Flashback

Almost nine years on from his faux documentary, The Conspiracy (2012), director Christopher MacBride returns with the Canadian psychological and sci-fi thriller Flashback. Fred Fitzell (Dylan O’Brien) stands on the precipice of adulthood. In a committed relationship with his long-term girlfriend Karen (Hannah Gross), he faces the pressure of a new corporate job, and his mother’s ailing health. When a chance encounter with a man from his youth results in terrifying flashbacks, Fred tries to piece together the fragmented memories of taking an experimental drug called Mercury. Becoming obsessed with finding out what happened to Cindy (Maika Monroe), a girl from his High School who went missing, the struggle to hold his life together threatens both his relationship and his job.

As with The Conspiracy, which sees two filmmakers go in search of their subject, a conspiracy theorist who mysteriously disappears, the motivational drive of Flashback’s story is also to discover the fate of a missing person. MacBride shifts his focus from the external to the internal. In as much as Fred becomes obsessive about what happened to Cindy, the story is as much about the choices and possible outcomes that have shaped his life. If the characters are searching for one another or themselves, it’s a reflection of a filmmaker whose developing his own creative language and identity.

An enjoyable hyper-energetic piece of filmmaking, MacBride flirts with the idea of what it could mean if we control our sensory responses. Cindy says to Fred after taking a weaker dose of Mercury, “There’s so much to explore if you don’t give in to the pleasure.” It’s an intriguing idea that brings definition to the story, underpinning it with an intent to develop ideas and themes. Questions of what lies beyond our perception, and the hidden mysteries of the mind are tantalising, offering any storyteller compelling, creative and entertaining material. Unfortunately the limited execution here leaves us to sense a debilitating sparseness to the storytelling, and the feeling that it gets lost in its own rabbit hole.

In spite of these qualms, MacBride is able to engage us with the emotional hook of Fred’s relationship with both Karen and his mother, portrayed with a sensitivity and gentleness, even if guilty of being a little saccharine. This is offset by the less optimistic idea of our shared existential crisis.

Sitting on a rooftop overlooking the city at night, Cindy tells Fred, “I don’t want to be like them. Locked in a prison that they’ve forgot that they’re in. Look at all of them, running around, pretending to know exactly who they are and why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

It’s a clichéd thought, yet that doesn’t make our shared existential crisis any less true. During the pandemic the idea of “normality” has been on our minds, and we have a choice. We can return to the “old normality” or seek out a “new normality.” Cindy’s words and Fred’s piecing together his fragmented puzzle feeds into the dilemma that occupies our present day reality.

The idea of sensory control, and the planes we can explore that lie beyond our perception are only a dream. For now we must use imagination to ponder these possibilities. It’s a grandiose idea that elevates the discussion about “normality”, to the hypothetical of, what if we could expand the possibilities of the human experience?

MacBride synchs his film with the timely question we should be asking ourselves: what do we want our collective futures to be? He retreats from any grand declaration to instead offer a simple thought. Fred’s fate proposes the idea that each of us has to create a space for ourselves. It’s one that should fulfil our needs to feel a sense of belonging, meaning and purpose, even if someone sat on a rooftop dreads the thought of being like us. We cannot control our collective “normality”, but we can control our personal sense of it.

Flashback is out on Sky Cinema and NOW on Friday, September 30th. On IMDB TV on Monday, January 3rd. Also available on other platforms.

Kids and grown-ups love it so!!!

In Steven Kostanski’s independent American sci-fi, horror, comedy Psycho Goreman, siblings Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) unwittingly resurrect an ancient alien overlord, who was entombed on Earth millions of years ago. Nicknaming him Psycho Goreman, PG for short, they discover they can control this tyrannical force, that once threatened to destroy universe with a magical amulet. Forced to abide by Mimi’s childish whims, PG’s presence soon draws the attention of allies and foes from across the galaxy. In small town America, the fate of the universe will be decided.

No stranger to genre cinema Kostanski’s previous directorial credits include Manborg (2011) and The Void (2016), co-directed with Jeremy Gillespie, and Leprechaun Returns (2018). He has also worked on makeup prosthetics and effects on features and series including Star Trek Discovery (2017-18), Hannibal (2013-14), Crimson Peak (Del Toro, 2015) and Suicide Squad (Ayer, 2016).

In conversation with DMovies, Kostanski discussed the need to change the culture around movies and keeping our inner child alive.

….


Paul Risker – Why film as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?

Steven Kostanski – I come from a very artistic family. My mum is an artist and while my dad’s not an artist, he was a technical drafting supervisor. He’s now retired, but he’s a technically minded guy, and the combination of that and my mum’s artistry turned me into what I am.

I like the problem-solving of filmmaking, and I also like the creative expression behind it – of being able to create weird fantasy worlds. I was a kid that was raised in the video store, watching sci-fi, horror, fantasy and action movies, Saturday morning cartoons, and playing video games – all the typical stuff of a late ’80s, early ’90s kid. It’s all burned into my brain and it influences everything I make.

When my dad moved one of our VCRs into the basement, I had free reign over what movies I was watching, and it opened up the world of filmmaking. I was able to obsess over movies, and this predates DVD and watching clips on YouTube. Being able to pause and rewind, and watch an effect over and over again, and obsess over how it was made was influential.

Up until that point I liked drawing, sculpting and painting. I was always making dioramas in school and I realised that all of those things could come together in one form of expression, which is movies.

PR – Youth is a special time to discover film because at that age we’re sponges. We absorb everything, and as we get older how we relate to cinema changes. It’s not that we love film any less, but it’s a different experience, and one that I find feeds a nostalgia.

SK – The internet and the connectivity we have is great for some things, and for the post-movie discussion it’s fine, but I find it spoils the experience of just watching a movie now because there’s expectation. The hype-machine that’s built around movies and TV now is so empowering, and it’s also instant – it happens and then it’s done.

It’s newer and it’s a little outside of the VHS era, but one of the last times I went to a movie and was blown away in that child like way was when I saw The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001). I’d not read the books and I didn’t know anything about it. I was more into sci-fi and horror at that point, and so I thought, ‘Oh, it’s just going to be elves and fantasy stuff, this is going to be boring’, and I remember being blown away and overwhelmed. I was pulled into this universe that was epic in scope, but also singular in Peter Jackson’s vision. I always felt he had me in the palm of his hand, ‘I’m telling you this story and you’re going to listen.’

I also think back on that experience because it was such a surprise, I was so blindsided. Immediately after I read the books and then the experience changed. There was hype and expectations around The Two Towers (Jackson, 2002) and The Return of the King (Jackson, 2003). Neither of those hit the same way that first movie hit because I didn’t know what I was getting into, and so I was overwhelmed by the experience. I wish more movies could do that, where they come out of nowhere because nobody is talking about them. You just go to check it out and it punches you in the face. We need a little bit more of that with our movie consumption.

PR – It occurs to me that it’s unlikely you’re alone in these feelings, and equally that it’s near impossible to reverse the power of the hype-machine.

SK – It’s impossible because we’re in an age where people are racing to spoil everything, and not just spoil, but also give their opinions. It becomes more about going to watch a movie and wondering if I’ll agree with someone, as opposed to going to watch the movie because you want to enjoy the experience.

The culture around movies has changed a lot, and not necessarily for the better in my opinion. It makes me yearn for that childlike excitement where the only hype around a movie I would get is one of my cousins telling me how terrifying Hellraiser 2 (Randel, 1988) was. The hype-machine back then was my cousins and my friends at school saying, “Oh, you’ve got to see The Puppet Master (1989-2018) movies, they’re crazy.” That’s all the lead in you’d get, and we need to bring that back. I’m not sure how, but we’ve got to figure it out.

PR – Is Psycho Goreman the type of film with a vibrant energy and confidence that it demands to be seen, therein making it difficult to adequately review or spoil through criticism?

SK – I feel like I’ve experienced that with PG, where there’s polarising opinions. What I’ve loved is that in the online discussion, even people that are not onboard with the movie are still telling you to see it. I like forward momentum, like what you’re saying. You just have to experience the thing, and I appreciate that because even with bad movies, it shouldn’t be a case of going to Rotten Tomatoes and thinking, “This has a lower rating, I’m not going to watch it.” I love misfires and I find them very interesting. Having made a movie that has this discussion around it, where people that have experienced the movie, regardless of whether it’s necessarily their cup of tea or not, are pushing people towards the film, is exciting. It’s getting us towards that movie culture that I’d rather be in, where it’s little more communal and accepting.

I’m not trying to spin anything, but I find that in this world where everybody is so polarised, it’s either love it, it’s the best thing ever, or they want to murder the filmmaker. Going back to childhood, there’s that middle ground of it’s a fun thing to talk about. It’s just a movie and it should be a fun pastime, and not so much of this industry of criticism and review, which I feel a lot of people have clung onto as their bread and butter, which feels very weird to me.

PR – As kids we’re dreamers, and films often fuelled our youthful dreams and fantasises. Is your film one that can offer nostalgia to reconnect with our inner child?

SK – My whole life and throughout my adulthood, I still feel like a twelve-year-old in an adult body. I don’t think that’s ever going to go away, and I’ll have moments of clarity in meetings with studio executives where I just want to go and play Nintendo 64.

You have to keep that spirit alive because I don’t get what the alternative is. As a kid, growing up meant I’m allowed to watch Terminator 2 (Cameron, 1991) and Predator (McTiernan, 1987) as much as I want. To me the adult content was just amped up kids content, and so that’s why I make the movies that I make. You’re allowed to like fantasy stuff as a grown up, there’s nothing taboo about that.

I don’t get what the expectation is otherwise – are we all just supposed to watch sports and wash our truck in the driveway every weekend, and barbecue? I don’t get what the alternative is and so to me adulthood is the same shit as when you’re a kid, except now there’s gore and nudity – what’s wrong with that!

To me it’s not so much reconnecting with being a kid, it’s about keeping the spark of life you had when you were a kid, and that seems to get extinguished in a lot of people in adulthood. It’s understandable, the consequences of reality can beat a person down, but I feel like you can use that guiding light of fun and whimsy to keep your spirit going in the dark times. I want to keep that energy going because otherwise what’s the point? Why even bother getting up in the morning?

Psycho Goreman is streaming exclusively on Shudder from May 20th.

Possessor

This is the first new film from Brandon Cronenberg in the better part of a decade, following his debut Antiviral (2012). Given Brandon’s surname, you might guess that he is a part of David Cronenberg’s brood, he is his only son, although Brandon has two sisters. He is also a cinematic heir to the Cronenberg name.

Antiviral is an interesting but ultimately cold and unsatisfying dystopian body-horror flick about selling celebrities’ illnesses to obsessed fans. In Possessor, on the other hand, Brandon Cronenberg bursts out of his father’s shadow and coming into his own as a filmmaker, even if the influence of fathers’ work is still obvious.

Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is an agent for the shadowy corporation Trematon. She inhabits other people’s bodies through brain-implants so that they can unknowingly commit assassinations on behalf of the corporation. She eventually takes over the body of Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott), who is the boyfriend of the daughter of rival CEO John Parse (Sean Bean). It all escalates into a duel between Colin and Tasya as he tries to regain control of his body.

Much like David Cronenberg’s films, Possessor is set in a Ballardian Toronto, but the action takes place in an alternative 2008, not a future or the present. The opening sequence of extreme violence would be an interesting film in itself. Gabrielle Graham plays a young black woman, Holly, who is working a party at some swanky hotel. She is under the control of Tasya, and stabs a man repeatedly. Tasya is supposed to get Holly to commit suicide, but she can’t go through it. She eventually gets Holly to shoot at the cops, and the cops blow her away. It’s an astute statement about how white wealthy people use black and brown people to do their dirty work and in the end the victims get punished for it. Throughout the film, Tasya seems to be going through extreme levels of stress stemming from this botched job and due to domestic issues with her husband and young son.

The main body of the film is the battle for control of Colin. It certainly has some shades of Upgrade (Leigh Whannell, 2018), but lacks some of the thrill-ride aspects of that film, instead offering something more hallucinatory. The casting of Andrea Riseborough as the defacto lead Tasya certainly recalls Mandy (Pano Cosmatos, 2018), as does the psychedelic pink colour palette in various sequences, especially the grande finale. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Tasya’s handler Girder, which also recalls poppa Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999), itself is kind of a Philip K. Dickian assassination thriller. Possessor‘s production designer Rupert Lazarus, who cut his teeth in the art department on eXistenZ, is one of the various people who Brandon has inherited from his father’s films. Another is Deirdre Bowen, who has been Cronenberg’s casting director since The Dead Zone (1983), which probably why the film is expertly cast.

Since David Cronenberg left behind the body horror films of his younger years with eXistenZ in 1999 to do crime films, literary adaptations and art-house flare (nothing wrong with that either), it’s good to see the Cronenberg family business injected with new blood. Possessor is the trippy sci-fi/horror movie you’ve been waiting for all year. It doesn’t disappoint with its impressive visuals, strong performances, twists and turns, satire, and a good sprinkling of the old ultra-violence. One of the best films of the year.

Possessor premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in October, when this piece was originally written. On some digital platforms on Friday, November 27th. On Shudder on Thursday, June 10th.

Sputnik

Russia, 1983 – Colonel Semiradov (Fyodor Bondarchuk), the head of a secluded military facility recruits the maverick doctor Tatiana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina), to evaluate Konstantin Sergeyevich (Pyotr Fyodorov) the sole surviving cosmonaut of the spacecraft Orbit-4. In the process of her work, she learns that he may have brought back to Earth an alien parasite, and Semiradov’s motivations lie in weaponising it.

I’ll never forget the unsettling feeling I had watching the opening of Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996), the memory of which still conjures up an eerie feeling. The triumph of mankind darkened by the shadow of an extraterrestrial force creeping over the lunar landing site. The music building to the big reveal of the alien vessel appearing overhead with Earth in the distance. It’s cinematic storytelling with an adrenaline rush. This one scene is symbolic of how humanity’s gaze to the stars has been one of wonder and fear – the achievement of our adventurous spirit juxtaposed with the fear of the unknown depths of space.

Out of this fear cinema has presented the unscrupulous nature of man as a source of terror, and the comparative nature of the ambitions of the socialist Soviet Union and a futuristic vision of capitalism. These are two opposing forms of political ideology, but Semiradov’s intentions to weaponise the parasite recalls the Weyland-Yutani Corporation of the Alien franchise, who have similar ambitions for the Alien.

In one scene, Semiradov says to Klimova, “Do you know why we need weapons? Weapons guarantee peace. A pack of dogs would tear each other to pieces. In order to live in peace, they need one leader.” His argument is an oversimplification – the world is divided up as a more than a pack of dogs, and the reason for weapons is peace through a propensity for mutual destruction. Our political world is built on this idea, and we still see tensions with countries such as Iran over nuclear development programmes, a deterrent to military threats from political and economic adversaries.

The political commentary aside, director Egor Abramenko’s feature debut is a journey from suspense to emotion, that creates a symbiotic relationship with Klimova. Introduced as a maverick who has saved the life of a boy, she deduces that Semiradov has recruited her because she’s willing to take risks. He sees someone akin to himself who prioritises results ahead of process. A single-mindedness imbues a character with a hardness, and Akinshina is captivating in the way she reveals the emotional depth of her character. Abramenko and his writers and writers Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev position her to other characters in such a way that develops and mutually benefits them as a group, while also creating dramatic parallel arcs: Sergeyevich (Pyotr Fyodorov) the emotional, and Semiradov the ethical.

Sputnik is an assured first feature that does not try to reinvent the genre and break with cliche. Abramenko, Malovichko and Zolotarev trust in a familiar science-fiction horror told well, and here is its pleasure. However, Sputnik is the type of story that will inevitably live or die on the back of its creature. Abramenko’s direction empowers the alien, that while not as iconic as other creatures in the genre, is a ferocious and menacing addition to the genre.

Sputnik is streaming On Digital in the UK (Vertigo Releasing) and in select theatres, On Digital and Cable VoD in the U.S (IFC Films) from Friday, August 14th.

Diverge

A pandemic virus has wiped out large cities and seemingly most of the world’s population. Chris Towne (Ivan Sandomire, the Eddie Vedder lookalike pictured above) is desperately searching for a cure for the malaise as his sick wife Anne (Erin Cunningham) grapples with the symptoms of the disease. Their son has already passed away. The couple meander through a dry and deserted landscape, symbolic of what the world has now become. Until they encounter an enigmatic stranger (Jamie Jackson) who claims he can save not just Anne but all of mankind. How? By sending Chris back into the past in order to rewrite history.

The post-apocalyptic future portrayed in the beginning of the film is strangely beautiful and eerie. The landscape is arid, bright and vast, the image saturation is so low that the sequence is almost black and white. Attention to textures is paid, from twisted clouds to cracked soil and water puddles. The first-time director successfully conveys a sense of isolation and despondency with a lovely artistic finish. But then Chris travels to the past and the film turns into something different, some sort of psychological thriller with a far more elusive artistic edge. A subtle psychological thriller, with a European touch. Not a fast-paced Hollywood thriller.

After time-travelling to the pre-apocalyptic past Chris and the stranger come across their own versions, and they do their best to avoid being seen by “themselves”. They attempt to stop Chris (from the past) from working on a project which will culminate in disaster, triggering the deadly pandemic. They are trying to alter the course history. The stakes are high, and so they will do anything they can in order to save mankind from impending doom. The movie lends a whole new meaning to at least two phrases: “you arrive in this world naked” and “I’m going to kill myself” – you can join the puzzle pieces and work out what I mean without watching the film. Otherwise just watch the movie!

This is a film interesting enough to keep you going for 85 minutes. I would recommend that you watch it in the dark and with good speakers or headphones. Or a seashell (again, watch it in order to understand the reference!). On the downside, this is far from a perfect movie, if still enjoyable and with enough philosophical and lyrical depth. The time travel premise feels a little bit trite, and the script has a few gaps. Plus the profoundly poetic tone in beginning of the film gets diluted throughout the narrative, and the initial ideas never comes full circle.

Diverge is available worldwide on all major VoD platforms from February 2018.

Before We Vanish (Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha)

This review is of a first viewing. It really doesn’t happen often, but I can imagine liking this more second time round. Before We Vanish is a very strange and unusual movie, from Japan.

Hands take a goldfish from a group in a white bathtub and transfer it into a metal pan. A sailor-suited schoolgirl carries the fish in a bag to another house. Inside the latter, on its floor, the fish struggles to breathe as it lies on the ground out of water. Spattered with blood, the girl (Yuri Tsunematsu) walks happily along the middle of a busy road. As she strolls without a care, a lorry swerving to avoid her crashes headlong into an oncoming car.

Elsewhere, something is wrong with Shinji Kase (Ryuhei Matsuda from The Raid 2, Gareth Evans, 2014). His behaviour alarms his wife Narumi (Masami Nagasawa from Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015, playing in LEAFF this Saturday 28/10). For instance, he suddenly vanishes from the house only to be found lying, quite happily, in the tall grass of a nearby field.

“No-one is saying anything,” says journalist Sakurai (Hiroki Hasegawa from Love And Peace, Sion Sono, 2015) who spends much of the time driving around in a van with a satellite dish on the roof. He’s convinced that a big story is about to break and intends to be the one doing it.

The girl hooks up with a boy (Mahiro Takasugi). Both are convinced they are aliens who have taken possession of human bodies. An invasion is coming and three of them have been sent ahead to lay the groundwork. Sakurai is definitely not an alien, but the other two let him tag along. The aliens are offering him an exclusive. Besides, in order to function they need a human to act as their ‘guide’.

Once resident within their human hosts, however, the aliens cannot comprehend many of the concepts that humans take for granted every day of their lives. Such as “individual”, “self”, “family” and “love”. But this issue is easily remedied. An alien finds a human with a clear idea of the concept of, say, “self”, touches them on the forehead with an extended finger (a bizarre nod to E.T., Steven Spielberg, 1982) and retrieves that concept from the victim’s head. The victim collapses immediately after the theft and is never quite the same again.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s meandering narrative mixes these conceits with more traditional sci-fi and action elements (but not that much of them, lest you might think of this as a generic SF picture – it is, but then again, it isn’t). There are battles with automatic weapons where the aliens get shot but hardly seem to notice. At least, until the resultant trauma proves too much for their host body.

One of the very first scenes has a woman pulled in through her own front door by an unseen adversary: towards the end, aircraft fly overhead delivering firebombs recalling similarly gratuitous flying aircraft at the close of the same director’s career-defining J-horror outing Pulse/Kairo (2001). Kurosawa tops this in Before We Vanish with a scene in which red lines drop from a cloud whirlpool above the sea then change course and fly towards the coast as burning fireballs.

The core of the piece is ultimately much less the plot, such as it is, than the characters: the aliens and their guides, the Kase family and the boy girl companions with the reporter tagging along. One minute it’s charming, the next it’s terrifying. One minute you’re watching a comedy, the next a moving romance and the next a sci-fi action movie. Which ought to render the whole thing an unwatchable disaster which can’t make up its mind as to what exactly it is. And yet somehow, in much the way that Pulse/Kairo threw every horror trope its director could envisage at the audience and yet produced something that cohered under a weird internal logic all of its own, the disparate elements of Before We Vanish hang together as a memorable whole. It’s both bonkers and beguiling in equal measure.

Before We Vanish plays in the London East Asia Film Festival. On Blu-ray and digital HD on Monday, February 11th.

UK18

It’s 2018, and neoliberalism is steadily morphing into neofacism. The UK is sleepwalking into a totalitarian regime. Extreme surveillance has already been introduced in the shape of apparently harmless RFID tags, and 75% of population already use them. People have become another trackable item in a gigantic Internet of Things. And that’s not all.

Eloise (Shona McWilliams) is a documentary filmmaker who suspects that she is somehow being brainwashed or manipulated by the UK government. Tacit questions are soon raised: is the RFID tag far more powerful and sinister than a simple trackable device? How is Eloise being controlled? How vulnerable is her body? Or are these fears just the byproduct of a highly susceptible mind and a feeble soul? Where do you draw the line between imagination and paranoia?

The topic of Draconian vigilance and the erosion of civil liberties is extremely pertinent right now, and Andrew Tiernan’s film could be frighteningly prescient. The highly controversial Investigatory Powers Act was passed last November with barely any objections from the political establishment, and very limited exposure in the media. The UK government now has unprecedented powers to snoop on our Internet history. Edward Snowden tweeted: “The UK has just legalised the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies”. We are quickly turning into an Orwellian society.

uk18-demon800
The nightmare vision within UK18 isn’t pretty at all.

This British sci-fi flick is urgent in its currentness and simplicity, without ever resorting to didacticism. The narrative is multilayered and inventive, and it isn’t always possible to distinguish between reality, imagination, allegory and a fourth novel layer: a government devised-reality within the character’s brain. The images in the movie range from very fuzzy and grainy to very sharp and crystal clear, with the occasional TV footage thrown in. This complex visual mosaic suggests that the line between reality and imagination is very thin and volatile, and it’s very easy to meander from one realm to the next. Nothing is quite what it seems. The imagery is often scrambled, and the plot in non-linear – just like our brains.

One element that is constant throughout the movie is the somber tone, sometimes supported by a cacophony of strange sounds: a harmonica, scratchy strings, white noise and a music score by the Hackney Massive. The result is an eerie world, populated by nervous and despondent human beings. The only hope are the young people willing to stand up and fight.

UK18 is dotted with deft comments on how the increasingly autocratic UK government is failing its population. There’s ethnic profiling: the film notes that black people are typically the first victims of stop and search and other invasive practices already widespread in the UK. Ethnic profiling is merely an euphemism for intitutionalised bigotry. Perhaps more significantly, the film highlights the stigmatisation of independent thinking: anyone who questions the law is promptly denounced as a “terrorist” or a “conspiracy theorist”. Masses are to remain apathic, or “dumbed down”. Defectors are killed and their murders are conveniently dismissed as an “unfortunate operational necessity”.

uk18-shona800
Shona McWilliams and Jason Williamson appear in UK18.

Alongside with our personal freedoms, our values of diversity and tolerance are quickly dissipating. Extreme surveillance represents the sheer failure of capitalism. UK18 is a powerful statement against the dictatorial nature of the Orwellian state, and the catastrophic consequences for each one of us, whether you support the system or not. It is also an alarm call: the bomb of totalitarianism is ticking very fast, and there may not be enough time to run unless people take action right now.

Ultimately, UK18 is a nightmare vision of our very near future: a dystopian society, where the only hope lies in the hands and the voices of the few people willing to face up the establishment. So stand up and fight!

Actors in the film also include: Ian Hart, Jean-Marc Barr and Jason Williamson.

DMovies screened UK18 at the Regent Street Cinema in April 2017. Click here in order to view the film online.

Don’t forget to read our exclusive interview with Andrew Tiernan by clicking here, and to watch the movie trailer below: