Movie reviews of Eric Hillis

There's a lesson here for low-budget filmmakers. Day 13 works best when it keeps things intimate, and for its opening 30 minutes or so it's a pretty effective little thriller, even if its protagonist's behaviour is hard to swallow. But it feels like a script that began with its final twist, and it ties itself in knots working backwards to deliver its denouement. Review

We get no real backstory of how Ahmed came to be this way. Review

Borte's filmmaking isn't exactly subtle, but it's economical and effective. Review

If you grew up in the '80s and now have kids of your own reaching the age where they can indulge in the genre's delights, the four and a half hours of In Search of Darkness should serve as quite the primer for leading them down the path to horror geekdom. Review

What makes Aquaslash work is how Gauthier tells his very silly story with a completely straight face, never once winking at the audience. Review

Like so many middlebrow British movies, Summerland is all surface. Review

It's testament to Tsutsui's abilities as a performer that we can find ourselves so conflicted. Review

Oakley, Windsor and Martini all do enough good work here however to keep us eager for their next outings. Review

There's certainly plenty here to make you sit up in your seat, but unless you have some prior investment in the world and people portrayed here, you might find yourself giving up on trying to keep track of its plot. Review

Its intriguing cultural context aside, The Vigil does little to set itself apart from the average horror movie of its ilk. Review

It's a shame Impetigore goes out on such a whimper, because there really is some great work on display here. Review

The performances are what really make The Rental worth taking time out of your own busy schedule for. Review

American cinema rarely gives us films like Clemency, which dare to focus on the internal life of a complicated character against the backdrop of what should be a very uncomplicated moral issue. Review

Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles offers more than enough thematic depth to satisfy Buñuel enthusiasts and a general adult audience. Review

Aside from an extra layer of professionalism, there's little to distinguish Lake of Death from the dozens of cheap American cabin in the woods horror movies that clog the VOD drain every year. Review

Open 24 Hours never quite sinks its teeth into the potentially dark, probing character study it might have been, as it's more concerned with getting to the eventual bloodshed. Said violence is relatively well mounted, but it's something of an anti-climax after the patiently unnerving build-up that gets us to that point. Review

But for all the good work around her, this is very much the Tuppence Middleton show. Abby is one of the more intriguing protagonists of recent years... Review

O'Connor's film has the sort of abrupt denouement that would be perfect if this were the pilot for a TV show, but as a movie it needs a little more room to breathe. Review

This is essentially her feature debut, and it's quite the entrance. Review

It's a middling addition to the sub-genre, but there's enough to keep devotees of Animal Attacks cinema mildly amused. Review

Mortimer, Nevin and Heathcote are all excellent here, and the fractured relationship between the women is laid out in a manner as ambiguous as the nature of Edna's mental state. Review

But for all the existing sci-fi/horror ingredients Brown throws into his narrative pot, he manages to make The Beach House a distinctively flavoured chowder of his own. Review

With an A-list star and a globe-trotting narrative, The Old Guard has the trappings of the modern tentpole action movie, but it's very much straight to video schlock. Review

The central idea here has bags of potential, and if played well it could result in a movie that's essentially John Carpenter's The Thing transplanted to the confines of a suburban family home. In Hong-Sun's film, the paranoid tension between the family members is never mined for the sort of thrills and suspense such a dynamic seems custom made for... Review