Brendan McCarthy Archives

Outcast (2010)

Rating: ★★★★

Dec 29, 2012Dark Sorceries

Absolutely fascinating Irish-Scottish film about people hunting each other with arcane sorceries on a rundown Edinburgh council estate … Compulsively fascinating in its often enigmatic approach, while depicting magic on screen in a way unlike anything we have seen before

Director: Colm McCarthy

Actors: James Nesbitt, Kate Dickie, James Cosmo, Karen Gillan, …

Category: Horror

29 December 201228 December 2024 by Roog

Wake Wood (2011)

Rating: ★★★½

Aug 7, 2011Resurrection of the Dead

Another entry from the revived Hammer Films, an intelligent and effective variant on Pet Semetary that manages to delve into some dark and chilling places

Director: David Keating

Actors: Aidan Gillen, Timothy Spall, Eva Birthistle, Ruth McCabe

Category: Horror

7 August 20115 June 2025 by Roog

Let Us Prey (2014)

Rating: ★★★

Aug 17, 2015Mysterious Stranger/Supernatural Retribution

A rather effective effort about a Mysterious Stranger locked in a cell who proceeds to expose the dark secrets of everybody around him, before a completely whacked ending

Director: Brian O'Malley

Actors: Liam Cunningham, Pollyanna McIntosh, Douglas Russell, Hanna Stanbridge, …

Category: Horror

17 August 201523 June 2026 by Roog

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Rating: ★★★★½

May 16, 2015Post-Holocaust Action

30 years in the making and the results are sensational. An action film so relentlessly foot-to-the-floor and full of kinetic wildness that it blows all its contemporaries away and sets the bar anew

Director: George Miller

Actors: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, …

Category: Science Fiction

16 May 20152 August 2026 by Roog

Cherry Tree (2015)

Rating: ★★★

Oct 10, 2017Devil Worship and Pregnancy

From David Keating who made Wake Wood, this falls into the Folk Horror genre and becomes a well-made variant on Rosemary's Baby as a schoolgirl accepts a Devil's Deal to save her father

Director: David Keating

Actors: Naomi Battrick, Anna Walton, Sam Hazeldine, Elva Trill, …

Category: Horror

10 October 20171 January 2026 by Roog

Nails (2017)

Rating: ★★

Jun 30, 2021Haunted Hospital

Film that takes place with the heroine confined to a hospital bed unable to move as a malevolent ghost enters her room

Director: Dennis Bartok

Actors: Shauna Macdonald, Ross Noble, Steve Wall, Leah McNamara, …

Category: Horror

30 June 202114 August 2022 by Roog

Muse (2017)

Rating: ★★

May 18, 2018Man Haunted by Supernatural Muses

Jaume Balaguero has become one of the most promising of modern Spanish genre directors, principally on the basis of the [Rec] films. However, this supernatural mystery that resembles one of Dario Argento's Three Mothers films fails to quite come together

Director: Jaume Balaguero

Actors: Elliot Cowan, Ana Ularu, Franka Potente, Christopher Lloyd, …

Category: Horror

18 May 201819 January 2025 by Roog

Vivarium (2019)

Rating: ★★★

Apr 13, 2020Couple Trapped in a Strange Suburb

A real mindscrew of a film in which Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg are a couple who enter a strangely unreal suburb of identical houses and find they can't leave. Then things start to get really strange.

Director: Lorcan Finnegan

Actors: Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Senan Jennings, Eanna Hardwicke, …

Category: Fantasy

13 April 20202 June 2023 by Roog