NINA FOREVER
Mourning gory
released 22 February 2015 | 18 | Blu- ray/ DVD/ download
Directors Ben and Chris Blaine
Cast Abigail Hardingham, Cian
Barry, Fiona O’Shaughnessy
So: the death of a loved one – let’s summarise what we all know, shall we? It hurts like hell, it can take an age to “move on”, and in the meantime the missing person can still feel like a presence. Brit horror Nina Forever restates these truisms via a living/ living/ dead ménage à trois.
After shelf- stacker Rob loses girlfriend Nina to a car crash, he hooks up with workmate Holly. But there’s one slight problem: whenever they have sex, Nina’s bloodied corpse rises up, unbidden, through the mattress. Awkward.
The fact that this doesn’t deter Holly results in some scenes that are strangely sexy – which is a pretty disconcerting thing to find yourself typing about a necrophiliac threesome... As Nina, Fiona O’Shaughnessy ( Utopia’s Jessica Hyde) has a few great one- liners – though the character’s mannered kook may set your teeth on edge. But the grief allegory feels mercilessly belaboured; after half an hour you feel like throwing your hands in the air and crying, “Yes, I get it!”
Extras Deleted/ alternate scenes, with directorial commentary ( 40 minutes); an arty montage of effects work, B- roll and storyboards ( nine minutes); a brief promo piece. Ian Berriman
As teens, the Blaine brothers made a VHS epic about the Second Coming. Their school banned it!