Author: Peter 'Witchfinder' Hopkins

ASSIMILATE **** USA 2019 Dir: John Murlowski. 93 mins Jack Finney’s evergreen paranoia classic “The Body Snatchers” tends to get a Hollywood reinterpretation every two decades or so and the era of Trump and fake news feels like the most apt backdrop for the story since the McCarthy-era emergence of Don Siegel’s 1956 original. Recycling familiar beats from earlier BODYSNATCHERS movies while adding a video blog narrative device and protagonists struggling to prove video evidence is “real”, this is a fast-paced, teen-pitched variation on the theme. Likeable Joel Courtney and Calum Worthy’s spy-cam web series dedicated to showing the people…

Filmmaker Jeff Payne announces IN DARKNESS I WAIT, the third installment of THE PALE FACED LADY short film series. “The first Pale Faced Lady was mostly narrative driven, giving you some visuals with the story and creating the dark atmospheres throughout. The second “She Will Return” went into the ghosts origins and dealt with the regret of bad decisions creating more of a suspenseful theme. I’m wanting to make part three a rollercoaster ride of tension and scares. In Darkness I Wait will be centered around two characters who go into the house to try and burn it down.…

12 DEATHS OF CHRISTMAS (a.k.a. Mother Krampus) *** U.K. 2017 Dir: James Klass. 90 mins Another Christmas horror enters the fold and with it a few surprising twists and turns can be expected. Opening with a narration of the eastern European story of Frau Perchta we are told that in the 12 days leading up to Christmas in 1921 several children disappeared. One girl was later found but unable to speak of her torment she later died. In 1992, 5 children disappeared in the lead up to Christmas and later found in the woods with their throats slit. The towns…

A GOOD WOMAN IS HARD TO FIND ***** UK / Ireland / Belgium 2019 Dir: Abner Pastoll. 97 mins “If you want to get anywhere in this life you have to be a bitch”. So advises tough but loyal mother Jane Brennan to her recently widowed daughter (Sarah Bolger) early on in Abner Pastoll’s exceptional thriller. In an unspecified modern Irish city where everything seems a little lost despite a new political “hope”, Bolger’s grief for a man dismissed by the media and police as a drug dealer runs parallel to her financial woes (and related, routine humiliations at the…

SHE WILL RETURN *** USA 2019 Jeff Payne 13 mins SHE WILL RETURN is the sequel to Jeff Payne’s short released this spring THE PALE FACED LADY. It is the origin story of THE PALE FACED LADY, a malevolent spirit that haunts her families home. It begins with a grieving fathers monologue describing how his wife died and how he then watched his daughters behaviour wildly change before she too disappeared only to return to haunt him in their home. Once again this contains beautiful set pieces, great visuals and another stunning score from Aimy Miller. If you watch closely,…