"Film Is A Battleground"

This 90s indie flick encapsulates the chaotic spirit of filmmaking with a naïve honesty that’s so perfectly embodied by Steve Buscemi’s existentially mired movie director, Nick Reve. Anxiety-ridden, almost to the point of indecision paralysis, we hold our breath as the pressure envelopes Nick slowly… like Death’s icy hand in a Final Destination film… sorry, I digress. This film essentially bubbles, bubbles, bubbles… until it boils fully over – and no amount of Mr Muscle is going to get those burnt-on stains out. Working on a tight schedule and budget, mammoth talent egos, on set love triangles, uninvited set guests – can Nick just get on with making his film already??

Like all movies about making movies, the central question to all of this is “why?” Why do any of this? Why suffer to make art? The passion. The mess. This film portrays this struggle as the refracted chaos of the human mind in all its meta absurdity. Freudian senses are aroused as this beautiful car crash is just too delicious to turn away from. And the stellar casting with Catherine Keener, Peter Dinklage and Dermot Mulroney helps too.

A criminally underrated heart-warming comedy gem starring Koji Yakusho (star of Tampopo, Cure and more recently, Perfect Days) as Katsuhiko, a tree feller living his best rural village life alone and by meticulous routine. One fine unsuspecting day, a film crew from the big city rocks up to the village to shoot a zombie film much to the curiosity of the locals. But Katsuhiko, however, respectfully farts in their general direction until he’s unsuspectedly roped in. Simple location scouting, you say? Of course, it always starts out like this…

This is a tale of two worlds colliding and the necessity to overcome those discomforts to achieve the same goal. Film crews can be obnoxious at the best of times with their often highfalutin demands and it seems that only Katsuhiko can deliver the straight shooting solutions when things start to spiral. Especially when the young director tries to run away and Katsuhiko must put on this tough paternal hat that he’d abandoned long ago. Cut to Katsuhiko, grey bloody make up, arms stretched out, macabre moans – yup, he’s a zombie extra. Team work really is dream work and in this case, it really does take a village.

A lot of movies about making movies engage the found footage trope (made famous by the 1999 Blair Witch Project phenomenon) because there’s something deeply satisfying about watching something that is discovered by accident, something that’s not meant to be seen. Voyeurism is tantalising. Late Night With The Devil begins with a preface – that what you are about to watch is a lost recording of a late-night 1970s talk show that never made it to air. Why? Well, you’re about to find out. Roll tape.

We arrive in the behind-the-scenes bustle of a live studio show – the 70s Mad Men-esque pastiche-athon alone is marvellous eye candy with the bold patterned set design, cinnamon-brown flared suits and shaggy hair styles. What’s more is that it’s Halloween night and our host, our star, Jack Delroy, played by goth supreme, David Dastmalchian, is desperate to bolster his dwindling ratings. A couple demonic possessions later and all hell literally breaks loose on set. And it’s all on camera.

It's no secret that movie making is a dream factory – for many, underpinned by the pursuit of success, fame, glory, awards, and money. But at what cost? If only you could pay bills with hope and passion alone – bottle me up! Faustian pacts, trading your soul with the Devil for fame and fortune, comes with consequences and Jack Delroy wishes that he’d never knocked on that door.

This is the first written and directed feature film by André Øvredal, who, I’m just going to say it, cannot make a bad horror movie (Autopsy of Jane Doe, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark and Last Voyage of the Demeter). It’s another found footage gem consisting of unedited rushes shot by a group of young ambitious filmmakers who set off in their role model, Michael Moore’s, footsteps to uncover a worthy story of illegal bear poaching in the Norwegian wilds, only to discover a world beyond their wildest beliefs when they accidentally trail a real life Troll Hunter, Hans. Yup, trolls. Real ones who live, breath… and hunt. And they’re not cute.

Movies about making scripted movies are able to edge into the realms of the absurd because it’s all about having a meticulous plan go spectacularly wrong. This is the world of unscripted – documentaries and news – there’s only so much planning you can do as you wait for the story to find you. In keeping to the raw social realist aesthetic, this film is able to live comfortably in the horror genre because when we’re watching things go wrong in this way, it becomes truly terrifying (comedy and horror intersect closer than we think in providing cathartic relief - one for another post). As we follow the filmmakers delving deeper into the dangerous world of trolls, they’ve clearly bitten of more than they can chew and there seems to be no way back from it. The only way out is through – and that camera is allowing us to bear witness to all of it.

This little comedy horror broke out of nowhere. Shot for a microbudget of US$30k, it grossed over US$30 million – that’s right, MILLION – worldwide, managing to tear the very risk-averse indie movie scene a new one. Word of mouth spread like wildfire – “you’ve got to see it to believe it!” tipped everyone, viewers and critics alike. They weren’t wrong. The Japanese title translates into English more directly as "Don't Stop the Camera!" – we follow a film crew tasked to produce a low-budget zombie film as a live one-take TV special at an abandoned, potentially haunted, warehouse. I mean, we all saw how tough the one-take gem Adolescence was even with its Netflix budget!

Of course, anything that could go wrong does go wrong… including real zombies turning up! But as live-TV dictates, the camera must keep rolling. But that’s all I’ll say here because the pleasure of watching this film is that you literally cannot predict where it’s going to go. Once you’re on that crazy train, there’s absolutely no way of getting off – but you’re guaranteed to be fist-pumping for the crew the entire way to wrap!

Robert Egger’s Nosferatu was one of the most highly anticipated box office releases of 2025. Who would have thunk that a gothic horror re-make of F W Murnau’s 1922 Dracula-knock-off silent classic would capture the imaginations of a mainstream cinema-going crowd over 100 years later?! It seems that vampires and the big screen really are a hot marriage that audiences can’t get enough of – “vampirism can function as a metaphor for the parasitism in the madness of film-making” to quote Peter Bradshaw, and Shadow of a Vampire does just this. A film about the making of the original Murnau film, starring Willem Dafoe as the creepy abit-too-method actor Max Schreck who plays the title vampire role alongside John Malkovich playing the long-suffering director, F W Murnau.

What’s fun about this film is that it’s based on the actual true events of the making of the film, with shots set up so perfectly to frame-match the original film, but then veers off completely into fiction when we learn that Max Schreck IS a real vampire hiding in plain sight, preying on his fellow cast and crew between takes. All this but set amongst the tumultuous backdrop of interfering financiers, strange locations, and much that’s lost in cultural translation. Dafoe’s delightfully hammy performance edges closer to Camp as the years go by but let’s remember, he bagged himself a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for this role. An actor playing an actor who’s actually not an actor but is pretending to be one. Are you still following?

This is a short 45-ish minute documentary about producing one of the last few decade’s most popular episodic television shows – yes, South Park IS still going. Famous for churning stop-motion animation satire GOLD sending up topical issues in almost real time, audiences turn to creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker for their social commentaries and with that demand for fast turnaround episodes comes a gruelling production schedule. In 2011 they allowed a film crew to follow them for a tense week of production of 1 episode – from conceptualising and writing all the way to the animation and broadcast. Amongst the child-like silliness are the all too real pressures – to the point that Trey Parker ends up physically hiding from his producer under his desk. This film captures that beating heart of South Park in exactly the way that you’d imagine – with bottled up, butt-clenching anarchy.