Review - Les chambres rouges (‘Red Rooms’) 2023, Pascal Plante

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS 

The plot

Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) leads a solitary life, seemingly devoid of friends or family. She works as a model, topping up her income with on-line poker games, which she’s very good at.  In her high-rise Montreal apartment, she drinks smoothies, works out to home exercise videos and builds her own Alexa type virtual hacker-proof assistant, Guinevere.

Her life-style allows her the opportunity to attend the trial of Ludovic Chevalier, (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), a man accused of murdering three blonde haired blue eyed teenage girls and broadcasting the crimes in pay per view dark web ‘red rooms’. The prosecution has obtained films of two of the victims, but that of the third girl, Camille Beaulieu, has never been found. 

In the pre-dawn queue for a seat in the court room’s public gallery, Kelly-Anne meets Clémentine (Laurie Babin), a ‘fan’ of Chevalier, convinced that he’s innocent and has been framed.  Clémentine seems to have an answer for everything – even when the jury is presented with photos of Camille’s bloodied and torn school uniform, found buried in Chevalier’s garden,  Clémentine theorises that Camille got her first period and buried the clothes out of shame. 

Kelly-Anne in the public gallery

Despite Kelly-Anne’s seeming disgust for anyone that isn’t herself, the two women form a friendship of sorts, and when Kelly-Anne finds out that Clémentine is sleeping rough to be able to go to the trial every day, she invites her to stay at her place. 

Clémentine is impressed with Kelly-Anne’s home, particularly with Guinevere, who Kelly-Anne states is impenetrable to being hacked or influenced by AI data mining. Clémentine asks Guinevere to tell her a joke, which she does.  

When the day comes that Chevalier’s films are to be played in court, everyone must leave apart from those most closely involved in the case  Clémentine is disappointed; this is her chance to see for herself that it’s not Chevalier in the films – she just needs to hear his voice.

Chevalier

‘You never do,’ Kelly-Anne says, first aiders push past them to see to fainters inside the court-room. Clémentine demands to know how Kelly-Anne knows this, and she admits that she has the films, she’s watched them, and Chevalier is guilty. She adds, ‘they are not for you’.

Back at Kelly-Anne’s apartment, they watch the films.  We the audience do not see what Clémentine does, but we hear it, and we we see Clémentine’s face as it crumples into heart-breaking  distress.  Kelly-Anne observes  Clémentine’s reaction instead of what’s happening on screen, her face both coldly impassive but somewhat fascinated by the tears running down  Clémentine’s cheeks.  Kelly-Anne goes to play the second video, and when Clémentine asks her not to, she does it anyway.

Poor Clem

That night, as they take their usual spots to sleep outside the court, Clémentine tells Kelly-Anne she’s leaving. She asks her why she’s so fascinated with Chevalier. After all,  Clémentine has her reasons – she believed that Chevalier was innocent and now she knows he’s not, she doesn’t want to hang around.  Kelly-Anne is unable to give her an answer. Clémentine then leaves, as unsure as we are of Kelly-Anne’s motives in befriending her. 

This bitch

On Chevalier’s birthday, Kelly-Anne attends the court wearing a blonde wig, blue contact lenses and Camille’s school uniform. 

 As she’s dragged out by security, Chevalier waves at her.  After already losing one job and on thin ice with her modelling agency,  she is dropped from their books all together because there’s edgy and there’s….whatever the fuck it is Kelly-Anne thinks she’s up to. Running alongside this is Kelly-Anne becoming increasingly paranoid, thinking she’s been followed and watched.

This doesn’t stop her trying to get a place in an on-line auction to buy the film of Camille’s murder – a spot she wins.  Her joy when she places the winning bid is akin is how most people would react if they won the lottery, or were told they are finally cancer free. It’s the first time we really see her show an emotion other than disgust or distain.  As she watched the video, she cries, but it’s triumph, joy, euphoria...she’s the one that gets to see this. She’s so damn happy about it he celebrates by drinking champagne out of a silver goblet. 

Kelly-Anne has herself a time

Later that night, Kelly-Anne breaks into Francine’s home, because another hobby of hers is cyber-stalking and hacking the computers of the mothers of dead children.  Dressed in the blonde wig, she takes smiling selfies in Camille’s bedroom and leaves the film of her death on a flash drive in Francine’s bedroom.

We then see a news report that Chevalier has changed his plea to guilty following new evidence coming to light. 

Kelly-Anne seems to have gotten away with all her nefarious deeds, because we see her watch the news report and an interview with Clémentine, who explains her deep regret at her obsession with Chevalier and her sympathy for the murdered girls and their families. 

True Crime in the Red Rooms

I had initially called this part ‘the modern obsession with true crime’ but it’s not a modern obsession. In the times of public hangings, aside from the fact people used to attend as a fun day out, they could buy souvenirs  - pieces of the rope, booklets with ballads and sketches about the crimes. Newspapers have gleefuly and graphically reported crimes from Jack the Ripper to Fred and Rose West, and they will always do this because to quote Stephen King, ‘if it bleeds it leads’.  It has been an enduring fascination for many of us, myself included. 

At least twenty true crime books are on my shelves and my Spotify playlist is loaded with episodes from Casefile, They Walk Among Us and Generation Why. Even as a child I liked crime stories and watching programmes like Morse, Twin Peaks and Cracker.

The keenest of true crime fans however, might find attending a high-profile murder trial a little too much. From the distance of a download, a stream, we can safely consume the most violent and disturbing of content. Face to face with the reality of such a crime, such as being a juror in a trial, is a different matter. I am not sure I could have been on the jury in the case of Preston Davey or the on-going trial of Simon Levy. 

Kelly-Anne’s fascination with Chevalier extends beyond the ‘normal’,  if you can call such a preoccupation with a murder normal. I think Kelly-Anne is less interested in the murderer and more in in the pain and violence he inflicts – that’s what really dings her buzzer. 

Camille’s mother Francine calls Chevalier’s groupies ‘obscene’ and true crime fans will be reminded of the women that attended Ted Bundy’s trials and wrote him love-letters. 

So we are forced to examine why we continue watching, and why we feel a kinship with Kelly-Anne, at least up until she shows Clémentine  the murder videos.

Kelly-Anne’s motives 

If we’re being generous to Kelly-Anne (and we shouldn’t be, because she’s monstrous) we could conclude that her obsession with Chevalier and the Camille tape is to prove his guilt and make sure he’s put away for life. 

But she:

• Cyber-stalks and hacks Francine
• Uses that information to break into her house
• Leaves the flash drive with Camille’s murder on it instead of just handing it over to the police
• Comes to court dressed as Francine’s dead daughter
• Has videos of the other murders, which she has watched so frequently she can time-stamp what’s going to happen when for Clémentine
• Forces Clémentine to watch the second video when she doesn’t want to

So her motives are entirely self-serving and because she finds it all such fun. She finds it fun to show Clémentine the videos, she finds it fun to cos-play as dead girl and she gets off on the pain and trauma of other people. Aside from that, Kelly-Anne has the feeling of an empty shell. She’s cold and blank. She disinterested in anything else outside of her own wants and needs. Even the food she makes herself – the same smoothie every night – is only there is sustain her and not because she likes eating. 

She treats Clémentine like a specimen in a jar, or an annoying fly buzzing around her. The invitation to stay is so Kelly-Anne can show off her fancy apartment to a girl that’s been sleeping rough and is impressed with virtual assistants. I am not even sure that it goes that deep with Kelly-Anne. I’ve read her being compared to Patrick Bateman, the main character of Bret Easton Ellis’  1991 novel American Psycho, who states, I simply am not there.

It’s Kelly-Anne’s emptiness that makes her so terrifying, and what a relief for us. Sure, we maybe weirdos that like nothing more than a Saturday night with snacks and a serial killer documentary, but we will never be like Kelly-Anne. 

Guinevere and ‘The Lady of Shallot’ 

'The Lady of Shallot' by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1875

Our girl Kelly-Anne does have a couple of interests outside of snuff films and smoothies, and that’s old-timey myths and poetry.

She calls her virtual assistant ‘Guinevere’ after the wife of King Arthur. I am sure that there’s a reason for this that someone more film literate would be able to explain, but all I can base it on it is this summary from ebsco.com:

Guinevere is a pivotal figure in Arthurian legend, best known as the wife of King Arthur of Camelot. Her character is multifaceted, often depicted as beautiful and desirable, yet embroiled in controversy regarding her fidelity and agency. In various interpretations, she experiences abduction, betrayal, and romantic entanglement, particularly with the knight Lancelot, highlighting themes of love, loyalty, and treachery. Guinevere is typically portrayed as wise but has also been characterized as scheming in some tales. While there is debate about the historicity of both Guinevere and Arthur, the legends surrounding them are deeply rooted in folklore and were popularized through medieval literature, notably in texts by Geoffrey of Monmouth and Sir Thomas Malory. Alternative narratives about her exist, presenting her in different lights—ranging from an accomplice to betrayal to a victim of abduction. 

So is Guinevere stand-in for how Kelly-Anne sees herself? Or how we see her? Or how Kelly-Anne sees the abducted and murdered girls?

Kelly-Anne’s desk top background is the 1875 John Atkins Grimshaw painting ‘The Lady of Shallot’ in turn inspired by 1832 poem of the same name by Alfred Tennyson. The poem was inspired by Elaine of Astolat, who dies of her unrequited love for Lancelot (this thing has a layers, like a TOR network….or an onion. Shallot...get it?)

In the poem, the lovesick Elaine can only view the world through a mirror, and spends her days weaving a tapestry of what she sees. A knight passing on a horse causes Elaine to lose her mind, and I can’t fault her for that as someone that watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Journey 27 times in one month because of Keanu Reeves. Elaine rushes to the window to be able to see her love properly. She leaves her tower, finds a boat, writes her name on it, sails it down the river to Camelot but dies before the gets there. Lancelot, the hot knight, is like, ‘she’s a ten but she’s dead’ and that’s the end of the poem. 

I don’t know if this is some kind of Victorian cautionary tale about women not getting fancy ideas above their station, or remaining indoors and doing chores or what, but mirrors are significant in both the poem and in Kelly-Anne’s world.  Throughout the film, we see mirror images and reflections  layered on top of each other; in the glass box Chevalier sits in, the windows of Kelly-Anne’s high-rise, in her computer screens.  In the first court room scene, Clémentine sits to Kelly-Anne’s left and another woman that looks a lot like her sits to her far right; Clémentine is obscured by the glass box that keeps Chevalier from the rest of the court-room and the reflections of the jurors sitting opposite. The other women is partially hidden by a woman sitting in front of her.  Though I’d like to think mirrors are trying to symbolise two sides to Kelly-Anne, or the face she presents to the world (a competent and reliable model, professional and reserved in her interactions) and the face we slowly start to see; depraved, degenerate, sick. 

What’s a ‘shallot’? An onion! 

Back to Guinevere, who has more conscious than her creator does. When Kelly-Anne asked Guinevere to tell her a joke, she responds,  ‘Why are ghosts such bad liars? Because you can see right through them!’

Scared that Guinevere has been monitoring her activities, Kelly-Anne blends her phone, though someone as tech-savvy as her should know that blending the phone is useless as the incriminating information isn’t just on the device itself. She’s going to be in some serious trouble if someone does a mere cursory recce of her desk-top or knows how to navigate TOR. 

Final thoughts

Red Rooms is a compelling, disturbing and chilling watch. It’s Kelly-Anne’s supercilious coldness that makes her such a twisted and creepy main character. For want of a better term, she gave me the ick, and made me feel very, very uncomfortable. Her coldness is in stark contrast to emotional and vulnerable  Clémentine, who exudes a naive warmness and is kind and passionate, even if she is not that bright and is easily lead.  Clémentine knows when she’s wrong and the minute she knows she’s wrong about Chevalier, she leaves. Why she doesn’t grass up Kelly-Anne for having the tapes is anyone’s guess, but perhaps her TV interview at the end of the film is a clue; she has no desire to be in the orbit of people like Kelly-Anne anymore, and perhaps part of that is trying to pretend that she never saw those tapes at all.

You can read this film as a comment on how on-line life isolates us from the real world. In an age where a constant stream of death and misery in out hands, right there at our finger-tips, we can lose connection to humanity. But there we sit, just like Kelly-Anne, consuming and consuming and consuming, mindlessly, thoughtlessly, without stopping to consider the real cost, the real loss and the real people for whom this is really happening to. 

Red Rooms is available to watch on Channel4.com 

Rewatching Dead Calm (1989, Phillip Noyce)

Contains spoilers...(duh, this film is 37 years old).

Horror movie husbands are frequently terrible. They move their families into creepy houses, they refuse to listen, they become possessed and relentlessly chop wood. Their long-suffering wives frequently have to plead with them; to move from the creepy house; to believe that something is terribly wrong; not to go back for the teddy bear; not to sit in a darkened room smoking and drinking and watching Super-8 home-movies.

Sam Neill, here playing Captain John Ingram, was a terrible horror movie husband in 1981’s deranged Possession. A husband and father so terrible he punched his wife in the face and went on a 3 week long bender, leaving his kid alone at home to survive by eating jam. The kid later drowns in the bath because both his parents are terrible, terrible self-absorbed, neglectful arse-holes.

In Dead Calm he’s a dream of a horror movie husband, but then the bar is low. I mean, he does leave his wife, Rae, (Nicole Kidman) on her own on a boat with a sweaty nut-case. Let’s also try and ignore the icky age difference between them. Neill was thirty-nine and Nicole Kidman was not yet old enough to buy an alcoholic drink in the States, though apparently her character is supposed to be 24. That’s movie casting for you, I guess. Girls only just old enough to drive are wives to men that were around to remember when seat belts weren’t mandatory and thirty-five year old women are playing the mothers of thirty-three year old men.

Following the traumatic death of their young son, John and Rae take a Pacific ocean vacation on their yacht The Saracen with their dog Ben. Not too long into their trip, they spy a boat that appears to be in trouble. John radios the boat but there’s no response. However one passenger is already on his way to The Saracen. That’s Hughie (Billy Zane) a man with a handful of passports, a newspaper ad clipping that says ‘hot girls wanted’ and a terrible story to tell.

Hughie...stranger danger in human form

The Orpheus, the ship he has abandoned, is sinking, taking the other already dead passengers down with it. How did they die, Hughie? Food poisoning you say? Ten days earlier? Hmmm. This would make me query 1) what Hughie had been eating for those ten days and 2) Exactly how long does it take a ship to sink?

John and Rae also look a bit doubtful of Hughie’s story (John flips the horror movie husband switch by being the one that’s more sus of Hughie, instead of Rae begging him to believe her that something is wrong) but they can’t exactly tell him to bugger off, so they lock him in the bedroom while John goes to investigate The Orpheus. Once onboard, John finds the dismembered remains of the crew and passengers, realises his spidey senses about Hughie were right, and desperately tries to get back to The Saracen.

However, Hughie has busted his way out of the bedroom, knocked Rae out and stolen the boat, leaving poor John floating in the middle of the ocean. Which is obviously not good, but in a way, it is because we get a feast for the eyes in the form of Sam Neill wearing soaking wet see through clothes. Mr. Darcy who.

Rae wakes on The Saracen with a split lip and a cracking headache and Hughie is doing a funny little dance on the deck and pretending he doesn’t know who John is or where he’s gone. Then Hughie says, ‘I was watching you while you were sleeping, I’ve got to say your face fascinates me,’ and tells Rae she has ‘magnificent bone structure’. Rae tries to convince Hughie to turn the boat around, but he says ‘they tried to suck the life out me!’ Facing a clearly unwell man, Rae plays along. It is a testament to Billy Zane’s acting that he is so handsome with his Marlon Brando face, beautiful white teeth and huge brown eyes but still manages to be utterly repulsive.

 Back to The Orpheus and John, now topless and very sweaty, has got the electrics working again and finds a video of the crew and passengers. Creepily, his own ship is the background of a video where a man has an argument with Hughie, who then basically goes nuts and kills everybody, though we don’t know why he also had to cut their heads off.

On The Saracen, while Hughie is distracted playing with the dog, Rae tries to radio The Orpheus. I absolutely love the way she says, ‘John are you there?’ in her squeaky little voice.

As it becomes clear that Hughie isn’t going to be talked into going back, or letting Rae go, she feigns affection and attraction for him ( and she does this very well, considering when they kiss it makes me gip because I am thinking how unpleasant it is for her).

She makes Hughie a post-coital lemonade laced with sedatives and we are treated to a very funny POV as the drugs take hold and Hughie can’t see straight. It’s around this mark that poor Ben gets harpooned so skip ahead around 4 minutes if you want to miss that bit.

With Hughie incapacitated below deck, Rae tries to turn the boat around, but the winds are high as a storm passes so she struggles. And she needs to hurry...John is adrift on a make-shift raft and has set fire to the sinking schooner. With both Rae and John having some sense of self-preservation, it’s a nice change to have horror movie characters that aren’t total dumbasses that deserve to die.

However, Hughie has woken up and escaped the ropes and is rewarded with a harpooning. As he’s a bit of a classic horror movie villain though, this doesn’t kill him. Nor does being bludgeoned or being slung into the sea (to be fair, Rae is slightly daft here and puts him on a life raft instead of straight into the water). She rescues John and they embrace, their nightmare over.

Just kidding, of course it isn’t, suckers. They couple find the now-empty life-raft and assume Hughie’s dead, because where the fuck is he? Who cares. Rae takes a calming dip and John tenderly washes her hair (aside from the fact he’s now no longer with us, a few thousand miles and a 30 year age gap, I am gutted that Sam Neill will never tenderly wash my hair). But gah! No, it’s Hughie. Why did John go and leave Rae with her hair covered in shampoo? Who knows. But he flare guns Hughie pow right in the kisser. Roollllll credits.

Writing this, I learned that test audiences didn’t like the original ending – a red rope training in the water, a bloody handprint on the side of the boat – considering it too ‘open ended’. Thus the flare-to-the-face final five minutes was tacked on to the end. I think this spoils things a bit. I like the idea of not knowing Hughie’s fate, and I like that Rae’s the one that saves the day.

I can’t remember the first time I watched Dead Calm. It probably would have occupied that space between Christian Slater movies and ones like Flatliners. Billy Zane likely would have been the main draw, with Sam Neill being too dad coded to be fanciable when I was a teenager (though Jurassic Park did have me and and sister obsessed with his butt for a time). Talking of dads, it’s Kidman that’s the true Daddy of this film. Rae is resourceful, smart and capable. We don’t need another pointless 5 minutes for John to rescue her right back when she’s already done a perfectly decent job thank you very much.

But this review was really an excuse to write about Sam Neill, who passed away on 13 July.

Sam Neill was born in Northern Ireland on 14 September, 1947. His parents named him Nigel, but at school he started calling himself Sam to distinguish himself from all the other Nigels. I wonder what kind of a life he would have had, if he’d decided to stick with being called Nigel. Would it have been very different?

His career spanned 51 years and over 70 films. Though for horror fans he’s very much a confirmed Scream King, his range of performance and projects feels unmatched. He had the ability to play even the vilest of characters with elements of humanity; not just a villain but human, containing multitudes.

His wholesome Instagram account documented his life with his farm animals and birds, and his career as a winegrower. He was an advocate for local environmental issues and animal welfare.

In 2022, he was diagnosed with stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, and at the time of his death the cancer was in remission.

An 2025 August interview with the Telegraph, published after his death, concludes:

As our time together came to a close, Neill was wry about the subject of death. “You know, I have a little painting by Helena Bonham Carter’s mother, Elena Propper De Callejón,” he explained. “It is a very sweet watercolour of a funny old thing in a flowery dress and bonnet. At the bottom of the painting is an inscription: ‘But she was kind…’ When I am no longer about, I hope someone will be able to say that about me.”

I didn’t know you, Sam. But I’d put money on it that as well as being talented and funny and handsome, you were also very, very kind.

Sam Neill, photographed at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, January 2016 Credit: Jeff Vespa/WireImage

100 Dates - It's Embarrassing to Have a Boyfriend

 

Vogue magazine has decided that it's embarrassing to have a boyfriend now . I guess that makes me super not embarrassing. The tenth anniversary of my singledom is this year. TEN YEARS. It’s the longest I’ve been single since I was old enough to date. I think I have reached a quiet state of acceptance. There’s not a lid for every pot. There’s not someone out there for everyone. He’s not going to turn up when I least expect it, or I stop looking. Ah the lies we are told. Mostly by coupled people that haven’t been single since you could buy cigs in packets of ten and a pint was £1.50. At least I am at an age where no-one does the sympathetic head tilt n’ nod. Chronically single people will know what this is. The look you get when you say, ‘no you haven’t met anyone. Yes, you went for dinner by yourself. The tilt n’ nod is usually followed by some advice. ‘have you tried dating apps?’ ‘have you tried paid dating apps?’ ‘Have you tried Meet Ups?’ ‘have you tried Speed Dating?’ Fuck off, Sue, I have tried all of that and here we are. Approaching fifty, applying trans-dermal gel before bed and fantasising about Leo Woodall in Vladimir.

The last dates I went on were in 2024. Covid has messed with our perception of time, but the fact that this is is coming up for two years ago is kind of blowing my tiny mind. The scythe’s swing is remorseless, to paraphrase my favorite TV toxic boss.

46 – That’s Not My Name (Spring 2024)

I can’t remember his name. We went for a coffee and then a couple of beers on a wet, cold spring day. He was very nice. So nice I can remember literally nothing about him. On the shortish side, kind face, bald head. I can’t even really remember what we talked about. I do remember I wasn’t feeling it enough for a second date. I think he might have kids and a mum that was a biochemist?

47, 48, 49 (maybe 50?) – Cranberry (Summer 2024)

Cranberry was Irish and he looked it. Red of hair, pale of skin, blue of eye. For some reason I had my distance preferences set to 100+ miles and thus I was messaged by Cranberry, who lived in a Northern town with great train links to London. I don’t want to go too much into these dates, because we went on a few, the last one being a big gig in London and some of the things Cranberry said set off alarm bells in respect of how he handled past rejections. He was younger (dammit, when will I learn? Never as we shall soon see). We were apparently on the same page about not continuing to meet up and I suspect he blocked me on WhatsApp afterwards. In some ways, I found this insulting. As if I was going to message him! But then I did go back and look at my archived chats, and occassionally I’d see a profile photo instead of a blob, and then one time, there he was with a woman, before reverting back to blob status again. So was he blocking me and unblocking me? I shall never know. I deleted the chat and his number the other week as part of a wider mass cull of data from my phone.

Summer 2025, I got a message from a man I previously wrote about. I’d long deleted his number, so I had no idea who it was. I replied saying as much, to which he responded something about missed opportunities. I said, great, but who are you? And he replied again but still would not say who it was. I worked it out, eventually and he asked if I fancied meeting up. No I fucking don’t. You are clearly lonely and going through your phone. These zombie moments have never been about me. It hasn’t taken six years to find work out that they liked me. They are just throwing out the lure and seeing who bites.

Winter 2025.

I let my loneliness and hope get the better of me. All those empty, grey and drizzly winter Sundays make me feel a way. I set up another Hinge account and after a week had a whopping 3 likes, one which was from a married couple looking for a unicorn. This really pissed me off. There are poly apps. Nowhere in my profile does it say I want to fuck a couple.

Three likes. It’s not normal to get such a low like rate when you’re ‘new’ on an app. You should be pushed to the top of the stack. The first week is where you should see the most likes. Rather than assume I was shadow banned, I internalised my lack of success and messaged my friend Lara who’s an old hat at this business and asked, ‘is it because I am old and ugly?’ She’s someone that gets a lot of attention on the apps, but then she has The Allure. I do not have the Allure. She assured me I am not old and ugly, the apps have been dead for a long time. I tried Bumble again. I got a lot more ‘likes’ but no matches. I felt crushed, like I did when I was a kid and picked last for games. I deleted both apps. I contented myself with trying not to stare at my current gym crush. It’s taken me three years to find out his name. Glaciers have moved faster.

There’s this Echobelly song called Great Things that goes: never wanted many things / except the chance to learn / from my mistakes / funny how you never learn/ but know them when they come around again.

And so it was when I met a man who I’ll call Ezra on one January day, and we began a text exchange, I fell into a familiar pattern. I’d respond to dry messages with essays. I’d double text. I’d send pictures of things related to what we had been talking about. We voice-noted; he said, ‘I love your voice’ but then left me on read for two days. One day, I was going to be in his locale. I suggested that we meet for a drink that evening when he finished work. He texted me throughout the day, but was as slippery as as a wet bar of soap in the shower when it came to confirming. He asked if he could ‘let me know later’. He let me know at gone half seven, when I was ready to head home.

The text exchanges dragged on painfully for a couple more weeks, until in Love Island parlance, I pied him. It’s not really a pie if the other party wasn’t really interested in the first place, but I have no tolerance for this kind of flaky pastry fuckery these days. I blamed myself; I had driven the interaction, I had made the first move. He hasn’t replied to the pie, which I both understand and find irritating. I didn’t do it to provoke a reaction, or try and get him to actually arrange a date. I was fed up, but I didn’t want to ghost because I think that’s rude. I would have liked an acknowledgement, though, just a simple, ‘OK, thanks for letting me know’, but nothing. I don’t think his silence is because he’s butt hurt, or that I have bruised his ego. I think it’s because he was never that arsed in the first place, and if anything he’s probably relieved.

When I couldn’t sleep, I’d lie in bed and think about just why I entertained a man like this for over a month. What is it about me? Why must I repeatedly chase what is clearly not for me?

I recently watched a video of Noel Gallagher signing autographs for a group of fans. I don’t know what country it was – somewhere warm and sunny. You could hear this woman off camera, she kept saying, ‘No-elle, No-elle, please, I am pregnant and I will call my baby after you,’ while he ignored her and wordlessly signed autographs for other people before jumping in the last Beamer out of Saigon and zooming off. I felt like that lady. I felt like the kid shouting, ‘Mummy! Look at me! Look at me!’ while hopping on one foot and doing jazz hands. I felt picked last for games again. What is it about me that wanted so desperately to have the attention of this man? Oh man, I thought that I was done with trying to decode texts from a man, but clearly not. This man whose words and actions were so out of sync it was like trying to decode the Zodiac cipher? Except…it wasn’t. I have been here too many times before to fail to notice this pattern, this way that some men will keep you in a virtual waiting room for their own entertainment. It should not concern me as to why this man did this to me. That’s really none of my business. All I should concern myself with is why I indulged it. It’s probably something to do with attachment styles, and long ingrained ideas and hopefullness. However, I am improving. Previously I would have let this kind of nonsense drag on for months, for years. 

There’s a theory that some people come into your life for a reason. I think Ezra happened along because for the longest time I had been thinking I would never fancy anyone again. (Gym crush doesn’t count, I just like looking at him). I had been in a ‘men – eww’ mindset for a long time. I mean...I’m sort of back there again now, but hey ho. Alanis said you live, you learn. Oasis said don’t look back in anger. In time, I’ll forget Ezra. He’ll be just like the others I met and can only vaguely remember because I read back on old blog posts and go, ‘oh yeah, that guy! What did he even look like?’ And I’ll walk on, ready for the next.

31 Days of Horror # 31 In the Mouth of Madness (dir. John Carpenter, 1994)

 **SPOILERS for this one...sorry.

‘God’s not supposed to be a hack horror writer.’

Dr Saperstein - where have we heard that name before, damn I love a horror movie Easter egg! (John Glover) - prepares for a new patient in-take at an unnamed asylum. Dragged in by two porters is insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill), screaming that he’s very definitely NOT MAD. Except Trent’s decorating his padded cell, asylum issue Pjs and face with black crayon crosses. So, he might be a bit mad. Or is he?

It seems there’s a madness spreading across the city, and on the request of Saperstein, Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) is called on to assess Trent to confirm if he’s ‘one of them’.

Trent has an incredible story to tell Dr Wrenn, that begins when he’s hired by the publisher of missing ‘bigger than Stephen King’ horror writer Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow). Cane’s gone missing with an unfinished manuscript and the head of his publishing house, Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston), wants it.

Cane’s books are so popular, fans will kill to get their hands on them, and his agent has gone on a axe-murdering spree.

Trent hasn’t even heard of Cane, which is kind of weird for an author that’s more famous than Stephen King – even people that aren’t fans have heard of him. Trent’s also dismissive of what he considers low-grade shit only morons would like, but when he reads them himself he has to grudgingly admit that they’re at least page-turners.

Trent’s investigations lead him to take a road trip with Cane’s editor Linda (Julie Carmen) to find Cane’s fictional town, Hobbs End. Strange things begin to happen - a painting changes when you turn your back, kids roam the otherwise empty streets of Hobbs End in menacing packs - which Trent dismisses as a publicity stunt created to hype the new book. Linda admits that this was supposed to be a stunt, but now Cane really is missing and they appear to be characters in the new book, which she’s only read part of.

As things get stranger, Trent desperately tries to escape Hobbs End, but Cane has other plans for him, Linda and….the whole world.

That sums up the plot very basically, but In the Mouth of Madness is a wild ride that’s covering a lot of themes in classic John Carpenter style. It’s a film that needs more than one watch to fully appreciate. It has moments that are supremely creepy (a cyclist looming out of the dark on a stretch of isolated road) and moments that are laugh out loud funny (a horrified Trent trying to prise Linda off when she attempts to seduce him ‘for the plot’).

This movie metas hard. As it progresses, you’re going to question what’s really happening. Is Trent trapped in a book within a book within a film? Is he just a character in Cane’s book, a creation of the author that only exists within the pages? Trent, of course, only exists within the confines of the film itself, a fact he becomes aware of in the final scene of the film; a hysterical Trent sitting in an empty cinema watching a film called In the Mouth of Madness starring himself.

Sam Neill is, as always, great. He does unhinged nerdy pompousness so well, and his comic timing is golden. His delivery of the line ‘never throw chips at a driver!’ is worth the streaming cost alone.

The rest of the cast are great, too, with Julie Carmen playing it straight compared to Sam Neill having the time of his life walking around banging things, rolling his eyes and declaring ‘this is REALITY!’

Content warning: I’m pleased to say this is pretty safe. There’s no dead dogs, no suicides and no sexual assault unless you count Linda lunging at Trent and trying to snog him. It’s a good starter / introduction to the genre, either for people that don’t like slashers / realistic violence or for younger audiences. There’s some jump scares, some gooey creatures, a head-on-backwards spider walk, but nothing to give you nightmares. Oh...I almost forgot that Trent punches Linda in the face, but she sort of deserves it. And it shouldn’t be funny, but it is.

Final thoughts: Do you read Sutter Cane?

31 Days of Horror # 30 Kill List (2011, dir. Ben Wheatley)

 ‘Daddy’s showing off.’

Former solider Jay (Neill Maskell) hasn’t had a job since he came back from a failed mission in Kiyv. His wife Shel (MyAnna Burning) is desperate for him to get a job; they’re broke. But Jay is also broken, and he’s angry and abusive, and prone to fits of explosive uncontrollable rage.

Shel invites his war friend Gal (Michael Smiley) and Gal’s girlfriend Fiona (Emma Fryer) over for dinner, which starts off bad, gets worse and then is sort of OK in the end, if you’re alright with your dinner guests fucking about with things in your house without you knowing.

Gal persuades Jay to do a hit job for The Client (Struan Rodger) who has a long kill list, but when Jay’s increasing unprofessionalism and violence threaten Shel and their son Sam things spiral. Jay’s not content with clean hits, he needs to absolutely annihilate those on the list and anyone else who happens to inadvertently get in the way. What’s weird though, is that before they die, the hits thank Jay.

What starts off as a crime film in the style of Lock Stock becomes something much darker as the story progresses, and the final few minutes are brutal. 

Content warning: Extreme violence

Final thoughts: Confirms my suspicion that people who work in HR suck.

31 days of Horror # Identity (2003, dir. James Mangold)

 ‘I saw you in an orange grove.’

A midnight hearing takes place to decide the fate of mass murderer Malcolm Rivers (Pruitt Taylor Vince). Dr Malik (Alfred Molina) is determined to stay Malcolm’s execution on the grounds that evidence supporting an insanity defence were not introduced in his trial.

In the meantime, fate brings ten strangers to a run-down motel on a rainy night when all roads in and out are flooded, and the phone lines are down.

There’s the motel manager, sleazy Larry (John Hawkes) George and Alice York (John C McGinley and Leila Kenzle) and Alice’s son Timmy (Brett Loehr), chauffer driver Ed (John Cusack) and his employer, career-stalled actress Suzanne (Rebecca DeMornay) newly-weds Ginny (Clea DuVall) and Lou (William Lee Scott), sex-worker Paris (Amanda Peet), cop Rhodes (Ray Liotta - RIP) and the prisoner he’s transporting, Robert (Jake Busey).

When Suzanne’s decapitated head is found in one of the laundry room’s washer driers, of course suspicion falls on Robert. But then Robert is also brutally murdered, the remaining guests must work out who the killer is; the thing is, they all think it could be any of them. Paranoia takes hold, with no-one knowing who they can trust. Things are further confused when the bodies disappear as if they were never there and Larry admits he’s not actually the hotel manager.

To say any more than that would give away a twist that’s not at the end of the film (though there is a twist at the end, too). What I can talk about is the feel of the film, and say it’s a delight to watch John Cusack spend so much time being soaking wet.

The film opens with a reading of the ghostly poem Antigonish by William Hughes Mearns. If you had a poetry book as a kid, you’ll probably know it as the little man who wasn’t there poem: ‘Yesterday upon the stair / I met a man who wasn’t there / he wasn’t there again today / I wish, I wish he’d go away’. This sets us up for the theme of the film, and it’s meaning becomes clear when you get to the twist.

The motel has a very unreal feel to it, it’s like a place in a video game, and this you’ll discover, is deliberate. It seems to be in a inescapable time-loop – when Robert attempts an escape, he just finds himself back in the motel’s diner with no explanation as to why.

Identity is a perfect Halloween watch. There’s no ghosts, (despite the poem) but there is an atmosphere of wrongness, and that’s before people start dying in horrible ways. Some of the story is told in brief flashbacks, so the first minutes you’d think this was a completely different kind of film.

Get the blankets, light some candles and turn the lights off. You’re in for a real treat with this one.

Content warning: the twist. Sorry.

Final thoughts: when I came home last night at three, the man was waiting there for me.

31 Days of Horror # 28 The Blair Witch Project (1999 dirs. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez)

‘I’m going to die out here’ 

Film students Heather (Rei Hance, then credited as Heather Donohue) Josh (Joshua Leonard) and Mike (Michael C Williams) head out into the woods in Burkittsville, Maryland, to make a documentary about local legend the Blair Witch. 

They interview locals, all who have their own creepy stories about the woods, and events over the years that have happened there. 

After their first night in the woods, they get very, very lost. Eerie noises wake them in the middle of the night, and mini cairns appear outside their tent in the morning. Strange stick figures hang from the trees and they lose the map and run out of food. 

As fear, exhaustion and hunger take hold, the three descend into paranoia and hopelessness. Then Josh disappears over night and all that’s left of him appears to be a parcel of blood, hair and teeth wrapped in a scrap of his shirt. They can hear him screaming for help in the darkness, but they can’t find him. 

They spend 8 days lost in the woods before finding an abandoned cabin that’s a callback to the townsfolk interviews that we see at the start of the film. It’s here that the film ends, in a final shocking scene that would either have you saying ‘fuck!’ if you paid attention to the dialogue at the start of the film, or, ‘what the fuck?’ if you didn’t. 

The Blair Witch is often credited as the first found footage film. It’s not – it’s preceded by Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and The Last Broadcast (1998). It can be credited for the first viral marketing campaign, though, with a website dedicated to the missing film makers and a pre-release mockumentary called The Curse of the Blair Witch that convinced early-days internet audiences that what they were watching was real, and not fiction. 

The actors, who also operated the cameras and sound equipment, had to keep out of the public eye once the film was released to keep up the idea that this was a real film made by real missing students. While the film was a critical and commercial success, the three actors suffered in the early days of the film’s release. Rei Hance in particular was never really able to shake the legacy of Heather Donohue – she retired from acting in 2008 and changed her name in 2020.

I can remember going to see Blair Witch, at the Empire Cinema in High Wycombe in the autumn of 1999. I thought, and still do think, that it’s a very scary film. Like Wolf Creek, the terror comes from isolation, and being lost in a wilderness you don’t know. I remember at the time thinking how easy it would be to lose your mind if you were in that situation. Hungry, sleep-deprived, cold and scared, how long would you survive? 

Content warning: motion sickness is a big issue in this one. Other than that, there’s not much to fear except your imagination.

Final thoughts: If you go down to the woods today, you better KEEP HOLD OF YOUR FUCKING MAP.