mike_film09

Yes, there are worse horror movies out there, but there are few where such a promising idea - the setting being the UK miners' strike of 1974, which plunged whole areas into darkness for lack of electricity - has been so wastefully ditched for a slack possession-style tale with little resonance.

There are good things: the main actress is accomplished, the photography classy. But there's little story to speak of, hence the need for the main character's part to 'self-generate' any drama there is.

One of the producers, Lizzie Francke, has a great track record especially for the UK (remember the transgressive Donkey Punch, which, um, punched well above its weight?). This film doesn't add to it.

I'm not even saying avoid the film. If you're a horror fan, you've seen it all done better. If you like Brit movies, maybe you might get something from it. But it definitely won't be what's promised by Shudder.

At the time of writing, every headline about this movie is filled with superlatives. Well, I don't want to diss a rare well-made British movie but actually, it's quite bad and I'll bet that you're disappointed with it. Why? Without spoilers, it's fair to say this an anti-hero movie, where we are watching the central character do things that are increasingly awful. Normally anti-hero movies, from The Joker back to (part of) Silence of the Lambs, at least make their anti-heroes interesting. But the central character here is profoundly UNinteresting: stupid, deluded and socially inept. So there's that. Then there's the fact that the central relationship between nurse and patient is poorly dramatised. Most of the character-related material comes from others who pop up coincidentally (eg while the anti-heroine is walking on the seafront). So the movie's key relationship never really works dramatically.

The key to the movie's current success, I think, is that the movie is heavily pretentious, and critics love that. They can fashion whole reviews on the gap between story and meaning. But I don't think mainstream audiences are in the same place at all. And you might find this yourself if you're unwise enough to pay money to see it. So, despite being in a minority of one (so far) I'm just saying be warned. P.S. If you want a horror movie about a carer, try 'Livide': it's got more genuine creepiness in its little finger than exists in all of 'Saint Maud'.

Quite brilliant opening episode of Peckinpah's own series may have just about fitted into the Western TV pigeonhole when it went out in 1960, but to those who know his later films, the series - and this episode in particular - prefigures his work to come. There are flickers of familiar moments: when Brit pugulist Denny kills a bar drunk with one punch, everyone else jumps forward to steal the dead guy's boots and clothes - something that also happened after the opening gunfight in The Wild Bunch. What mainly stands out here, though, is the incredible writing, directing and playing of the central 'love' story, between Dave and his ex-, the beautiful Jeff. I've literally never seen TV as well judged as the quiet moments when they sit together, talking of the past. It boggles the mind that something this good was a) commissioned, then b) cancelled. It also demands a restoration, so we don't have to see it on fuzzy old YouTube. Surely there are enough Peckinpah fans out there to justify a restoration and release?