Switchblade Romance (DVD)

Horror films are popular at the moment. This, to my mind, is a good thing. I like horror films. This one's a slasher movie from France, of all places. If there's one European country that's never had an indigenous horror movie tradition, it's France. (Of all the truly great horror movies, only one, Les Yeux Sans Visage by Georges Franju, is French.) But the director, Alexandre Aja, clearly knows his stuff, and he's cranked out what is *almost* a great little film. Two pretty students, Marie and Alex, go to visit Alex's parents in their remote country house in order to revise for some exams. Everything seems fairly normal, with easy going parents, adorable ...

With more and more Hollywood horror films becoming either lame remakes or utter ****, it seems it’s up to the rest of the world to begin making quality horror once again. Japan and South Korea seem to have taken up this challenge the most successfully, what with creepy psychological horrors such as The Ring, The Grudge and A Tale Of Two Sisters. Hell, even the UK has made a few good films (if you count Shaun of the Dead and Severence as horrors rather than comedies). But of all the places in the world, who’d have thought that France would be the country to produce one of the goriest, scariest and most tense horror films of recent years. The country that gave us ...

Two female friends (Marie and Alex) decide to spend the holidays with Alex’s family in their rustic farmhouse, nestled deep in the French countryside. Their spirits are high, but by the time they drive out to the house they are exhausted from the day’s exertions and soon retire to bed. In the depth of night, the only sound that can be heard is the rattle of music through the headphones of Marie’s personal stereo, who is blissfully unaware of anything that is going on around her. Outside the farmhouse, two beams of light break the darkness – the headlights from a truck, silently making its way along the approach road to the house. The truck pulls up outside the ...