30 Days of Fright: August 2012 horror DVD round-up

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We know what you’ve been thinking. Yes, indeed, it has been a long while since us long-suffering horror movie fans have been treated to another slice of Blair Witch/Rec style found footage unpleasantness. Sarcasm aside, at least our lead movie this month offers something slightly different to most of its ilk.

Australian director Carlo Ledesma’s sleeper hit The Tunnel is a pseudo-documentary following a film crew as they investigate an underground water reservoir beneath a drought-hit Sydney. Needless to say, things take a somewhat sinister turn when our protagonists discover something nasty chewing up local rough sleepers.

Slickly-shot with a keen satirical eye for real-life news broadcasting and politics plus a whole lot tenser than many a real-time thrill ride (no mean feat considering the survivors provide the narration in retrospect), it’s no surprise that this fan-funded pic is already in line for a sequel.

Speaking of low-budget camcorder goings-on, next up we have possibly the least necessary spoof ever, the downright horrible Supernatural Activity. From the title, you know which haunted house film this ‘spooftacular’ chooses to rib; pretty much everything else you need to know is that it manages to somehow make the Scary Movie franchise look classy.

The press release for alternative history gothscapade The Raven doesn’t say it’s necessarily a parody, though it’s not much of a stretch to see it as a crushingly unfunny spoof of the likes of From Hell and Sleepy Hollow.

V For Vendetta director James McTeigue’s leaden thriller stars the usually reliable John Cusack as an over-the-hill Edgar Allan Poe, called in to help solve a series of copycat killings influenced by his own grisly writings. A raging alcoholic no longer capable of getting his work in print, Cusack is fine as the great gothic author though sloppy, half-baked references to his work, a criminally underused Brendan Gleeson and plot twists you just don’t care about serve as a somewhat offensive tribute to one of the true icons of American literature.

Last up is the curious gangster/village/vampire mash-up The Reverend. Based on the graphic novel of the same name, maybe this low-budget British oddity would have been better named ‘Lock, Stock and Two Bloody Fangs’.

Stuart Brennan plays a young South Wales clergyman assigned to a seemingly idyllic village, who is savage by one of those inconvenient bloodsuckers you sometimes encounter. He survives, but with a new-found bloodlust, he decides to turn that on local villains and clean up the nearby ‘estate’.

Brennan is great as the unthreatening nice guy turned anti-hero, though unfortunately the shabby plot doesn’t bear up and appearances from the likes of Brit goth favourite Emily Booth and the semi-legendary Rutger Hauer seem a little shoehorned in.

With South Wales inexplicably full of Guy Ritchie-style mockneys such as Tamer Hassan as the local kingpin and a plain weird turn from EastEnders‘ Shane Ritchie as an ‘orrible pimp, a more believable setting and cast may have saved this potential cult classic.

Watch the trailer for The Raven

What’s the best horror movie you’ve seen recently? Let us know below…