Penny Dreadful
A candy-coloured raperevenge, an eye without a face, and the Sundance movies to look out for
ANGEL OF VENGEANCE
Rape-revenge has never been a massive favourite of mine when it comes to horror subgenres, but Promising Young Woman might just be the exception. Released in the US in December, this is the directorial debut of Killing Eve season two showrunner Emerald Fennell. Carey Mulligan plays against type as an avenging angel who feigns drunkenness to teach hard lessons to the supposed nice guys who take her home and try to have their wicked way without consent.
This is a bright, funny fable which turns dark as hell.
Incredibly current for the post #Metoo era, it shines a light on female experience with a laser pointer. Could Mulligan or Fennell be noticed come awards season (whatever the hell that looks like this year)? It would be a giant leap for genre and accessible, bold women’s stories if they are. It’s the first rape-revenge I’ve ever seen that fetishises its protagonist’s rainbow-coloured nails more than her body. A must-watch.
GOING FOR THE BURNS
Apparently there’s some sort of pandemic on, and when it first kicked off Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion flew to the top of people’s watch lists, presumably to compare notes. Now Sodey says he’s working with writer Scott Z Burns on a “philosophical sequel”. Talking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast he said, “You’ll look at the two of them as kind of paired, but very different hair colours. Scott and I had been talking about, ‘So, what’s the next iteration of a Contagion-type story?’” Contagion was largely very prescient, so I’ll be waiting for Burns and ’bergh to lead the way. “We should probably hot-foot it a little bit,” he told the podcast.
NASTY GAL
The Sundance Festival is always fertile ground for at least one great horror, and there’s a chance this year it’ll come from a Brit. First-time feature director Prano Bailey-bond is debuting her movie Censor, which will open the Midnight strand of the Fest. Set in the video nasties-era ’80s, it follows a film censor (Niamh Algar) haunted by personal demons from her past, who finds her perceptions shifting after she views a movie which might have links to her childhood. Bailey-bond has been marked as one to watch for a while now thanks to her distinctive short films, and there’s already great buzz about this, with promises of “extreme violence and gore”. Other interesting titles to look out for are disorientating mental health movie Knocking, about a woman plagued by a mysterious banging in her house; Coming Home In The Dark, a brutal Kiwi road trip thriller about a family menaced by two drifters; and sexual violence exploration Violation.
EYES PEELED
Want monsters? Want bonkers? If you haven’t already, check out South Korean Netflix series Sweet Home, which landed on the service at the end of last year. Based on a web comic of the same name, it focuses on an apartment complex in the middle of a monster apocalypse. It’s a sprawling show which stands out for its creatures: one’s just a giant eye on an enormous optic nerve; another has the top of its head lopped off, and wanders round complaining that it can’t see. But it also keeps you engaged with its characters (including several badass young women) and weird, wonderful humour.