Saturday, 8 February 2025

British horror THE CELLAR - Set for release

The highly anticipated British horror film THE CELLAR is set for release in 2025, with the exact date still to be confirmed. Directed by Jamie Langlands, this psychological nightmare has already made waves on the festival circuit, winning over 20 international awards and securing nine official selections. The newly released trailer gives a terrifying glimpse into what promises to be one of the year's most unsettling horror films.

The story follows Abigail, a young girl who wakes up in a dark underground cell with no memory of how she got there. Trapped in a claustrophobic nightmare, she must fight to survive while uncovering the chilling truth about her situation. 

As reality blurs, the film explores trauma, fear, and the terrifying power of the unknown. Known for its eerie visuals and haunting sound design, The Cellar is already being praised for its ability to build tension and dread.

Langlands' debut feature is set to establish him as a director to watch, with a cast led by Meghan Adara as Abigail, alongside Neil James, Charlotte Marshall, and Mickaela Sands. The film has drawn attention for its atmospheric storytelling and psychological depth, promising a horror experience that lingers long after the credits roll. With the trailer now available, horror fans can prepare for a tense and unforgettable descent into darkness.

View the Trailer on YouTube.

Coming Soon!

Visit the Official Website... https://www.thecellarhorror.com

Visit the Official Facebook Page




Supernatural Horror THE CONTAINMENT - Coming Soon

Black Mandala is proud to present THE CONTAINMENT, directed by Jack Zagha Kababie and Yossy Zagha, a chilling supernatural horror that blends psychological terror with demonic possession, all set against the backdrop of deep family trauma. 

A young girl is consumed by a terrifying entity, its grip tightening with every passing day as she desperately fights to reclaim her own soul. Her mother turns to doctors, exorcists, and so-called experts, but none can expel the darkness festering within her. 

As the horror escalates and the line between the supernatural and reality begins to blur, a devout nun steps forward to confront the evil. 

But as she delves deeper, an even more horrifying truth emerges—one that suggests the greatest threat may not come from the demon itself, but from something far more insidious, something no prayer can save them from.

View the Trailer on YouTube

Coming Soon.


 

Sci-fi action thriller PROJECT SILENCE - Coming to UHD and BD

Sci-fi action thriller PROJECT SILENCE gets a 4K UHD release on 10th February from Altitude.

A gripping mix of action, sci-fi and horror, featuring a shady government experiment gone awry, a bridge on the verge of collapse, a toxic gas leak, and a band of trapped survivors being hunted by mutant killer dogs in thick fog.

A father, Jung-Won, and his daughter are on their way to Incheon Airport when a thick fog causes a massive chain-reaction crash on the airport bridge. They get stuck in the chaos when mutated military dogs are accidentally released from their transport vehicle and start preying upon humans. 

As the bridge is shut down, it is now up to Jung-won aided by the other survivors to figure out a way to make it through the night while uncovering the conspiracy behind the dogs.

Written and directed by Kim Tae-gon, and starring Parasite’s Lee Sun-kyun, PROJECT SILENCE is one hundred minutes of breathless mayhem and South Korean genre cinema at its best. 

The film is released in a 4K UHD edition, a beautifully designed collectable 4K UHD Steelbook edition, Blu-ray and DVD from 10th February.

View the Trailer on YouTube.

Buy the UK 4K UHD Steelbook from Amazon.co.uk

Buy the UK BD from Amazon.co.uk

Buy the UK DVD from Amazon.co.uk





Rupert Russell, director of THE LAST SACRIFICE - Interview

THE LAST SACRIFICE Q & A with director Rupert Russell

Ahead of the UK premiere of horror documentary THE LAST SACRIFICE at FrightFest Glasgow 2025, director Rupert Russell reflects on the making of a grizzly true-crime investigation that probes into the eerie, enigmatic cultural undercurrents that shaped the British folk horror genre.

Q) Your film is having its UK premiere at this year’s FrightFest Glasgow event. Excited or what? 

Indeed, suitably close to Summerisle, the fictional island in The Wicker Man.

Q) What initially drew you to the project? 

Embarrassingly, I had only watched The Wicker Man for the first time in 2022. I did not see it as a horror film. To me, it was a documentary of what living in Britain was like over the past several years. The madness of Summerisle was indistinguishable from the madness of the British Isles. That climatic scene on the mountaintop, where Srgt. Howie pleads for his life, begging them to see that ‘killing me won’t save your apples’, only to be met by the collective shrug his Lordship gives, ‘I know it will’, for me has been an almost daily experience.

I was telling a close friend all this when he stopped me and said, ‘well, you know there was a real murder this was all based on?’

Q) It’s centered around the unsolved murder of Charles Walton in 1945, giving the documentary the feel of a true-crime investigation. What is the background to the case? 

A movie poster with a red backgroundDescription automatically generatedCharles Walton was a 74-year-old farm labourer who, on Valentine Day, 1945, was discovered in a field in the Cotswolds with a pitchfork in his face and a bellhook buried in his throat. The scene was so grizzly that the Warwickshire police called Scotland Yard requesting help, and they sent none other than Britain’s most famous detective: Robert Fabian of the Yard. When he arrived, he described the murder as a ‘slaughterhouse horror’. But despite his own investigation, and years and years of further attempts by the local police, no one was ever charged with the crime.

Q) What fascinated you about the case? 

The fascination for me wasn’t who did it, but who do we believe did it, and why? Mysteries are mirrors, they are reflections of ourselves. In the case of an unsolved murder, we project our paranoid fears and fantasies onto the face of the imagined killer. The theories that griped Britain were, therefore, really theories about the British themselves. And the theories that emerged contained many novel features we hadn’t seen before in fact or fiction. In particular, the theory that the source of danger was not the perennial outsider - the Nosferatu figure invading the city walls - but rather the otherwise ‘normal’ insider. The enemy within. 


Q) The rural setting and superstitious fears surrounding Walton's death mirror the isolation and community rituals in films like The Wicker Man. How did these parallels shape your storytelling? 


The parallels between fact and fiction was what excited me creatively about the film. I began the project by watching documentaries made of real witches in the 1960s, filled with a Mondo-esque mixture of exploitation and theatrics. On talking to real witches, some of whom appeared in the films, I discovered that despite the ‘hype’ they were in fact accurate portrayals of what was happening at the time. And, on the face of it, more outrageous and shocking than the Hammer and Tigon witchcraft films at the time. This spoke to the heat of the story, how fact and fantasy had become intertwined and often indistinguishable.

Furthermore, the conspiracies around the Walton murder informed the tropes of the folk horror films that were made at the time, and we now just take them for granted as the staple beats of the genre. But these did not come from the imaginations of screenwriters, but rather policeman and sleuth academics trying to make sense of a bizarre ‘ritual’ murder in rural Britain.


Q) The role of the tabloid media seemed to play a big part in fueling the public’s fascination with ritual sacrifice and the occult in post-war Britain. Do you think this impeded the murder investigation? 

No.  There was a delayed reaction, mostly spurned on by the chief inspector of the case, Robert Fabian of the Yard, whose memories, after he retired, brought the occult aspects to the public’s attention. In his 1945 police report, Fabian is quite explicit that the hinderance to the investigation were the local villagers themselves. He complained about their ‘secretive’ nature and refusal to fully cooperate with the police investigation. Fabian was convened that in a town of less than 500 people, the killer’s identity would have been widely known. Nobody seemed to care that there might be a demented killer terrorising the vulnerable. Unless, of course, they knew who the murderer was - and why the murder was committed. 


Q) What do you think is the enduring legacy of the Charles Walton murder, both in real-life folklore and its continuing influence on the horror film genre?
 

The folk horror movies of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s are the result of a collision of cultural forces. They’re an incoherent mishmash of all sorts of weird and wonderful things that were happening in Britain at the time. Authors, screenwriters and director joined the dots between the Walton murder, the rise of Wicca, the counterculture, the hippie movement, women’s liberation, the sexual revolution, class war and so much more. They all kind of swirled together in a technicolor vortex around the figure of the witch. This figure became a kind of organising metaphor for all that was being torn up and a warning of the new world that might be around the corner.


Q) How would you compare the British folk horror films of the ‘60s and early ‘70s to the American ones that came later? 

The British films all feature a member of the new professional class - a teacher, doctor, or policeman - who goes to a strange English village. They’re the victim of a conspiracy between the peasantry and an aristocrat who commands their loyalty through pagan gods or voodoo magic. They are paranoid tales of a reactionary counter-revolution, where Atlee’s new social democracy will be rolled back to a feudal time.

In contrast, the American films are about going somewhere foreign and are led by naive tourists, such as An American Werewolf in London or Midsommar. They encounter not a class conflict, but a cult: an ideology taken to a dangerous extreme. When you consider that the Americas are the place we dumped our own religious nutters in the 17th and 18th centuries, their fears may well be quite rational.


Q) What is your favourite folk horror movie? 

I was ignorant of the genre when I started making the film and it was a true joy to take a compressed crash course. My favourites would be Panda’s Fen, The Plague of the Zombies, Twins of Evil, and Demons of the Mind.


Q) Finally, what’s next for you? 

I have two fiction horror films that are in development, and another film archive doc.


THE LAST SACRIFICE
is showing at the Glasgow Film Theatre on Fri 7 March, 3.30pm, as part of Pigeon Shrine FrightFest Glasgow 2025.

Rupert will be attending.

For more info on this and other films at the Festival and to book tickets, visit...
https://frightfest.co.uk/2025Glasgow/


 

 

 

Survival Horror PLAY DEAD - Coming Soon...

Black Mandala is proud to present PLAY DEAD a chilling new horror film that kicks off with a woman waking up in a basement surrounded by corpses and fighting for her life.

This grisly tale of survival and deception is directed by Carlos ‘Charly’ Goitia (Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker, The 100 Candles Game: The Last Possession) and produced by Nicolás Onetti (1978, What the Waters Left Behind). The screenplay is penned by Gonzalo Mellid and Camilo Zaffora.

PLAY DEAD follows the harrowing journey of Alison (Paula Brasca - What the Waters Left Behind), who finds herself gravely injured and trapped in a dark, cryptic basement. Desperate to survive, she must use her wits and pretend to be dead, blending in with the corpses around her. 

But as she clings to life, she makes a horrifying discovery—above her, a grotesque, ritualistic celebration is unfolding. With each passing moment, the danger escalates.

Drawing heavy inspiration from horror classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Don’t Breathe, and The Collector, PLAY DEAD blends relentless tension with gruesome horror,  delivering a truly unforgettable cinematic experience.

View the Trailer on YouTube

Coming Soon...

 

Creature Feature GATOR CREEK - Coming to Digital, March.

Vacation turns to disaster when Houston graduate Kyle (Athena Strates) and her friends survive a plane crash in the desolate Louisiana bayou, only to discover there's something infinitely more dangerous lurking in the shallows…a pack of primordial, highly-evolved American alligators. 

Apex predators and perfectly adapted to their native habitat, the gators have zeroed in on the survivors - pure killing machines 150 million years in the making. And these gators are living in an environment contaminated by illegal chemicals pumped into their ecosystem. They're bigger, smarter, faster, meaner, and hell-bent on devouring anything that stumbles into their territory...

From directors Taneli Mustonen and Brad Watson, GATOR CREEK features an ensemble of young stars in Athena Strates, Isabelle Bonfrer, Elisha Applebaum, Madalena Aragão, and Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong. UK-based genre specialists Tea Shop Productions (FALL, 47 METERS DOWN) produced.

Vertigo plans to release the survival flick from the producers of FALL and 47 METERS DOWN on Digital platforms in the UK and Ireland on March 24th.

View the Trailer on YouTube.



Poster and Trailer revealed for Popeye horror SHIVER ME TIMBERS...

Get ready to set sail on a blood-soaked, laugh-out-loud voyage— Alpake Entertainment has just dropped the uncensored red band trailer for SHIVER ME TIMBERS, the first-ever horror-comedy starring a horrifying new Popeye. The film, directed by Paul Mann, will be marketed at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin, where EuroObscura will handle international sales.

Blending classic slasher thrills with off-the-wall comedy, SHIVER ME TIMBERS pays homage to 80s horror while bringing Popeye into his most terrifying adventure yet. In SHIVER ME TIMBERS, Olive Oyl, her brother Castor and friends, go on a camping trip to see a meteor shower.  But the night turns into horror as a meteor transforms Popeye into an unstoppable killing machine. 

The film has already been acquired by Gravitas Ventures, an Anthem Sports & Entertainment Company, for North America, with a scheduled release in April 2025. The new red band trailer offers a brutal and hilarious first look at SHIVER ME TIMBERS, showcasing over-the-top gore, twisted humor, and a fresh take on the beloved sailor’s world. Fans of horrorcomedy
and slasher classics won’t want to miss this wild ride.

SHIVER ME TIMBERS is set to make waves at the European Film Market in Berlin, where EuroObscura will present the film to international buyers. With its April 2025 release locked in for North America, horror fans everywhere should brace themselves for an adventure filled with screams and laughs in equal measure.

View the Trailer on YouTube.