Blue Rose Film Review

BARBARIAN (MA15+) Written and directed by Zach Cregger Starring Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård and Justin Long Duration: 102 minutes We are living in an era of cinema that is being dominated by what some are calling the "renaissance" of horror cinema - horror films that non-horror fans feel comfortable praising because they double as family dramas, allegories for trauma, or vehicles for sharp social commentary. God forbid I use the phrase "elevated horror," but with the huge critical success of films like Hereditary and The Babadook, just to name a couple, there has been a sense in the last five or ten years that the only way that great horror films are being financed these days is if they are able to appeal to non-horror fans at the same time. That is not to say that any of these films that do or do not fit into this category are bad - most of them are excellent. But what that has led to is a lack of big, popular horror films that are completely unabashed and un

Martyrs is a film that I had been putting off seeing for a long time, mostly because I knew that it is the film that came closest to driving film critic and personal idol Mark Kermode out of the cinema without actually doing so. It is a strange anomaly for me, because usually I jump at any opportunity to experience a new piece of extreme cinema, but I just had a feeling that Martyrs might be too much for me.  And let me say up front, this is a film that absolutely deserves its reputation as one of the most full-on horror films in recent memory. In fact, I think Martyrs is one of the most deliberately unpleasant films I have ever seen. The question that I desperately wanted answers to, though:  Is it any good? © Kojo Pictures, 2008 The short answer to that question, having finally managed to see it in a crowded late-night screening in Sydney, is yes. However, is it as good as some of the film's biggest defenders would have you believe? I can't say that I think it is.  There are