Day: 5 September 2024

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Dead Northern Festival News and Reviews Reviews

Dead Northern Festival 2024 Review – All This Time


All This Time chronicles the infinite time loop that Grace (Emily Rose Holt) has found herself trapped in. Joined by an elusive vampire, Elias (Dan de Bourg), Grace must unravel a string of veiled secrets to escape the treacherously eerie time glitch and return to normality.

Writer and director Rob Worsey delivers a standout, complex and thought-provoking second feature that, alongside his zombie-themed feature debut, Among the Living (2022), proves that Worsey is a talent to be watched. Worsey’s uncanny ability to stir tension and assemble well-crafted scares that linger like a troubling night-terror are at an all-time high throughout All This Time.

The film dabbles in equal amounts of trepidation, theatrical drama, and gothic horror to form an unholy trinity of emotively triggered fear. For instance, as we see Grace come to terms with the disturbed histories that lie in wait, not once does the film become gimmicky in its scares; instead, bouts of unease are stirred, and waves of darkness are weaponised, collectively espousing a film that is as tonally rich as it is visually impactful. 

As teased above, All This Time is steeped in a gothically minded atmosphere where the isolation of grandness meets a shadowy, stunningly designed sense of unmistakable dread. In its iconographical form, All This Time employs its grandiose setting, impressive costume design and haunting, moody lighting to showcase its gothic roots, which all combine to create a film that is worthy of watching with the volume off just to absorb the sheer ‘look’ of it all. 

Matching the mysterious ambience is the film’s brilliant performances from the likes of Rose Holt and de Bourg, alongside the excellent Emma Pallant. Independent cinema has a habit of bringing about the most spiffing of exhibitions of talent, with All This Time being no exception to this rule. Throughout the entire runtime, the executions are all acted out with such compelling authenticity that draws the audience in and has them hanging on to every last word.

Shifting onto the horror elements, All This Time makes use of its groundhog-like narrative to conjure a sting of anxiety that innately wizzes up an unnerving sense of being trapped, contained and unable to make sense of everyone and everything.

On a theoretical plane, this inability to flee has the power to be suffocating and grim, but Worsey boldly propels this notion by infusing a vampiric spin. Fanged fiends, bloodsuckers, ‘The Count’, Dracula – however these immortal creatures have been cinematically developed before, All This Time, decides to take a unique spin on the vampire tale through its utilisation of a character-study based approach to storytelling. Keeping spoilers tightly under wraps – what can be commended is how the film continuously toys with the motives of the characters. Rarely do we know what to believe and who to trust throughout the running enigma of it all.

In total, All This Time will both move and provoke, pervade and resonate. Ultimately, this is not a film to be missed.

You can catch the film Friday 27th September at this years festival, tickets here!

Categories
Dead Northern Festival News and Reviews Reviews

Dead Northern 2024 Festival Review – Kill Your Lover

Directing duo Alix Austin and Keir Siewert deliver a gnarly, grotesque, and emotionally raw feat of tainted love, where body horror and a cerebral narrativisation collide together to create the must-see ‘Kill Your Lover’. 

Strained couple Axel (Shane Quigley Murphy) and Dakota (Paige Gilmour) have long lost the passion that oozed from their early days together; with Dakota now desperate to break free and put an end to her partner’s controlling hold. However, whilst on the cusp of delivering him the bad news, Axel falls ill with a monstrous infection, one that spews poison, splinters skin and turns its host into a corrosive mess – and worst of all…it’s contagious. 

From the initial setup right up until the credits begin to roll, the entire film is slick with an uncomfortable sense of intimacy. Intimate through its nature of chronicling a toxic relationship. Intimate through its portrayal of up close and personal graphic body horror, and intimate in how it feels as if we have been positioned to voyeuristically gaze like a fly on the wall as Dakota and Axel experience the terrifying motions of their damning monstrosity.

The private, immediate view the audience experiences feels disturbed, as if we are that of a prying eye. It is this precise dark, troubling anxiety that makes Kill Your Lover’s stirring approach so effective. As much as the film is a splattery gore fest, Austin and Siewert manage to penetrate the layers of fleshy horror and create a tone that is ripe with metaphors into destructive, venomous kinship and feeling inescapable dread at the hands of someone you once used to unconditionally love. 

The film’s continuous lashings of affective energy also transfers itself into the sophisticated aesthetic that manages to balance obscure bloodiness whilst not faltering to unwarranted butchery – which for a film of such calibre would take away from the complex emotive aura. For instance, as the film escalates to the point of sheer horror-filled pandemonium as the treacherous infection spreads, an array of brilliant effects come to fruition. The makeup and design is gruesome, ghastly and macabre in the most unique way possible. The gravity of the fearsome visuals is made all the more nightmarish at the hands of the crafty and powerful performances from leads Gilmour and Quigley Murphy, both of whom excel at portraying depthful, intricate and complicated characters. 

Kill Your Lover is a standout feature that speaks to the creator’s exhilarating storytelling talents. From Austin’s incredible short horror ‘Sucker’ (2022), to Siewert and Austin’s team effort on the anthological entry ‘It’s Inside’ in Isolation (2021), it is a sure thing that this duo is one to watch. 

Catch the film Saturday 28th September at the 2024 festival, tickets and details here.