REVIEW: Holy Spider [2022]

Keep your eyes open. Saeed Hanaei’s (Mehdi Bajestani) compulsion has grown to uncontrollable levels. So, it’s only a matter of time before he’s caught—if Mashhad’s police want to catch him. That’s the question Tehran journalist Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) asks upon arriving at the holy city. Nine women (all prostitutes) had already been strangled to death and dumped in and around the same area with no leads or suspects to be found. Either the department is inept, the so-called “Spider Killer” is a genius, or the crimes aren’t something the public…

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REVIEW: Gräns [Border] [2018]

You shouldn’t listen to what humans say. Customs officer Tina (Eva Melander) stands at attention while a line of passengers exiting an international flight walk by, her nostrils perpetually flaring. She’s sniffing them as a means of discerning which might have illegally undeclared possessions on their person. An “Excuse me” later and her partner is taking three bottles of alcohol out of a minor’s duffel bag, sending him on his way with a warning along the lines of “Our confiscating it is better than you going to jail on a…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Shelley [2016]

“But it’s not just about the money” Everything starts so innocently that you’d be hard-pressed to realize Ali Abbasi‘s Shelley is a horror film besides the score’s dread-inducing soundscape rising to a deafening level of static. Sure the setting’s weird with Louise (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Kasper (Peter Christoffersen) living in the Danish woods without electricity or running water far-removed from civilization, but the world’s fill of eccentrics. They’re actually quite nice, bringing in a new maid (Cosmina Stratan‘s Romanian single mother Elena) with open arms and warm smiles. It…

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