Greg Klymkiw's 10 BEST HORROR/SCI-FI/FANTASY/ACTION FILMS of 2014 - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas

Berkshire County
Dir. Audrey Cummings, Scr. Chris Gamble, Prod. A71 Productions, High Star Entertainment, Narrow Edge Productions
Pigs, you see, are lurking in the woods. Not just any pigs, mind you, but a family of travelling serial killers adorned in horrifying pig masks. And these sick fuckers mean business.

The Editor
Dir. Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Scr. Brooks, Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, Prod. Astron-6
Blonde Stud: So where were you on the night of the murder?
Blonde Babe: I was at home washing my hair and shaving my pussy.

Ejecta
Dir. dir. Dir. Chad Archibald, Matt Wiele, Scr. Tony Burgess, Prod. Foresight Features
There are no happy-faced hairless alien midgets gesticulating Zoltán Kodály Hand Signals whilst smiling at a beaming Francois Truffaut. No-siree-Spielberg. These mo-fos induce horror that inspires drawer-filling of the highest order.

Hellmouth 
Dir. John Geddes, Scr. Tony Burgess, Prod. Foresight Features
To both the living and perhaps even the dead, old graveyards are as comforting as they are creepy. Screenwriter Tony Burgess seems to understand this better than most and as such, he's crafted one of the most deliciously insane horror treats of the new millennium.

Honeymoon
Dir. Leigh Janiak , Scr. Phil Graziadei, Janiak, Prod. Fewlas Entertainment
An extrication violates an opening of extreme indelicacy. It inspires, not only horror, but deep shame. Beware the forest. Beware the night. Most of all, beware the light.

Late Phases
Dir. Adrián García Bogliano, Scr. Eric Stolze, Prod. Larry Fessenden
Just after a full moon, there is a period of calm in werewolf country as the glistening orb settles benignly into its last quarter, new moon and then, first quarter phases. It's here, during this month of calm where one can best prepare for the next onslaught of a werewolf attack. Ambrose, played by Nick Damici, one of the best actors working in America today, is a blind man. That won't stop him, though. A lycanthrope must be taken out.

Oculus
Dir. Mike Flanagan, Scr. Flanagan, Jeff Howard, Jeff Seidman, Prod. Lasser Productions
During a disquieting evening, a Hunky Brother (fresh out of the loony bin) and his Babe-o-licious Sister (having prepared both of them for the worst), square off against an antique mirror which, during their childhood, transformed their happy Daddy into a hot-headed abuser and their Hot Mama into a willing victim of torture at the hands of mega-bunyip hubby-pants.

See No Evil 2
Dir. Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska, Scr. Nathan Brookes, Bobby Lee Darby, Prod. WWE Studios
It's a quiet night night in the city morgue, but not for long. Soon it will be flooded with corpses from a nearby mass-killing-spree, including the body of the killer himself, the seven-foot, 300-pound, Jacob Goodnight. The lad's merely been resting. Now he's ready for more naughty horseplay.

Time Lapse
Dir. Bradley King , Scr. King, B.P. Cooper, Prod. Uncooperative Pictures, Veritas Productions
Twilight Zone-like science fiction and horror dips its toe into the film noir territory of a criminal underbelly when a trio of young people happen upon a mysterious camera that seems to have the power to capture images from the future and a malevolent scum-bucket bookie wants his piece of the action. Mounting greed, sexual tension and backstabbing eventually ooze into the buoyant shenanigans. Genre-bending murder and mayhem aren’t far behind.

Wyrmwood
Dir. Kiah Roache-Turner, Scr. Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner, Prod. Guerilla Films
This white-knuckle roller coaster ride through the unyielding Australian bushland focuses upon a family man (who's had to slaughter his family when they "turn" into zombies) and a ragtag group of tough guys, equip themselves with heavy-duty armour, armament and steely resolve to blast through hordes of flesh-eating slabs of viscous decay and careen on a collision course with a group of Nazi-like government soldiers who are kidnapping both zombies and humans so a wing-nut scientist can perform brutal experiments upon them. Scary-ass thrills in the best action film of the year.

These terrific films were launched during a myriad of great film festivals like Toronto After Dark Film Festival, Montreal's FantAsia International Film Festival, TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival and the Blood in the Snow Film Festival. They are officially being released via VSC, Raven Banner, Elevation Pictures, A-71, Anchor Bay Entertainment (Canada), IFC, Relativity Media, Magnet Releasing and MPI. They have all, or will be soon available on a variety of media. They can be ordered by clicking on the various links below

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OUT OF THE FURNACE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Neo-Noir enshrouds Rust Belt's Braddock, Penn.

Out of the Furnace (2013) ***1/2
Dir. Scott Cooper

Starring: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson,
Willem Dafoe, Sam Shepard, Zoe Saldana, Forest Whitaker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When a movie opens with Woody Harrelson at a drive-in theatre forcibly shoving a wiener down his date's throat and then, after smashing her face repeatedly against the dashboard he barrels out of the vehicle to savagely beat a man who tries to come to the woman's rescue, you know beyond a shadow of any doubt where you are.

Hell.

It has another name in America - it's the Rust Belt, the grey, dirty and dreary cities and towns of Pennsylvania that belch endless clouds of poison smoke into the sky from the steel factories providing the lion's share of employment to the dazed citizenry unlucky enough to live there. Save for working in the mills that slowly kill you and/or signing up for military duty in the Middle East, the only other real employment is in the dark underworld that permeates the tattered fabric of this septic tank of despair.

There are plenty of bars and off-track betting parlours to numb the pain of living.

And there's violence. Plenty of it.

Director Scott (Crazy Heart) Cooper's fine, muted crime drama from a screenplay he adapted from an original script by Brad Ingelsby takes us through familiar territory, but it does so in ways wherein the eruptions of extreme cruelty come when you least expect them. The tropes of the genre are employed, but you never quite know how they'll manifest themselves and this might be one of the picture's greatest strengths. An atmosphere of hopelessness pervades the world of the film and even when Russell, a mill worker (deftly underplayed by Christian Bale) tries to make a good life for himself, events conspire to keep dashing his simple, reasonable hopes for something resembling a future. His brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) is a desperately shell-shocked soldier with three horrific tours of duty in Iraq (and a fourth pending). His solace is in gambling and his future in underground bare-knuckle boxing.

Amidst the empty storefronts of Braddock, Pennsylvania and in the dank, empty home where the brothers' Dad dies a painful death from the effects of working the mill his whole life, Russell and Rodney's lives will soon cross paths to be inextricably linked with the psychopathic thug Harlan DeGroat (Harrelson) and the tough, but strangely amiable bar-owner (and bookie) John Petty (Willem Dafoe). To say things get grim is an understatement. Out of the Furnace is a heartbreaking portrait of an America on the verge of total collapse. Ironically, it's set on the eve of Barack Obama's victorious ascension to the presidency in 2008, but any shred of hope is dashed by the reality of a country that's been battered by a genuinely villainous corporate New World Order that is intent upon driving an even bigger wedge between rich and poor. What's left is an ever-increasing class of the working poor and the insidious element of low-level thuggery and crime.


The movie is finally unrelenting in painting a portrait of a grimy world not unlike the real Old West, where senseless acts of violence can be met with vengeance, but nothing about the retribution is sweet.

Director Cooper delivers a picture that'll be hard for audiences to face, but the end result will haunt them long after the lights comes up and strangely, they'll feel richer for having seen this journey rather than the myriad of empty extravaganzas littering the movie screens. Though the movie is saddled with an unfortunate love-interest and subplot involving Zoe Saldana, it survives this ho-hum intrusion upon a world that otherwise feels intrinsically male - where the traditional roles applied to men continue to permeate a savage, desperate existence.

"Out of the Furnace" is in a surprisingly wider release (via Relativity Media/VVS Films) than one would expect for a film of uncompromising darkness. Given how gorgeously shot on actual 35mm film stock it is by ace cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, it is definitely worth seeing on a big screen.