The Gore Connoisseurs

Brightburn is one of this year's big budget horror releases – a scary movie reimagining of the Superman story produced by James Gunn. Yet its director cut his teeth on micro-budget 2014 gore-fest The Hive, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime . Director David Yarovesky's debut feature caught Gunn's attention and won him the bug bucks funding he needed to make Brightburn. It's a film that has largely flown under the radar, but what was it that caught Hollywood's attention? The Hive is in some ways a typical story of plague and infestation. A group of camp counsellors slowly succumb to nasty black goo which makes them violent, telepathic and pretty unsightly. The Hive is messy, but unlike many horror films it's certain of its own right to exist in a busy genre landscape Our hero Adam (Gabriel Basso) wakes up infected by the goo and suffering from amnesia. There are warnings scrawled on the wall that there are monsters outside, and Adam starts to rea...

Critics are calling Irish horror film  The Hole in the Ground this year's Hereditary , yet on the evidence of the trailer alone it looks like a by-the-numbers horror movie. While the trailer for Jordan Peele's Us promised us a bizarre set-up and arresting imagery, The Hole in the Ground ticked off an impressive number of horror clichés in its two and a half minute runtime. Yet Hole has already been picked up by horror powerhouse A24 ( Hereditary, The Witch, It Comes at Night ) following its Sundance premiere, so doubtless it's destined for great things. But if, like us, you're thinking that Lee Cronin's debut feature sounds a bit like every other scary movie you've seen in the past few years, here's five tropes it's "borrowed" from recent horror films. 1) Let's move to a house in the middle of nowhere We get that house prices are through the roof – but come on! We completely get why Pyewacket's Leah is pissed o...

Our series on feminist horror films continues, as we take a look at some modern classics. We're going in chronological order, and exploring three of the most interesting 21st Century horror films from a feminist perspective: Teeth, Hush and The Witch . In the latest installment of our series on feminist horror, we look at a broad cross-section of what feminist horror means in the 21st Century.  4) Teeth (2007) In a sentence:  The tonally uneven story of a chastity-promising teenager who discovers she has a toothed vagina. It's perhaps one of the most misunderstood horror movies ever made. What goes down: Dawn (Jess Weixler) is the star speaker at a chastity youth group, but she's struggling to stick to her resolutions when not-so-handsome stranger Tobey (Hale Appelman) appears on the scene. It quickly turns out that Tobey isn't as benevolant as he seems, but thankfully Dawn has a secret weapon against male violence: a toothed vagina. Was th...