Comrade Courant Culture Critic

  'Rabbit': A Surreal Australian Thriller That Punches Above Its Weight "Luke Shanahan's debut is a visually stunning, cerebral puzzle box, slightly hampered by its own ambition." — 4/5 Stars For those seeking a refreshing, visually arresting, and thought-provoking thriller that isn't afraid to challenge its audience, Rabbit is 100% worth checking out. It’s a testament to the potent and often overlooked creativity flourishing in Australian cinema. It was a film I had not seen and had forgotten anything I had once known about it—all the better for a clean, unspoiled viewing. What unfolded over the next 103 minutes was a refreshing and haunting surprise: a rare gem from Australia that serves as a potent announcement of a new directorial voice in Luke Shanahan. The plot follows Maude Ashton (a hauntingly intense Adelaide Clemens), a year after the ...

  'Borgman': A Sinister Masterpiece That Deserves Wider Recognition "Dutch auteur Alex van Warmerdam crafts a haunting surrealist thriller that's been criminally overlooked" — 5/5 Stars "And they descended upon the Earth to strengthen their ranks." Borgman (2013) review: As it opens we are met with those eerie biblical words (in Dutch), and van Warmerdam pulls us into a world of equally eerie images. We see a hunting party, looking like they've stepped out of another century, moving through the woods. They're armed with spears, accompanied by a barking dog, and one of them—a priest, no less—carries a shotgun. It's immediately clear they're hunting something wicked, and that this thing lives underground. It's a fever dream beginning that immediately signals we're not in familiar territory—and it's only the tip of the iceberg in what stands as one ...

  A Beautiful, Frustrating Near-Miss from Oz Perkins, Longlegs (2024) "A visually hypnotic horror-thriller that doesn't quite deliver on its promise" — 3.5/5 Stars From the first frame, Longlegs lets you know you're in the hands of a visual stylist. Director Oz Perkins paints with shadows and light in a way that feels both meticulously crafted and dangerously unhinged. The aspect ratios shift like moods, the lighting schemes evoke everything from 70s conspiracy thrillers to Scandinavian nightmares. There are moments of pure cinematic sorcery here—sequences so visually arresting they momentarily make you forget you're watching a movie and instead feel like you've stumbled into someone's fever dream. But like the best fever dreams, Longlegs starts to fray at the edges when you try to make sense of it. The setup is classic procedural: Maika Monroe's FBI agent Lee Hark...

A Punk Rock Grindhouse Horror, Spare Parts (2020) A Punk Rock Grindhouse Horror, Spare Parts (2020) What's more punk rock than getting your arm hacked off and replaced with a rivet-shooting axe by a cult of junkyard freaks? On paper, Spare Parts should play like a scratched-up VHS discovered at a squat party — a bloody, DIY manifesto against good taste. In practice, it's more like a band with all the right influences but no distinct sound. Ambitiously grimy, knowingly trashy, but leaving its best riffs on the cutting-room floor. Short-Ass Summary Directed by Andrew Thomas Hunt, this Canadian flick follows Ms. 45, an all-girl punk band touring through hell—or, at least, the worst parts of America. After a setup ripped from a seventies revenge thriller, they're captured by a cult led by a wannabe Caesar (the great Julian Richings) and forced into gladiatorial games. The ticket price? Their fucking limbs, swapped for crude weapons. What W...