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JEFFREY DOLLMER: THE DOLL, THE DAHMER AND THE DEATH OF GOOD TASTE

04 Sunday Oct 2026

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When the killer-doll movie crawls out of the video-store bargain bin

There are films that arrive at a festival demanding to be taken seriously.

There are films that arrive hoping to be discovered.

And then there are films like Jeffrey Dollmer, which seem to arrive carrying a petrol can, a fake moustache and absolutely no intention of apologising for themselves.

A possessed doll.

The spirit of Jeffrey Dahmer.

A remote photo shoot.

A collection of models.

Murder, exploitation and a title that sounds like somebody ran a serial killer’s name through a children’s toy catalogue.

You could spend an enormous amount of time asking whether Jeffrey Dollmer is in good taste.

The film would probably prefer you didn’t.

Monster Fest’s own program copy essentially throws the gauntlet down before the screening even begins, describing the film as “cheap, nasty, ridiculous” and openly celebrating its capacity to offend. That is not an accidental side effect of the film’s identity. It is the sales pitch.

And perhaps that is the most interesting thing about Jeffrey Dollmer.

It feels like a movie from a parallel universe in which the video store never died.

WELCOME TO THE WRONG SHELF

There is a particular kind of horror movie that used to be everywhere.

You would walk into a video shop and find it lurking beneath the more respectable releases. The artwork promised something outrageous. The title promised something worse. The synopsis seemed to have been written by somebody who had been dared to make it sound as filthy and violent as possible.

You picked it up.

You read the back.

You knew absolutely nothing about it.

And that was precisely the point.

Jeffrey Dollmer feels like it belongs in that ecosystem.

Not because it resembles a lost 1980s film in any literal sense, but because it understands the ancient exploitation-movie equation that a sufficiently outrageous premise is itself an invitation.

This is not “a film about a possessed doll.”

It is Jeffrey Dollmer.

The title is already the trailer.

THE FULL MOON CONNECTION

The obvious comparison is Charles Band’s Full Moon Pictures.

That comparison is not intended as an insult.

Quite the opposite.

Full Moon built an entire cottage industry around the idea that horror did not have to be respectable to be entertaining. The company understood the peculiar alchemy of killer toys, demonic objects, mad scientists, miniature monsters, erotic nightmares and concepts that would probably sound insane if explained outside the context of a video-store shelf.

Puppet Master is perhaps the obvious reference point, but the larger Full Moon tradition is what matters here.

The concept comes first.

The spectacle follows.

Logic can take the evening off.

The viewer is not necessarily being promised prestige.

They are being promised something.

A hook.

A monster.

A ridiculous premise.

A reason to press play.

Jeffrey Dollmer appears to understand that tradition instinctively.

It does not seem interested in asking how a possessed serial killer doll could function within a rigorously constructed supernatural mythology.

It asks a much more important exploitation question:

Wouldn’t it be insane if this happened?

And then it goes ahead and makes the movie.

MARK SAVAGE’S HOUSE OF BAD TASTE

At the centre of this particular descent is Australian filmmaker Mark Savage, a director whose career has never suggested an overwhelming interest in staying safely inside the boundaries of good taste.

Monster Fest describes Savage as a fiercely independent filmmaker responsible for titles including Marauders, Sensitive New Age Killer and The Masturbating Gunman.

Those titles alone should tell you something about the cinematic neighbourhood in which Jeffrey Dollmer has chosen to build its house.

Savage is not approaching the material as though somebody has accidentally handed an arthouse director the wrong script.

The premise is the destination.

The bad taste is part of the architecture.

And that places Jeffrey Dollmer in an increasingly interesting corner of contemporary genre filmmaking: movies made with the awareness that there is still an audience for horror that does not need to justify its existence through seriousness.

THE KILLER DOLL THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST

The killer doll is one of horror’s most enduring ideas because the concept itself contains a contradiction.

A doll is supposed to be an object of childhood affection.

It is small.

It is harmless.

It sits where you leave it.

Until it doesn’t.

From The Twilight Zone to Child’s Play and beyond, the killer doll works because it turns an object designed to be controlled into something that controls the room instead.

Jeffrey Dollmer takes that familiar mechanism and pours something considerably uglier into it.

Jeffrey Dahmer.

The historical Dahmer was a real serial killer whose crimes involved the murder and dismemberment of seventeen males between 1978 and 1991. Turning his identity into a killer-doll premise is therefore considerably more provocative than simply inventing another fictional psychopath.

The film’s outrageousness depends upon that collision between the recognisable and the absurd.

The name carries real-world horror.

The doll carries fantasy.

The film slams them together.

And the result is deliberately uncomfortable.

EXPLOITATION KNOWS IT IS EXPLOITATION

This is where the film’s relationship with exploitation cinema becomes particularly useful.

Exploitation has always understood that controversy can function as currency.

The title gets you to stop.

The poster gets you to look.

The premise gets you to wonder whether the filmmakers can possibly pull it off.

And then the movie has to deliver enough of the promised excess to justify the journey.

Jeffrey Dollmer is practically engineered around that principle.

The Monster Fest program doesn’t disguise the film’s intentions. It practically shouts them through a megaphone. A group of models arrive at a photo shoot and encounter a doll possessed by the spirit of Dahmer. The language itself becomes part of the experience.

There is no elaborate mystery box.

No twelve-minute prologue designed to establish an expansive mythology.

No solemn announcement that this is “a meditation on trauma.”

There is a doll.

There is Dahmer.

Things go badly.

Sometimes horror knows exactly how much explanation it needs.

THE PHOTO SHOOT FROM HELL

The choice of a photo shoot is also perfectly suited to this kind of cinema.

The setting already contains an element of artificiality.

Models.

Cameras.

Posing.

Performance.

Bodies being arranged for consumption.

Everyone is already participating in a manufactured spectacle before the supernatural horror arrives.

That creates an interesting secondary layer beneath the exploitation.

The characters are being photographed.

The audience is watching them.

The doll is watching them.

And the film itself is turning the whole situation into entertainment.

It is a hall of mirrors made out of bodies, cameras and voyeurism.

That is not necessarily a reason to suddenly transform Jeffrey Dollmer into a dissertation on the gaze.

Sometimes a killer doll is just a killer doll.

But exploitation cinema has always understood that looking is part of the bargain.

The audience comes to see something they probably shouldn’t.

The movie knows it.

CHEAP ISN’T ALWAYS A CRITICISM

There is a tendency to use words such as “cheap” and “low-budget” as though they automatically represent failures.

They don’t.

Sometimes they represent freedom.

A large studio production has committees.

Insurance requirements.

Brand concerns.

Marketing departments.

Executives asking whether the premise is appropriate for the company’s image.

A film like Jeffrey Dollmer does not appear to have suffered from an excess of corporate supervision.

And thank God for that.

The result may be rough around the edges. It may occasionally feel like it was constructed with whatever was available. It may possess the visual fingerprints of independent exploitation rather than polished studio horror.

But that can be part of the pleasure.

There is something perversely liberating about a film that looks as though somebody simply decided:

We can make a movie about a serial killer doll.

And then did.

THE RETURN OF THE VIDEO-STORE MOVIE

This is where the Full Moon comparison becomes more than a convenient reference.

There was a time when the direct-to-video market provided a vast parallel cinema.

Films could be strange.

Films could be cheap.

Films could be derivative.

Films could be glorious.

Films could be terrible.

Sometimes they could be all five simultaneously.

But they existed.

The video store gave these films a physical geography.

You could wander through the horror section and discover something you had never heard of.

You could judge a movie by its cover.

You could rent it because the title made you laugh.

You could rent it because the artwork frightened you.

You could rent it because your friends dared you.

Streaming has made enormous amounts of cinema available, but it has also changed the nature of discovery. The algorithm wants to know what you already like.

The video store wanted to know what you were willing to risk.

Jeffrey Dollmer feels like a film made for that older form of cinematic gambling.

THE PROBLEM WITH TASTE

Good taste has its uses.

It stops us from making terrible decisions.

It also stops people from making interesting ones.

Horror has always benefited from filmmakers willing to step outside respectable boundaries. Some of the genre’s most memorable films emerged precisely because somebody thought an idea was too ridiculous, too grotesque or too tasteless to work.

Sometimes they were right.

Sometimes they were gloriously wrong.

The important thing is that somebody tried.

Monster Fest has always understood this part of genre culture. Its program is deliberately broad enough to accommodate serious genre filmmaking alongside movies that appear to have been assembled from the contents of a deranged filmmaker’s garage.

That is why Jeffrey Dollmer makes sense here.

It is not an interruption.

It is part of the ecosystem.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE TITLE

Of course, there is one unavoidable problem with the film.

Jeffrey Dahmer was real.

There is an ethical difference between a fictional serial killer and a real person whose crimes destroyed actual lives.

That makes the film’s premise more complicated than something like Puppet Master or Child’s Play.

The exploitation of notorious killers has become a familiar part of contemporary horror and true-crime culture, but familiarity does not make the ethical question disappear.

What does it mean to turn a real killer into entertainment?

Where is the line between grotesque fantasy and commercial exploitation?

And when the killer is transformed into a ridiculous object like a doll, does that distance us from the reality of the crimes—or simply make the spectacle easier to consume?

Those questions sit uncomfortably underneath the film.

Perhaps that discomfort is unavoidable.

Perhaps it is part of what happens when horror takes real-world evil and turns it into genre material.

Either way, Jeffrey Dollmer is not something that can be discussed entirely outside that context.

BUT THEN THERE’S THE TITLE AGAIN

And yet.

There is also the sheer absurdity of the concept.

This is a film called Jeffrey Dollmer.

That name alone tells you that the filmmakers are not trying to disguise the exploitation.

The title is a punchline.

It is a dare.

It is the sort of title that exists specifically to make somebody say:

“Wait. What is that?”

And if your response to that question is to immediately want to see it, then the film has already done its job.

THE ART OF THE RIDICULOUS

The best exploitation cinema has always understood one simple truth:

Ridiculous does not necessarily mean worthless.

Sometimes ridiculous is a legitimate aesthetic.

It allows filmmakers to take ideas that would collapse under the weight of seriousness and turn them into something energetic, strange and entertaining.

Jeffrey Dollmer appears to belong to that tradition.

The film is not asking to be mistaken for The Silence of the Lambs.

It is not competing with prestige psychological horror.

It is not trying to make you forget that you are watching a movie about a serial killer’s spirit inhabiting a doll.

It is making sure you never forget.

And perhaps that is exactly the point.

THE FULL MOON OF IT ALL

Imagine finding this on a video-store shelf thirty years ago.

You have already watched Puppet Master.

You’ve exhausted the obvious Ghoulies.

You’ve seen Demonic Toys.

You’ve wandered through the Full Moon catalogue far enough that the phrase “possessed object” no longer sounds like a warning.

Then you see Jeffrey Dollmer.

You pick it up.

You read the back.

You laugh.

You grimace.

You wonder whether the film can possibly be as outrageous as the title suggests.

Then you rent it.

That is the cinematic experience Jeffrey Dollmer seems determined to resurrect.

Not prestige.

Not cultural respectability.

Not awards-season seriousness.

Discovery.

The glorious possibility that somebody, somewhere, has made a movie so completely bonkers that you simply have to see what happens.

THE MONSTER FEST FACTOR

That is why Jeffrey Dollmer feels particularly well placed at Monster Fest.

The 2026 festival is already presenting films ranging from Australian premieres and world premieres to retrospectives and documentaries about genre filmmakers, including Full Moon Rising: The Charles Band Story.

That makes the Full Moon comparison almost impossible to ignore.

There is something beautifully appropriate about having a film that appears to belong to the same extended cinematic bloodline sitting within a festival program that is also examining Charles Band’s career and the machinery of cult filmmaking.

One film looks back at the man who helped make low-budget genre excess into an international cottage industry.

The other seems determined to remind us that the disease is still alive.

The video store may have disappeared.

The spirit remains.

And apparently it has possessed a doll.

SO, WHAT DO WE DO WITH JEFFREY DOLLMER?

The answer may depend entirely on what you want from horror.

If you want subtlety, this probably isn’t the address.

If you want restrained psychological terror, there are other doors.

If you want a meticulously constructed meditation on the nature of evil, perhaps keep walking.

But if you want a film that looks you directly in the eye and says, “You know what would be funny? A Jeffrey Dahmer killer doll,” then congratulations.

You’ve found your movie.

And there is something oddly refreshing about that.

Horror does not always need to be tasteful.

It does not always need to be important.

It does not always need to justify itself.

Sometimes it can simply be outrageous.

Sometimes the title really is the premise.

Sometimes the premise really is the movie.

And sometimes the best thing you can do with a film this ridiculous is stop asking whether it should exist and start asking the far more important question:

Did they have the guts to actually make it?

Mark Savage did.

The Prognosis:

Jeffrey Dollmer looks like the kind of movie that might have been discovered on a battered VHS cassette after midnight, somewhere between the killer dolls and the films whose titles you were embarrassed to admit you’d rented.

And that may be its greatest virtue.

In an era increasingly dominated by polished horror, elevated horror, franchise horror and algorithmically assembled horror, there is still something gloriously defiant about a film that simply embraces the exploitation impulse.

A serial killer.

A doll.

A photo shoot.

A terrible idea.

A feature-length commitment to that terrible idea.

Maybe that’s not the death of good taste.

Maybe it’s a reminder that horror has always needed a place where good taste can be left outside.

Jeffrey Dollmer is playing at Monster Fest 2026 as a World Premiere, with Mark Savage behind the camera. The Melbourne screening is at Cinema Nova on Tuesday 6 October at 8:45pm.

Bring your sense of humour.

Leave your dignity at the door.

The doll is waiting.

  • Saul Muerte

I LOVE PARIS: Everybody Wants a Piece of You

01 Thursday Oct 2026

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Vampires, vanity and the blood-soaked economics of becoming famous

The music industry has always been a vampire story.

Everybody wants something from you. Your voice. Your image. Your time. Your body. Your attention. Your followers. Your soul, if the contract is right.

Nicky Murphy’s I Love Paris simply has the good sense to stop pretending that metaphor is enough.

Shot through the deliberately grubby and voyeuristic lens of a mockumentary, I Love Paris follows Paris, an aspiring singer hustling through the Parisian music scene while chasing the increasingly elusive promise of fame. When a vampire attack unexpectedly interrupts her already precarious career trajectory, becoming undead proves to be less of a career-ending catastrophe than you might expect. In fact, immortality, nocturnal working hours and an endless appetite for blood may simply be another set of obstacles to negotiate on the road to stardom.

It is an inspired premise because Murphy understands that the vampire and the aspiring artist have considerably more in common than either might initially admit. Both are creatures of appetite. Both require an audience. Both survive by taking something from other people. Both can become objects of fascination while remaining fundamentally parasitic. And both eventually discover that the machinery which promises to elevate them can just as easily consume them.

The genius of I Love Paris is that it doesn’t hammer this metaphor into submission. Instead, it lets the absurdity of vampirism coexist with the mundane humiliations of trying to make it in the music business. Paris still needs recognition. She still needs contacts. She still needs someone to take her seriously. She still needs social media engagement. Becoming a blood-drinking immortal doesn’t magically make the gatekeepers disappear.

If anything, it gives her another fucking problem.

Murphy’s mockumentary approach is crucial to the film’s success. There is an immediate intimacy to the footage, as though we have stumbled into somebody else’s chaotic documentary about artistic ambition and simply forgotten to leave. The camera doesn’t stand outside Paris and judge her. It follows her. It watches her. It records the good, the bad, the embarrassing and the increasingly bloody.

That creates an uncomfortable relationship between subject and spectator.

At times, I Love Paris reminded me of Man Bites Dog, not because Murphy is attempting to replicate Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde’s particular brand of cinematic provocation, but because the camera develops the same unsettling complicity with what it observes. We aren’t merely watching a dangerous situation unfold. We are watching people watch it unfold. And the longer the camera remains present, the more difficult it becomes to determine where documentation ends and exploitation begins.

That is where the film’s real fangs emerge.

Because how much are we willing to let go by in the name of entertainment?

How much cruelty becomes acceptable once there is a camera pointed at it?

How much exploitation are we prepared to forgive if the resulting footage is funny, shocking, fashionable or simply good art?

These aren’t abstract questions in I Love Paris. They are embedded in the very construction of the film. The camera is hungry. Paris is hungry. The music industry is hungry. The vampires are hungry.

Everybody wants a piece.

And somebody is going to get drained.

Aminata Thiboult is magnificent at the centre of this ecosystem. Paris is not constructed as some conventional tragic vampire figure, nor is she simply the naïve young artist who stumbles into darkness. She is ambitious, flawed, funny, occasionally infuriating and recognisably human. That humanity becomes particularly important once the supernatural enters the equation. Thiboult’s performance allows Paris to remain a person rather than becoming merely a vessel for the vampire gag. Her ambition survives the transformation. So does her ego. So does her desire to be seen.

Perhaps that is the real horror.

She hasn’t changed as much as she thinks she has.

Leonor Oberson is equally effective as Lutèce, the vampire responsible for bringing Paris into this nocturnal existence. Their relationship becomes one of the film’s richest sources of comedy and tension, because Lutèce is not simply an undead mentor handing down the sacred laws of vampirism. She is another complicated human being trapped inside a supernatural existence, and the relationship between the two women has the messy, affectionate and occasionally toxic quality of a friendship that has become impossible to categorise. An interview with Murphy, Thiboult and Oberson reveals that much of the film’s dialogue was developed through a mixture of scripted material and improvisation, with the performers translating and reshaping Murphy’s English-language scripts into something more naturally their own.

That authenticity is one of the film’s great assets.

Murphy allows Paris to feel inhabited rather than performed.

The streets feel lived in. The conversations have the looseness of people who know each other. The comedy doesn’t always announce itself as comedy. Sometimes it simply emerges from the collision between the utterly ridiculous and the completely ordinary.

And then there is the blood.

The vampire mythology is deliberately less interested in elaborate rules than in the practical inconvenience of being a creature that needs to feed. Murphy’s vampires don’t exist as some impossibly elegant aristocratic species floating above humanity. They are humans with an additional biological requirement.

They need blood.

Lots of it.

And if that sounds straightforward, try building a music career around it.

The result is a strange tonal balancing act. I Love Paris is funny without allowing its comedy to completely defang the horror. There are moments when the absurdity provokes laughter and moments when the laughter becomes slightly uncomfortable because the thing being laughed at is, objectively, horrible. That instability is important. The film understands that laughter and horror often occupy the same psychological space.

Sometimes we laugh because something is funny.

Sometimes we laugh because we don’t quite know what else to do.

And sometimes we laugh because the alternative is acknowledging that what we’re watching is genuinely disturbing.

Murphy’s direction allows these contradictions to breathe. The guerrilla-style production, shot on the streets of Paris with an extremely small footprint, could have produced something visually disposable. Instead, the limitations become part of the film’s aesthetic identity. The city doesn’t feel like a backdrop constructed for a vampire movie. It feels like Paris continuing to exist while these increasingly deranged people attempt to pursue their ambitions inside it.

That grounded reality is particularly important to Thiboult and Oberson’s performances. Their characters aren’t floating through some artificial vampire universe. They are negotiating relationships, artistic ambition, money, fame and survival within recognisable social spaces. The supernatural is therefore not an escape from reality. It becomes an exaggeration of it.

The vampire simply makes the exploitation harder to ignore.

This is where the film’s tension between greed and culture becomes particularly potent. Art is supposed to represent something beyond commerce, yet the music industry is an ecosystem built around selling identity. Paris wants to create. Other people want to package her. She wants to be heard. Other people want numbers. She wants artistic recognition. Other people want engagement.

And eventually the question becomes brutally simple:

Who is feeding on whom?

The answer, of course, is complicated.

The vampire feeds on the living.

The industry feeds on the artist.

The audience feeds on the spectacle.

And the filmmaker feeds the audience.

Suddenly that little mockumentary camera becomes considerably more sinister.

This is where I Love Paris earns its comparison with the voyeuristic discomfort of Man Bites Dog. The camera doesn’t merely record exploitation; its very presence raises the possibility that exploitation is the entertainment. We are watching Paris struggle, fail, scheme, bleed and feed because the film has invited us to watch.

We are not innocent observers.

We bought the ticket.

We pressed play.

We stayed.

And that makes the film’s questions about art considerably more interesting than a straightforward satire of the music industry. I Love Paris asks whether the audience itself is part of the ecosystem that creates these hungry creatures of celebrity.

Are we guilty of propelling the hungry hounds towards their glory, only to condemn them when they begin behaving like hungry hounds?

We want authenticity, but we also want spectacle.

We want artists to be vulnerable, but only in ways that entertain us.

We want to see behind the curtain, but rarely stop to ask whether the person standing behind it wanted the curtain removed.

And perhaps this is why the vampire is such a perfect metaphor for celebrity culture. The vampire is immortal because the audience refuses to let the image die. The celebrity survives through attention. Attention becomes currency. Currency becomes power. Power becomes appetite.

The cycle continues.

I Love Paris doesn’t need to lecture us about any of this. It simply puts the blood on the table and lets us decide whether we’re still hungry.

The film’s greatest achievement may ultimately be its ability to make Paris simultaneously ridiculous and sympathetic. She can be selfish. She can be vain. She can be frustrating. But she is also recognisable. Her hunger for success isn’t supernatural. It’s painfully human.

The vampire simply gives that hunger teeth.

Murphy’s film therefore becomes something considerably more interesting than a vampire comedy set against the music industry. It is a film about the performance of identity, the commodification of creativity and the uncomfortable relationship between artist and audience. It understands that the modern celebrity machine doesn’t necessarily need to destroy people outright.

Sometimes it simply keeps feeding.

And the people being fed upon keep smiling for the camera.

The Prognosis:

I Love Paris is a wonderfully strange hybrid: vampire movie, mockumentary, music-industry satire and uncomfortable exercise in cinematic voyeurism. Nicky Murphy’s direction finds considerable strength in allowing the natural elements of Paris, the performances and the improvised rhythms of everyday interaction to remain visible rather than burying them beneath excessive genre machinery.

Aminata Thiboult and Leonor Oberson give the film its grounded human pulse, creating characters whose relationships remain compelling even when the world around them becomes increasingly absurd. Their performances help ensure that the vampire mythology never overwhelms the film’s more interesting concerns: ambition, exploitation, artistic identity and the desperate hunger to be seen.

But perhaps the sharpest blade is directed back at us.

Because I Love Paris doesn’t simply ask what happens when a vampire enters the music industry.

It asks what happens when we keep watching.

When does fascination become voyeurism?

When does art become exploitation?

And how much blood are we prepared to overlook if the show is good enough?

The vampires may be hungry.

The industry may be hungry.

But the audience has been feeding them all along.

I LOVE PARIS screens at Monster Fest 2026 on Sunday 4 October at 5:00pm at Cinema Nova, Melbourne, following its Australian Premiere run after winning the Gold Audience Award for Best International Feature at Fantasia.

Come for the vampires.

Stay for the uncomfortable realisation that perhaps we’ve always been part of the feeding frenzy.

  • Saul Muerte

BLOODLUST: The Australian Revenge Western at the End of the World

30 Wednesday Sep 2026

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The Western has always been a genre about what happens when civilisation runs out of road. Take away the courthouse, the sheriff, the town square and the comforting fiction that justice can be administered by somebody wearing a badge, and you are left with a man, a gun and a very personal understanding of what constitutes a reckoning. Bloodlust takes that ancient machinery of revenge and drives it into the wreckage of a post-apocalyptic Australia, where the world has already ended but the oldest human impulse apparently missed the memo.

Keith and Becca are survivors in more ways than one. They have managed to carve out something resembling companionship in the remains of a world where almost everything else has disappeared. Their existence is stripped back to the essentials: movement, survival and each other. Then a chance encounter with four other survivors turns violently catastrophic. Becca is murdered, Keith is left for dead, and the few possessions they possess are taken from them. Six months later, Keith emerges from the wreckage with a singular purpose. He has found the men responsible, and whatever remains of the man they once encountered on the road is about to be buried beneath something considerably colder.

This is where Bloodlust finds its most compelling territory. Revenge stories traditionally begin with a moral equation: someone has been wronged, therefore somebody must pay. It is the cinematic equivalent of an eye for an eye, except that cinema has always been fascinated by what happens when the eye is finally collected. The closer the avenger gets to his target, the more complicated that original equation becomes. Bloodlust understands this tension and allows Keith’s pursuit to become something more unsettling than a straightforward exercise in settling scores.

Because what exactly is Keith trying to restore?

Becca cannot be brought back. The old world cannot be reconstructed. There is no functioning justice system waiting for Keith to deliver the perpetrators into its hands. There isn’t even much of a civilisation left to protect. His revenge therefore exists in a moral vacuum. He is not restoring order so much as creating his own version of it, one corpse at a time.

That makes Bloodlust feel like an Australian Western that has somehow wandered through the apocalypse and forgotten to change its clothes.

There is the lone figure moving across hostile terrain. There is the murdered woman whose death becomes the catalyst for violence. There is the hunt. There are the men who have done the wronging and the man who intends to make them answer for it. Yet instead of Monument Valley or the dusty frontier towns of classical Western mythology, Michalik and Evans give us the decaying remains of Australia. The frontier has not merely been pushed further west. The entire country has become the frontier.

And that gives the film a wonderfully strange identity.

The post-apocalyptic setting could easily have become an excuse for generic wasteland imagery, but Bloodlust uses its limited resources to create something much more intimate. This isn’t a world populated by armies of mutants, elaborate settlements or armies of marauding survivors. It is a reduced landscape in which the absence of civilisation becomes part of the horror. The emptiness matters. The spaces between people matter. Every encounter carries the possibility of violence because there are so few structures left to prevent it.

In that respect, Bloodlust belongs to a long tradition of Australian cinema that understands landscape as something more psychologically complicated than scenery. The Australian bush has frequently been represented as a place where familiar rules become unreliable, where isolation can turn ordinary human behaviour into something primal. Here, the landscape has been stripped even further. The civilisation that once gave the environment context has disappeared, leaving only the terrain and the people who remain trapped inside it.

And Keith is very much a product of that landscape.

His transformation is central to the film’s power. Revenge cinema has always loved the metamorphosis of the victim into the avenger, but Bloodlust isn’t interested in pretending that this transformation is clean. Violence changes the person who administers it. Every act of vengeance carries the possibility that the distinction between justice and brutality will become increasingly academic.

The film’s title consequently becomes more revealing the further we travel into Keith’s story. Bloodlust isn’t simply describing the violence surrounding him. It suggests something more fundamental: that revenge can become an appetite.

Once the first blood has been spilled, how much is enough?

That is the question hanging over Keith’s journey.

Matt Michalik and Rupert Evans approach this material with a remarkable degree of economy. The pair wrote, directed, shot and edited the film themselves, while also appearing in front of the camera, expanding what began as a ten-minute action short made during their university years into a 70-minute feature. The film was shot over four months with a crew of just four people.

That context is worth knowing, not because Bloodlust needs excuses made for it, but because it explains something important about the film’s physicality. There is a stripped-down quality to the filmmaking that suits the material. The movie doesn’t feel like an enormous production pretending to be small. It feels like a group of filmmakers who understood the resources available to them and built the film around movement, landscape, bodies and violence.

And when Bloodlust gets violent, it doesn’t treat brutality as decorative seasoning.

The violence has consequence. It is ugly, physical and deliberately uncomfortable, which gives the revenge sequences an interesting tension. We understand why Keith wants vengeance. We understand the enormity of what has been taken from him. But understanding the motivation doesn’t necessarily mean we can comfortably inhabit the morality of what follows.

That distinction is crucial.

The easiest revenge films allow us to cheer because the villains are so thoroughly monstrous that their destruction becomes a form of audience wish fulfilment. Bloodlust operates in murkier territory. Its central figure has been wronged beyond comprehension, yet his response increasingly forces us to question whether vengeance is capable of remaining proportional once there is nobody left to enforce the boundaries.

It is the old Western problem dressed in post-apocalyptic clothing.

Who watches the watcher when there is nobody left?

And perhaps more importantly: who judges the man who has decided that he alone is qualified to deliver justice?

There is something almost primitive about Bloodlust in this regard. Beneath its post-apocalyptic surface lies an ancient story. A loved one is taken. A survivor swears vengeance. The road stretches ahead. The enemies wait somewhere beyond the horizon. The avenger walks towards them carrying grief that gradually hardens into purpose.

The difference is that this particular frontier has already burned down.

That collision between old and new is where the film derives much of its character. The Western is one of cinema’s oldest mythologies, while post-apocalyptic fiction is one of its most persistent modern anxieties. Put the two together and you get a strange hybrid in which the past and future appear to have crashed into each other somewhere in the Australian wilderness.

The result is lean, brutal and occasionally twisted in ways that feel distinctly its own.

Bloodlust isn’t interested in building an elaborate mythology around the apocalypse. It doesn’t need to tell us every detail of what happened to the world. The absence of information becomes part of the atmosphere. What matters is what remains: a handful of people, a hostile environment, old grievances and the increasingly fragile boundary between being the victim and becoming the monster.

That makes it a particularly fitting addition to Monster Fest’s Homegrown Horrors program. The festival describes it as a stripped-back piece of independent Australian filmmaking that punches above its weight, and there is something satisfying about watching a film whose production circumstances seem almost perversely appropriate to its story: a tiny crew creating a film about people trying to survive in a world where almost everything has already been stripped away.

There is no cavalry coming for Keith.

No sheriff.

No courtroom.

No final appeal.

Just the road.

And somewhere at the end of it, somebody is going to pay.

The Prognosis:

Bloodlust takes the familiar anatomy of the revenge film and performs an interesting autopsy on it. By transplanting the Western’s moral landscape into a post-apocalyptic Australia, Matt Michalik and Rupert Evans create a film that is simultaneously familiar and strangely alien. Its brutality is considerable, but its more interesting wounds are psychological: what happens when grief becomes vengeance, vengeance becomes purpose, and purpose begins to consume the person pursuing it?

This is Australian genre filmmaking stripped to the bone, but the skeleton underneath is an old one.

The frontier.

The outlaw.

The wronged man.

The reckoning.

Only this time, there isn’t a civilisation waiting on the other side of the dust.

BLOODLUST screens as an Australian Premiere at Monster Fest 2026 on Saturday 3 October at 7:30pm at Cinema Nova, Melbourne, with a Q&A following the screening.

If revenge is an eye for an eye, Bloodlust asks a much nastier question:

What happens when there is nobody left to close their eyes?

  • Saul Muerte

GODMOTHER: Welcome to the Desert, Where the Family Values Get Weird

30 Wednesday Sep 2026

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There are few things more suspicious in a horror film than the phrase “romantic getaway.” It is cinema’s way of placing a flashing neon sign above the protagonists and quietly informing the audience that somebody, somewhere, has made a terrible booking decision. In Godmother, that decision begins innocently enough: a couple head into the New Mexico desert hoping to escape the machinery of everyday life, only for their retreat to become considerably less intimate when Theo invites her heartbroken sister Katie along for the ride. Then the house itself starts introducing complications, and suddenly the idea of a relaxing weekend away begins to resemble the sort of holiday brochure that should come with a psychiatric warning.

Directed by John Veron in his feature debut and co-written with Alanah Pearce, Godmother initially plays its cards with a certain restraint. There is an appealingly awkward quality to the interpersonal dynamics, with relationships already carrying enough baggage before the supernatural—or whatever lurks at the edges of the story—has had an opportunity to unpack its own. That gives the film an important foundation. The horror doesn’t simply arrive from somewhere outside the characters; it grows out of the increasingly uncomfortable social space they have entered.

And then the temperature begins to rise.

This is where Godmother becomes considerably more interesting. Rather than detonating its entire arsenal at once, the film gradually turns the screws, allowing the atmosphere to curdle. What initially resembles an offbeat desert drama starts acquiring the peculiar logic of a nightmare in which every attempt to maintain normality only makes the situation stranger. The New Mexico landscape becomes more than picturesque backdrop. It is a pressure cooker—wide open, sun-blasted and seemingly offering nowhere useful to hide.

That gradual escalation is one of the film’s strengths. Godmother understands that horror can benefit from letting the audience sit in the wrong room for a little too long. There is something distinctly off about the experience: the sense that we have taken a perfectly ordinary road trip, missed the appropriate exit somewhere outside civilisation and are now following a road sign pointing towards a destination nobody remembers agreeing to visit.

The film is also blessed with the presence of two actors who bring considerable genre history into this increasingly strange equation. Dee Wallace has spent decades inhabiting the emotional architecture of horror, from The Howling and Cujo through E.T. and beyond, and she possesses the rare ability to make warmth and unease coexist within the same performance. Bruce Davison, meanwhile, carries his own formidable genre pedigree, having moved through everything from Willard to X-Men and The Lords of Salem. Their presence gives Godmother an intriguing generational dimension: this is a film featuring performers who know precisely how much menace can hide behind a seemingly ordinary smile.

Their roles work particularly well because the film doesn’t treat veteran genre performers as museum pieces. They aren’t simply here to give horror fans a knowing wink. Instead, Wallace and Davison become part of the machinery that allows Godmother to transition from uncomfortable social encounter into something considerably more sinister.

And that transition is where Alanah Pearce and John Veron’s collaboration becomes particularly noticeable. There is a creative curiosity running through the film—a willingness to let the premise become increasingly peculiar rather than constantly steering it back towards familiar genre territory. Pearce brings a background steeped in games, storytelling and popular culture, while Veron approaches the material as a filmmaker making his feature debut. The result is a film that feels interested in the possibilities of its own premise rather than simply ticking boxes on a horror checklist.

It also helps that Godmother understands the value of not immediately explaining everything. Horror is often at its most effective when the audience has enough information to become suspicious but not enough to feel entirely comfortable. The film plays with that uncertainty, allowing its characters to keep making decisions that seem reasonable right up until the moment they very clearly aren’t.

The desert is particularly useful territory for this kind of horror. It is the landscape of American mythology stripped of its reassuring edges: enormous distances, isolated properties, strange encounters and the persistent possibility that civilisation is considerably further away than you initially thought. It is also a perfect setting because the environment itself seems to encourage bad decisions. You can almost imagine the road disappearing behind you while some unseen voice in the passenger seat whispers, Keep driving. It’ll be fine.

It won’t be fine.

But Godmother doesn’t need to pretend that it is reinventing horror to be worthwhile. Its pleasures are found in the way it builds, the peculiarities it introduces along the way and the performances that give its increasingly bizarre circumstances a human centre. The film has an infectious willingness to push its premise further, and when it finally begins letting the horror properly off the leash, the earlier restraint pays dividends.

There is also something pleasingly old-fashioned about its construction. The film is interested in characters first, atmosphere second and outright mayhem somewhere further down the road. That makes the eventual escalation feel earned rather than simply inserted because the runtime has reached the point where somebody needs to start screaming.

For Monster Fest audiences, Godmother offers precisely the kind of festival experience that works best when you know as little as possible beforehand. It is an Australian Premiere with a strong creative partnership at its centre, a couple of veteran genre performers lurking within the cast, and a premise that becomes increasingly difficult to classify the further it travels from the romantic getaway advertised on the itinerary.

So pack the sunscreen, fill the tank and leave your better judgement at home.

The Prognosis:

Godmother is a steadily escalating horror film that finds its personality in the collision between uncomfortable domestic dynamics, desert isolation and increasingly strange genre territory. John Veron and Alanah Pearce have fashioned something that is happy to take the scenic route before driving directly into darker territory, while Dee Wallace and Bruce Davison provide welcome genre gravitas to a cast of characters whose weekend is about to become considerably less relaxing.

GODMOTHER screens as an Australian Premiere at Monster Fest 2026 on Saturday 3 October at Cinema Nova, Melbourne.

Monster Fest runs from 2–10 October, with the festival’s 2026 program presenting the film among its international and Australian genre premieres.

If you’re heading to Monster Fest, this is one desert getaway where I’d recommend checking the return journey before you leave.

  • Saul Muerte

Under the Scalpel: Interview with John Veron

To accompany our exploration of Godmother, Surgeons of Horror’s Under the Scalpel goes directly to the source. Saul Muerte speaks with director John Veron about the film’s journey from screenplay to screen, the challenges of independent horror production, the decision to place this particular nightmare against an isolated desert landscape, and the creative influences that helped shape its uneasy blend of occult menace and psychological tension. It’s a spoiler-free conversation that offers a glimpse behind the curtain without dismantling the mysteries that make Godmother work — an opportunity to hear the filmmaker himself discuss the anatomy of the film before the scalpel goes in.

Movie Review: Daniel Isn’t Real

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

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I rarely go straight out when writing a review by stating my position and casting a prognosis but in the instance of Daniel Isn’t Real my gut reaction was so strong and reactive during and post viewing that I felt an overwhelming compulsion to rave about how fantastic this movie is.
I’ve often mentioned how integral it is for movies to evoke a reaction that churns up inside and leaves me with this feeling that is hard to describe, but essentially sends a buzz of excitement and I can literally feel the creative energy being transmitted from the screen.

At its core Daniel Isn’t Real is a window into the psyche of our central character, Luke played by Miles Robbins last seen on the screen playing stoner Dave from Halloween 2018.

Luke suffers a mental relapse when two impactful events occur when he is young. The first is when his father walks out on him and Mary Stuart Masterson, who “Joons” it up as an equally unhinged mother.
On the same day, Luke ventures out into his neighbourhood and comes across the aftermath of a mass shooting.
It is then that Luke meets an imaginary friend, Daniel, who brings the worst out in Luke’s personality. This results on Luke’s mother making him lock Daniel away in the doll house to suppress this negativity ala Drop Dead Fred without the comedy.

Cut to years later and Luke is now 21, and with his mother’s condition seemingly worse, he begins to fear that the same thing may happen to him. Encouraged by his psychotherapist to unleash his imagination, Luke releases Daniel once more, but this time is lead by this mysterious entity (and takes on the form of Arnie’s son Patrick Schwarzenegger) that only he can see. At first, Daniel encourages Luke to step out of his shell, where he meets Cassie (a magnificent Sasha Lane) but this soon escalate as Daniel is able to possess Luke and make him do things that he has no control over and sends Luke into a transcendent spiral of depression and disillusionment.

Part of the magic of this film comes through the special effects that warp and shape our senses and throws the audience into disarray while we like Luke try to decipher the distinction between reality and a warped imagination. 

Prognosis:

It’s the age old story of good vs evil told between a disillusioned young man and his imaginary friend. Who will get the upper hand? 

Director Adam Egypt Mortimer delivers a beautifully visceral journey that is stunning and encapsulating. This is a must-watch film that needs to be viewed and discussed. Thankfully it can be seen at MonsterFest Australia this weekend.

MONSTERFEST AUSTRALIA 2019 SCREENINGS

Fri, 1ST NOVEMBER, 7:15PM:
Capitol Cinemas, Manuka, Canberra

Sat, 2nd NOVEMBER, 10:15PM
GU Film House, Adelaide

Sat, 2nd NOVEMBER, 10:20PM
Event Cinemas, Innaloo, Perth

Sun, 3rd NOVEMBER, 12:10PM
Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney

Sun, 3rd NOVEMBER, 2PM
Event Cinemas, Myer Centre, Brisbane

  • Saul Muerte

Movie Review: Rabid

29 Tuesday Oct 2019

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Why do we keep remaking old trends?

The first lines spoken in The Soska Sisters latest feature is something of an odd choice seeing that the film itself is a remake of David Cronenberg’s science fiction body horror feature that was released back in 1977, but then the ‘Twisted Twins’ have built a reputation on face-lifts and transformations within their features that it should come as no surprise that should revamp a cult classic.
Cronenberg is clearly an inspiration in the Soska Sisters previous features where body horror, mutilation, and the butchering of the beautiful is constantly a running theme through their narrative.
From their low-budget debut feature, Dead Hooker In A Truck, they have been willing to their bodies on the line for the sake of their vision and in doing so, continuously look to raise the stakes, but arguably haven’t attained this since their brilliant sophomore outing behind the director’s chair with American Mary.

So, how does this modern transformation of Rabid fair and does it amount to the twin directors’ previous outings?

I have enjoyed watching the Soska Sisters’ journey, even their paint by numbers WWE venture, See No Evil 2, and I found that Rabid had the right pulse to entertain and satiate the gruesome, and bloody fascination with the human aesthetic and its ultimate destruction.
We cast ourselves deep in the fashion world, where there is an expected elegance and if you don’t measure up, then you’re cast aside and considered insignificant. 

This is where we meet our lead protagonist, Rose (Laura Vandervoot) who works for a fashion designer, Gunther (Mackenzie Gray), but struggles to meet her mark.
One night she is invited out by photographer Brad (Ben Hollingsworth) and believes that her luck could potentially be turning, but soon discovers that it’s a pity date, set up by her best friend, Chelsea (Hanneke Talbot). Humiliated, Rose attempts to flee on her bike but is plowed down by an unseen vehicle and rushed to hospital leaving her disfigured and more depressed.
It is only when she learns of a scientific breakthrough that could potentially restore her figure that Rose seizes the opportunity to be considered normal. Once again though, trust comes into question as we are only willing to expose the mask we choose to wear with people and only every so often do we allow our true selves be seen.
This is a common theme throughout the movie where we should question everyone’s motives and always be suspicious of the characters we encounter, even within the medical profession as hinted by Stephen McHattie’s doctor when he asks his assistant to lend a deformed Rose a mirror, only to contradict himself by saying that Rose should never look at a mirror.

So, Rose undergoes a significant and delicate operation that not only restores her looks but metamorphosed her whole demeanour with mesmerising effect on her persona. Whilst her life suddenly flips for the better, Rose is consumed with lust for blood and meat that sends her into a frenzy and unleashing a creature within that leaves her victims with something that closely resembles rabies, but spreads as quickly as the black plague. 

From here on in the action becomes frenetic and just as uncontrollable as the disease, which is obviously a directorial choice, but I can understand some viewers who might find this approach grating. 

Stuck between pursuing her dreams of having her own design on the catwalk and recognition of her style, and seeking medical aid, Rose steers closer to self-destruction and chaos.

Prognosis:

The Soska Sisters are back in their domain of stripping the human facade and revealing the tortured soul lurking within in their latest turn in the directors’ chair.
Yes, it’s a remake, but there is enough spin on the original and more of the visual style and substance that makes Jen and Sylvia a force to be reckoned with when they are at their best.
As always their films are beautifully shot, and manage to infuse some raw energy within the beats, and Rabid continues to project the Soskas into a twisted limelight that feels gnarly and fresh.

MONSTERFEST AUSTRALIA 2019 SCREENINGS

Fri, 1ST NOVEMBER, 7PM:

GU Film House, Adelaide

Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney

Event Cinemas, Innaloo, Perth

Sat, 2nd NOVEMBER, 8PM

Capitol Cinemas, Manuka, Canberra

Sun, 3rd NOVEMBER, 6PM

Event Cinemas, Myer Centre, Brisbane

  • Saul Muerte

Director Mike Green discusses his first feature film, Outback

28 Monday Oct 2019

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Mike Green has been gradually building on his film credentials with a series of screenplays and work as 1st AD on a number of high profile films including Truth starring Cate Blanchet and Robert Redford.  Now he has turned his attention to directing his first feature length movie, Outback, a tale of survival in the heart of Australia, and casts a bewildered and fractured American couple in the midst of this savage land. 

Before its Sydney screening as part of Monsterfest Australia on Sat 2 Nov at 9pm, Mike sat down with the surgeons team to discuss his journey and his own challenges in creating his vision.

Mike Green interview:

What initially drew you to the story behind Lisa and Wade’s outback plight?

Well, I had a proper budget feature that I was hoping to make with a cast attached and building a team and then Nicole Kidman announced Angel of Mine which on the surface sounded very much like our feature film project. That really pulled the rug beneath our feet and I had a small window of time in which to shoot something because my wife was going back to work from maternity leave and a little bit of money saved on my credit card.
So I essentially reverse engineered something I could shoot in a compressed amount of time. And 10 days is what we shot Outback in. 
So I took a familiar story which was Open Water,  the two people that get stranded in the ocean. I thought about taking that situation and placing them in the outback. Limiting your cast means limiting so much of the production, so it was essentially going to be a two-hander.
Everyone has a perception of the Australian outback and how vast and dry it is, how it’s filled with critters and creepy crawlies. So I took that idea and instead of having a serial killer or madman as the antagonist, I made Australia and the outback, the antagonist.
No one has done a film called Outback which was surprising to me. So I put it all in a blender and out came a two-hander about this couple of Americans and the dynamic between them in a survival thriller with this tragic love story, and place them in a scenario that sees them stranded in the outback. 

There is a lot of weight on the shoulders of the two leads, Lauren Lofberg and Taylor Wiese to carry the film.
How did you get them to tap into the gravitas of their situation?

The first thing I needed to do when casting was have the right face, character, and persona for the parts, so after reaching out to a few people I spoke to Lauren, who despite her small showreel had something there, but she was looking to do something substantial and put a stamp on something. She put a few self tapes down and she was really emotional and she was going through some things at the time, which I asked with her blessing if I could weave into the storyline because it was something so personal to her and we knew that she could tap into that so easily and access those emotional time stones. 

What do you think fascinates us about human survival?

I think there is this primeval situation where you would ask yourself, “what would I do?”
It doesn’t take much for the audience to be there with them. The performance and environment helped from a cinematic perspective.
You often hear stories of how even locals get lost for two or three days in the Blue Mountains for example, and things can get pretty gnarly quickly. Even with the best intentions and with a phone on you, when you start to get dehydrated, what seems like a smart decision, upon reflection is like, “what was I thinking?”

What has been the most enduring thing that you’ve encountered in your lifetime?
Have you had much experience of the outback yourself and what impact did this beautifully vast location have on production.

For me taking from the theme of the movie of not taking tomorrow for granted, was a way into the storyline.
From the plot and survival aspect, I used to go to the outback a lot as a kid with a mate who had a property. We were in a couple of situations where we ran out of water and we didn’t have a compass, and when you are out there, you don’t really have any sense of direction other than which way the sun is going.
He’d been on the land a bit and I was more of a city slicker, and I remember him saying the mathematical equation that I use in the film, and he knew from my answers that I was dehydrated even though I wasn’t aware of it.
I could have been in a lot of trouble if it wasn’t for him and his experience on the land. 

What would you say was your toughest challenge during filming?

I’m first AD, I’m producing, I’m catering, like I’m cooking at night, I’m printing off the schedule for the next day for the crew and everyone is working so hard, so you have to lead by example.
In that environment and working such long hours in the heat, working so intimately with such a tight-knit crew, It’s not always rosy and part of having such a good team is allowing people to let off steam in certain ways. The toughest thing was keeping everyone emotionally and physically on the same page in what we were trying to do.
You’re really fathering a group of people, in the most beautiful way.

What do you think or hope that people will take home after watching Outback?

I’m hoping the audience reflect on their own life and how they can embrace the day or the moment, whether that’s with their family, career, or just life itself, and appreciate it.
I know that sounds a bit arty farty, but being in Australia, there shouldn’t be anyone whinging really.
Any kind of developed country, I know there has been some bad things that have happened, but each to their own I guess.

Now that your first feature film is released into the festival circuit, what was the biggest learning you will take and what is next on the horizon?

I think the biggest learning for me is to keep making stuff, It’s not always going to click but you should be getting better when you make stuff and that’s the key to improving. It’s that old adage, “Practice, practice, practice”.
In regards to what’s next, I’m working with a bunch of writers I kinda wanna be aggressive and get projects made and being prolific.

Movie review: Outback

Outback will be screening at Monsterfest Australia 2019, where cast and crew will be available for a Q&A post film screening time below:

SATURDAY 2nd NOVEMBER, 9PM
Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney

  • Saul Muerte

Movie Review: Outback

28 Monday Oct 2019

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During filming of Australian western The Proposition, British actor Ray Winstone once remarked that every living thing in this country was out to kill you.
It’s this component that director Mike Green wanted to paint of his homeland to evoke that sense of fear and dread in the vast open plain. 

Instead of having a serial killer or madman as the antagonist, I made Australia and the outback, the antagonist” 

Mike Green interview

We often vision Australia as this serene, beautiful land which on the surface casts one of the most majestic scenes that our planet offers, but if you delve deep enough, you find the hidden dangers lurking in plain sight.
Green lures us into the desert terrain through the eyes of an American couple on what should have been a romantic adventure, but like the land in which they set out to explore, Lisa (Lauren Lofsberg) and Wade (Tyler Wiese) are just as fractured and unpredictable.

We join Lisa and Wade at the start of their journey from Sydney Airport where we learn that Lisa has rejected Wade’s marriage proposal.
The result finds the couple disconnected and searching for each other to see whether the relationship is worth fighting for.
In doing so, they become lost and insignificant in a foreign land.
Testament to Green’s writing skills should be mentioned as he draws out some well-developed characters in his leads which is fleshed out with some fantastic performances.
This is a good thing as between them they need to carry the movie with very little other characters to interact with.
By the film’s conclusion, we really care about their outcome, because Green has taken the time for us to connect and care for them both.

The choices that Lisa and Wade that lead them to their ordeal are born out of ignorance and naivety but their decisions that are believable and in the moment, as they try to navigate their way to survival whilst facing a number of dangers along the way from snakes and scorpions, to searing heat and dehydration.
All of which surmount into a gripping, heart-wrenching drama that captivates right to the end.

The Prognosis:

Director Mike Green takes the audience on a brutal and harsh journey of survival through the lens of an American couple on the brink of collapse. The gritty realism along with excellent performances helps lift this movie and casts a blistering light on the savage land with a narrative that keeps you hooked and willing the characters to endure their torment and live to tell their tale.

Outback will be screening at Monsterfest Australia 2019, where cast and crew will be available for a Q&A post film screening time below:

SATURDAY 2nd NOVEMBER, 9PM

Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney

  • Saul Muerte

Movie Review: Dark Whispers Vol. 1

27 Sunday Oct 2019

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So, here’s the thing. I’m not usually a fan of horror anthologies. Whilst I have enjoyed the more well known films that have carried the collective stories that tap into the the dark genre, such as Creepshow, Trick r’ Treat or V/H/S, invariably I feel a little let down by some of the stories that don’t quite meet the mark or the high standard of the better stories within the anthology. For every “The Crate” or “Something to Tide You Over” there’s a “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” or “They’re Creeping Up On You” using Creepshow as an example. So when viewing this latest offering from Australia entitled Dark Whispers Vol 1, I ventured with slight hesitation, but was pleasantly surprised by the result. 

Inspired by the recent anthologies A Night of Horror Vol. 1 and XX, Australian director and producer, Megan Riakos teamed up with Leonie Marsh and festival director Briony Kidd to surmount a crack team of female visionists and creatives to deliver 10 highly-crafted tales of dread.

Megan Riakos on creating women’s horror anthology, Dark Whispers Vol 1

So, let’s delve into each of these tales one by one and see if these collective stories have enough strength and cohesion to drive the narrative together. 

BIRTHDAY GIRL
Director: Angie Black; Writer: Michael Harden

We open up with a fairly brief and condense tale that sees a grieving mother trying to capture those precious moments with her daughter trapped in a limbo of intense sorrow.
The short timeframe on display, Black weaves enough emotion for the audience to connect with the mother’s pain.

THE MAN WHO CAUGHT A MERMAID
Writer/Director: Kaitlin Tinker; Writer: Jean-Phillipe Lopez

This next tale dives into the fantastical, as an elderly man sets out to snare a mermaid amongst laughter and ridicule, but all is not as it appears as the story reveals a dark and sinister world lurking beneath the depths of fancy.

GLOOMY VALENTINE
Writer/Director: Isabel Peppard; Writer: Warwick Burton

I’m a huge sucky for stop motion and Peppard showers our visual senses with a glorious tale of heartbreak that is stunning and captivating, whilst tapping into a lamentable suffering.

WATCH ME
Director: Briony Kidd; Writer: Claire d’Este

This was one of my favourites of the bunk as Kidd projects a tale of vanity and self-appreciation. Told from the perspective of a glamorous actress who is reminiscent of Norma Desmond with her ambition and thrives so much on attention that without the attention she will wither away.

STORYTIME
Writer/Director: Jub Clerc; Co-Writer: Sylvia Clarke

I equally had a lot of time and love for this tale of two kids in the Kimberely who venture into the mangroves despite the warnings of the Gooynbooyn Woman, believing her campfire stories to be the stuff of myth and legend. Clerc invokes an old story and infuses it with modern storytelling that beautifully captures the Dreamtime stories passed down from generation to generation through Aboriginal culture.

THE RIDE
Writer/Director: Marion Pilowsky; Story by Issy Pilowsky

Here I was reminded just how dark and glorious Anthony LaPaglia’s performances can be, and how he portrays an average Australian guy who can slip into sinister so easily. Playing a guy who picks up a hitchhiker, who gets more than he bargained for and a ride that will change his life forever.

GRILLZ
Director: Lucy Gouldthorpe; Writer: Claire d’Este

Online dating from the perspective of a female vampire in search for her next prey provides us with an enjoyably dark story that defies your assumptions and adds a little twist in her desire for blood.

WHITE SONG
Writer/Director: Katrina Irawati Graham

This one also left a lasting impression on me and uses the famous Indonesian ghost story of Kuntil Anak as its inspiration.
Kuntil Anak is a ghost who died whilst pregnant and when she appears before a grieving widow, she is confronted by a force far greater than her dark haunting embodiment has encountered before, unfolding a battle of energy and light in her wake. 

LITTLE SHAREHOUSE OF HORRORS
Writer/Director: Madeleine Purdy; Writer: Joel Perlgut

This quirky tale on the concept of “you are what you eat” or in this case, smoke, sees Maeve searching for a healthy alternative to her smoothies, but finds a strange concoction in the mix.
When nature fights back, it attacks the weak-minded souls, and Purdy provides a witty and sardonic view of humanity.

THE INTRUDER
Writer/Director: Janine Hewitt

Rounding out the dectet of stories comes a dark and wondrous tale that is beautifully played by its performers Asher Keddie and Bree Desborough. The homogeneity that marries this film alongside the first tale, Birthday Girl and the sense of being stuck in one’s emotions helps to cement the collection, as Zoe has become a prisoner in her own home, terrorized by a stalker containing her in her fear and despair.

Weaving its way through the various tales, Riakos envelops a series of segments entitled, The Book of Dark Whispers, as a young woman who inherits a mysterious book from her mother that symbolises the passing down through the years and the shared emotional baggage that we inevitable take on from previous generations.

It’s a captivating performance from Andrea Demetriades who manages to embody all the viewers thoughts and emotions and projects them through her character, and in doing so provides the heart and soul of the movie.

The Prognosis:

Dark Whispers Vol 1 really exceeded my expectations when it comes to horror anthologies that are so often worn down by the lesser stories in the collection.

Here though are some excellently well-crafted stories that make for a highly enjoyable narrative and proves that there are some dark and sinister tales to be told from some exciting female creatives that deserve praise and recognition. I look forward to further tales from these powerful and thought-provoking storytellers.

Dark Whispers Vol.1 will be screening at Monsterfest Australia 2019, where cast and crew will be available for a Q&A post film screening time below:

SUNDAY 3rd NOVEMBER, 6.15PM
Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney

  • Saul Muerte

Megan Riakos on creating women’s horror anthology, Dark Whispers Vol 1

27 Sunday Oct 2019

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When director/producer Megan Riakos took the helm as President for Women in Film & Television NSW, little did she know that she was on the verge of establishing a potential pathway of hope for women in the industry.
With a feature film already on her credits, Crushed, which was incredibly well received, Megan would team up with Leonie Marsh and Briony Kidd to produce a horror anthology that would unite Australian female directors and writers in a powerful collection of stories that shake the soul.
Dark Whispers Vol. 1 is currently screening as part of Monsterfest Australia 2019 and Megan recently chatted with the Surgeons team ahead of the Sydney event to dissect and discuss the creative process involved.

Megan Riakos interview:

Megan Riakos, Director and Producer – Dark Whispers Vol. 1

One of the key strengths behind this anthology, is the strength in the storytelling, pulling from various aspects across the Australian landscape to combine and make a cohesive and powerful narrative of our great southern land.
When it came to selecting the stories that would bind together for Dark Whispers Vol. 1, what specifically were you looking for?

I worked with Briony Kidd, festival director of Stranger With My Face International Film Festival (SWMFIFF) on the curation of the anthology and we received submissions via the general callout as well as approaching people directly to ask them to submit. Briony’s work on her festival meant she was privy to some great films that weren’t on my radar and gave us a good cross-section of films to consider. When submissions closed, we created a long list for discussion based on the film’s horror characteristics, as well as the quality of directing, acting, production values, script and originality.
There was no set theme required for these films beyond it being a horror film by a female identifying director who is a resident or citizen of Australia.
We curated the films that resonated with us and that would complement the other films in the anthology.

Your vision overall was to shed light on the wealth of female talent in the industry, which has this great myth that there is a shallow pool out there.
How did you go about shattering this myth and in what way do you hope that Dark Whispers will transform the cinema audiences expectations?

The very act of creating a women’s horror anthology and kicking off the project with a call out to the Australian screen industry for horror films by women generated a discussion around the issue and now with the festival release, it is helping to recalibrate our expectations of who can be a horror filmmaker.
At our Melbourne Monster Fest screening we had several emerging women horror filmmakers in the audience who said that up ’til they point, they felt like they were the lone female horror maker amongst their peers and that they felt hopeful seeing a whole bunch of other women out their creating really great content.
I am a firm believer in ‘If you can see it, you can be it”.

The Creative team from Dark Whispers Vol.1

With 10 fellow directors involved in the short features in the film, how much weight did you allow them to let their creativity flourish?

We discovered these films when they were fully complete, so had no impact on how they were made, however I was heavily influenced by each film when it came time to write and direct the wraparound segment which tied each segment together. 

You have spoken about recent inspirations from anthologies, A Night of Horror and XX.
What did you learn from these films and how did that impact on your direction?

There is a rich history of horror, thriller and sci-fi anthologies over the years from the likes of Twilight Zone & Creepshow to the more recent Southbound, Black Mirror, ABC’s of Death and Holidays and they all use their own devices to create a cohesive bond around the Anthology.
As an audience member, I really enjoy it when there are “easter eggs” that tie otherwise disparate chapters together – whether it be a prop, a stylistic choice, a reference to a time or place or character that pops up in a different episode.
The two anthologies in particular that gave me the impetus to actually make Dark Whispers are A Night of Horror and XX which both came out about the same time.
A Night of Horror was also curated from existing films and I really enjoyed the way they developed their wrap around, referencing each proceeding film with the horror element within it – This project showed me that it was achievable to create a really great project with a low budget and I knew it was something that I could take on, especially once Enzo Tedeschi, the creator of that anthology, come onboard as Executive Producer on the film. XX was also a big inspiration – it was one of the first female horror anthologies out there and I wanted to do an Australian version for the horror filmmakers being overlooked here.

You’re a creative artist yourself and direct the segments called The Book of Whispers that unite the ten tales together.
What inspirations do you draw from in the creative process and what challenges did you face when creating this anthology?

Due to the broad call out for horror films, I wasn’t able to start working on the wrap around segment until we had locked in the final 10 films.
It was at that point that I started breaking down the inherent themes and similarities the films shared.
Many of the films explored longing, grief, regret and navigating life.
There were several films about family, kinship and motherhood and I was curious about the idea that we carry dark lessons with us from one generation to the next and we need to learn how to deal with carrying the darkness in life without succumbing to it.
The concept at the centre of the anthology is around a haunted book which is passed between helped to unify the diverse chapters within it.

Andrea Demtriades as Clara in Dark Whispers vol 1 segment, The Book of Whispers.

The Book of Whispers centers around one character played by the magnificent Andrea Demetriades.
How did she become involved in the project and what was it like working with her?

My producing partner Leonie Marsh and I were brainstorming ideas about who could play our lead Clara and we both thought of Andrea Demetriades. We have loved seeing her work on Crownies, Pulse and Janet King and thought she would be perfect for the role.
Working with Andrea was wonderful, we only had one day to shoot all her scenes and she jumped right in and nailed it.

What has been the reaction you have received so far, and could we expect a Vol.2? Are there any other future projects on the horizon?

We are proud of Volume 1 and are really pleased with the response during our festival release.
We will gauge how we go over the following six months but are definitely planning a Volume 2 – whether that be a second horror anthology or perhaps steering over to explore science fiction.
Keep your eyes peeled for the next instalment, in whatever guise that might be!

Dark Whispers Vol.1 will be screening at Monsterfest Australia 2019, where cast and crew will be available for a Q&A post film screening time below:

SUNDAY 3rd NOVEMBER, 6.15PM
Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney

Movie Review: Dark Whispers Vol. 1

Saul Muerte
Lead Surgeon
Editor, writer, podcast host

” I was curious about the idea that we carry dark lessons with us from one generation to the next and we need to learn how to deal with carrying the darkness in life without succumbing to it.”