Woken (2023) Review

Fresh from her standout turn in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, rising star Erin Kellyman takes centre stage in WOKEN, a tense, genre-blending sci-fi thriller from writer-director Alan Friel making his feature debut. Alongside one of Britain’s most respected performers, Maxine Peake, Kellyman delivers a committed performance in a claustrophobic mystery that explores paranoia, memory and survival against an apocalyptic backdrop.

The story follows Anna (Kellyman), who awakens on a remote island after an accident with no recollection of who she is, where she is, or even the pregnancy she is carrying. Surrounded by unfamiliar faces — including her husband James (Ivanno Jeremiah) and neighbours Helen (Peake) and Peter (Corrado Invernizzi) — Anna is forced to piece together the fragments of her fractured identity as those around her attempt to fill in the blanks.

Yet unease quickly settles in. As Anna begins to question the reality presented to her, she uncovers a devastating truth: humanity has been decimated by a pandemic. Even after this revelation, however, a creeping sense of dread lingers. Convinced darker secrets remain hidden beneath the surface, Anna’s growing paranoia leads her to suspect that the greatest threat may not lie beyond the island, but within it.

For its opening act, WOKEN proves highly effective. Friel carefully cultivates an atmosphere of uncertainty and tension, ensuring viewers remain engaged as suspicion steadily mounts. By the time the film arrives at its first major reveal — roughly thirty minutes in — the narrative appears poised to deliver something genuinely compelling. The twist confirms what audiences have already begun to suspect: all is far from what it seems.

Unfortunately, it is after this pivotal moment that WOKEN begins to lose momentum. As the film gradually reveals more of its hand, diminishing returns set in. What initially feels unsettling and mysterious soon becomes increasingly familiar, with subsequent revelations landing less effectively and exposing a disappointingly formulaic core. Rather than deepening the intrigue, the narrative slips into predictable territory, undermining much of the tension established so successfully in its opening stretch.

That disappointment is amplified by the film’s strengths elsewhere. Kellyman anchors proceedings with conviction, while Peake lends her customary gravitas to an otherwise underdeveloped supporting role. The ensemble is uniformly reliable, elevating material that often feels more conventional than its premise suggests. Visually, the film fares better still: the rugged beauty of County Clare, Ireland, where the production was filmed, provides a striking backdrop, with atmospheric cinematography capturing the island’s craggy isolation to considerable effect.

Given the calibre of talent involved, WOKEN feels like a missed opportunity. Its premise, cast and early suspense suggest something more ambitious than standard genre fare, yet the film ultimately settles for familiar beats and predictable storytelling. While competently assembled and intermittently gripping, this is sci-fi thriller territory that rarely rises above the ordinary.

Woken is on UK digital 25 May from 101 Films

Trailer

The post Woken (2023) Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.

The Cure (2026) Review

From the writers of Unsane comes a new psychological thriller inspired by chilling advances in biotech. Afflicted with a mysterious illness, Ally (Samantha Cochran – V/H/S/Halloween) discovers that her billionaire adoptive parents (David Dastmalchian – Late Night with the Devil & Ashley Greene – The Twilight Saga) have sinister designs linked to her recovery and the surrounding community. With twisted visions of macabre experiments haunting her, she must fight to escape the binds of the malicious condition as well as the fortified island compound or be drained of everything that makes her human. Courtesy of Signature Entertainment.

Nancy Leopardi’s The Cure may not break new ground, but what it sets out to do, it accomplishes with confidence and assurance. While undeniably predictable, there is a certain comfort in its familiarity; the film knowingly treads well-worn territory, relying on solid performances and assured direction to sustain audience investment.

At the heart of the story is a sympathetic turn from Samantha Cochran, whose portrayal of Ally gives the film an emotional anchor. Supporting her are memorably unsettling performances from David Dastmalchian and Ashley Greene as her adoptive parents, both bringing an appropriately sinister menace that elevates the material beyond its conventional framework.

You find yourself rooting for Ally throughout, and that emotional investment ultimately outweighs the film’s lack of originality. Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer’s screenplay remains firmly within familiar genre conventions rather than attempting to reinvent them, yet the result is consistently engaging and thoroughly watchable. Although clearly aimed at a younger, teen audience, The Cure proved engrossing even for viewers outside its target demographic.

The post The Cure (2026) Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.

Krispr (2023) Review

Tis the season for holiday horrors in Krispr – Petrie Willink (Oppenheimer) and Jeremiah JJ Roberts’ sci-fi thriller. Following its release in the US, Krispr arrives on UK digital on 18 May, courtesy of Miracle Media.

When Dr Elijah Roelof (Willink) brings his latest project, Krispr (Sof Puchley) – a lifelike clone designed to learn and assist – home for the holiday season, he sets off a chilling chain of events. Initially naive to the ways of the world, Krispr’s ability to soak up knowledge soon takes a dangerous turn when she makes some shocking discoveries about mankind’s darkest moments.

As Krispr’s intentions become more ominous, will Elijah realise that his technological marvel is becoming a monster before it’s too late, or will it be a Christmas to remember for all the wrong reasons?

At first glance, KRISPR appears poised to follow in the footsteps of recent AI-horror success stories, evoking immediate comparisons to M3GAN. However, any sense of momentum is quickly diluted by the film’s relentless fixation on Frankenstein, with Mary Shelley’s seminal text referenced so frequently that subtlety is all but abandoned. Ironically, much like Shelley’s tragic creation, KRISPR itself feels crudely stitched together from superior source material, emerging not as a coherent whole but as a cumbersome imitation of better films.

Narratively, KRISPR struggles under the weight of its own implausibility. Logic and common sense are notably absent throughout, leaving viewers to navigate a plot that often feels frustratingly inert. Much of the film’s considerable runtime centres on Dr Elijah Roelof, the scientist behind the titular clone, whose defining characteristic seems to be his incessant hostility towards his wife, Chloe, blaming her for virtually every inconvenience. Chloe, in turn, spends much of the film lamenting her husband’s emotional investment in his creation, resulting in repetitive exchanges that rarely evolve beyond domestic grievance.

The film’s central premise becomes increasingly difficult to accept when Elijah—ostensibly a brilliant scientist capable of pioneering advanced cloning technology—makes the baffling decision to remove KRISPR from a controlled laboratory environment and transport her to his parents’ home over Christmas and New Year. His justification, that he wishes to observe her behaviour, rings hollow given that he spends much of the film seemingly unaware of her whereabouts, frequently asking family members where she has gone. Stranger still, none of the household appears particularly concerned about the mysterious outsider wandering unchecked through their home. Such lapses in logic become impossible to ignore as the story progresses.

Elijah himself proves to be a particularly frustrating protagonist. Despite being positioned as a scientific visionary, he is portrayed as indecisive, emotionally volatile, and conspicuously lacking the intelligence his role demands. Spending nearly two hours in the company of a character who largely whines, broods, and demonstrates little meaningful agency makes for an exhausting viewing experience.

Pacing compounds the issue. At close to two hours, KRISPR feels substantially overlong, with scenes frequently lingering well beyond their dramatic usefulness. Extended sequences—such as a protracted family dinner conversation concerning meat consumption—test patience rather than deepen characterisation. The dialogue often feels improvised, lacking the precision or dramatic rhythm needed to sustain engagement.

Technically, the film fares little better. A near-constant score quickly becomes intrusive, inconsistent sound quality proves distracting, and the script rarely finds moments of genuine insight or tension. Combined with an ensemble of grating characters, the overall experience becomes increasingly wearisome. Watching KRISPR often recalls the infamous A Clockwork Orange sequence in which Alex is forcibly held open-eyed against his will: an endurance test rather than entertainment. The destination is obvious from early on, making the film’s prolonged journey toward an inevitable conclusion all the more frustrating.

Perhaps most tellingly, KRISPR includes a line strikingly reminiscent of Jurassic Park: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” The sentiment proves unintentionally apt. One cannot help but feel the same question applies to KRISPR itself.

Trailer

Krispr is on UK digital 18 May from Miracle Media

The post Krispr (2023) Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.

Bone Keeper (2026) Review

Bone Keeper is directed and written by Howard J. Ford (DarkGame, Escape) and stars Sarah Alexandra Marks (Escape, Punch, Bogieville), Louis James (Help, Manor Of Darkness), Tiffany Hannam-Daniels (River Of Blood), as well as British acting royalty John Rhys-Davies (Lord of the Rings, Raiders of the Lost Ark).

A cosmic fireball crashes into remote woodland, awakening a terrifying creature hidden in the depths. 1976: James Wheeler enters a cave determined to uncover the truth – and is never seen again. All that’s found is a single frame of Super 8 film, capturing the silhouette of a horrifying creature. Now Wheeler’s granddaughter, along with five explorers, set out to investigate the legend of the ‘Bone Keeper’. But deep in the caves, they realise they are being hunted, and the line between hunter and prey blurs. Will they uncover the truth and escape the creature – or become the next missing souls?

After screening to a sold-out audience at FrightFest Glasgow on 6 March and arriving on digital platforms from 6 April, Bone Keeper arrives with modest ambitions and an obvious reverence for some of the most influential entries in the sci-fi horror canon. It wears those inspirations openly, borrowing liberally from the suffocating dread of Alien, the paranoia and creature effects of The Thing, and the subterranean terror of The Descent. While it lacks the craftsmanship, atmosphere, and thematic weight that elevated those films to classic status, it compensates with enthusiasm, energy, and a welcome willingness to embrace its own absurdity.

The premise is simple and familiar: a group of explorers venture into an isolated, hostile environment and soon discover they are not alone. What follows is a predictable but competently assembled descent into chaos, as the group is gradually picked off by a lurking, slimy threat. The screenplay makes little effort to subvert expectations or deepen its mythology, instead focusing almost entirely on immediate survival and the escalating physical threat. Characterisation is thin, and the dialogue rarely extends beyond panicked questions, shouted warnings, and expressions of disbelief. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, this simplicity works in the film’s favour. The characters may not be complex, but they are generally likeable enough that their fates still carry some emotional weight.

Visually, Bone Keeper operates within clear budgetary limitations, but it uses its resources effectively. The environments are suitably claustrophobic and oppressive, reinforcing the characters’ vulnerability and isolation. The creature design, while not particularly original, is functional and appropriately grotesque. The special effects, though far from state-of-the-art, are convincing enough to sustain immersion, and the film wisely avoids overexposure that might reveal their limitations. Instead, it relies on suggestion, shadow, and quick glimpses to maintain tension. There is, however, no shortage of slime, gore, and tactile unpleasantness, which will please viewers seeking visceral horror.

Where the film falters most is in its lack of atmosphere and sustained suspense. Unlike its obvious predecessors, it rarely builds genuine dread, instead opting for frequent, sudden confrontations that prioritise shock over slow-burn tension. This approach makes the film consistently engaging but prevents it from achieving the lingering unease that defines truly memorable horror. The pacing, however, remains brisk throughout its ninety-minute runtime, and it never overstays its welcome.

Despite its shortcomings, there is an undeniable charm to Bone Keeper. It understands exactly what it is: a modest, creature-driven genre exercise designed to entertain rather than challenge. Its earnestness and lack of pretension make it easy to forgive its narrative and technical limitations. The cast commit fully to the material, grounding the more ridiculous elements just enough to keep the film from descending into outright parody.

The film’s open ending, which strongly hints at a continuation of the story, feels less like an artistic necessity and more like a hopeful gesture toward a potential sequel. Whether or not that sequel materialises, Bone Keeper succeeds in delivering exactly what it promises: a deliriously silly, goo-soaked survival horror that prioritises fun over finesse.
It may lack the class, originality, and craftsmanship of the films that inspired it, but it remains an entertaining and accessible entry in the genre. For devoted horror fans willing to embrace its flaws, Bone Keeper offers a thoroughly enjoyable ride into familiar, slimy darkness.

Check out the trailer below

The post Bone Keeper (2026) Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.

In Vitro (2024) Review

IN VITRO is co-directed by Will Howarth and Tom McKeith, with Howarth making his feature-length directorial debut. Star of the film Talia Zucker (LAKE MUNGO) collaborated with the duo as co-writers. The film also features stand out performances from Ashley Zukerman (SUCCESSION, APPLE CIDER VINEGAR), as well as Will Howarth (BEAST).

Layla lives on a remote cattle property with her husband, Jack, who has developed a new process for breeding livestock. But the farm is struggling, and the isolated existence is not the life Layla dreamed of, especially when several unsettling events occur on the property. As Layla starts to question her life with Jack, she discovers that there is a disturbing presence with them on the farm.

IN VITRO starts off as looking like it is nothing more than a marriage drama but do stick with it, it might appear static and uninvolving (and for good reason), but I can assure you that once the groundwork has been laid down that what follows is intense, bewildering and keeps you on your toes. Where the story goes I cannot and will not say, I would like the viewer to be as fresh to IN VITRO as I was with nothing more than a basic plot online to go on.

What I can tell you is that the film’s sound design and photography are both excellent. The photography captures both the beauty and sparseness of the landscape, whereas the sound design adds metallic textures to an unsettling and perplexing effect. IN VITRO’s midsection is incredibly tense following an OMG reveal that knocks you for six. It then settles into a less tense, but more disturbing and disorientating final act that will sit with you long after the film finishes.

The post In Vitro (2024) Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.

Osiris (2025) Review

When a group of trained soldiers discover we’re not alone in the universe, Linda Hamilton is the only thing standing between them and certain death. A team of Special Forces commandos wake up on an alien spacecraft with no memory of how they arrived, and quickly discover they are being hunted by a merciless alien race.

Starring Max Martini (CONTACT), Brianna Hildebrand (DEADPOOL), Linds Edwards (HOMEFRONT) LaMonica Garrett (1883) and Linda Hamilton (THE TERMINATOR), Osiris is written by William Kaufman (SHRAPNEL) and Paul Reichelt (THE CHANNEL) and is directed by Kaufman.

OSIRIS has a couple of things that weigh up in its favour, it looks good for a film produced on a limited budget and its use of practical effects is welcome. Sure, the aliens are all too obviously men in costumes however that just adds to its throwback charm. Otherwise, writer/director William Kaufman’s film fails to make good on its B-movie set-up. There is next to no characterisation or originality. In a nutshell OSIRIS is ALIENS meets PREDATOR with well staged but overlong action sequences that lack any dynamic tension.

If you’re going to homage James Cameron’s ALIENS, which is both an absolute classic and near flawless entertainment, then you really do have to up your game, unfortunately that is not the case here with OSIRIS. Instead, key moments from Cameron’s 1986 classic are slotted into the narrative and rather than elicit a favourable response they instead result in a groan. Linda Hamilton – whose inclusion is yet another nod to James Cameron’s work, this time THE TERMINATOR franchise – drops into the mix at around an hour into the film but her appearance comes too late to save the day as this film was already dead-on-arrival.

For all the carnage and goo there is no throbbing, driving dynamic with either the film’s direction or script to elevate this above being a near endless homage to ALIENS, here are just a few examples – a soldier freaks out just like Hicks from ALIENS but without the late great Bill Paxton’s charisma or charm, the soldiers come across a young female survivor who tells the guys all that they are going to die, just like Newt in ALIENS, and there is an end moment that rifts on ALIENS’ Bishop getting lanced through his chest. The film’s final scene changes tact nodding instead to the climatic twist from the original 1968 PLANET OF THE APES and yet again you wish OSIRIS was more its own beast rather than constantly nodding to others.

OSIRIS is available on Digital Platforms 28 July and on DVD & Blu-ray 1 September. Distributed by Signature Entertainment

Trailer YouTube

The post Osiris (2025) Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.

Neurovenge (2025) Review

Director Mina Soliman (Karakurt, Allodynia) makes her feature debut with this chilling Black Mirror-esque thriller that’s set to move in on digital this June courtesy of Reel 2 Reel Films.

Following the devastating loss of her brother Charlie (Blake Canning – BUTCHERS, WHAT LURKS BENEATH), teen Jill (Isabella Shibuta – RIGHT UNDER MY ROOF, DESIGNING CHRISTMAS) struggles to deal with her overwhelming grief as she grows even more distant from her alcoholic stepfather. The pair hope they can begin to rebuild their lives when they are approached to be a test group for an intriguing new AI home programme.

However, it’s not long until the house’s AI system ‘Jackie’ begins to overstep the boundaries and Henry grows wary of their new high-tech hell hole. Tensions rise between father and daughter as ‘Jackie’ comforts Jill through her mourning, even taking control by inviting her friends to the house. But, when ‘Jackie’ appears to go offline and the house goes into lockdown, Jill and her friends must attempt to survive the tormenting house of horrors as ‘Jackie’ begins to reboot and the system’s true intentions are revealed… with deadly consequences…

Director Mina Soliman’s debut feature NEUROVENGE is another in a long line of thrillers where technology terrorises humans. From the calming yet threateningly neutral tones of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’s Hal 9000, through to Julie Christie’s Seventies flick DEMON SEED and then right up to and including recent release M3GAN 2.0, technology rarely benefits the user and instead takes full control and makes their lives hell. And that is exactly what happens here in NEUROVENGE as AI system ‘Jackie’ does just that to her human captives, this time in the name of revenge.

NEUROVENGE should suck given that it is hardly breaking new ground but surprisingly it doesn’t. Buoyed up by decent performances, a decent pace and a short runtime, every minute is made to count. If I were to have a criticism of NEUROVENGE it would be that come the film’s climax matters are resolved far too tidily and quickly for my liking and also sometimes the sound mix for a couple of the film’s start-up scenes varies but otherwise this modestly budgeted sci-fi thriller hits the spot nicely.

On digital 30 June from Reel 2 Reel Films

TRAILER

The post Neurovenge (2025) Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.

Rebirth: Home Sweet Home (2025) Review

This supernatural action horror based on the hit video-game franchise is off-the-wall madness. American cop Jake, who whilst on holiday with his family in Thailand, is thrust into a supernatural world after interrupting a mass murderer’s ritual that opens the Gates of Hell.

When demons escape, possessing people on the streets, the city is thrown into chaos. To save the city, and his trapped family, Jake must ally himself with a mysterious Novice Monk and embark on a journey through the supernatural world of The Hindrance to shut the Gates of Hell.

REBIRTH: HOME SWEET HOME is directed by Alexander Kiesl and Steffen Hacker (BEYOND BELIEF: FACT OR FICTION) and is based on a 2017 videogame that draws on Thai folklore for its horror elements. It’s a survival game that sees the player attempting to evade evil spirits, after waking up in the middle of nowhere, and find their way back to the ‘home sweet home’ of the title. In a nutshell that’s what this film is exactly about so in that respect it is successful in transferring the basic concept to the screen.

As to whether this film matches the thrills and spills that the game franchise offers is not known to me, given that I am not a gamer, but what I can say is this. It’s a muddled affair that moves at a zippy pace and that the visual effects work will unfortunately not appease some viewers, I am talking about those only used to more impressive visual effects work in larger budgeted movies. For me, the effects work was fine, it adds the charm of this videogame adaptation. It can tend to be exposition-heavy but with demonic possessions aplenty, much running around and scrapping and shooting, it is far from dull. It’s rough and ready and often confused but it hit the spot nicely for the short while it played.

REBIRTH: HOME SWEET HOME is available on Digital Platforms 14 April and DVD & Blu-ray 21 April. Distributed by Signature Entertainment

TRAILER

The post Rebirth: Home Sweet Home (2025) Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.

Scanners (1981) Limited Edition 4K/UHD and Blu-ray Box set Review

SCANNERS Limited Edition 4K/UHD and Blu-ray Box set is set for release on 31 March 2024 and will also be available in Standard Edition 4K and Blu-ray. The groundbreaking special effects and iconic explosive scenes are about to be seen in all their grotesque glory with a brand-new 4K restoration, with the approval of Cronenberg himself.

The set is presented in a stunning rigid slipcase complete with new artwork by Krishna Shenoi and comes packed with a slew of brilliant special features including a new commentary, interviews with cast and crew, including Micheal Ironside. There’s also a 120-page book filled with essays and more. Please see the full list of features on attached.

Drifter Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack – DEAD RINGERS) is plagued by incessant voices in his head, unaware that he’s a ‘Scanner’ – a person with extraordinary telepathic powers, who can not only read minds but literally tear them apart.

When he meets Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan – THE PRISONER, BRAVEHEART), the scientist recruits him and others of his kind to help them adapt to society. But a sinister underground movement of Scanners led by the psychotic Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside – TOTAL RECALL, STARSHIP TROOPERS) have other intentions and the ultimate confrontation of minds awaits.

Director David Cronenberg was in his imperial phase back at the tail end of the Seventies and beginning of the Eighties, with each of his successive movies generating bigger headlines in genre magazines and advertised with increasingly more garish and freakish posters and TV advertising. By the time SCANNERS was released and set up shop in the public conscientiousness, Cronenberg had already transformed the horror genre with his brand of body-horror both repulsing and captivating audiences with titles such as SHIVERS and RABID.

With his 1981 release SCANNERS the advertising folks made no secret that in the film a bespectacled man’s head explodes. It was a bold move, effectively taking what would turn out to be the film’s main talking point and therefore ruining the ‘shock’ for viewers in advance. It did what all good marketing should do though, and it had curious punters packing into cinemas worldwide making it a moderate box-office hit. Where SCANNERS really connected with audiences though was through the advent of home entertainment and V/H/S videotapes which was back then a rapidly expanding market.

It was through video that I first got to see SCANNERS – I would have been aged around thirteen or fourteen at the time – and as I did with other movies that had made a dent on my impressionable mind prior to actually seeing, I was sat there poised with a cushion to hand lest anything onscreen got too much for what I considered (incorrectly) to be my delicate sensibilities.

As it proved too often be the case, my imagination of what I envisaged might happen onscreen was far worse than what I saw. I was also surprised by how cerebral Cronenberg’s SCANNERS was. I had anticipated a pure gorefest and what I got instead was a very well thought out and considered storyline and script with there being only a couple of well executed moments where any gore kicked in. Michael Ironside as the film’s bad guy Darryl Revok who oozes both onscreen magnetism and steals the film from everyone else whenever he features onscreen.

Jump forward to 2025 and my now revisiting Cronenberg’s SCANNERS for this pleasingly special feature-heavy Limited Edition 4K edition, and my appreciation of this sci-fi horror remains undiminished. Watching it again is like catching up with an old friend, the viewing elicited a warm fuzzy feeling that took me back to my younger years and reminded me again of just how ground-breaking and exciting horror cinema was back then. Presented in 4K I am seeing it cleaner and clearer than at any time of viewing it prior and I ended up falling in love with it all over again.

Special Features

New 4K restoration approved by Director David Cronenberg

Dual format edition including both UHD and Blu-ray with main feature and bonus features on both discs

UHD presented in HDR with Dolby Vision

New audio commentary by Caelum Vatnsdal

Audio commentary by William Beard

My Art Keeps Me Sane: an interview with Actor Stephen Lack

Method in his Madness: an interview with Actor Michael Ironside

Bad Guy Dane: an interview with Actor Lawrence Dane

The Eye of Scanners: an interview with Cinematographer Mark Irwin

Mind Fragments: an interview with Composer Howard Shore

The Chaos of Scanners: an interview with Executive Producer Pierre David

Exploding Brains & Popping Veins: an interview with Makeup Effects Artist Stephan Dupuis

Monster Kid: an interview with Makeup Effects Artist Chris Walas

Cronenberg’s Tech Babies: a video essay by Tim Coleman

Limited Edition Contents

Rigid slipcase with new artwork by Krishna Shenoi

120-page book with new essays by Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes, Eugenio Ercolani and Gian Giacomo Petrone, Kurt Halfyard, Craig Ian Mann, Francesco Massaccesi, Jessica Scott, Emma Westwood and Heather Wixson

6 collectors’ art cards

The post Scanners (1981) Limited Edition 4K/UHD and Blu-ray Box set Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.

Unspeakable: Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2024) Review

Breaking Glass Pictures has unleashed the ultimate cosmic horror experience with UNSPEAKABLE: BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP, the chilling final chapter in Chad Ferrin’s Lovecraftian trilogy. Starring Edward Furlong (TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY), Robert Miano, and Susan Priver, this genre-bending fever dream debuts worldwide on March 4, 2025.

Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s terrifying short story, the film follows Ambrose London (Furlong), a world-renowned oneirologist summoned to Arkham Asylum to investigate a deeply disturbing case—a man possessed by a 122-year-old colonial peasant. But when Ambrose’s “Dream Machine” accidentally opens a portal to an alien entity hellbent on world annihilation, all hell breaks loose in a twisted, nightmarish descent into madness.

Any movie that is inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft-inspired with the author’s surreal material often proving an uneasy bedfellow with the medium of film. That said, the late great Stuart Gordon pulled it off with, especially with his classic 1985 flick RE-ANIMATOR, but of late, and aside from the terrific 2023 Greek flick MINORE, little else has succeeded.

The opening moments of Chad Ferrin’s UNSPEAKABLE: BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP initially signalled that this was going to be a major misfire whereby a prison-related incident sees male genitals, oral sex and the tearing off with teeth of a man’s baby maker redacted. Whether this was just for the review copy I received or how the film was meant to play out, I don’t know. What I can say is that later, UNSPEAKABLE has no qualms about showing EVERYTHING, and I do mean EVERYTHING!

Against all the odds stacked against it – a low budget, a sometimes over-bearing soundtrack and head-scratching plot concerns – UNSPEAKABLE works! It makes for a fun and refreshingly perverse entertainment that is never slow in coming forward. From the well-endowed mutant penises that bare teeth, which remind one of the chestburster from Ridley Scott’s ALIEN to the pleasingly over-the-top gore and violence, Chad Ferrin’s movie is a guilty pleasure and truly something to behold. It may not match the brilliance of Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft-related treasurers, but it still puts a smile on one’s face all the same.

The post Unspeakable: Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2024) Review appeared first on My Bloody Reviews.