Review: ‘The Funeral Home’ is a creepy place to live.

THE FUNERAL HOME

Bernardo is an undertaker. He and his dysfunctional family lives amongst coffins, wreaths and mischievous supernatural entities that visit daily. They attribute the paranormal manifestations to the dead bodies from their mortuary work. Finding the real source of all this madness will be their quest, but they might find a terrifying truth. Luis Machín, Celeste Gerez, Camila Vaccarini, Susana Varela, and Hugo Arana star.

 

The nonchalance of this tattered family living in a severely haunted funeral home is astounding. The audience goes in blind as we see a boundary of scorched earth not only in their yard but eventually, we discover it’s inside the house itself. The cinematography of The Funeral Home is eye-catching. The set dressing is filled with clues while the spectral lighting is just downright cool. The mood is heavy and frightening from the very first shot. That’s an uneasy feeling that never lets up. Performances from everyone are outstanding. There is a sadness and anger that hangs about each of the characters. The script is about betrayal and pure anguish. It has a Sinister-esque feel about it. The visual scares are jarring as hell. It’s clear that someone has made a deal with the devil, so to speak. I do mean that for more than one person. I have so many questions remaining, the revelations that do come our way are shocking and terrifying in a human way. There is so much potential in this film, I would love to see it developed into an entire series. There is a lot to unpack inside The Funeral Home and I desperately want to know more.

 

Mauro Iván Ojeda’s chilling supernatural thriller The Funeral Home comes to select virtual theaters on January 29 and digital on Feb 2.

‘THIRST’ (Screamfest 2020) sinks its teeth into cult status.

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The addict Hulda is arrested and accused of murdering her brother. After she is let go because of insufficient evidence, she meets Hjörtur, a thousand-year-old gay vampire. Together they fight a cult while being investigated by a rogue detective.

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Wowing Screamfest 2020 audiences, the gloriously gory and unapologetically in your face, vampire horror-comedy Thirst is a movie about a girl and her unlikely gay best friend. Poor Hulda just wants to stop being blamed for a bunch of murders and find someone to care about her for the right reasons. Poor Hjörtur just wants to play with his food, and as The Prince of Darkness, he can damn well do what he pleases. The performances are wildly funny and the chemistry between Hjörtur Sævar Steinason and Hulda Lind Kristinsdóttir is simply electric. The visual gags, quite literally, are unforgettable. The overt sexualization of the men is genius. If you know nothing going in, you know everything soon enough.

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It could have been made by the same filmmakers as genre film fest favorite Fried Barry. The colors, the camera work, the visual mindfuckery. They are cut from the same weird and wonderful cloth. In Thirst, the amount of practical fx and blood are equal parts laughable and joyous. Genre fans will literally cheer. The relationship between Hulda and Hjörtur is what stays with me 12 hours after viewing. You could write an entire television series on their dynamic and I would be there to watch it. The climax of the film is nothing short of a spectacular splatterfest. Combined with the over the top power ballads(which I’m pretty sure is my favorite aspect), this is sure to reach cult status. Stick around once the credits start to roll. Your ears and eyes won’t be sorry.

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Direct from a well-received festival run, where it played such fests as Screamfest 2020, London FrightFest, and Out On Film, Thirst comes to DVD and Digital 12/1 from Uncork’d Entertainment.

From directors Steinþór Hróar Steinþórsson, Gaukur Úlfars comes a high-energy thrill fest with some of the most creative films to grace a screen in years. Hjörtur Sævar Steinason, Jens Jensson, Hulda Lind Kristinsdóttir, Ester Sveinbjarnardóttir, Birgitta Sigursteinsdóttir, and Birna Halldórsdóttir star.

Direct from a well-received festival run, where it played such fests as Screamfest 2020, London FrightFest, and Out On Film, Thirst comes to DVD and Digital 12/1 from Uncork’d Entertainment.

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Review: ‘LOVE IS BLIND’ is unlike anything you’ve seen this year.

 funny and irresistible story of a young girl who literally cannot see or hear her mother, even though she is living with her under the same roof. With the help of an eccentric psychiatrist, and a local, accidental hero, our heroine has to grow up, but falls in love and eventually takes hold of her future – despite not being able to see what’s right in front of her.

Love Is Blind is visually and conceptually spectacular. It taps into the emotional versus logical. We create our own reality for many different reasons; coping from loss, anxiety, or simply in an attempt more perfect environment for our imaginations to flourish.

The craziest thing is that to say much more about the plot is to do it a disservice. It’s almost indescribable. Love Is Blind challenges the notion of being an to heal inside and out. It’s about human connection.

The film has an enveloping feel of hyper-saturated colors. The soundtrack is hypnotizing. The narration adds to the whimsy. The script features beautifully nuanced characters. Quirky personalities all come together to make for an engrossing story. The cast is unreal and the performances across-the-board are a delight. Shannon Tarbet, Aidan Turner, Benjamin Walker, Matthew Broderick, and Chloë Sevigny take this charming as hell script and run with it. The film is co-directed by Monty Whitebloom and Andy Delaney from a script by Jennifer Schuur. It is important for me to note, as a mother of a toddler on the spectrum, to see a character represented with such life and humor is amazing. Love Is Blind is undeniably one of the most unique indie films I’ve seen in quite a while.

Uncork’d Entertainment will release the romantic comedy LOVE IS BLIND in theaters and on Digital and On Demand on November 8, 2019.

LOVE IS BLIND stars Shannon Tarbet (“Killing Eve,” Colette), Aidan Turner (The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot, The Hobbit franchise), Benjamin Walker (“Jessica Jones,” In the Heart of the Sea), Matthew Broderick (“Better Things,” The Producers), and Chloë Sevigny (“The Act,” The Dead Don’t Die).  The film is co-directed by Monty Whitebloom and Andy Delaney (“Polarbearman”) from a script by Jennifer Schuur (“Big Love,” “The Catch”).

 

Review: Don’t get trapped in ‘The Snare’

C.A. Cooper’s first feature length film debut, The Snare, is the story of Alice (Eaoifa Forward) who heads out to a vacant vacation complex for a drunken weekend, with her friend Lizzy (Rachel Warren) and her boyfriend Carl (Dan Paton). Despite the fact that they were knowingly trespassing, they didn’t expect the hell that they would soon be trapped in. This is the story of those who have fallen into a trap, and I want to make sure you don’t follow in their foot steps.

This is a film that had great ideas however, they were poorly executed. There were scenes within the film that were great, and scenes that were terrible, and in all honestly just needed to be cleaned up. The film didn’t appear to have a huge budget and it showed in different places through out, for example there was plastic patio furniture in the kitchen, and it didn’t make sense considering the overall quality of the apartment. There are many independent horror films out there with small budgets that are still great due to their creativity; The Snare just didn’t quite reach that mark. For someone who loves the horror genre, this film at times can feel rather frustrating, because you see the shell of an unnerving film, however the meat within it just wasn’t good.

[Spoilers Ahead]

The film clearly had a deeper meaning behind what was occurring within Alice’s mind. We see that her father in the beginning of the story has no boundaries like a father normally would around his own daughter, which purposefully makes the audience uneasy. We are then introduce to Lizzy, who is supposedly her friend, and Lizzy’s boyfriend Carl, who shows clear parallels to Alice’s father’s perversions. Alice seems like a quiet and together girl, and her friend Lizzy does not share those same characteristics; in a lot of ways their friendship doesn’t make that much sense, such as Lizzy stealing keys to a vacation apartment that isn’t hers and Alice just kind of goes along with it. Once they realize they are stuck on one of the upper floors of the building with no practical escape, the story became slightly more interesting. When we begin to see what’s occurring in Alice’s mind, there wasn’t a natural build of suspense, but instead the film relied heavily on the jump scares, which is kind of a disappointment. The best moments of the film happen closer to the end, but even the ending it’s self didn’t finish very strong.

The film overall was underwhelming. The acting did hugely improve as the film went on, however I believe it really could of been better if select parts of the story had been done differently. The overall theme that I think C.A. Cooper was aiming for, was interesting; I did like the dark parallels between Alice’s home life and their entrapment within the apartment, as well as the eerie music. For some the good may out weigh the bad, however it is not a horror film that I would recommend.

2 1/2 out of 5 stars.

Uncork’d Entertainment’s British horror flick, The Snare will be release in theaters and VOD on January 6th, 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB89ifUSrwA