SACRIFICIOS (2025) FANTASPOA 2026

A father grieveing the loss of his son, heads off to sea and ends up pulling his son from the water, however if he wants to keep the boy alive the gods require a sacrifice.

This is heady and emotional film. The film is a look at grief, guilt and mouring in an unexpected way. While framed as a kind of fairy tale or something full of magical realism, the film is also a kind of horror film as we watch a man deal with the worst thing that most people can imagine. It's a film that seeks to ponder its ideas in unexpected ways, melding Christian ideas with those of the Aztecs. It is a film that is going to leave many in the audience broken.

When you see this film, don't think about notions of genre or classifications. SACRIFICIOS is not really anything other than one man's walk through the dark place of child loss. The shifts through various "genres" is simply a way of examining the dark night of the soul at the center of the tale. I say this because I know that since the film is playing at Fantaspoa some people are going to go into the film looking for it to be a horror film. It kind of is, but it really isn't. This is the best sort of film, an examination of the human condition in another form.

This is something special. See it.

LAMPIE (2025) NYICFF 2026

Young girl who helps her father run the local lighthouse is forced to go work at "The Black House" after her failure to light the lamp causes a shipwreck. She is forced to be there in order to pay off her debt. Her task is to take care of the boy who lives there.

The easiest thing to say is just go buy a ticket. This is one of the best films to play at NYICFF in the last few years, which says a great deal because of all of the great films that have played the festival.  This film is going to get a cult following and you will want to get in on the ground floor.

This is one part fairy tale, one part magical realism tale and several parts grand adventure. I don't want to spoil where or how this goes, just know that odds are you are not going to know where this film is going to go. It's full of great characters who sell every turn of the plot.

This is just pure cinematic magic of the highest order and finding films like this is why I love going to NYICFF evey year.

Highly recommended- this film is going to end up on one of my year end list come December.

Rabbit Trap (2025) Scary Movies 13

The studio asked for an abbreviated review to run for Scary Movies. A longer one will run for its release in September 

In the 1970's a couple move into the Welsh countryside. As she records her new album and he records ambient sound they are visited by an odd teen boy  looking to become friends.

One of the great opening halves of any film this year, takes some unexpected turns in the second half in a film that reveals itself to be something other than a (folk) horror film. I was not expecting for where this film went or to have it reveal itself to be something more. If you want to see why horror is used to do more than scare, Rabbit Trap will clue you in.

This is a super film for those who want chills and feelings beyond jump scares.

Go see it.

Legend of The Happy Worker (2025) Locarno 2025

Right before I saw this film I ran across a listing of unproduced David Lynch projects and this film was on it. Lynch didn't think he could get it to work and so executive produced the film for Duwayne Dunham who was Lynch's editor. 

This is  an absurd fairy tale about a utopian community where a guy named Joe ends up in position of power.

I am not going to guess whether you like this or not. You will either love its wacky sense of reality and sense of humor or you won't. Its a mannered film with everyone leaning into the silliness and the positive attitude. 

I liked the film I didn't love it. The problem for me is that the film chipper/vaudvillian tone didn't completely work for me. The insistance of keeping the theatrical dialog and delivery of the source play with the real world setting didn't work for me. Its a daring choice, but it doesn't work and creates a distance and the wrong  sense of unreality.

If you are a David Lynch completeist or someone who doesn't want a typical Hollywood film give this film a shot.

A pointer toward Devil's Bride (1974) Fantasia 2025

The Eastern Block nations were making some weird ass films under the rule of the Soviets. I don't mean that in a bad way, more that there are some truly bizarre film that came out during the Cold War, especially in the 60's, 70's and 80's. I mean no one in Hollywood would turn out a musical folk tale about the devil ending up in a romance after getting pitched from heaven. The music is fully of fuzzy guitars and  music thts similar to Jesus Christ Superstar except not up to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

God bless Deaf Crocodile for bringing this film to the masses. This is a one of a kind viewing experience that is going to delight anyone who wants off Hollywood films. This is going to confuse others. And it will annoy the hell out of anyone who wants typical Hollywood product.

I do not know if this qualifies as a good film. I don't know if I like it as a film. I don't know if that matters. I do know that I loved the experience of watching. I loved the weird twists ans turns and not feeling like I knew where this was going. This is an experience and an eye opening film about the world and cinema.

If you want something that isn't like anything you've seen before- give this film a shot.

The Legend of Ochi (2025) NYICFF 2025

An ADDENDUM before we start:

This piece has gone through several drafts each one stripping  away the discussion and leaving just a list of grievences, making me wonder if I should have posted this for Festivus. It wasn't unintentional it was something that just happened.  The reason it happened was that I have been trying to explain my feeling for this film and it's gone from a simple "I like it but it's a mess" to more iterations until now where I realize that I am angrily disappointed in this film - almost everything works - I mean it looks great, the cast is there, the creatures are awesome- but the script is so lacking in characters and reasoning that the narrative thread snaps from the first instant- we are never told anything that gives us a backstory of what is happening or why; nor do we get real characters but line drawings (I won't insult the notion of sketches).  There is a sense that the director knows it all (this could have been a 5-hour film) but he just doesn't show it or thinks that his target audience of six-year-olds will never notice. And the fact that so much seems to be missing pisses me off because this should have been a truly awesome film that lived in my heart forever and instead it's become a piece of junk I want desperately to break apart so that someone will rescue the tale and tell it the right way, with real reasons and real characters that aren't lazily drawn to the point none of them make sense. I want the film that the pieces promise not this broken doll with its limbs and head chopped off. I should not have had to spend 100 plus minutes spending each one asking about why and what and how. I should have drifted off on the story. And because this film doesn't explain anything-internally nothing makes sense - I am left with not so much a review but an abbreviated list of questions about things I should never have noticed.

I apologize but this film broke my heart (I mean look at the Ochi they are so damn cool)

THE REVIEW

Ever since I saw THE LEGEND OF OCHI at NYICFF my friends were asking what I thought of the film.  I wasn't sure what to say. Should I tell them how good the film looks? Or should I talk about the grand operatic score? Or should I tell them the creatures are very well done.?

Did I say any of that? No.What I said was simply "It's a mess"

I don't care that the director said he made the film for kids, the film makes no sense.

The film takes place on the island of Carpathia which is in the Black Sea. The island is shared by a group of people and some big blue creatures called ochi which occassionally kill the live stock and the people. The people, lead by Willem Dafoe, hunt the ochi. WHen Dafoe's daughter finds a small ochi she decides to  return it to its family.  This doesn't sit well with he father assumes she has been kidnapped and wih his band of lost boys goes to find rescue her.

I don't know where to start but while the film looks great the rest of the film really is a mess.

I don't know if the script was as much of a mess as the film is, but I sure hope not. Nothing in the film is explained or hangs together. I have no impressions of the film,  I only just an endless list of a questions and plot problems. Raymond Chandler said that an audience will forgive one, perhaps two unexplained turns (one of the shootings in THE BIG SLEEP is never explained), but more than that you will lose the audience. OCHI is full of unexplained turns and questions requiring answers. Here is a brief list of some of them:

- Is this a serious film or comedy? Willem Dafoe is so far over the top and his delivery is so out there I didn't now if I was supposed to be laughing or not. It seems like a comedy but no one was laughing.

-There is no real back story. We are told the monsters and the people are on the island and they don't get along, but there is no effort to explain what exactly happened. This leaves us with no idea why is Dafoe is such a homicidal nut job.

-There is no explanation of the monsters. NONE.  The bits we know- that they live in the woods... er caves on the island and hunt live stock makes no sense.  They are animals, until they aren't.

-There is no character development. NONE. We have no idea who anyone is. We kind of have a vague sense of the three leads were a family, but beyond that we have nothing. This is especially interesting since the band of boys who hunt with Dafoe are given prominence on the poster, but all we now is that they cast offs from families and orphans. We know nothing  about any of them except that one of them speaks with a Brooklyn accent (his only line). (And why does their look make them seem more like thugs/ fascists  then kids?)

- A terrium of catepillars? With no top and no sense that they will be butterflies?

-Everyone speas with a different accent, and language. Dafoe speas like himself, Helena Hengel speaks with a scandanavian accent and Emily Watson speaks with an accent from Mars. One boy sounds like he is from Brooklyn. The music played on the radio is in a variety of different languages. The guy who has his car stolen speaks in a Slavic language.

-Emily Watson knows all this information about the ochi, but we don't now how. She allegedly taught her daughter words of the ochi, but we don't know anything. She know where they live but she never saw the paintings in the cave. She ran after her daughter... and brought her flute?

- When the daughter the daughter realizes she can speak ochi the film is subtitled...just for that one scene.

- Why does travel across the island takes however along it requires the plot.

-We have no sense of anyone on the island other then Dafoe and the related characters. There is no sense of the society living there even though we see them. Why did they send their kids to Dafoe? What about school? 

-There is no reason that Dafoe goes from a psychotic Peter Pan to loving father.

-Why does one of Dafoes boys break into the house and trash the place when they are just there to see if the daughter is there? (There is a whole line of questioning here about the society where this happens, why they can misbehave and why they cross the line from being thugs to being de facto fascist soldiers)

- What is the deal with the Petro character? One minute he's good soldier, the next he's kind of sweet on the daughter and the next he's being a bad guy again...until he's not. This just highlights that no one arcs and no event naturally happens things just happen because the director says so.

There is more, much more. Almost every moment in the film will have you asking questions. I took pages and pages of notes much to amusement of the people sitting a couple of seats down the row.

This film feels like it was a thousand-page novel and it was cut to a fraction of that length.

Weirdly the film kind of works (as long as you don't think about it). The reason is the score which does all the heavy lifting by cueing us to what we are supposed to feel. The film is so cliched in construction and the score works so well that even if you have noticed all the missing material the end still will make you weepy- why? Because the score fixlls in all the holes.

Is it a bad film? Objectively, oh yea. The narrative just doesn't work. But emotionally... it kind of does at least enough that if you can let the music carry you to where you are five years old and don't know about plot holes.

Ultimately this film pisses me off more than any film has in the last year or so. Why? Because so much of the film works, the visuals, the music, the creatures... that the complete failure of the script to work  is a freaking shame. Had it worked it would have been an instant classic, instead its a major disappointment... a disappoint will even hit the film's five year old fans once they are old enough to ask questions.

The Girl With The Needle (2024) opens Friday

A young woman struggling to survive in the wake of the First World War takes job at a candy store as a wet nurse for the owners clandestine adoption agency. However things are not as they seem.

This is a bleak black nightmarish historical drama mixed with fairy tale mixed with horror film. This is not a remotely happy film and it's like being forcibly plunged into the deepest pit of hell. It's a film that dwells in the dark places of human existence. It's a film that places our heroine in a dark world of poverty before we even get to the candy store.

This is a stunningly shot film. The black and white images are amazing. The look of the film echoes the images of the original NOSFERATU, BEGOTTEN and some half remembered dream. The aspect ratio is narrow and thus claustrophobic. The some of the sequences, like the opening montage are stunning. When they are married to the score this film slices its way into the center of your being.

That said, and despite the mood getting under my skin, I find that I admire this more than I like it. The issue for me is that the film is very much a work of art under the control of the director. That normally is okay but here there is a definite wall of artifice that kept me from falling head over heels for it. 

Don't get me wrong this is one of the best looking films and creepiest films of the year, and as such you should see it, but I don't know if you'll make a return trip.

THE UMBRELLA FAIRY (2024) Fantasia 2024

Qingdai a spirit of  an umbrella made from the same black stone as an infamous sword wants to reunite with Wanggui, her sister and the spirit of the black sword. Wanggui has gone off to get get revenge for the death of the sword's owner.

A mix of Japanese style imagery and Chinese ideas THE UMBRELLA FAIRY is film of visual overload. So few films are this jam packed with images that watching the film I wanted to stop the film every couple of minutes just to explore what was hiding in the backgrounds.  So much of what we are seeing is in motion that I can’t imagine what it was like to animate this. As a piece of art this film is a staggering achievement. I was blown away as my eyes melted in delight.

The dramatically I’m not certain the film works, or works according to Western sensibilities. There are lots of plot threads and little bits drifting through the film and I’m not certain it all comes together.  Yes there is an emotional pay off, but there are still some threads I would have like resolved. (One note my feelings may change on a second viewing may change. I say this because  while the film was subtitled nothing that was written was translated so things like the final image were not translated)

Slight reservations aside this is a stunning piece of animation that demands to be seen.

MAMI WATA (2023) closes First Look Festival 2023 at MOMI

MAMI WATA is a beautiful black and white fable that needs to be seen on a big screen.

Telling the story of a village that is watched over by the goddess Mama Wata. Her wishes are determined by two women in the village. When a boy dies and a stranger appears the village begins to question the ways of the past.

Formally staged with deliberateness that you see in some of the world’s great art, MAMI WATA transcends its seeming theatrical construction and moves instead into the realm of cinematic myth. This is a fairy tale brought to life on the big screen. It goes from something seemingly simply and stagey into something breathing and alive. It is an arresting work of cinema.

All hail director CJ “Fiery” Obasi. Using high contrast black and white photography he has created a living painting. His sense of light and dark reminds me a great deal of the work of artist Frank Miller whose graphic work  like Sin City made us rethink about how light and dark can change the world. Here Obasi uses the lack of color to create a waking dream that becomes more real and more enveloping as it goes along.

I was floored, at first by the images I was seeing and later by how deeply I was moved by them.

This film is a cinematic treat

Highly recommended

Squeal (2022)

 

While on a trip to Eastern Europe a  man, who doesn’t speak the language ends up chained with the pigs by a pig farmer. As he tries to figure out how to escape he is befriended by a pig.

Off kilter black comedy fairy tale is either going to thrill you or make you want to flee. Its a twisted tale that is not for all tastes. Its a very knowing tale that is very interested in making a point of some sort. I’m not entirely sure what that point was or more damagingly if it’s even a valid point. Frankly despite being about pigs this film is really just a long rambling shaggy dog story. I was willing to go with for a while until I suddenly began to realize it wasn’t going to go anywhere. There was a point some way past the half way mark where I got a sense that this was heading toward an WTF ending. While it’s not WTF it is a head scratcher.

Frankly I think that despite the director’s thoughts this film really doesn’t have a point.

Not recommended

Bremen Town Musicians (1959) American release 1965

Another West German fairy tale film has four animals leaving their masters and going off to Bremen to become musicians.

Trippy telling of the classic tale has humans in animal masks playing the leads to mixed results. Certain to have played better in its day the film now has a certain quaint quality to it. At the same time the lessons of the original tale do come through. Guaranteed to warp your kids, this is the perfect film to watch with weird movie lovers.

The American dub features children's show host Paul Tripp (The Christmas That Almost Wasn't) telling the story which is perfectly fine.

Rumpelstiltskin (1951)

One of a number of West German fairy tale films produced after the Second World War that ended up washing up on American shores years after their European runs more often than not in  a form bent by K Gordon Murray who bought them and numerous Mexican films for release as kiddie only screenings on weekends.(It been speculated the Murray's weekend kids shows were responsible for drug use and mental illness in the generation who saw them)

A more or less straight forward telling of the tale this film is going to seem way too leisurely paced for today's audiences  who are weened on wild and crazy action. That the film takes 80 minutes to spin out is going to have many people reaching for the remote.

One the other hand if you want a nostalgic film that doesn't Disney-fy  a fairy tale give it a shot.

The Big Bad Wolf and Stinky the Skunk return in The Queens Swordsman aka The Happy Musketeers (1961)

This film in the series of films featuring the Big Bad Wolf and the skunk Stinky, is not only probably the best of the bunch but a good film on it's own terms.

For those unfamiliar with the Wolf and Stinky films, they first appeared in a telling of LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD where they were more comic relief then real threat, They then appeared in the various sequels (RED RIDING HOOD AND HER FRIENDS, LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD AND TOM THUMB alternately LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD AND THE MONSTERS) where they were really the focus of the films. The series was released in the US by K Gordon Murray who dubbed them and had them play weekend kiddie engagements and on TV on Saturday and Sunday afternoon where they warped generations of children. I caught them on TV as a kid and was forever scarred enough to spend decade searching them out.

This time out Stinky and the Wolf are raising a child they found lost in the woods. Years have passed and as the infant has grown the pair realize that they need more than they can provide living in the woods so they go to town and end up as musketeers for the king and queen. They are instrumental in helping to save the kingdom from a take over.

Playing more like a historical swashbuckler with a skunk and Wolf in the lead than a kids film THE QUEEN'S SWORDSMAN is a really a grand adventure. Filled with action and intrigue this would have been a classic film had they simply removed the two costumed leads with real people.  Frankly this is rather an adult film since so many people actually die.  You could never release this film now because the family groups would have a fit.

The key to enjoying this film is getting past the fact that the film's leads are two people in ill fitting costumes who have been oddly dubbed. Its a weird experience watching everyone interact with these odd characters but if you've seen the other films in the series you know to just go with it simply because the films are so much fun.

The film like the others in the series are must sees for anyone who loves cinema.  They are truly wonderful pieces of crazy ass fantasy from an innocent time (hell, no one blinks when a live alligator is put in a bed with a little kid) that film lovers must see....

...sadly I don't think the films are available legally in the US.  I know Something Weird had released them on VHS years ago  but I believe at some point the K Gordon Murray estate put a stop to that and  they have been camping down on streaming releases. I could be wrong, but I know when I originally covered some of the films in 2011 the only way to get the films were the collectors market. And if memory serves I was told that some grand release of all of the films was coming by the estate who thought they could make a mint- except that the films had been out of circulation out side of Something Weird for thirty years so two generations of film fans had no idea what these films were. I haven't tried to chase down the status since then so that could all be wrong. (Please feel free to correct me in the comments)

You have to track this and the other films in the sequence down, get some friends, some drinks and popcorn and go crazy on a Saturday night.

Actually what I would love is for a film festival like New York to do is a small side bar of these whacked out films so they get back into the discussion....

Dragon Princess (2021) Animation First 2022

The Dragon Princess is one of the best discoveries of 2022 so far. This is a glorious old school fairy tale that will delight everyone.

The plot of the film has a dragon making a deal with frog sorceress in order to be given children. From the three eggs two male dragons hatch and from the third a magical young girl with green hair who is part  dragon and part human her name is Bristle.  When Bristle meets a head strong princess from a nearby town they become friends much to the annoyance of her father.  Bristle then travels to the near by town and learns a lesson about humans, friendship and family.

I can’t say enough good about this film. This is fairy tale of the sort they don’t do any more. It follows the expected lines from start to finish, however it updates things with a more modern take. Greed and gold are bad.  Royalty exist to do good and the bonds of friendship and family are everything.  More importantly this is a fairy tale where women kick ass. The mage who puts everything in motion is a woman. It’s about princesses. Most importantly the one’s doing the right thing and kicking ass are the women. They are the one’s doing the good deeds while the men are behaving like jerks. This is a film that you will want to show your little girls.

At the same time I think boys and men will eat this up because this is such a good story they won’t care who is at the center.

I need to point of the magnificent animation. Done in largely old school 2D style the film looks familiar in the best sort of a way. Yet at the same time it uses computers to create some amazing effects, in particular the look of the dragon, which is so magical that I kept stopping the screener I was given to review the film to just look at the images and see what they did.

This film is pure magic of the highest cinematic sort.

Highly recommended.

You Won't Be Alone (2022) Sundance 2022

Described as a horror film in some Sundance material YOU WON'T BE ALONE isn't. Its a fairy tale about a a young woman who becomes a shapeshifter who takes on the form of a number of dead people. It ends where it begins.  

I liked YOU WON'T BE ALONE but I didn't love it. The film is the story of a someone learning about life and herself by walking in some eles's shoes, literally. I think it is a solid and very good film.  The cast is great with the multiple actors and actresses playing the same role blending together prefectly. Its a beautiful film to look at and has a great pastorl feel.

The problem for me was it was watching it was kind of like having a friend drive me some place I thought I hadn't been to before only to realize about half way in I knew the destination. Realizing what I was seeing altered how I saw the film. It took the wonder off the trip, despite having a blast taking it.

To me this film feels like a melding of Justin McConnell's LIFECHANGER with one of 2021's most haunting films ALL THE MOONS with a dash of La Ronde sprinkled in by way of Malick (TREE OF LIFE), Tarkovsky (ANDREI RUBLEV) ,Sergei Parajanov (SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS) and David Lowrey (A GHOST STORY). 

Its a film that feels it has been made with the best ingredients, it just didn't knock my socks off. 

Worth a look

SLAPFACE (2021) Grimmfest 2021

Bullied young man makes friends with an ugly witch who kills anyone who hurts him

Jerimiah Kipp hits it out of the part with a horror film that transcends the genre to become something greater. This isn't just about scares, but it becomes a film about the things we do having consequences we never could imagine.

Not really a horror film of jump scares this is a film of situational horror. We know what is going on a head of the characters and it ups the tension. we can see that things are going to g wrong, but there is nothing we can do to stop it. We hurt because we like almost everyone on screen and know they don't deserve to die. Indeed some of the deaths make it clear just how wrong the whole situation is.

This film is a stunner. As I have said before numerous times Jerimiah Kipp is one of the best directors working in the genre. His films are always ones that vibrate your soul because he insists on working with great casts who give us great characters. More importantly he makes films that are more than jump scares so they hang around in out hearts.

Highly recommended, SLAPFACE is one of the best horror films of 2021

Brief thoughts on WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY? (2021) NYFF 2021

Whimsical romance concerns a meet cute couple who have their appearances changed by the fates so they will not recognize each other.

How you react to this film is going to be determined by how you react to the rambling side tracking style that frequently drifts off into odd asides (we watch a soccer ball float down a river for no clear reason, even if the narration is amusing). Sequences just run on. If this is something you like you're going to love this film.

Personally I loved the central story of the romance challenged by the fates, however I really could have done without the asides and the rambling nature. There is a great 90 minute movie here, the problem is this is a 150 minute movie.  

Frankly this struck me as the sort of film that only a critic could love.

Scales (2020) hits theaters today in NY and LA before opening wide

SCALES is visually stunning film. It’s lovely fairy tale that is must for anyone who wants to see a lyric tale told in a moving way.

This is the story of Hayat, a young girl saved from death by her father who refused to sacrifice her to the sea creatures that live off the coast of their village. Growing up she is considered a pariah  however she decides to end the madness and takes matters into her own hands and hunts the beasts in the sea.

A feminist tale that is a biting commentary on the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, the film is a stiff rebuke to the patriarchy. I’m kind of shocked that authorities allowed the film to be finished.

The film is a shot is a stunning monochrome. Unlike some films where the black and white is a choice, the use is vital to the film.  The film would not feel as dream like in color. The images would not have the power to enchant us. Watching the film I was struck by the notion that had this film been in color it would have been instantly half as good simply because the images wouldn’t have had the power to move us.

And while I am absolutely over the moon about this film I do want to say that I will be the first to say it isn’t perfect largely the pacing is a bit too leisurely.  I suspect the need to make the run time come in at least 75 minutes resulted in the choice of letting a couple of sequences go on a bit long.

Regardless of that this is a stunning film  for anyone who want a beautiful adult fairy tale

The Seven Dwarfs to the Rescue (1951; American release 1965)

After Snow White and Prince Charming are married, the Prince must put down a rebellion led by a duke. However, Snow White is tricked into believing that Charming has been captured. When she tries to free him, she's captured by the Prince of Darkness. The Seven Dwarfs are then forced to go and rescue her.

One review of this film said that the New Orleans Bad Film Festival shows the film every five years, because they claim the film's so bad the audience won't sit for it. It's not that bad. While decidedly not good, it isn't really bad, certainly not in any sort of legendary way. It's actually very much like any number of the other fairy tale films produced in Europe at the same time. I'm guessing that this film, like many other similar films, is actually merely badly dubbed. As several reviews said, this film is only bad to people who really don't know bad films.


Like most of the dairy tale films of the time this film takes what most of us think of as a classic fairy tale and puts a spins into the stories we were told as children. It's weird and wonderful, set in a place similar to our own (yet different). It's a really wild head space to be in that all sorts of weird things happen and it takes odd turns, like topless-looking water nymphs kidnapping the dwarfs from the middle of a field. Truly trippy, — this is a film is its own beast.

While decidedly not for all tastes, this film is a must see for anyone who loves weird and wacky films. It's a one of a kind viewing experience and not to be missed.

The Book of Birdie (2017)

The Award winning THE BOOK OF BIRDIE hits VOD today and it's a strange trip into a a dark fairy tale realm.

Birdie is a teenage girl who bleeds mysteriously. Her grandmother is unable to care for her and leaves her in the care of the sisters in a convent. There she makes the acquaintance of the daughter of the groundskeeper. Things begin to go weird when the convent is suddenly slated for closing and choices have to be made.

One of a kind fairy tale is full of emotion and unease. Thanks to stellar filmmaking and a perfect use of Catholic imagery THE BOOK OF BIRDIE is one of the most uncomfortable films you'll see all year.As the film goes on the cool imagery such as the hanging nun that Birdie talks to goes from that's cool to some how disturbing. The universe of the film, no matter how cool it looks is just really off and it wears us down and gives us nightmares.

While perhaps not a film filled with shock scares it it a film that is much more insidious in that it invades our brains and stays with us long after the final credits roll. I saw this right before bed and the imagery drifted into my dreams and haunted me all the next day.

Recommended for anyone who wants something more than your typical hack slash horror and instead wants a thoughtful fever dream of a film