[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

SHEITAN - This was made around the time of that mid-noughties wave of French horror, most of which I really enjoyed. 'Sheitan' is a darkly perverse rural horror, where a bunch of urban street kids are transplanted to the country estate of a girl they meet in a discotheque on christmas eve. There, they find a yokelised and deeply sinister Vincent Cassal, rooms full of broken dolls, a bunch of in-breds and a mysterious plot about the birthing of Satan. A film which is well at ease with its own grubbiness, and features such BBFC baiting scenes (but apparently not, as it has a legit '18' certificate) as a dimwit girl sexing up a dog. The mid section drifts a bit and could've been more focussed and intense, but overall I really liked its twisted, parodic take on familial horror.

SOUTHERN COMFORT - Another sort-of backwoods horror film, the brilliant 'Southern Comfort' shows us in excruciating close up the unravelling of a national guard platoon in the face of (mostly) unseen menace. The soldiers are all completely unlikable and mostly idiotic, but the film is unwaveringly gripping and never lets go of a sense of seething tension present right from the start. Powers Boothe and Keith Carradine, who at times function almost like a chorus, give excellent performances. Their characters' detached cynicism and alienation from the shambles surrounding them provides a hook for the movie's more urbane audience, initially at least - by the end of the film, we see their mindset is pretty basic to the whole problem. This is a great study of paranoia and the isolation of the individual(ist's) psyche, way more sophisticated then something like 'The Thing', even though the the two films share similar atmospheres (and endings, for that matter). A great movie, one which I've just seen for the first time.

Two fantastic films Frankie, and two great reviews.

I much prefer Southern Comfort to its more famous inbred half sibling Deliverance.