STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING
(US, 2025)
Craig Ouellette’s fifteen-years-in-the-making horror-romance is very much a love-letter to Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with a queer nod to Thelma & Louise. The movie wears its inspirations on its sleeve, and has no shame in doing so. This is a wild ride through the dark heart of the American South, and it takes no prisoners. A movie that wants to entertain, and does so in spades. There’s nothing new on display, we’ve seen it all before, but Ouellette delivers his package, grinning, with a bow tied in chains.
Dani (Kelsey Christian) is a singer-guitarist on a mission, her sights set on California, attempting to rekindle her past band’s joy, but she’s out on her own. Until she meets cute diner lass Kaitlin (Bonnie Jean Tyler), who is keen as mustard to slip off the world’s smallest handcuffs and kick free of her trailer trash husband, Darrel (Travis Lincoln Cox). Together the two women hit the road. But that road is gonna hit back. Hard. Will love lie bleeding, or will the dream-filled lovers escape the homestead clutches and twisted family values of the Robinson’s (Maria Olsen, Bill Hengstenberg, and Michael Gmur). It’s contemporary girl power vs redneck tradition and every woman for herself!
Ouellette shot Straight On Till Morning over four or so years, harnessing a true indie spirit, and the fire of freedom and “family” instils the movie like a smoky overproof bourbon, with original songs provided by Christian, Tyler on wardrobe duties, Olsen as casting director, and Cox as second assistant director. Special effects makeup from Rachael Wagner includes an impressive shin bone compound fracture that will guarantee loud wincing from the audience. Hope Ouellette doesn’t have to wait another fifteen before he makes his next genre mash-up.
It Ends
(US, 2025)
Writer/director Alex Ullom is part of the new wave of Gen Z filmmakers, eschewing traditional methods of production and holding all the creative control in their hands. The cast and crew are all Zoomers, and their take on indie horror is bold and refreshing, if perhaps overly earnest. Ullom has been keen to coin the phrase “hang out horror” and with his debut feature he’s achieved that by taking the road movie by the bullhorns and thrusting it deep into the wilderness of existential dread, almost entirely from the confines of an SUV. And, for the most it, it succeeds very well.
Four mates pile into a Jeep Cherokee, whilst helping their friend on a college move, and they’re keen to find some takeout. They make a turn off the main road and onto a two-lane blacktop heading into the thick of the surrounding hinterland. There’s James (Phinehas Yoon), the cynic, Tyler (Mitchell Cole), who owns the Jeep and seems the staunchest, and there’s Fisher (Noah Toth), the joker, and Day (Akira Jackson), the female energy keeping the guys on their toes. Before they can say “Abracadabra” there’s a dark magic at play; the road has become an endless highway, and their plight made entirely fragile.
On a surface level It Ends works as a metaphor for young adults and the unknown future of their lives, the curiosity, the questioning, the courage and the fear. There is also the theme of mortality and morality, twisted and thrown around, from the front seat to the back, and out the window. Ullom isn’t interested in providing easy answers, in fact, he’s dead set on throwing all questions into the ring and letting the audience chew on what they find tastiest. This is a character study about conflict and resolve, but not following any set rules. There are familiar visceral horror tropes that loiter on the periphery, but It Ends is very much playing a psychological game, and it rewards in subtle, yet satisfying ways, with a curious dark sense of humour thrown in for good measure. Excellent performances and direction from names to watch.
Come Closer
(Isreal/Italy, 2024)
Eden (Lia Elalouf) is a vibrant, impulsive young woman in her early 20s. She has a close relationship with her younger brother Nati (Ido Tako), which is shattered when he is killed suddenly following his birthday celebrations during the film’s opening scenes. Eden slips into a listless blue funk of grief, trying to fill the void, trying to make sense of this profound loss, and she finds an anchor in the form of Maya (Darya Rosenn), the young, naïve girlfriend her brother had been seeing in secret. Eden befriends Maya, and attempts to conquer her shyness, and while they find an unusually sensual, intimate solace in each other’s company, there is a sense of desperation that begins to take hold.
The debut feature from Tom Nesher, who wrote the screenplay based on her experiences of losing her younger brother in a tragic accident. It’s a compelling and emotionally complex drama of relationships and identity, a powerful portrait of grief and the effect on those around you. Lia Elalouf, a former Israeli model and combat instructor in the Israel Defense Force, gives a stunning, hugely charismatic performance full of seductive sassiness and self-assurance, but capturing an innate fragility underneath.
Fraught with danger and allure Come Closer navigates a precarious journey of self-doubt and self-discovery, and culminates in one of the most emotionally-stirring endings to a drama I’ve seen in years. This is a character study that throbs with a quiet energy, a smart morality tale that shifts amorally, a calling card for the director and star, and on further reflection has cemented itself as one of my favourite films of the year.
Islands
(Germany, 2025)
Tom (Sam Riley) is a tennis coach on a Canary Island resort. He’s a lush bachelor, spending his days lazily teaching Brit and European tourists how to volley, and his nights at loud, local club Waikeke, sifting with the fairer sex, often ending up hungover and alone on a nearby beach with little to no memory of how he got there. He’s an ex-professional player, in the doldrums of his 40s, coasting on booze and the goodwill of others. Enter the Maguire family; Anne (Stacy Martin), husband Dave (Jack Farthing) and their young boy Anton (Dylan Torrell). There is an immediate sexual tension between Anne and Tom. But it’s wayward Dave who will be the catalyst for the movie’s psychological slow burn thrills.
German director and co-writer Jan-Ole Gerster have fashioned a terrifically sly “film soleil” (think noir in the sunshine), a character study of loneliness and ennui, a “whodunnit” that refuses to meander the usual avenues of clue deduction and diligent reward. It does play with many of the tropes of the mystery thriller, but ultimately settles into something more lingering and unique. Yes, frustration is definitely an element that is played to the fore, but Islands serves up a match that is by no means love all.
Riley and Martin deliver superbly controlled performances, all sly eye contact and cautious body language. Riley holds a laid-back charm, while Martin exudes an elusive sensuality. Farthing is also excellent as the itchy husband who needs to be kept on a shorter leash, while the desolate beauty of Fuerteventura is almost a character in itself. The tone of the movie shifts at the end, and while I wasn’t entirely sold on it at the time, I’m feeling more in tune with it now. Islands feels like the balmy, breezy lost cousin of Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky, with Hopper’s The Hot Spot as the beer chaser.
The Wailing
(Spain/Argentina/France, 2025)
In one of the best slow-burn supernatural horror movies of the year, Pedro Martin-Calero’s debut feature The Wailing (original Spanish title, El Llanto translates as “The Cry” or “The Crying”) is a dramatic tour-de-force that acts like a massive metaphor for misogynism and systemic abuse, with three central roles that shine like beacons; Ester Expósito as Andrea, Malena Villa as Camilla, and Mathilde Olliver as Marie. Exposito and Olliver stand-out, especially, for such superb, emotionally nuanced performances.
Co-written with award-winning screenwriter Isabel Peña, Martin-Calero’s triptych narrative essentially follows three young women across a couple of time-lines (1998 and 2022) and two different countries – linked by a mysterious abandoned building – with their lives being ruined by a “hombre de negro” (José Luis Ferrae), an elderly man/oppressive entity who stalks the women through electronic devices/monitor screens (laptops, phones, televisions). He is some kind of devil, a serial terroriser of interconnected women, and anyone who happens to be in the way.
This is a deeply psychological horror, with a perfectly eerie score, and it burns with a palpable sense of dread, especially during the first third’s narrative that follows the tortured Andrea in Madrid, who is at first dealing with the discovery she was adopted and her boyfriend partying it up on the other side of the world (Sydney, even!), only to discover there is a malevolent presence infecting her existence, and now she can never allow herself to fall asleep again. Some twenty-five years earlier film student Camilla, in a township near Tel Aviv, secretly videos a complete stranger (it is Marie, whom we first meet in a disturbing prologue sequence) who is being hunted by the same evil entity as the one who will come for Andrea. It’s a cyclic, seemingly endless shroud of darkness, an echo of fear, a cry for help. But who can come to rescue?