[Film Review] Celluloid Screams Festival: We Need To Do Something (2021)
We Need to Do Something (2021) takes place in a huge bathroom, where a family of four wait out a tornado. As the storm passes, the family realise they are trapped and tensions rise while they wait for rescue. Quiet mediator Mum - Diane (Vinessa Shaw) and alcoholic, angry Dad – Robert (Pat Healy) are a couple on the verge of divorce. Their children are confidently angsty Melissa (Sierra McCormick) who believes she is to blame for the storm – and inquisitive and sensitive brother Bobby (John James Cronin).
I had a chat with writer Max Booth III about his inspiration for We Need to Do Something and how he managed to get his vision on to the big screen – read it here.
I love a film concept where the action takes place in one location. However, these can often be difficult to execute. It’s hard to keep momentum and audience engagement when there is not much happening visually on screen such as different scenes and locations. We Need to Do Something keeps you absolutely engaged by maintaining the pace, moving through the plot at speed as the family deteriorates due to the stress, hunger and fear permeating the bathroom. A survival film always gets me thinking ‘what would I do in the situation?’, I think I am the brother in this example – asking for stories and spouting off facts about tornados.
The cast are fantastic, Pat Healy as our ‘bad dad’ is a standout. The quick biting dialogue keeps it exciting as the characters allow their once hidden hatred for each other come to the surface as their outlook begins to look hopeless. But, the film allows itself to be funny and silly where it needs to be - there is a moment where the family, facing starvation, decide to eat something gross. Robert, the father, is everyone in the audience as he expresses his repulsion - “Fuck this”. In an era where it feels as though some horror films are super serious, or not allowing themselves to indulge fully into the horror, keeping it at arm’s length - here you are free to have some laughs and scares within the same scene.
We Need to Do Something throws everything at the screen from natural disasters, witchcraft, affairs, alcoholism, demons and the scariest of them all- inter family relationships. I had a lot of fun with this film and I think you will too.
When people think of horror films, slashers are often the first thing that comes to mind. The sub-genres also spawned a wealth of horror icons: Freddy, Jason, Michael, Chucky - characters so recognisable we’re on first name terms with them. In many ways the slasher distills the genre down to some of its fundamental parts - fear, violence and murder.
Throughout September we were looking at slasher films, and therefore we decided to cover a slasher film that could be considered as an underrated gem in the horror genre. And the perfect film for this was Franck Khalfoun’s 2012 remake of MANIAC.
In the late seventies and early eighties, one man was considered the curator of all things gore in America. During the lovingly named splatter decade, Tom Savini worked on masterpieces of blood and viscera like Dawn of the Dead (1978), a film which gained the attention of hopeful director William Lustig, a man only known for making pornography before his step into horror.
Looking for some different slasher film recommendations? Then look no fruther as Ariel Powers-Schaub has 13 non-typical slasher horror films for you to watch.
Even though they are not to my personal liking, there is no denying that slasher films have been an important basis for the horror genre, and helped to build the foundations for other sub-genres throughout the years.
But some of the most terrifying horrors are those that take place entirely under the skin, where the mind is the location of the fear. Psychological horror has the power to unsettle by calling into question the basis of the self - one's own brain.
On Saturday, 17th June 2023, I sat down with two friends to watch The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009) and The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2012). I was nervous to be grossed out (I can’t really handle the idea of eating shit) but excited to cross these two films off my list.
Many of the most effective horror films involve blurring the lines between waking life and a nightmare. When women in horror are emotionally and psychologically manipulated – whether by other people or more malicious supernatural forces – viewers are pulled into their inner worlds, often left with a chilling unease and the question of where reality ends and the horror begins.
Body horror is one of the fundamental pillars of the horror genre and crops up in some form or another in a huge variety of works. There's straightforward gore - the inherent horror of seeing the body mutilated, and also more nuanced fears.
In the sweaty summer of 1989, emerging like a monochrome migraine from the encroaching shadow of Japan’s economic crash, Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man shocked and disgusted the (very few) audiences originally in attendance.
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