Category Archives: Sydney Underground Film Festival

Dead Wrong: Snatchers Revives The Body Snatcher with Aussie Dark Humour

30 Saturday Aug 2025

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Dark comedy has always thrived on uncomfortable juxtapositions, and Snatchers, the Canberra-made debut from directors Craig Alexander and Shelly Higgs, gleefully leans into the clash between the morbid and the mundane. A contemporary riff on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body Snatcher, refracted through the lens of Australian gallows humour, it delivers a brisk, twisty tale of desperation, friendship, and the fine line between survival and exploitation.

The set-up is deceptively simple. In a near-dystopian Australia, lifelong friends Mac (Alexander) and Fettes (Justin Hosking) eke out a living as undervalued, underpaid orderlies. When a Jane Doe rolls into their orbit, seemingly a fresh candidate for organ harvesting, the duo sees an opportunity to cash in on their grim surroundings. But when the corpse proves not to be as dead as expected, their plan mutates into a moral and logistical quagmire — a farcical spiral of bad decisions, shifting allegiances, and grim comedy.

What distinguishes Snatchers is not just its premise, but its tonal balancing act. The film operates as a modern Australian take on the Burke and Hare mythos, where grave-robbing becomes a working-class hustle. Yet, instead of solemn Gothic horror, Alexander and Higgs infuse the narrative with a distinctly local irreverence. The humour is dry, the banter unpolished, and the absurdity of the situation constantly undercut by the casual bluntness of its characters. Where a British version might lean into macabre wit, Snatchers feels bracingly Antipodean — equal parts cheeky, grim, and self-deprecating.

Hannah McKenzie, as the not-so-dead Jane Doe, injects a lively volatility into the proceedings, a reminder that the “corpse” has agency of her own and won’t be easily reduced to commodity. The film finds much of its energy in this disruption, forcing Mac and Fettes to navigate not only their friendship but the moral sinkholes of their scheme. The twists come quickly, some predictable, others slyly surprising, but always tethered to the film’s central question: how far will ordinary people bend ethics when the system leaves them with so little to lose?

Though undeniably modest in scale and budget, Snatchers makes a virtue of its scrappy production. Its humour doesn’t always land cleanly, and its narrative leans into familiar beats, but the sheer audacity of its premise — and the willingness to entwine Stevenson’s gothic lineage with Australian socio-economic bite — keeps it engaging. As a festival entry, it embodies the SUFF spirit: resourceful, transgressive, and proudly unpolished, a film that finds life in the margins where mainstream cinema rarely dares to tread.

The Prognosis:

At 80 minutes, Snatchers doesn’t overstay its welcome. Instead, it lingers in the uneasy laughter it provokes — laughter that’s always one step away from horror, one step away from despair.

  • Saul Muerte

SUFF – Snatchers
Unrated 15+
Starts Thursday, September 11, 2025 · Comedy · 1 hr 20 min

Between Dream and Delirium: Julie Pacino’s I Live Here Now Blurs Reality into Madness

30 Saturday Aug 2025

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Julie Pacino’s debut feature announces itself less as a narrative than as a hypnotic state of being. With I Live Here Now, she crafts a film that drifts between dream, paranoia, and fractured identity, where each scene feels like a step deeper into a psychological labyrinth. It is a strikingly assured first feature, one that refuses to provide a map, demanding instead that its audience surrender to its vertiginous rhythms.

Lucy Fry, in a career-defining performance, embodies Rose, a young actress who retreats to a remote hotel in Idyllwild, California, in search of respite from her unraveling life. But the more she seeks refuge, the more porous the walls of her reality become. Time loops back on itself, doubles materialise, and memory seeps into performance until the categories lose meaning altogether. Fry is magnetic precisely because she grounds this hallucinatory descent in something tangible: the unease of someone who no longer trusts her own perceptions.

Pacino wears her influences with confidence. Sheryl Lee’s presence inevitably conjures the spectre of Twin Peaks, and David Lynch’s fingerprints are felt in the film’s elastic time, uncanny repetitions, and ominous hum that seems to vibrate through the very air. Yet Pacino’s aesthetic is not mere homage. Her saturated colour palette recalls Argento’s lush operatics, while the film’s elliptical logic suggests Buñuel’s surreal provocations. Layered on top is a contemporary awareness of performance itself — how identity, memory, and desire are all rehearsed roles, prone to fracture under pressure.

Shot on 35mm, the film achieves a tactile, dreamlike fragility. Every frame looks like a half-remembered photograph, poised on the edge of fading. The supporting cast — Madeline Brewer, Cara Seymour, Sheryl Lee, and a gleefully slippery Matt Rife — all slot into the hallucinatory mood, each embodying figures that may be confidantes, doubles, or projections of Rose’s disintegrating psyche. The film offers no clear answers; its power lies in its refusal to resolve whether we are witnessing dream, reality, or a fragmented plurality of selves.

If Tokyo Evil Hotel was SUFF’s splatter assault on the senses, then I Live Here Now is its slow, intoxicating hypnosis. It burrows into the subconscious and gnaws away at the seams of certainty, drawing the viewer into a space where dread and desire cohabit uneasily. As Rose descends, so do we — through layers of paranoia and fractured selfhood, into the uncanny realisation that the mind itself is the ultimate haunted house.

The Prognosis:

I Live Here Now is not a film to be solved. It is a film to be inhabited, to be surrendered to. And in that surrender, Julie Pacino has crafted a debut that is both daringly elusive and deeply resonant — a Lynchian dream refracted through her own distinct lens.

  • Saul Muerte

SUFF – I Live Here Now
Unrated 15+
Starts Thursday, September 11, 2025 · Drama · 1 hr 36 min

Spinning Into Madness: Pater Noster and the Mission of Light Turns Vinyl into a Psychedelic Curse

29 Friday Aug 2025

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Christopher Bickel is not a filmmaker interested in polish. He is interested in sweat, noise, and the intoxicating dirt that clings to the celluloid ghosts of exploitation cinema. With Pater Noster and the Mission of Light, his latest DIY descent into the grindhouse abyss, Bickel channels the cracked spirit of 1970s cult horror while infusing it with a distinctly contemporary awareness of obsession — musical, spiritual, and cinematic.

The hook is irresistible: Max, a record store clerk chasing the thrill of rare vinyl, stumbles upon an LP from a long-forgotten commune band called Mission of Light. What begins as crate-digging curiosity spirals into something altogether darker, as Max and her friends trace the record’s origins to a secluded cult whose rituals are soaked in both blood and distortion. Before long, the chiming folk harmonies become incantations, the needle-drop becomes a curse, and the grooves themselves seem to open onto a world of psychedelic terror.

Bickel, whose underground reputation was forged on unapologetically abrasive, micro-budget projects, makes no effort to hide the seams. In fact, the seams are the point: a stitched-together tapestry of lurid colour, stroboscopic editing, and gory practical effects that recall the handmade ferocity of vintage splatter cinema. The budget is meager, but the imagination is unruly. When the film tilts fully into ritual bloodletting and cosmic chaos, it achieves the kind of unhinged sensory overload that expensive horror often can’t touch.

What’s most surprising, though, is the music. The filmmakers wrote and recorded a full album in the guise of Mission of Light, and its jangling, upbeat folk tunes — deceptively sunny, unnervingly catchy — weave through the film like a viral infection. Their recurrence creates a peculiar dissonance: the music seems to gnaw at the edges of the viewer’s mind, becoming both a nostalgic echo of 1970s counterculture and a sinister tool of indoctrination. By the time the cult’s rituals are in full swing, the songs are inseparable from the horror, leaving the audience haunted by melodies as much as imagery.

For all its disjointedness — the pacing takes time to find its grip, and some performances verge on pastiche — the film exerts a strange cumulative power. It sneaks up on you, wearing you down with repetition and atmosphere until its final stretches feel like an outright possession. It is less a film you watch than one you are slowly, insidiously absorbed into.

The Prognosis:

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light is not for everyone. Its rough edges are sharp, its indulgence in retro exploitation tropes unapologetic. But within SUFF’s lineup, it is precisely the kind of discovery audiences come to this festival for: a work made with passion, sweat, and delirious creativity, chewing through its limitations to deliver something singular. Bickel has crafted a nightmare that’s equal parts grindhouse revival, cult exposé, and vinyl collector’s hallucination — a low-budget hymn that worms its way into your soul, humming as it feeds.

  • Saul Muerte

SUFF – Pater Noster and the Mission of Light
Unrated 18+
Starts Thursday, September 11, 2025 · Horror · 1 hr 37 min

Neon-Bathed Terror: Nishimura’s Tokyo Evil Hotel Haunts and Horrifies

29 Friday Aug 2025

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SUFF 2025 – Where Cult Cinema, Transgression, and Innovation Collide

In the annals of Japanese horror cinema, Yoshihiro Nishimura occupies a singular, slippery niche — one forged in latex, arterial spray, and an irreverent carnival of grotesquery. From Tokyo Gore Police to Helldriver, his films have thrived on excess, turning the body into a site of anarchic spectacle. With Tokyo Evil Hotel, Nishimura returns to his splatter roots but cloaks the viscera in something more spectral, an unnerving meditation on urban legends and the hidden machinery of Japan’s entertainment underworld.

The premise sounds almost folkloric: a cursed hotel, five suicides in a year, a ghostly figure in a wheelchair propelled by betrayal and heartbreak. But Nishimura, ever the provocateur, is less interested in quiet ghost story chills than in conjuring a fever dream. The film drags the viewer down its neon-lit corridors, where reality and nightmare blur into one another. Images arrive in waves — some baroque in their grotesquerie, others achingly poetic — before dissolving into the next eruption of slime, latex, or digital delirium.

What anchors this onslaught is not narrative cohesion (which Nishimura deliberately unravels) but mood, texture, and metaphor. The hotel itself becomes a nexus of exploitation, its walls absorbing the residue of despair from a culture that glamorises seduction while feeding on vulnerability. Nishimura weaponises the tropes of J-horror — the wrathful woman, the haunted threshold, the cyclical nature of trauma — and splices them into his splatter lineage. If Ring and Ju-On explored the horror of technological contamination, Tokyo Evil Hotel maps the horror of commodified intimacy, where every smile has a price and every fantasy its corroded underbelly.

The cast — Masanori Mimoto and Natsumi Tadano among them — give just enough grounding to keep the delirium tethered to human suffering, though their characters often feel like archetypal vessels swept along by the director’s vision. The real star, as always with Nishimura, is the texture: prosthetic ingenuity, practical gore, and uncanny tableaux that feel equal parts Kabuki and Cronenberg.

Yet the film is not without fracture. The disjointedness — the lurch from social critique to grotesque comedy to lyrical melancholy — sometimes undermines the impact. For some, this instability will feel frustrating; for others, it is precisely Nishimura’s method, a refusal to let the viewer rest. In the context of the Sydney Underground Film Festival, however, Tokyo Evil Hotel feels entirely at home. SUFF thrives on works that assault the senses, destabilise the familiar, and revel in the unruly. Nishimura’s latest is all of that: a cacophony of horror tropes remixed, a lurid nightmare of betrayal and exploitation, and a work that refuses to be neatly filed under ghost story or gorefest.

The Prognosis:

Tokyo Evil Hotel is less about narrative payoff than about immersion — in slime, in sorrow, in spectacle. It is a haunted funhouse mirror of Japan’s social anxieties, one that cackles, weeps, and bleeds in equal measure. Disjointed but unforgettable, it reminds us why Nishimura remains a cult legend: because no one else so gleefully drags horror into the gutter, then refracts it through neon into something unnervingly beautiful.

  • Saul Muerte

SUFF – Tokyo Evil Hotel
Starts Thursday, September 11, 2025 · Horror · 1 hr 30 min

SUFF 2024 – Movie Review: Mother Father Sister Brother Frank

15 Thursday Aug 2024

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With the program release dropping this week for the much-anticipated 18th Annual Sydney Underground Film Festival, it was a great pleasure to sit down and watch one of the feature lineups, Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Frank (MFSBF). The joy is not only in realizing that one of my favorite festivals, dedicated to the twisted and macabre, is back, but in how MFSBF epitomizes the style and substance that makes the festival so great. The film delivers a unique blend of the darker side of cinema, whether it’s full-throttle gore or outlandishly dark humor. MFSBF firmly falls into the latter category, offering a humorous tale of a family caught in a night of murder and mishap.

Set in what appears to be a typical suburban household, the Jennings family prepares to sit down for a Sunday dinner. But beneath the surface of Dad’s drinking, Jim’s phone habits, and Jolene’s dietary concerns, lies a web of secrets that no amount of sugar-coating from Mum can keep buried—especially when Uncle Frank arrives and threatens to expose everything. It doesn’t take long for thoughts to turn to murder, but the question remains: just how capable are the Jennings in carrying out their dark deeds and keeping their secrets hidden for good?

Tonally, director Caden Douglas masterfully places the humor just right, slowly dialing up the angst while delivering a series of painfully hilarious sequences that highlight how inept the family is. Each bungled attempt at solving their problems leads them further into potential ruin, as they metaphorically and literally dig their own graves. The film deftly explores whether the Jennings can bond together and claw their way out of the chaos they’ve created.

Special mention must be made of standout performances by Enrico Colantoni (Galaxy Quest) and Mindy Cohn (The Facts of Life), who delicately portray the father and mother roles with painful poise and bumbling brilliance. Their chemistry anchors the film, providing both comedic and emotional depth.

  • Saul Muerte

Catch the screening of Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Frank at the Sydney Underground Film Festival at Dendy, Newtown.

Screening times and tickets available below:

FRIDAY 13TH SEPTEMBER – 9.30PM

SUNDAY 15TH SEPTEMBER – 3.30PM

Movie review: Poundcake (2023)

07 Thursday Sep 2023

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Having been a loyal supporter of the Sydney Underground Film Festival for the past six years, I’m certainly no stranger to the diverse and eclectic choices that make up the film list year on year. The organisers proudly wear the latest weird and wonderful of the celluloid vein as part of its staple line up and Poundcake by Director Onur Tukel is no exception. Tukel is no stranger in taking on controversial conversations which centre  on the subject of relationships or gender, and with Poundcake he picks up the tendentious topics and rams it into the ground, pulverising it into a pulp. For those unaccustomed to the director’s visual and political stance, it’s fair to say that Tukel doesn’t shy away from areas that are too uncomfortable for some, and deliberately pushes those buttons in order to not only get a response but to also create discussion.

In his latest venture, Tukel directs and performs in a tale which is billed as a serial killer in New York City who is going around killing straight white men and no one blinks an eye. On face value, this is filled with intrigue, and it’s premise hooked me in along with the gimp mask wearing, beefy-looking serial killer, but these moments are fleeting, and somewhat shocking as his chosen method of killing is by raping his victims. The majority of the time, the film is told by a group of podcasters and members of the community who all share their polarising views. This dampens the moments of horror and instead squashes and distances the viewer with the bombardment of messages.

The Prognosis:

SUFF will hang their hat on the weird and wonderful moments in film, and with this Poundcake fits the bill. Horror lovers may find themselves wanting however, as this film is a socially political narrative from a director who will challenge some with his views. Personally, I found them a little jarring, but maybe you have a different spin on things and feel that he is deliberately provoking commentary.

Why not judge for yourself and post your thoughts here.

  • Saul Muerte

Poundcake will be screening at the Sydney Underground Film Festival, Friday 8th September at 6pm. 

Movie review: Kratt (2021)

04 Saturday Sep 2021

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Rasmus Merivoo’s latest feature Kratt which is currently screening as part of the 2021 Sydney Underground Film Festival taps into a warped fantastical world, resurrecting the magic of fairy tales in the vein of The Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen. Here the director propels the stories through a modern lens, with the impact of the internet and social media.

Part of its charm is that the story is told through the eyes of a couple of teens Mia (Nora Merivoo) and Kevin (Harri Merivoo) who are forced to stay with their Grandmother (Mari Lill) while their parents go on a spiritual retreat. Just when they think that their world is heading straight for a world of boredom, and seemingly the only people in town without wifi connection, Mia and Kevin stumble across the instructions to build their own kratt – a mythical creature formed from hay and household materials (think something similar to the golem). The promise that the kratt could bring them wealth and fortune is an opportunity that they are not willing to miss and bring some much needed life into their dull lives.

All does not go according to plan however as the kratt enters into the body of their grandmother and the kids are compelled to find work for her for fear that the entity may turn on them at any given moment.

There are moments where Merivoo blends the quirkiness of eccentric locals from business guru to an occult-like group dedicated to facebook, and wielding torches at the first sign of trouble, and mop-headed priest, who believes he may be of service to 

The kids through the power of God.

The Diagnosis:

Merivoo taps into the old-Estonian folklore and places it firmly in a modern-day setting, but keeps the quirks embedded into the tale to bring a little edge to the scene.
There is subtle humour on display here too with performances played with tongues firmly in cheek adding  a little flavour to the narrative along the way.

  • Saul Muerte

Kratt will be available to stream from September 9, 2021 8:30 PM GMT+10

Movie review: An Ideal Host (2021)

04 Saturday Sep 2021

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Since Donald Sutherland pointed his finger and wailed in the closing credits of 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers I’ve loved the whole alien assimilation scene. Currently screening as part of the 2021 Sydney Underground Film Festival comes an Australian voice to the subgenre in An Ideal Host. Channeling that voice is Robert Woods in his directorial feature debut, who fires off on all cylinders with that unique Australian humour, pulling in the words from screenwriter Tyler Jacob Jones and bringing them to life. 

Leading what appears to be an idyllic life, Liz (Nadia Collins) and Jackson (Evan Williams)as they set themselves up in a country town with their sweeping views of a serene yet rugged landscape (and cows).
There’s a little more going on beneath the surface as Liz seeks to have everything perfect and in place ahead of a dinner party for the close friends, They’ve even rehearsed a wedding proposal to be performed before their guests during the course of the evening. And yet, you constantly question Jackson’s true motives.

All of which comes secondary when an old friend, Daisy (Naomi Brockwell) invites herself along to the occasion with the threat of destroying the tranquility with her wild and unpredictable ways. Daisy would prove to be the last of Liz’s problems however, when further unexpected visitors make their presence known and start to take control of the human bodies and a plan to take over the town and beyond.

What strikes you about this film though besides the comedy beats is the special effects on show, a testament to Woods vision, when the tentacled creatures make their presence felt. The beauty on display though is the way that Woods slowly dials this up through to a carnage-filled conclusion, leaving you grimacing with glee. You can tell that he has honed his craft with an energy that entertains and delights the audience.

The Diagnosis:

Director Robert Woods proves again that Australia has a distinctive voice when it comes to horror. His blend of humour, effects and narrative shine through to the fore.
The beats when hit are strong and effective which is orchestrated with precision.

An Ideal Host surprises through the shifts and tones which also proves that Woods can draw you into the narrative before unleashing a gritty, and savagely satisfying end.

  • Saul Muerte

An Ideal Host will be available to stream from September 9, 2021 8:30 PM GMT+10

Movie review: Hotel Poseidon (2021)

31 Tuesday Aug 2021

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Dave (Tom Vermeir) is a reluctant caretaker of the titular Hotel Poseidon, which lives and breathes its namesake, through the visuals that ooze and breathe its putridity through the screen and submerges you deep within its sensuous void. 

The fact that our hapless protagonist has succumbed to the world around him drifting from one alluring scene to the next, lures the viewer deeper into its dark abyss.

Bequeathed to him by his late father, the aquatic themed hotel embodies the characteristics of the Greek God with its swings of temperament, once providing a mood of destruction and anger in a wake of earth shattering proportions before drifting into a jubilant buoyancy, lifting its occupants into a heightened frenzy before crashing once more into melancholy.

Like our protagonist, some of the emotions become overwhelming and the hotel guests overbearing, smothering the essence of humanity out from between its decaying walls. Dave often has to retreat into a false slumber in order to rest from the fury, but it’s always short lived. His infatuation with some of the guests also bring him to decrepitude; a human shipwreck banked on the ocean floor struggling to breathe. The longer he stays submerged, the higher the stakes that he will become a permanent resident in the watery grave.

Stefan Lernous manages to craft a hypnotic film both with his direction and writing style and works this in harmony with Geert Verstraete’s visuals. It’s clear that Lernous draws from his acting theatrical background to draw the best from his cast allowing each of them to flourish to provide strong performances across the board.

The Diagnosis:

Beautifully shot and drenched in humanities faults to the point of smothering and heightened to the extreme.

It’s a slow beast however, which may not suit all tastes.

  • Saul Muerte

Hotel Poseidon will be available to stream from September 9, 2021 8:30 PM GMT+10

Movie review: Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It (2021)

30 Monday Aug 2021

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And so it comes to pass that one of the Surgeons of Horror’s favourite film festivals rears its beautifully ugly head to shed light on the dark and distrubed side of the celluloid screen.

Opening up the 2021 season of the Sydney Underground Film Festival is an Australian premiere from Kazakhstan that at face value can be poorly judged based on the opening 10 minutes. We’re painted a picture of a guy, Dastan (Daniar Alshinov) who seemingly is trapped in a loveless marriage, which he is forced to endure because of expecting their first child. This tone suddenly shifts however when Dastan suddenly goes on a fishing road trip with his two best friends, one who is trying to tap into his business prospects, the other a district police officer, all of who are bumbling buffoons, well outside of the comfort zone and trying to make the most of their outing. 

To damn their characteristics isn’t one that scoffs at their downfall but more so embraces their faults with a humorous response to their ill choices along the way.

I read somewhere about the comparisons to The Coen Brothers movies in style and tone, and for this I can totally picture it, especially some of their earlier movies such as Blood Simple. The similarities see these loveable characters trip and fall over their own blunders in a journey that will question if they will see the end and live to tell the tale.

Along the way our trio fall foul of a quartet of questionable characters from the underbelly of the criminal world, who also come with their own level of ignoramuses. These brothers argue and object to their own decisions, tripping over each other to gain a level of power over one another, much to their own detriment.

In a chance encounter, Dastan and his friends witness the brothers blow the head off of a minion. From her on in, Dastan must strive to last the night and find their way back home without the know-how or intellect to do so.
Throw into the mix, other oddities in a one-eyed spiritual kick-ass vigilante hell-bent on the revenge of the death of his dog; an enraptured odd young lady with the aid of her equally strange father, then we’re treated with a unique and funny tale that s a joy to behold. 

The Diagnosis:

Let this one absorb you and you will be entertained by the farcical, heightened dark comedy on display.
There is a lot of fun on display here, and director Yernar Nurgaliyev manages to dance with the sense of humour aimed at your everyman trio subjected to the ridiculous in order to survive and provide a wake up call to the things that matter to them.

A great festival opener.

  • Saul Muerte

Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It will be available to stream from September 9, 2021 7:30 PM GMT+10