DVD: It Follows

DVD: IT FOLLOWS Teen horror with a kind but chilling heart

Teen horror with a kind but chilling heart

This is an unusually humane horror film, made more chilling by its warmth towards its characters. After a brief prologue of inexplicable, bone-snapping terror, it lets us live quietly for some time with 19-year-old heroine Jay (Maika Monroe, perfectly natural and poised for stardom), till her naive visions of a date with a sexy city boy end with her drugged, bound, and cursed to be followed by an implacable, shape-shifting thing only she can see.

Christopher Lee: A Career in Clips

CHRISTOPHER LEE: A CAREER IN CLIPS theartsdesk pays tribute to the iconic actor, who died this week

theartsdesk pays tribute to the iconic actor, who died this week

Christopher Lee died this week, aged 93. It’s strange that an actor best known for horror films, for characters that were fiendish and diabolical, should be so cherished a part of the British cultural landscape. That fact speaks volumes for the charisma and charm, as well as craft of Lee’s performances, and for the intelligence, grace and wit of the man in person.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT Style over substance in the supposed 'first Iranian vampire Western'

Style over substance in the supposed 'first Iranian vampire Western'

A skateboarding female vampire in a striped Brêton top. A James Dean look-alike with a junkie father. A prostitute as confessor. Spaghetti western-influenced music. The black-and-white A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a smorgasbord of attention-grabbing elements brought together in what is being promoted as the “first Iranian vampire Western”.

The accuracy of the geographic tagging will be returned to in a few paragraphs, but one thing is clear about the self-consciously quirky A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: it’s a unique proposition.

DVD: The Blob

Surprisingly tense monster-from-space film which marked Steve McQueen’s lead debut

Retrospectively, two things help The Blob stand apart from the glut of late-Fifties aliens-invade-small-town-America science fiction films. It gave Steve McQueen his first starring role and its theme tune was an early Burt Bacharach co-write. Either of these – or even both together – are probably not enough to make the 1958 regional independent production into a classic piece of American cinema. But it is pretty good.

Bloodborne

BLOODBORNE Brutally hard, but rewarding action gaming

Brutally hard, but rewarding action gaming

Should games be challenging? One of the perennial design challenges of videogames. Make a game too tough and you'll put people off; make it too easy and you'll offer no interest. And then there's the tricky issue of individuals having vastly different play styles and abilities.

White Night

WHITE NIGHT Beautifully stylish horror adventure shines out

Beautifully stylish horror adventure shines out

The old house seems empty at first. But in the darkness, a flickering match your only light source, it quickly becomes apparent that something terrible is here…

White Night is a classic haunted house tale and a classic adventure game wrapped up in a beautiful, stylised visual feast. Like the Sin City comics and films, this uses stark black and white with just the occasional flicker of colour, mostly the guttering yellow of a match.

Ruddigore, Charles Court Opera, King's Head Theatre

RUDDIGORE, CHARLES COURT OPERA, KING'S HEAD THEATRE They can sing, dance and make you laugh until you cry: portmanteau G&S at its very best

They can sing, dance and make you laugh until you cry: portmanteau G&S at its very best

How can a feisty village dame duetting “lackaday”s with the mounted head of a long-lost, nay, long-dead love be so deuced affecting? Ascribe it partly to the carefully-applied sentiment of Gilbert and Sullivan, slipping in a very singular 11-o’clock number after so much Gothick spoofery, partly to two consummate and subtle singing actors, Amy J Payne and John Savournin, in a production of spare ingenuity by the latter, true Renaissance/Victorian man equally at home in opera and operetta.

Resident Evil: Revelations 2 – Episode 1

Action-oriented horror series gets snipped into formulaic episodes

A shambling corpse, desperately gouging anything that comes near it for sustenance, a shadow of its former self. I'm not talking of the zombies that infest this game, but the Resident Evil series itself and its iconic Japanese publisher Capcom.

For those not familiar with the Resident Evil series, this wildly successful set of games jump-started the "survival horror" genre in 1996, and has since spawned an army of spin-off game titles and films, while the main series has mutated – from slow-paced adventure to high-speed action.

It Follows

Smart, striking horror starring Maika Monroe and directed by David Robert Mitchell

David Robert Mitchell's second ode to innocence lost is a rather more twisted take on the subject than his first film, The Myth of the American Sleepover. That was a beautifully judged ensemble coming-of-ager which merely teased us with horror tropes. Alongside the titular teen tradition it featured an abandoned warehouse, a Ouija board, a trip down to the basement and a midnight swim. With his chilling follow-up Mitchell goes full horror, presenting us with a STH: a sexually transmitted haunting.

DVD: The Nightcomers

DVD: THE NIGHTCOMERS Marlon Brando bombs in ludicrous Michael Winner-directed prequel to 'The Turn of the Screw'

Marlon Brando bombs in ludicrous Michael Winner-directed prequel to 'The Turn of the Screw'

“We have been doing sex” is Flora and Miles’s answer when housekeeper Miss Jessel asks what they are up to. The brother and sister have seemingly been violently attacking each other on a bed. The inspiration is gardener Peter Quint’s interactions with their governess Miss Jessel: Miles has been spying on them. The Nightcomers sought to provide the backstory for Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and, in so doing, explain the torments in the novella.