Review by Britt Hayes If The Cabin in the Woods is a love letter to the horror we’ve all grown to love (and, at times, have become complacent toward), V/H/S is an anarchic assault on the found footage genre. Directors Adam Wingard, Ti West, Simon Barrett, David Bruckner, Glenn McQuaid, Radio Silence, and Joe Swanberg [...]

Review by Britt Hayes If there ever existed a love letter to horror, The Cabin in the Woods is it. Directed by Drew Goddard, who co-wrote with Joss Whedon, The Cabin in the Woods takes a well-worn genre narrative and wraps in something incredibly clever and unexpected. When a group of friends head off into [...]

Review by Keri O’Shea The Raven feels as though it has sneaked up on its audience a bit. I remember hearing about this proposed release a long time ago: my initial excitement gave way to a sneaking suspicion that the whole project had collapsed in on itself, as so often happens to compelling projects – [...]

Review by Uncouth It’s no secret I love DIY films. I’ve written endlessly about my passion for the common man picking up a camera, grabbing some buddies and making a flick. Usually, to be honest, they’re awful. There’s a reason why not everyone can just pick up a camera and grab some buddies and make [...]

Review by Nia Edwards-Behi This keeps happening to me. I hear about a film. I avoid the specifics of why everyone loves it. It becomes something of a festival darling or a genre fan favourite. Then, I eventually watch it and… oh. That’s it? Is the hype machine doing its worst, here, or am I [...]

Reviewed by Comix Junji Ito is pretty goddamn insane and that’s putting it lightly. The man is iconic for creating horror comics that not only creep the hell out of you, but stick around long after you’ve stopped reading right to left. He has done tons of super fantastic work, with such great titles as [...]

Review by Marc Patterson Damn whores. They don’t know what the hell they’re getting into. Continuing on our oddly evolving, yet ever impromptu theme this month of horrifying sea creature films comes this new entry from Vicious Circle Films. I first saw El Monstro del Mar what feels like ages ago. The director sent me [...]

Review by Marc Patterson I’m reminded of the The Ballad of Railroad Jerk – “This isn’t the 70s. It’s not the 80s. This is the 90s!” Oh god, the 90s – what a weird time for the WiP film – but fuck it, right? It’s never a bad time for WiP love, especially when said [...]

Review by Uncouth The gap between “professional” Hollywood productions and DIY indie flicks has become more and more narrow, which makes being a cinephile today very exciting. The only way to make a film in decades previous was to either be a) very rich or b) connected in the Hollywood system. The more widespread use [...]

Review by Ben Bussey What makes a rebel? The dictionary definition is “1. a person who refuses allegiance to, resists, or rises in arms against the government or ruler of his or her country; 2. a person who resists any authority, control or tradition.” Presumably we’re safe to disregard the first definition in relation to [...]

Review by Stephanie Scaife Here we have the sophomore effort from Canadian director Jon Knautz, who brought us the amusing festival pleaser Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer in 2007. This time he plays it entirely straight in this ambitious but ultimately disappointing horror film that arrives on DVD and Blu-ray this week. Ambitious young journalist Carmen [...]

Review by Annie Riordan Never take a short cut through the desert. It didn’t work in The Hills Have Eyes; not the original or the remake OR any of the sequels. It didn’t work in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; not the original, or the remake, OR any of the sequels. It didn’t work in Reeker, [...]

by Keri O’Shea Editor’s note, 23/02/2012 – since we posted this article, it has come to light that Lina Romay, star of this film and lifelong muse to Jess Franco, passed away last week after a long battle with cancer. We at Brutal As Hell are deeply saddened by this news and offer our deepest [...]

Reviews by James Bickert With the Synapse announcement of True Story of a Woman in Jail: Sex Hell (1975) to be released on DVD this year, I decided to review the film and its sequels. This isn’t a review of their discs which I’m sure will be gorgeous but a review of some Japanese copies [...]

Review by Stephanie Scaife “A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.” I should start off by saying that Alex Cox’s (Sid & Nancy, Straight to Hell) Repo Man is one of my all time favourite movies, making this review a little tough to write as it’s near impossible to be objective when [...]

Review by Ben Bussey A word of advice to microbudget filmmakers who plan on subjecting us to yet another by-the-numbers torture flick: might be best to give yourselves a title that doesn’t invite cockney rhyming slang. Flashing the word ‘terrible’ in the opening sequence perhaps isn’t the best step either. First impressions count for a [...]

Review by Marc Patterson I’ve come to the distinct conclusion that Tom Six is one of the most challenging directors working in the horror genre today. I’ve never had a director polarize my feelings for a film so intensely and now he’s done it twice. In my mind there’s no question that he’s a talented [...]