory-loss that long-term sleepers suffer upon waking – and they’ve been asleep a long, long time; and the increasing threat of mental breakdown and violent paranoia – Pandorum. As Bower explores the ship, attempting to make his way to the reactor he encounters several other survivors turned feral, and a race of possibly mutated and ferociously ravenous savages straight out of The Descent/Ghosts of Mars creature blender.

So what’s new, I hear you cry. Nothing much if I’m honest, but as I wrote above Pandorum takes certain tropes and specific elements from the sf/horror sub-genre and convincingly makes them its own. The atmosphere and cinematography are downright grimy, the Elysium is Nostromo’s big brother – all its corridors are dank and dripping after years of decay. None of the crews have been around to maintain the ship’s vast, maze-like structure and systems. The creatures are hyper-violent, scuttling across the corroding surfaces of the cavernous Elysium, and although the reason for their being there is rather nebulously explained, their presence and constant stalking threat ramps up the tension to almost unbearable levels á la The Descent.

The gradual return of Bower and Peyton’s personal and professional memories, combined with the stories of the survivors, develop into a history of the last moments of the human race on Earth, the breakdown of the crew of the Elysium, and a desperate fight for its future in a colossal sleeper-ship that knows it’s time to die.

As with The Dark Hour, Pandorum’s ending is wonderfully surprising, powerfully apt and contrasts completely with what’s gone before. It allows for a sequel, (although it’s unlikely as it didn’t perform well in cinemas), but they should leave it as it is: a clever, terrifying and uplifting film that will surely develop a cult following on DVD.

Pandorum, 2009

Directed by Christian Alvart

Antichrist commences with an extended scene, shot in black and white, and set to a classical soundtrack. No dialogue, just detailed slow-motion shots of the flat in which the Man and the Woman (the characters are unnamed and I’ll not mention the actor and actresses names either) are making love, and (ooh how controversial) a single second scene of penetration. During this activity their young son walks down the stairs, climbs onto a desk and falls out of the window. It’s a memorable, simple and stylish way to begin a film that soon loses itself in analysis, atmosphere and ambiguity.

The Man is a therapist who feels he knows more about his wife’s bereavement and guilt issues than the staff at the hospital, so he discharges her, taking care of her at home; a move which soon comes across as selfish, as the woman increasingly feels like an experimental subject. Perhaps in response she demands increasingly physical sex and self-harms as the influence of nature gradually manifests itself and her guilt grows. The Man decides they should spend time at their utterly remote cabin in the woods, Eden, where the Woman spent time writing her dissertation on medieval misogyny and where, we find out, she fell into believing what she was writing about, rather than critiquing it.

Von Trier dedicates the film to Andrei Tarkovsky, the famed Russian Director of Andrei Rublev, Stalker and Solaris among others, and it’s with these last two films that Antichrist resonates the most as von Trier utilises several of Tarkovsky’s filmic techniques such as long, uninterrupted scenes, and the black and white dialogue free passages. Like Tarkvosky, Von Trier in Antichrist has given the earth, nature, the elements and the animal kingdom, an alien and ambiguous intelligence that seeps into the minds of the Man and the Woman so that their time sent in Eden becomes a wildly surging series of experiences and emotions: as the cabin’s tin roof is constantly bombarded with acorns from the huge trees it sits beneath; in harsh, visceral and surreal encounters with crows and a talking fox (which I found extremely powerful and perfect within that segment of the film, as opposed to many who have simply laughed).

As the Woman experiences the highs and lows of self-realisation it is the Man, the therapist, who appears most-affected as the landscape becomes an immense primal force that overwhelms them both; as he works with her to overcome her fear of the grass that swirls around the cabin, he is seeing visions that warn him of impending chaos. It is here where Antichrist veers away from what I took, (wanted?), to be an intriguing, ambitious exploration into the nature of nature and its influence on our relationships, towards a graphic depiction of torture and survival rooted in the deep mental illness resulting from a child’s death. Driven on by their surroundings, unable to cope with the sheer size of the environment and their emotions, their physical relationship intensifies into matrimonial violence: genital mutilations being the worst of many outrages inflicted upon and by each other.

The furore surrounding Antichrist has been mostly about its easy to criticise elements: the sex, the violence, its so-called pretentiousness, von Trier’s reputation and even his supposed attitude towards women. I bet even von Trier isn’t sure what he’s trying to say some of the time but, for me, Antichrist is an extremely brave film; as with Tarkovsky’s works, its attempts to depict this unknowable and unquantifiable world we live in and the unpredictable and unfathomable ways we humans relate to it and to each other, are absolutely open to debate and interpretation, and that’s the point. Two-thirds wonderful.

Antichrist, 2009

Directed by Lars Von Trier

Colin is the eponymous central character whom we meet returning home one afternoon. It soon becomes apparent there’s anarchy in the streets of Wandsworth, South London as gunshots and explosions fill the City air and he washes his blood-soaked hands and knife. Colin has been bitten and after fighting off his flatmate we witness his inevitable un-birth. The film then follows our hero around the streets of London as he slowly descends into a state of fully-fledged zombie. For a zed geek like me this is one of the most interesting aspects of the film as, initially, Colin appears to have a certain amount of intelligence to his actions, maybe considering whether or not to tuck into some easily available flesh as the more developed around him flood the streets and chase down the unfortunate survivors.

Colin wanders around, occasionally chowing down, mostly on the already dead, possibly learning from the actions of the others. There are some interesting victims, notably the man who is being eaten alive while he listens to his MP3 player, a gadget which attracts Colin’s attention for a while. There are a couple of episodes where our hero disappears amongst the whole zombie horde, such as the time when he stumbles into a townhouse where four students are fending off a whole front room of the undead. As sheer weight of numbers overwhelms them the scene does actually become fairly harrowing and only one girl escapes. We follow her as she breaks into a seemingly disused garage where a sleazy bloke seems to be torturing zombies by removing their eyes. Again, it’s an intense scene, but its effect is somewhat dampened by the fact you can’t see what’s going on most of the time, and it’s so unexpected and jarring when set against the carnage in the streets. Director Marc Price should be commended for trying something a little different with these interludes, and with Colin being almost totally from an undead perspective.

Price also succeeds with his decision to introduce a sub-plot wherein his sister realises he’s a zombie, and with some mates captures him in an effort to see if he can remember who he is was/is. These poignant scenes are well balanced by her mates’ dislike for Colin in his current state, and the decision they must make when it becomes obvious he cannot be ‘returned’. (Another geek note of interest – apparently, immersing a zed’s head in a bath of water will calm it down temporarily).

Colin is surprisingly well-acted given the majority of its cast were recruited via Facebook and MySpace, although it helps that the majority of the film is without dialogue, and where there is speech it is mostly experienced from Colin’s point-of-view. Being sympathetic to a central character is a prerequisite of most films; the viewer’s interaction with Colin is no different as we know just enough about him to care and as the story unfolds and he descends into a new form of life this sympathy only increases.

Colin, 2008

Dirceted by Marc Price

Red Sands

Charged with seizing and then monitoring an important road the soldiers get lost due to some random artillery fire, come across some ruins and out of boredom (regardless of the fact they’ve just been attacked) set about shooting up the statues carved in the sides of the red sandstone hills. This act of ignorance unleashes a Djinn which then takes its revenge on the soldiers.  We know it’s a Djinn because there’s a plaque in the stone that says so.

The problem with Red Sands is that at the very beginning of the film you are shown who survives, and because you also know what’s shape-shifting and taking on the appearance of those it kills, causing hallucinations and generally making their stay in a strangely abandoned stone house uncomfortable (especially as the radio is unusable and the jeep’s engine is mysteriously ripped out) there’s absolutely no intrigue, suspense or surprise to the experience.

The shallow and clichéd characters of the soldiers are played by the numbers (why does every radio operator have glasses, and be literately nerdy?) The shadowy interior setting of the house is way too dark to see any detail; and there is a tired re-use of ideas from Dead Birds – a lot of the decent effects are dark, hollow eyes and wide gaping mouths of those victims sucked dry by the Djinn; admittedly they are scary the first time around, but if you’ve seen them once…

Ultimately, and unfortunately because I really wanted to like it, Red Sands is a disappointing and predictable film.

[This review was originally published in the Spring 09 edition of Prism, the Newsletter of the British Fantasy Society]

There’s a strong if fairly unoriginal plot forming the foundations of Dead Wood. A brief prologue shows us a man running through the woods, pursued by something unseen, the woods alive with movement. He comes to a small river and hesitates and that proves his undoing. His girlfriend is left shouting his name as the woods darken around her. We then jump to a couple playing matchmakers for a weekend, taking their shy but mutually attracted friends camping. On the way they run over a deer and as it lays there in convulsions, they make what they consider to be the correct and humane decision, and finish it off.

Dead Wood, an independent UK production, mixes up a little Blair Witch, a possessed Asian girl with yep, long-dark hair and staring eyes, and some spliff-induced hallucinations. The atmosphere grows heavy as the four lose themselves in the woods, stumble across a rotting tent and welcome a complete stranger, (the girlfriend from the prologue) into their midst rather too naively.

I was reminded of the scenes in Evil Dead as something rushes through the trees bearing down on the campers and… and, to be honest, there are far too many references to influential horror films crammed in here, so that Dead Wood loses itself amongst the trees, as does the average acting, and the panoramic ( and possibly) stock footage of vast forests into which the group definitely did not drive. This is a shame, because when it finally gets going (40 minutes into its total running time of 82) there are some interesting and spooky manifestations of a green environment with a lust for the red stuff.

Frustratingly the reasons behind the woods going after the campers are never explained; maybe it’s a Long Weekend nature’s revenge scenario due to the deer fatality, or possibly just because the woods themselves are bad, or haunted, or polluted, or…

Regardless of some effective tree transformations á la The Guardian, Dead Wood is a trying and tedious experience for such a short trip.

[This review was originally published in the Spring 09 edition of Prism, the Newsletter of the British Fantasy Society]

A few weeks later I managed to catch a busy,  somewhat relieved and very amiable Mr. Kevorkian, (no relation), for a coffee and a chat to discuss this very British film, which is currently enjoying a well-deserved run at the ICA cinema throughout June and July.

MFR: Where did the seed of the idea for The Disappeared originate?

JK: Myself and Neil Murphy, the Producer had had a really bad experience of a film script that we had optioned. I’m not going to mention the name. We’d tweaked the script and made it much better, but then we lost the funding and it was very, very frustrating. We said to ourselves that we couldn’t keep on getting other people’s scripts and spending all this time and money on them and then losing them at the eleventh hour. People were getting greedy and other comanies became interested and talking about getting big actors, big stars involved. Most of the time it doesn’t work, you want something gritty instead of too polished, something that sends shivers down your spine, the hairs on the back of your neck, that’s what we wanted. The cheaper the horror film, the scarier the horror film. That’s my thing. We wanted to concentrate on the horror in it, the atmosphere; whereas if you’ve got a big studio-type horror film they won’t allow you to get away with that. Atmosphere is the last thing on their minds. They want you to focus on the stars, and I don’t think it works for a horror film, those slick techniques.

So we thought, let’s just write our own, let’s come up with our own damn idea! We sat down and said let’s do a horror film, we can do it really cheaply and get away with it. And in the UK, at the time, there weren’t many horror films being produced. Not this type of film, maybe a few slasher films, which I love as well, don’t get me wrong I love all that sort of stuff, but we wanted to make a more atmospheric film, with more about the characters. We wanted to make a classic, old-school chiller, something we hadn’t seen for a while. It started out the the EVP (electronic voice phenomena) idea of watching a press conference about a murder and hearing a voice of the victim. We saw a few of these on television a while ago, and we decided to see what we could do with that.

But we had to be careful as there was that Michael Keaton film, (White Noise), coming out and we didn’t want to go down that route. I avoided that film at the time, and have only just seen it, and there’s no comparison. Once we had the main idea we looked at the environment. Where could we set the film? Suburbia? No. Let’s go to somewhere a bit more gritty. Let’s make it scary. A council estate. Let’s give people something they aren’t expecting. Once we’d found the estate we’d have the whole place to set the film. Not just the inside of a suburban house.

MFR: And how did you find the collaboration process with Neil Murphy?

JK: We sat down at different desks in the same room and just wrote. We had to be quite disciplined. Neil would come over and we’d lock ourselves in the flat for the whole day until six or seven at night. I really enjoy the process. I had a lot of ideas for scenes that I could already see in my head. Then we’d go off separately and I’d write pages 10-20 and Neil would write pages 21-40 and we’d put our own intepretation on the story. Then we’d sit down and combine the two versions; we got rid of loads of stuff – that’s crap, that’s crap. When we got the green-light to do the film we had a first draft that took a month to do, and the second draft took another month and a half.

MFR: The film has two distinct halves – the contemporary urban ghost story, influenced by Asian scares; and the eerily atmospheric, almost gothic horror of the tunnels beneath the Church, influenced by the British Hammer and Amicus traditions…

JK: The big dilemma was how much to actually put in the film itself. In the older drafts we had more horror running throughout the whole film, and we had to think about how much we could leave in and still tell the same story. Having really interesting locations helped make that choice as they really help the tone and atmosphere, without really having to ’say’ it in the script. A lot of the gothicness came in as we shot. The church is one of my favourite locations. I found the location I had in my head. The brief was find a place that gives me a feel of the church in Salem’s Lot. I love that seventies scary unpleasant feel. That was in Honor Oak in South East London. It even had the right door!

MFR: Are you a Londoner? How did you set about finding the locations…

JK: I’ve been in London forever! It was interesting and we had to look around for a while, and although it’s a low-budget film, it does have a budget and a whole film-crew to look after and to get from place-to-place. It’s not a Blair Witch, put-a-camera-on-a-shoulder-and-run-around, so there was a lot of responsibility. I gave the location guy a brief: it had to be colourless, it really had to feel creepy. I avoided shooting scenes with lots of extras, and tried to keep everything to a bare minumum. I wanted the atmosphere to come through by itself.

When I saw the pictures of Heygate, (the estate near Elephant and Castle, now being redeveloped and its residents rehomed), I knew straight away. When I went there for the first time it was really odd. It’s surrounded by the city, but when you get there and walk through the heart of the estate you can’t hear anything. It had the atmosphere I was looking for – no one’s going to want to walk across this estate, it had a sense of being forgotten about, like the kids who are going missing in the film. It also had a sense of timelessness. I kept technology out of the film as much as I could. There are no mobile phones. I wanted the place isolated, cut off from the rest of the world. The bland colours of the buildings were striking, blending into the background really well.

We liased with the Council and shot there for three and a half weeks; the whole film took just under five weeks. We tried to keep in the background, but as soon as the kids on the estate got wind that Tom Felton (of the Harry Potter films) was there, they ran around asking for autographs, but it helped us befriend the locals who were absolutely lovely. There were a few ‘junkie’ types who didn’t want us there; but the majority were a good bunch, and it was an estate full of families, a family-run estate, with lots of people working there who also lived there. In the playground scenes we had to stop the kids running around: we’ll give you an autograph if you sit still for a few minutes, and they were great.

MFR: Matthew’s flat had a real impact on me. I couldn’t imagine living in such a place…

JK: The interior of the flat was real. We actually did it down a bit. It was a great location, but it felt so claustrophobic. After being there in the flat for a whole week, it felt hot and enclosed, althugh the walls were paper-thin. It was the real deal, as were all the locations in the film.

MFR: And where did you film the subterranean scenes? In London?

JK: The tunnels are the Chislehurst Caves, on the borders of Kent. There are 20 miles of man-made tunnels. People used to live there in the Second World War. There are churches down there, whole communities lived there beneath the ground. When you first go in, it’s quite daunting and the crew were a bit freaked out. We were going to be there over three days, from first thing in the morning to last thing at night. It feels cold in there at first, but it’s got this bizarre temperature that you get used to – not cold or warm. Nothing grows in there. or lives in there anymore. It’s absolutely pitch black. No lights at all. You have to take torches and if you got lost you had a whistle. It’s the real thing and we thought we’d just film this thing. If we’d had a budget we’d have probably lit it or built it in a studio. In the sequence where Matthew’s running through the tunnels, I wanted the scene to be just running and running until the film runs out of the magazine, and you couldn’t get that in a studio. In a studio you’d have to be clever with the lighting and cutting, but there was no cutting, he just kept running. There was a problem with the crew running after him though! But I like the idea of this whole manicness. You can hardly see what’s going on, and that’s purely deliberate, and not knowing what’s going on I wanted to bring that across in this great location. I think the crew became a bit stir crazy, and it was exhausting carrying all the equipment a long way in there. It wasn’t just a cave, for example, the altar room had six or seven different areas leading off from it, so to make up that one location there were six or seven places to be used. That’s where a studio has an advantage, I had to cut to make things seamless.

MFR: How do you make locations scary?

JK: Excellent question! I think it’s to do with the way you shoot it, in terms of lighting and colour. And I think it’s how you time your shots. Going back to other horror films, there a lot of fast cuts, but I think you lose that sense of what’s scary. What I find scary is staring at someone or something for a long time and the atmosphere builds around you and absorbs you. But a lot of the time it is the actual location itself, the look of the thing. We filtered a bit, but what I wanted the most was to use it and show it how it was. The brief to Diego, the cinematographer was let’s make it realistic, let’s not stylize, right up until the caves let’s not follow a strict way of doing things. Once we got into the caves – let’s go for stark lighting and bring up the horror elements and I think the contrast really works.

MFR: So the darkness, a time-old problem for horror film-makers. Does hi-def make a difference?

JK: When we did the first cut of the movie, which was about two hours, me and the Editor sat down and tried to bring out the horror and the atmosphere. I was very nervous, because the last half of the film is so dark, we filmed with one light source, but people like it, and I think it worked. A lot of the films you see these days, it’s dark, but it’s not dark. It’s not what you’d see. If there’s no light you can’t see anything and that’s why it’s scary!

You could shoot it in hi-def, but it goes quite milky and you lose that denseness of the blacks. So we shot on film. If we’d used hi-def we wouldn’t have got the gritty atmosphere we did. We had a cast and crew screening and we’d converted to hi-def – it looked good, but not good enough. We projected it on 35mm at the Odeon (at Frightfest) and it looked great. On DVD it’ll look great because we’ll keep the source elements, the discipline of how we shot it, in the negative. The 35mm and the Hi-def are two completely different versions really.

MFR: The Disappeared’s a very English film, but perhaps employing Asian-inluenced techiques for the portrayal of the ghosts – e.g. reflections in glass, and so on…

JK: People are doing simple things to scare people because they work. The blander and more mundane the settings the scarier they are too. I use classic chill techniques like echoes because they do work. The handheld cameras in the caves also adds to the atmosphere. It feels real and organic. It does feel as if somebody’s there with you. The key is not to make it look handheld, but for it to be handheld. This was all hand-held, but it doesn’t come across, especially for the first part of the film.

MFR: I really enjoyed the way you set-up a mythology of South east London ghosts…

JK: Again, you just don’t see this in films. This city and that area in particular has a massive history of sightings and they’re just not used enough.

MFR: Were you aware that the characters and story could be seen as a metaphor for those people who live on the estate, some with troubled lives perhaps, and those who’ve lost children…

JK: Yes. The story and locations play on the biggest fears of society; estate gangs; dysfunctional families; child abduction. All these things, if you put them all into one location and it becomes even scarier. It makes it real, and people respond to that.

[A series of photos taken around the estates of the Elephant and Castle by students studying photojournalism can be seen here. Check out image 11 - the Ashenden building on the Heygate Estate.]

MFR: Harry Treadaway, as Matthew Ryan is awesome. How did you find the casting process?

JK: It was more of a case, especially with the more established actors, that I’d meet them and see if they wanted to work with me, as a first-time Director.

With Matthew’s character, Harry Treadaway nailed it. Without him the film would be nothing. It’s a drama as much as anything so if he’s dropped the ball at anytime it would have been over. Due to his success, Harry’s very selective about the roles he chooses these days, but Matthew’s a great, great character. So I had to reassure Harry, and talk with him about what I wanted from the character: let’s not have this character, who, depsite being scared, runs about screaming. Matthew’s messed up in his head; and in the film, is it in his head, or is it real? He liked that angle and especially the fact he is a quiet character. There was one scene, where Matthew and Jake, his father, blow up, and I took it out as it detracted from the atmosphere. Greg Wise who plays Jake is about 20 years older than Harry, so the father and son relationship worked really well. You had to feel so sorry for the kids in the film. Matthew’s character is quiet and messed up; whereas Tom’s character, Simon, is louder and more confident, but who goes through massive attitudinal changes later in the film, when his sister goes missing.

Casting the evil character was challenging – how does he play it? Not under or over play it? He needed to be menacing and was the last character casted. The evil character, you could take him back to another time, another place, and people make their own interpretations. Some might say he’s a vampire. But he’s not. All these different things come up, and it’s quite nice. I definitely wanted to keep the ending very, very ambiguous.

MFR: Frightfest was back in August 2008, so I got an update from Johnny on progress since then…

JK: The Frightfest guys really helped us get a lot of press which has been great and it has resulted to having its UK theatrical release at the ICA in London.

The ICA run and some great reviews have also led to interest from some other distributors to pick it up for DVD in the Autumn.

Up to this ICA run the film has been doing the festival circuit over the last few months and picking up some awards along the way at some nice festivals. The film recently won best feature and sound at the Eerie Horror Fest in Pennsylvania, Mauvais Genre France 2009 – Winner of Young Jury’s Prize 2009 in the feature category and also Houston International Film Festival 2009 – Winner of Best Narrative Feature Award. It also screened at Screamfest in LA, Lund in Sweden, the Dublin Horrorthon, Dead Channels San Francisco, Ravenna in Italy, Leeds, Malaga.

We have also sold the film to IFC films in US and it will have its release from the IFC theaters platform which which be screened all over IFC’s channels across North America. The release is from the 8th of July, very exciting!

My next projects starts the end of this year. It’s called, Sleep Thief. It’s a combination of Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, and The Machinist, it has a great story with very strong central characters. It does have some ghostly elements like in The Others. It plays very much on modern fears and is very topical. We are in the process of casting the male lead now – will keep you posted.

Nine survivors of what might have been a biological and/or nuclear holocaust are locked up inside the ruined planet. Their lives run like clockwork, ruled by restricted movement, rationing of food, power, and hope.  Hazardous missions to forage for new supplies of food and medication form part of the survivalist routine. Outside the sealed sanctuary toxic ghouls (possibly zombies and referred to as Strangers) roam myriad corridors dripping in filth and disease. But there’s more to the subterranean inhabitants than slow decaying remnants of society – for one hour every day, ‘the cold hour’, the Invisibles roam the shadowy environment. Freezing air, wood and metal as they travel the length and breadth of the sanctuary, the survivors lock themselves into their rooms for fear of encountering these ethereal predators.

Terrorised by two types of evil and imprisoned beneath the surface by the fallout, the nine survivors convincingly play out strained relationships, their quirks and bigotries manifesting in treachery and a desperate fight for survival. The youngest survivor, a boy named Jesus records a video diary showing us a child’s fears of this awful world he has been born into, and through this young voice, debut director Quiroga manages to successfully create, maintain and manipulate a tense atmosphere of dread and anticipation, of love and hate, innocence and strength that is gripping from the first minute to the last.

And that last scene! A truly surprise ending, and you can’t say that of many a film. Maybe you’ll love it or hate it. I thought it was perfect. Either way, this single awesome scene provides answers to what’s gone before and takes the story into new realms even as it ends.  An emotional, savage, and wholly original sf/horror hybrid, The Dark Hour is recommended without reservation.

The Dark Hour, 2006

Director: Elio Quiroga; Writer: Elio Quiroga

[This review was originally published in the Easter 09 edition of Prism, the Newsletter of the British Fantasy Society]