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Flame Tree Fiction

Film Review: The Curse of La Llorona

Posted by Matteo Middlemiss

Good horror films are a matter of plate spinning. It’s not enough to have a good script or good cast or a good effects team; you have to balance all these things and more. A classic spooky spirit is often a good trope for a horror film to follow. It has lots of directions it can go and even a middling film can have the occasional peak-through-your-fingers moment. The danger becomes creating a badly made film or letting one of these plates fall.

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Topics: Film Review

Film Review: Pet Sematary

Posted by Molly Rosevear

Pet Sematary is a story that needs little introduction. If you know the book, and know the story, you already know what’s coming and it’s more about how the filmmakers execute it. If you don’t know what’s coming then the less you know going in, the better. Filled with every kind of horror you could want, Pet Sematary makes an incredible basis for a horror film and has earned itself the title of the book that scared Stephen King the most when writing it. For years Pet Sematary was an incredible book with a really middling film adaptation, but with the wave of great King adaptations in recent times, there was hope that this film might live up to the book.

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Topics: Film Review

Film Review: Overlord

Posted by Matteo Middlemiss

This new outing for the Nazi zombie genre sees Jovan Adepo and Wyatt Russell as American soldiers who lead their squadron on a mission to disable a radio tower on the night before D-Day. What they discover is something much darker than any of them expected.

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Topics: Zombies, Film Review

Film Review: Slaughterhouse Rulez

Posted by Matteo Middlemiss

In the latest film to feature the iconic British duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, we see an elite british boarding school under attack from sub-terranean monsters (and more importantly the fracking industry).

 

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Topics: Film Review

Film Review: Mile 22

Posted by Matteo Middlemiss

The new action thriller, Mile 22, centres on an elite secret service team who carry out secret operations in what is intended to be a very secret manner but never seems to end up being that secret. The elite nature of this team is touted throughout the film but how does it fair when a mission doesn’t quite go to plan? 

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Topics: Film Review

Film Review: A Simple Favour

Posted by Matteo Middlemiss

The latest film from Paul Feig sees him take on a rather different genre to his usual fair. This genuine thriller, featuring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively as its leads, is full of the comedy you would expect from Feig’s films without sacrificing the tension of the story. 

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Topics: Film Review

Film Review: Searching

Posted by Matteo Middlemiss

Searching is the new thriller that features Jon Cho as a father in distress and Debra Messing as a stern police officer trying to help him. The story plays out entirely on a computer screen as Cho chases leads to find his missing daughter.

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Topics: Film Review

Film Review: Incredibles 2

Posted by Matteo Middlemiss

Incredibles 2 is the long awaited sequel to the 2004 smash hit superhero movie. I think it’s easy to forget how good of a superhero film the first Incredibles was. It came in era when the only real superhero films were the Sam Rami Spiderman films and the X-men series. It predated the Marvel Cinematic Universe and even the Christopher Nolan Batman films and doesn’t get quite enough credit as a superhero film separate from being an animated film.

 

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Topics: Film Review, incredibles

Film Review: Skyscraper

Posted by Matteo Middlemiss

Skyscraper focuses on a drawn out fight between Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and his latest nemesis: an extremely high-tech skyscraper filled with fire. It’s a battle for the ages filled more plot lines than a guy Ritchie Gangster flick.

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Topics: Film Review

Film Review: Sicario: Soldado

Posted by Matteo Middlemiss

The first scenes of the new Sicario film set the tone for the whole feature. They are gritty, violent and difficult to watch. It pulls no punches with the visuals, which, in an age of action films being dominated by superheroes and The Rock, feels increasingly unfamiliar. You expect the camera to pull out or cutaway but it holds and lets you see everything as it happens.

 

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Topics: crime,, Film Review, thriller

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