[SilverGunnar Hansen]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

CHERRY FALLS - Finally got around to watching this after clocking its several positive notices around here. I really enjoyed it, and, although superficially it has that late ninties / early noughties 'horror-lite' (or, to be lazy, 'post-Scream') feel to it, it's actually quite subversive on some levels. Maybe I'm easily amused, but the idea of a bunch of high school seniors organising an orgy in order to avoid being offed by a virginity-fixated killer strikes me as hilarious. This aside, the film's back story is pretty forlorn, and some scenes, like the one in the putative killer's run-down house, really creeped me out and linger on in my mind.

THE LAST BROADCAST - Well known as the forerunner of 'Blair Witch'. It looks really cheap and is a bit clunky in some respects (ie. the 'twist' at the end), but, although it doesn't reach the heights of near hysteria scaled by BWP, I think it succeeds in building an atmosphere of impending near dread, particularly in the latter part of the film (ending notwithstanding). Maybe there's something about the format which lends itself to that doom laden feeling of imminence. Beyond this, there are some interesting but unresolved ideas about construction of 'reality' / perception by the media, and, again on a conceptual level, it at least takes up the baton from 'Cannibal Holocaust' as the next phase in the development of the found-footage subgenre.

THE NEAR ROOM - Another one of the pound shop random buys. It's an interesting Glasgow-noir about a burned out journalist uncovering a mire of corruption in the search for his daughter. I'm surprised it's not better known, given the familiar faces on show and the fact that it's quite stylised and odd in some ways. I mean, it's not screamingly weird or anything, but has that expressively-lit and subtlely disjointed post-'Blood Simple' feel to it. Good. Well, worth a quid anyway.

Out on a limb, but if you feel like more Glasgow stuff, Orphans is really great, another film I feel goes under the radar (even though a lot of people saw it at the time) perhaps because it's so colloquial / parochial and covers so many different tones.

Oh, and - Cherry Falls is great fun! Lots of knowing fun to be had there. Especially with Jay Mohr and Michael Biehn! Brittany Murphy had a really kooky appeal too, such a shame she's not around anymore.