Evil Dead Rise ★★★★☆
Directed by Lee Cronin. Starring Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher. 18 cert, gen release, 93 min
The possessed book has ended up at a crumbling LA apartment building. It hardly needs to be said that words are incanted and the living become undead. Sam Raimi & co have plucked Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin from the chorus line to deliver a rip-roaring entertainment that captures the tone of the first two horror classics while finding new veins to messily drain. Evil Dead Rises is not quite so unambiguously comic as that early work, but Cronin never forgets we are here to have a bloody good time. An absolute blast. Full review DC
Pray for Our Sinners ★★★★☆
Directed by Sinéad O’Shea. Featuring Mary Randle, Sinead O’Shea. 12A cert, limited release, 81 min
O’Shea, director of A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot, confirms her determination to disinter unwelcome truths with this return to her home town of Navan. The heroes of the piece are Dr Mary Randle and her late husband, Patrick, also a doctor, who, faced with resistance from the clergy, stood up against corporal punishment and the misuse of pregnant girls. The film delves sensitively into horrors still fresh in the mind, but it is open to all voices. Its power lies in its intimacy and, ultimately, in its cautious hopefulness. Full review DC
Sick of Myself/Syk Pike ★★★★★
Directed by Kristoffer Borgli. Starring Kristine Kujath Thorp, Eirik Sæther, Fanny Vaager, Henrik Mestad, Andrea Bræin Hovig. Limited release, 97 min
Kristine Kujath Thorp’s Signe is one-half of a hilariously awful couple. When her self-regarding boyfriend (Sæther) finds a baffling degree of success with his installations of stolen chairs, Signe becomes locked in attention-seeking escalations that make one think of Roald Dahl’s The Twits upgraded for TikTokers. She fakes illness. She hogs fame. This pitch-black Norwegian comedy makes merry with malignant narcissism and the worried well. Signe’s behaviour may be repugnant, but there is something touchingly pathetic about her need for sympathy. An astringent satire featuring deeply committed performances. Full review TB
Pacifiction ★★★☆☆
Directed by Albert Serra. Starring Benoît Magimel, Pahoa Mahagafanau, Marc Susini, Matahi Pambrun, Alexandre Melo, Sergi Lopez, Montse Triola. Limited release, 164 min
There’s a Tahitian surfing scene in Pacifiction, the latest, cryptic feature from Albert Serra. Vast and choppy, it’s probably the only sequence the Catalan auteur has directed that might - at a squint - be confused with Point Break. In all other respects, this meandering, mysterious 164-minute mediation on French imperialism is not for everyone. Benoît Magimel has fun as M. de Roller, the louche high commissioner who swans around French Polynesia in classic colonial white linens. It’s cinematic in a pointedly gaudy, plastic way, with wide-angled tableaux that make one think of Gauguin by AI. Full review TB
