BLOOD DELIRIUM – Strip off, hang around in the kitchen with your boobs out, then have a confusing conversation via answering machine with your ‘future self’ who somehow actually lives in the present – if that’s your idea of a good time, welcome to ‘Blood Delirium’. Though it’s probably best summed up by the scene where a widowed artiste plays bombastic church organ whilst his manservant, an enthusiastic necrophiliac and rapist, has fun with the deceased in the background. Absolute madness. I loved it. The ‘hero’ is just some guy in a helicopter who turns up two minutes from the end. A fair amount of blood, way more delirium.
THE FEAST – I hate dinner parties (I’d rather be curled up in front of ‘Blood Delirium’, or this), so the idea of a roomful of unlikables stuffing themselves then croaking didn’t have to work too hard to sell itself to me. A silent girl turns up to cater an event at a rich couple’s awful house, which looks like it was designed by Micheal Haneke’s sadistic architect brother – cue long takes of frosty-looking ‘spaces’. The people in them aren’t much warmer. This refrigerator approach really works, slowly chilling the viewer’s marrow before an eruption of folkloric comeuppance brings on the dread for a final course that’s definitely worth waiting for. This elliptical Welsh weird tale impressed me greatly and I hereby recommend it to you. Happy New Year.
ORPHAN : FIRST KILL – Tells the tale of how the little monster from the original came to be rampaging around the US looking for gullible families to shit on. I really liked ‘Orphan’ all those years ago (2009, I think) so went in with high hopes, always a mistake in retrospect. Not that OFK is bad, it just needed some of the edge of its parent – the fact that it does throw a bit of a bad taste curveball is in its favour, although something about the whole affair never rises above a baseline of mere competence. As a result, it’s mildly enjoyable but ultimately disposable. Meh New Year, then.
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