Il Cento notti di orrore PART 6- More Recent Korean Horror Films: APP THE HORROR (2025), THE UNRIGHTEOUS (2024) & THE RITUAL a.k.a. THE FAVOR (2025)

 Here is the latest installment of the Il Cento notti di orrore – One Hundred Nights of Horror series.  There was a quite bit of lull from the last entry, which was up to Nos. 19, and now here we go with another set of Korean horror films. This is purely a matter of expediency and has little to do with the improved quality of Korean horror or any other consideration.  

Now that most of the VOD services in the US— led by Netflix and Amazon Prime— appear to be quite happy to bring in Korean horror films with the time lag of sometimes only several months from the dates of their domestic theatrical debuts, they are easily accessible in North America more than ever.  This is of course not necessarily the case with big domestic hits—horror or not—nabbed by a distribution company such as NEON and scheduled to play in the North American theaters, such as Colony, Hope and Whispering Waters (all of which have been reviewed in the official Koreanfilm.org site) and a few such as App the Horror which is yet (again, as of late August 2026) to find a North American distributor. But I will take whatever comes available, no complaints.

20.  App the Horror 귀신 부르는 앱: 영 (South Korea, 2026). A Heart People Production, Distributed by Sambaek Sanghoe. International sales handled by Anthology21. Released theatrically February 18, 2026.  Aspect ratio: 2.35:1, 1.37:1. 1 hour 27 minutes. “Unlock” 잠금해제. Director: Hyung Seul-woo. Cinematography: Um Jae-wan. Lighting: Kim Kang-min. Editor: Kim Ju-eun. Music: Kim Yong. Production Design: Seo Ji-hyung. Makeup: Kwak Hye-ryung. “Dawn Shift” 새벽출근. Director & Editor: Ko Hee-sub. Cinematography: Choi Jong-man. Lighting: Yoon Bang-su. Music: Kim Yong. Production Design: Jang Won. Makeup: Kim Do-hee. “Bound for Goseong,” 고성행. Director & Editor: Lee Sang-min. Cinematography: Kim Jong-su. Lighting: Park Jin-yong, Jung Jun-seok, Yoon Jung-mun, Choi Yong-gon. Music: Han Seo-jin, Lee Sung-kyung. Production Design: Kim Hye-rim. “Collector” 콜렉터. Director: Sun Jong-hoon. Cinematography: Ku Du-han. Lighting: Kim Ju-il. Editor: Kim Ju-eun. Music: Kim Yong. Production Design: Lim Hye-min. Makeup: Lee Eun-chong. “Oneself” 자신.  Director: Son Min-jun. Cinematography: Um Jae-wan. Lighting: Kim Kang-min. Editor: Choi Ha-neul. Music: Kang Hyun-jung. Production Design: Kim Jin-ju, Shin Sang-min. Sound: Kim Beom-yu. “Ghost Gate Room”  귀문방. Director: Kim Seung-tae. Cinematography: Kim Min-guk, An Dong-min, Song Ji-yoon, Kwak Seung-hee. Costume Design: Shin Yu-jin, Yo Won. Makeup: Kim Do-hee, Hwang Yun-na.  CAST:  Kim Young-jae (Dong-ju), Kim Ju-a (Han-byeol), Yang Jo-a (Sun-young), Kim Hee-jung (Na-yeon), Park Seo-ji (Jin-seo), Kim Young-seon (Mother), Son Min-jun (Min-jun), Anupam Tripathi (Suneta), Im Ye-eun (Collector), Lee Seung-yeon (Eun-a), Kim Gyu-nam (Ha-rin), Kim A-cheon (Old Landlord). Accessed through Watcha Korea VOD, July 2026. 

The anthology or portmanteau horror format has sustained itself in Korea for the last three decades. It has in fact been responsible for some of the stronger, and sometimes the more prestigious, horror projects, including the Three series, in which Kim Ji-woon and Park Chan-wook participated; Horror Stories (Min Kyu-dong, Jung Bum-sik, et al.); and more recent scrappy but decent examples like Body Parts. Given that many Korean filmmakers cut their teeth on short films, produced as school graduation projects for instance, they welcome the chance to show off their skills and style in a relatively brief form. The biggest drawback to the format is the gap in quality among episodes: it is a rare anthology horror film in which every episode is equally riveting, though examples that meet the criterion do exist, such as the British classic Dead of Night.  The pre-made, binge-watch-oriented format of Netflix and other channels allows filmmakers to address this problem to a degree, as Guillermo del Toro did with his superb Cabinet of Curiosities. However, for a feature film, say, two golden nuggets out of five, sitting alongside three bars of lead or balls of tinfoil, could bring down the value of the whole enterprise considerably.

App the Horror, an unfortunate title which sounds as dorky and uncommitted in English as in Korean, is based on the premise that a high school tech club has created a phone app supposedly letting you see and contact the ghosts, a very thin thread that really does not do much to connect the installments with one another. Despite this potentially frivolous premise, the overall atmosphere is cool and moody, with little low-rent humor or trendy gimmicks that usually characterize these films. Let us proceed from the lackluster and okay to the good and excellent, ignoring the order in which the segments appear.

The opener “Unlock” simply works as an introductory piece in which the said high school students invoke dead spirits through an elaborate ritual, amusingly (for me at least) supervised by a long-haired, suit-dressed guy seemingly modeled after Hieda Reijiro from the Yokai Hunter series. Very little to be said about it, even though it rather nicely evokes the atmospherics of late ‘90s-oughts J-horror.  “Dawn Shift” deals with two women who work for a death and decomposition cleanup service (also the background of Somebody), running into a ghost of a possible suicide victim. Director Ko Hee-sup is a veteran of web-dramas including Kim Min-chul starrer Replay: The Moment (2021), and not surprisingly, better at capturing realistic banters and frustrations of two women than scaring the viewers. “Collector” is the most straightforward and uncomplicated segment in the film, simply a string of booga-ooga scare sequences, about a very angry spirit murdered by a man taking illicit pictures of her with his smartphone, who haunt a discarded-lost handphone chop-shop crew member (competently essayed by the New Delian-Korean resident Tripathi, who broke out internationally playing Ali Abdul in Squid Game). The scare effects are actually the most effective in the film, but the episode has almost no content to speak of.

“Ghost Gate Room” has the flavor of a folk horror film in which an unsuspecting visitor falls victim to incomprehensible and sinister rites of a local community, in this case the site of the ritual turns out to be a nondescript one-room apartment unit managed by a creepy, possibly senile landlord.  Although the denouement is predictable, the film, directed by Kim Seung-tae, responsible for a low-budget alternate-universe SF Dream Maker (2021), does a fairly good job of wrangling suspense out of furtively glimpsed pagan (quasi-shamanistic) rituals and increasing anxiety of the protagonist (Kim Gyu-nam, TV drama Love Your Enemy).  Like a number of other recent Korean films, it does touch on one of the believable anxieties of the MZ generation Koreans (especially females) that their rare-find urban abode is figuratively (of course literally so in this film) a gate into Hell.

This brings us to the two standout episodes in the movie. "Oneself," filmed in an extremely contrasty, color-saturated style, deals with a disabled middle-aged man, played by the director Son Min-jun, whose short film Cut (2018) also played with the concept of subjective reality in a horror setting, who is cared for in a run-down facility and tormented by blood-drenched female spirits. Viewers soon learn, however, that this initially sympathetic figure harbors a sinister secret. Rather gory and nasty, the segment is also infused with surrealistic, religiously inflected visuals, and ultimately delivers a sort of meditation on the Buddhist notion of karmic retribution: can being tormented by a deteriorating and dysfunctional body constitute sufficient moral punishment for heinous deeds that took the lives of other people? 

Another standout segment, "Bound for Goseong," written and directed by Lee Sang-min, who has since made the huge hit Whispering Waters, is the only one shot in the 1.37:1 ratio.  It deals with the anxiety and terror of Jin-seo, a snooty high schooler reluctantly riding a bus to Goseong at the arrangement of her pushy mother, who has vaguely promised an improvement in her academic performance and other sundry benefits once she arrives. Confined mostly to the interior of the bus, the episode displays a subdued sense of humor as the driver remains utterly indifferent to the seemingly irrational presence of a creepy passenger; it ends, of course, in a clever, morally disturbing payoff, by which viewers are made to feel genuinely sympathetic toward Jin-seo. It is a rather effective intimate-space horror piece and displays Lee's capacity to wrangle excellent performances out of archetypal characters, the trait that helped Whispering Waters emerge as a commercial success.

On the whole, App the Horror, despite its unexciting conceptual hook, is an above-average Korean anthology horror film. We will continue to see the movies with portmanteau format produced in Korea, given that short-form content shows little sign of abating. Whether such reliance on the format can generally improve the proportion of good segments over lukewarm or bad ones remains to be seen. ☆☆☆★

21. The Unrighteous 원정빌라(South Korea, 2024). A K Dragon Production, Distributed by Smile Entertainment (international distribution: KT Alpha). Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1, 1 hour 27 minutes. Director: Kim Sun-kook (feature debut). Producer: Kim Hee-young. Cinematography: Choi Won-wook, Cho Young-dae. Music: Lim Dae-hwan. Released theatrically December 4, 2024.  CAST: Lee Hyun-woo (Joo-hyun), Moon Jung-hee (Shin-hye), Bang Min-ah (Yu-jin), Sung Byung-sook (Young-sun), Jung Min-sung (Moon-su), Lee Jae-gu, Ko Ju-ni, Noh Ji-hoon. Watched at the 2024 Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival, available at Amazon Prime as of August 2026.

 

Joo-hyun (Lee Hyun-woo, TV drama Cinderella at 2 am), splitting his days between a bank security post and cram sessions for the real estate broker's exam, shares Unit 203 of an apartment complex called Wonjeong Villa—badly in need of renovation, apparently located somewhere in Busan City—with his ailing mother Yeong-seon (Sung Byung-sook) and his niece Ye-ji.  Almost immediately, he gets picked on for parking space disputes and floor-noise complaints by Shin-hye (Moon Jung-hee, The Day I Died), the sneering tenant in Unit 303 directly above him. He, out of petty annoyance, stuffs her mailbox with a wad of brochures advertising for local church services.  What he could not have anticipated was that Shin-hye becomes an ardent believer and proselytizer for the ministry of Pastor Jung Mun-su (Jung Min-sung, Exit, Paradise).  Soon, most of the apartment residents, including Joo-hyun’s own mother, fall under the thrall of the oily pastor, singing and praising the lord in group meetings. With the help of Yu-jin (Bang Min-a, the vocalist of K-pop group Girl’s Day but also seasoned TV actress: Delivery Man, Beautiful Gong Shim), a neighborhood pharmacist with a personal interest in deprogramming cult members, Joo-hyun attempts to break the hold of the pastor’s hold on his mother, despite the harassment and persecution campaign by the cult that gets him fired from his job.  But then he learns, to his shock and panic, that the latter are preparing an unspeakable ritual replicating Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in the most literal form possible—with his niece as a potential offering.  

The Unrighteous is one of the Korean films I caught at BiFan but was unable to write about in time for the festival report. It in fact shares an angle with The Ritual, in its exploration of the dark side of Christian faiths that slip into the status of heretical cults. The film's message could be neatly summarized by the tagline on its poster: "Trust not thy neighbor." The serpentine hostility of the villa residents, and their indifference to the real suffering of fellow community members, are presented methodically and with a flavor of authentic social observation, often camouflaged by concerns about the resale value of their apartments and ensconced in the hypocritical language of spiritual care and religious faith.

The principals are adequate to good in their characterizations, with Bang Min-a a standout as a cool-headed, sharp-looking investigator. There is an inevitable surprise revelation about her identity, which is very much in the manner of Korean TV drama and frankly redundant. Director-writer Kim Seon-guk, for whom The Unrighteous is a feature debut, does a good job of wrangling credible performances out of the cast, although the direction occasionally reminds one of reading a webtoon rather than watching a work of cinema. The fiery climax is rather clumsily staged, failing to generate real terror or to draw viewers into the horrified consciousness of Joo-hyun, obviously the intended effect. 

The film is marred by low production values, including its use of AI-generated imagery in the end titles. It is one of those genre films that are more interesting for their subject matter and approach than for their filmmaking acumen or aesthetic accomplishment. It is too depressing to be a fun time-waster but not refined or creative enough to be a truly memorable horror film. Nonetheless, it deserves credit for telling this story of (Christian) faith going frighteningly haywire with a measure of gumption and commitment. ☆☆★★★

22. The Ritual (a.k.a. The Favor) 구원자 (South Korea, 2025). A Mayday Studio-Studio Big Us Production, Presented by Studio Big Us. Co-produced by iFilm Corporation and Grida Studio, Distributed by Mindmark. Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1, 1 hour 43 minutes. Director: Shin Jun. Screenplay: Kang Da-hee. Producers: Jung Hyun, Lee Jung-seok. Released theatrically November 5, 2025. CAST: Kim Byung-chul (Young-beom), Song Ji-hyo (Sun-hee), Kim Hieora (Chun-seo), Jin Yu-chan (Jong-hoon), Oh Han-gyeol (Min-jae), Ahn Se-ho (Dong-jin). Watched through subscription: July 2026, Amazon Prime.  

Young-beom (Kim Byung-chul, The Guard Post,Best Friend), a physician, relocates to a run-down country town, believing that this would prove beneficial, if not physically then at least spiritually, for his high-schooler son Jong-hoon (Jin Yu-chan), paralyzed from the waist down, as well as his wife Sun-hee (Song Ji-hyo, Unstoppable, Intruder), whose eyesight is gradually deteriorating. One day on a routine errand, Young-beom runs over an old man (Kim Seol-jin) on the pitch-dark road.  He makes a critical mistake of bringing the seemingly mortally wounded old man, hideously scarred with the apparently scorched skins and hands, to his tool shed. One thing leads to another and the creepy old man ends up touching his son, who is instantly cured of his disability. Sun-hee, convinced that their family was touched by a miracle, joins a church at the nearby village Obok-ri, where she is encouraged to testify to the blessed event. However, things begin to take a dark turn when she learns that one of the church’s most devoted member, Chun-seo (the musical actress Kim Hieora, best known for Frida: The Last Night Show, based on Frida Kahlo’s life), has a son, Min-jae, who suddenly developed a crippling disability identical to Jong-hoon’s, precisely on the day that the latter was cured.

The Ritual is the sophomore feature from writer-director Shin Jun, whose debut, Yongsoon, a coming-of-age story about a young girl, received good notices at the 2016 Busan International Film Festival. It belongs to the tradition of a horror story as a moral fable —think of "The Monkey's Paw," or even of the current megahit Obsession, different though its flavor is —that highlights the spiritual cost of having your dearest wishes come true. An evangelical Christian inflection is strong here as well, although in The Ritual it functions less as an actual theme than as a socio-cultural background that shapes how the "miracles" are interpreted. Shin suggests rather than states the problem with Obok-ri, a small town whose reputation for miraculous cures has sustained its church: the signs are kept vaguely disquieting, a cross on a pew that resembles a blotch of spilled blood, for instance, and the town ignores altogether those it has ruined, like Min-jae and Chun-seo, the real victims of these so-called miracles.

The film is lugubrious and takes itself too seriously, not to mention too bloody and gory in spots, but the moral conflicts that Young-beom's family wrestles with are compelling and manage to hold the viewer's interest until the end, helped by energetic performances from the leads. Song Ji-hyo, one of the most beautiful Korean actresses of the last two decades, has actively sought out character roles since her mega-success on the variety show Running Man: here she appears almost mousy, deliberately made to look pinched and unflattering, but the effect is not quite convincing. It would have worked better had her character been given a more active part to play opposite Kim Byung-chul. The biggest contributors to the proceedings are probably the special effects makeup team at Gepeto (Yun Hyang-jik, Kim Se-hee), who designed the old man's progressive deterioration in disgustingly realistic detail, as well as the "marks" left by the miraculous touch, which look like fingerprints and brands at once. 

The Ritual is a moderately interesting Korean horror film that attempts to go a bit further than the routine genre exercise, but it cannot quite scale the heights of similarly dour but compelling works about impossible moral choices, such as Somebody and Song Ji-hyo's own Intruder. ☆☆☆ 

As for the industry statistics, The Unrighteous barely played the theatrical market at all, collecting fewer than 18,000 tickets on no more than 164 screens. The Ritual, a.k.a. The Favor, did somewhat better, selling 34,000 tickets, but the figure is still disappointing given that the film stars Song Ji-hyo, a legitimate star actress. (For a comparison, Song's Intruder sold approximately 530,000 tickets, a solid hit but still not enough to make up for its relatively big production budget.) The clear commercial winner among the three films covered here is App the Horror, which raked in 101,537 tickets but we are not sure if this was sufficient to cover the film’s production cost.

An Interview with Damian McCarthy, Director of ODDITY (2024) and HOKUM (2026)

In time for the theatrical release of Hokum, which, buoyed by Neon’s robust campaign, is receiving words-of-mouth praise from the theatergoers as well as good to excellent reviews from critics, I am appending the interview I had conducted with Damian McCarthy, director and screenwriter of Caveat and Oddity.  The occasion was the 2024 Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival.  The interview was conducted in July 10, 2024.  The text has been edited for clarity and brevity from a longer recording.  The copyright of the interview contents belong to Kyu Hyun Kim and Damian McCarthy: any direct citation of the text requires an explicit permission of the interviewer and interviewee herein.  My great thanks to Director McCarthy, Mr. Siegmund Mark of the BiFan publicity team and other staff members of BiFan.   

Kyu Hyun Kim (Q): Thank you for agreeing to this interview!  I greatly enjoyed Oddity. I have also watched your debut film Caveat. Did you come from a theatre background?

Damian McCarthy (M): No, I grew up in a small city called Cork [the location of Oddity’s Cabinet of Curiosities shop] in Ireland. My parents owned a video store and that was my very first exposure to motion pictures. I just watched a lot of VHS as a kid, sometimes the same movies again and again, and fell in love with the cinema that way.

Q: How did you get into movie business?  

M : I began making short films, quite a bit of them, three minutes, eight minutes long. Some were good, others were bad. Eventually I honed my craft and got better at making them.  I had done this for about ten years, and of course I did not make a living out of it.  When I finally went to a film school for three years, one of the best things about it was exposure to cinema history and all kinds of great films, including non-Anglophone ones, that I would not have been aware of otherwise, in addition to learning the craft and working with those who shared my passion. 

Q: When I watched Caveat, my expectations were overthrown several times in the course of the film, in good ways.  Could you talk about its characters, especially the character of Olga?  She seems to be on the cusp of being a supernatural threat, but by the end of the movie, we end up sympathizing with her. Was she expanded from an earlier version, say, in a short film?  Did you continue to modify her character while directing the feature? 

M: The basic idea about Caveat was that all three main characters were unreliable narrators to varying extents.  Olga is sort of a villain in the film, but never intentionally so: she had suffered through many years of gaslighting and psychological manipulation, so I wanted that point to be underscored. 

Q: The rabbit drum is a great device! 

M: It is open to interpretation whether the drumming bunny is in actuality an alarm system designed to detect ghostly appearance.  I deliberately kept alive the impression that the bunny might simply be a broken toy that randomly acts up, in order to keep the viewers on edge regarding what is going on.  Caveat was a super low-budget affair: all my family members and friends chipped in. People said that characters in this film made the stupidest decisions imaginable, all the things you need to avoid in a horror film [Laughter]. 

Q: That does not apply to some of the characters in Oddity, most importantly Yana [the new girlfriend of Oddity’s doctor protagonist], whose response is, very sensibly, “I am not going back into the house!” 

M: Exactly!  

Q: Can I ask you about spatial designs of Oddity?  Where does your inspiration come from?

M: There was a very old, historically preserved house in Bantree, with a renovated stable in the back. This was a space used for historical exhibition in ‘90s and had since fallen into disuse. I originally wanted to build a set for my next film there.  However, when I got the permission to do that, I realized that the old house itself was such an interesting and unique environment that I decided to film most of my movie inside that house.  I don’t think I would have made Oddity if I had not had access to that house.  

Q: Were you influenced by classic horror cinema, such as Hammer films? 

M: Not specifically British horror: I would consider my influences greatly eclectic.  For instance, I had that idea of a haunted desk bell [featured at the end of Oddity] and this could have easily come from an EC Comics story.  I fully intended, from the beginning, to mash up different subgenres of horror: a thriller with a murderous stalker, cursed objects, supernatural revenge, and so on. 

Q: The design aspect of this movie is fascinating, including some unnerving details.  For instance, the glass eye worn by Ollie, who initially appears quite threatening: that looked literally hand-painted by him. 

M. The actor who played Ollie, Tadhg Murphy, is blind in one eye in real life. 

Q: Really?!

M: Yes, and he worked with the design of the glass eye with the prosthetics team.  We came up with the idea that under the circumstances Ollie would have had to crudely hand-design the glass eye.  And then we filmed his white, nearly pupil-less glass eye under the warm, golden lighting, which makes it pop out in a subtly uneasy way.  Of course, Murphy is a wonderful actor and he made it all the more unsettling through his acting.      

Q: And that wooden figure, a man-sized voodoo doll if you will, when I look at it, it does not look carved or constructed.  It looks like sort of… a person fossilized in the moment of absolute, horrifying agony.

M: Yes! That is exactly what we had intended.  I had it in the script that the doll should have this gaping, open mouth and is screaming silently all the time. Even when it is completely unmoving and just sits there, it creates an anxiety in the viewer that at any moment you might hear this being scream in an inhuman voice. And then later in the film, we were able to put in a lot of ambient sounds, mostly variations of different human voices, in connection with the doll. I felt that one film that I have seen which did this type of music and sound design truly well is Hideo Nakata’s Ringu. In that film, the sounds and music do not become rousing or bombastic as it reaches the climax, they keep sustaining those ambiently uneasy qualities throughout the entire movie.      

Q: Oh, so this is a perfect transition to my next question, which is about sound design and music. I think this is possibly one area that Oddity benefited from the previous film due to increased budget. 

M: Yes indeed, I was actually able to afford a sound designer with Oddity [Laughter], although many staff members were carried over from Caveat.

Q: Where did you acquire that song which played a pretty significant role in the film?          

M: It’s “Now You Know,” by Little Willie John, an early ‘60s American singer.  I found about his music from [Jeremy Saulnier’s] Blue Ruins (2013), which had used his “No Regrets.” I found the former song to be not only a good addition of humor and a bit of levity to the heavy proceedings, but also a perfect commentary on the behaviors of Dr. Timmis [Gwylim Lee], whose ego prevents him from ever accepting that there are genuine supernatural things taking place around him.

Q: Carolyn Bracken does a wonderful job in a tough dual role. Have you worked with her before?

M: No, I saw her for the first time in another Irish horror film, You Are Not My Mother (2021), and thought she had a great physical presence.  In that movie she went through a transformation that showed that she could play identical-looking but radically different characters in my film.

Q: How do you feel about the horror genre as a whole?

M: I feel that I could have presented Caveat and Oddity with all their supernatural elements eliminated, and they would still stand up as mysteries or dramas. For me, horror and comedy remain the best forms of escapism, those that can provide emotional releases for the viewers. 

Q: I myself grew up in a Catholic milieu, and I recognize the Catholic educational and cultural experiences underlying your works   Could you comment on these aspects of your films?

M: Yes, I was raised as a Catholic in ‘80s and ‘90s, and it was indeed an extremely strict environment.  Since then, the church lost some of its grip on the people’s psyche, but its presence is still felt. The episode in Oddity about someone turning around the cross left on the schoolground, and another person always “correcting” it time and again, probably resonates with those who had grown up in those environments.

Q: What is your new film project? 

M: It is at the planning stage [in 2024] but it is about an Irish writer who decided to visit the country’s most notorious haunted hotel [which eventually became Hokum]. 

Q: For inspiration?!  Sounds like a monumentally bad idea [Laughter]. 

M: Couldn’t agree more! 

Q: Would you be interested in taking a Hollywood project or remain for a while in Ireland?  

M: I think there is some concern on my part, at this point, about jumping into a large production with a big budget.  I still want to maintain some level of control over how the film turns out, not necessarily dictated by what the commercial prospects are.

Q: We have then come to the final question at BiFan, what is your favorite Korean film, and what is your view of Korean genre films?

M: [Emphatically] My absolutely favorite Korean film is Memories of Murder (2003). Bong Joon-ho’s blocking and mis-en-scene are simply amazing.  Oldboy (2003) is another favorite film: sound design, editing, Choi Min-sik’s performance with only music playing in the background— I come back to watch this movie every once in a while, every few months, just to get me worked up [Laughter].

Q: Thank you so much for a fun and enlightening interview! Good luck with your next project and [then upcoming] release of Oddity in the US theaters.

M: Thank you! 

"The Most Haunted Hotel in Ireland"-- HOKUM (2026) Review

HOKUM. 2026. A Team Thrives/Image Nation Abu Dhabi FZ/Cweature Features/Spooky Pictures/Tailored Films/Fis Eireann-Screen Ireland Co-Production, distributed by Neon International. Ireland-United Arab Emirate . 1 hour 47 minutes, Aspect Ratio 2.39:1. Director & Screenplay: Damian McCarthy. Cinematography: Colm Hogan. Production Designer: Til Frohlich. Costume Designer: Lara Campbell. Music: Joseph Bishara. Sound Designer: Steve Fanagan. Makeup Designer: Niam O’Loan. 

CAST: Adam Scott (Ohm Bauman), Florence Ordesh (Fiona), David Wilmot (Jerry), Peter Coonan (Mal, the Desk Clerk), Michael Patric (Fergal, the Groundskeeper), Will O’Connell (Alby the Belloboy/Jack the Jackass), Austin Amelio (Conquistador), Ezra Carlisle (Conquistador’s Boy Companion), Brendan Conroy (Cob, the Old Man), Mallory Adams (Ohm’s Mother), Sioux Carroll (The Witch).

In the accompanying Damian McCarthy interview, he describes Hokum as a movie about Ireland’s “most haunted hotel,” with a particularly terrifying honeymoon suite. It is a very accurate description, but of course his third feature film is much more than that. Not that Hokum deviates much from classic horror film formulae: it is a conscious riff on Stephen King in his ‘70s mode of updating Universal-style old horror cinema motifs— a psychologically conflicted writer visiting a haunted/cursed location that might have a personal connection— with dollops of Irish folk horror. 

Ohm Bauman, an Irish American writer, played by Adam Scott with the requisite air of mundane callousness and just-visible-below-the-skin internal turmoil, currently working on the final installment of his Conquistador Trilogy of historical novels, visits a secluded hotel called Bilberry Woods to scatter the ashes of his parents. It appears that they had stayed in the hotel’s honeymoon suite following their marriage. The hotel comes with a creepy folk-horror mythology about Callieach (or the Hag of Beara), a witch supposed to, according to this film, cuff and chain children, dragging them into the underworld. Bauman is cynical and abrasive and has a nicely rendered encounter with the hotel’s Bellboy (Will O’Connell) who pushes all the wrong buttons in the writer (including the ultimate no-no, “I am an aspiring writer myself and I have a manuscript that I want to show you…”) and gets physically abused as a result.  

It turns out Bauman is seriously depressed and, while creatively productive, has lost faith in humanity. He spells out the intended denouement of his latest novel to Fiona (Florence Ordesh), a female staff member who stands up to him and calls his bluff, a pitch-dark, feel-bad ending that she immediately rejects. He also reluctantly befriends Jerry (David Wilmot), an aging counter-culture backwoods type who drinks goat milk spiked by magic mushroom elixir, allegedly enabling him to pick up signals from the underworld.

At this point, something drastic happens to the protagonist, pushing the whole picture slightly askew and makes the viewers question the verity of what they are about to follow. Fortunately, Director McCarthy manages to avoid relying on tiresome editorial tricks that call attention to unreliability of the narrator and keeps the proceedings just conventional and predictable enough to stabilize the viewer’s orientation. This aspect of the film, Bauman’s subjective perspective in contradistinction to the “real” supernatural things happening, is handled particularly well by McCarthy. He provides a satisfactory resolution that shows the protagonist having been positively transformed from his experience, without necessarily shutting down multiple possibilities of interpretation regarding the question of “what really happened?”   

There are some cliched plot developments and characterizations, most notably the source of Bauman’s guilt involving his parent’s deaths, but these points are never belabored to the point of distracting the viewer. Scott does an excellent job of keeping the viewers engaged, considering that his Bauman is an unlikable, self-possessed ass, working well with local Irish actors playing characters designed a bit like board game personages but still effective. The standout for me was the interaction between Bauman and Alby the Bellboy, sarcastically humorous but genuinely cringe-inducing in its combination of awkwardness and malice, culminating in a rather nice payoff at the end.      

Interspersed with the reasonably well worked out plot are McCarthy’s signature touches, such as his love for the quirky, the slightly ridiculous and the portentously antique— a cord-pulled servant bell that looks positively ancient and an elaborately crafted, sinister-looking angel-motif alarm clock, for instance, play significant functional roles throughout the film. He pulls out all the stops in the middle part when Bauman must deal with the Honeymoon Suite itself, seemingly connected to the underworld through a dumb waiter, the figurative (and literal) key to unlocking his confinement tantalizingly out of reach for him. 

The interesting spatial arrangements of his previous films, always subtly off-kilter and artificial like an old fin-de-siecle mechanical toy, are also present here, substantially enhanced by Colm Hogan’s widescreen cinematography and the subdued but effective production designs supervised by Til Frohlich. It is to McCarthy’s credit that the film, although largely confined to several rooms of the hotel in terms of settings, never feels claustrophobic except when such feelings are explicitly called for. The visual scheme of Hokum is otherwise almost rigorously classical, the events and visuals presented on the precise scale of a ‘70s-style regional horror film: no elaborate CGI demons, no overtly absurdist imagery that references other, more famous horror films. The only exception is Bauman’s hallucination (which is given a sort of rational explanation at the end, natch) of a children’s show character, Jack the Jackass, indeed a nightmare fuel and far scarier than the witch, supposedly the film’s main supernatural bogey. 

Oddity has its committed supporters and is a rollicking fun of its own, but in my view Hokum has a more precise take on the psychological and moral conflicts of the protagonist and presents an overall more thoughtful, positive understanding of human weaknesses and foibles than its predecessor. It is also one darn spooky ride, that earns its stripes fair and square: I heartily endorse the star Scott’s call to “watch Hokum in the theater, with a fellow group of paying audience.”   

My Favorite Blu Ray/4K UHD Blu Rays of 2025

As I have predicted in last year’s preamble to this annual list, 2025 was a pretty darn horrible year, not personally for me, but for the world.  Again, I do not believe 2026 will be measurably better.  We are all bracing ourselves for a horrific catastrophe or a series of unmistakable signs that the things we have held dear regarding democracy, education, just plain human decency and others will be seriously (but hopefully not irrevocably) damaged.  In the last year, I noted with some surprise that the number of my purchased Blu Rays and 4K UHD discs had expanded greatly in number.  But in retrospect, this was not really surprising.  I believe in the power of motion pictures and other popular artforms. They are not merely reflections of our Zeitgeist.  We not only take solace but also learn lessons from them.   We always have access to those artists who, while exploring the depths of ignorance and depravity of the “God-fearing normal people” around them, refuse to embrace shallow nihilism or despair.  Some titles, if not all, in the list below testify to this observation, whether I have successfully conveyed this understanding or not.

The total amount of Blu Rays and 4K UHD discs purchased in 2025 increased by close to 30 percent from 2024, which puts the number of procured titles at nearly double that of 2023.  This answers the question I posed last year: the massive increase in the titles I had purchased was not a happenstance.  To be clear, this was not an outcome of my conscious effort to cut down on streaming subscriptions and turn toward physical media.  Even though there are too many streaming channels and their “mainstream” titles are becoming less and less interesting (especially their longform serialized content— the “TV series” materials), I actually downloaded (rented and purchased) a sizable number of movies from online platforms.  The numbers of movies I have in possession as downloaded files are not exactly declining.  My subscription to Arrow Video, for instance, did not make much dent at all in the number of Blu Rays issued by the label that I have purchased (or received as a payment for my contribution).  I do not know about you, but, for me, streaming services have not replaced physical media and are unlikely to do that ever, not just in the short term.    

Again, the usual disclaimers: For those who stumble onto my blog for the first time, this list is exactly what it says it is, My Favorite Blu Rays and 4K UHD Blu Rays of 2025.  It is not beholden to any “objective” assessment of the archival values of the items discussed herein, although the latter are certainly factors for consideration.  Nor is it beholden to the critical consensus for “greatness” or “excellence” of the films found in these discs.  This list is as far removed from the “The 100 Movies You Should See Before You Die” sort, which I actively detest.   

As Djuna put it memorably and succinctly, all movies are old movies.  The moment you have watched a pristine 2026 film it has become an “old” movie for you.  So, there is no strict rule for including “newer” titles.  The rule of thumb for me that has remained constant for more than a decade and a half, is the sense of (re)discovery, surprise or confirmation (of what I had suspected or anticipated) that a title gives me.  Every year, I “cheat” a bit and include one or two titles that I got my hands on too late to be included in the previous year’s list— in this year there is one title (Felidae) actually released in 2024, but for the rest, I have confined myself to the titles copyrighted to 2025. 

Finally, to those of you who might be reading or at least aware of the Korean-language version of this list: I have waded into such a surrealistically deep pool of deserving titles in 2025 that, for the first time since I have begun to compile these lists many years ago, I am finally close to having an entirely distinctive list of titles for Korean and English-language lists, meaning no overlap between the two lists.  When I actually took stock of the titles, the lists stopped just short of becoming entirely independent of one another, but this remains a distinct possibility in 2027 and subsequent years.  Who knows: Netflix purchasing Warner Brothers and other industry bullcrap might make it exponentially difficult in the near future, but in any case, I will let the releases dictate the result.    

20. The Hellbenders (1967, StudioCanal Cult Classics, Region B)

A title familiar from my black & white AFKN (American Forces Korean Network) channel-surfing days, its nail-biting and deliberately suspenseful sequence, in which the female protagonist impersonating a widow of a fallen Confederate soldier attempts to dissuade a Union cavalry from inspecting a coffin loaded with the robbed bank notes, has left a lasting impression on me, along with its requisite nastiness befitting a Sergio Corbucci spaghetti Western.  Yet I found the film, remastered by StudioCanal into a pristine special edition, deviating from my memory of it in some surprising ways.  In this edition, The Hellbenders no longer comes off like a typical Italo Western and, perhaps like Corbucci’s Django and Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, its darkly pessimistic, not to say nihilistic, tone carries a rather authentic thematic weight, commenting on the self-perpetuation of warlike mentality and material greed rationalized by ideological conviction (i.e. the belief in “the cause”).

StudioCanal’s presentation through their Cult Classics line comes with an enthusiastic participation from the cult director Alex Cox, who contributes a commentary, as well as Ruggero Deodato, then-assistant director to Corbucci.

19. Maybe It’s Love (1984, Kani Releasing, Region A)

 

This title had been unknown to me and appeared less than inviting at first glance. Even Kani’s packaging suggested that the title was a Tupperware erotic thriller in the ‘80s mold, with powdery visuals and gratuitous nudities galore.  I only purchased it upon finding out that it was directed by a female director not well known to me, Angie Chen.   To my pleasant surprise, the film turned out to be an eccentric concoction-- something like a Nancy Drew mystery cum a Francois Truffaut-style coming-of-age story set in rustic, undeveloped areas of Hong Kong, infused with elements of adult film noir (The Postman Always Rings Twice, anyone?), a cute pre-adolescent adventure (The Goonies) and, yes, very plastic ‘80s erotic thriller, complete with reams of the footage showing spandex-clad, headband-wearing young vixen sweating and gyrating to disco rhythms (The sex does not, despite the cover art and posters, quite spill into the salacious territory). The sheer incongruity of all these elements should centrifugally spin the film into incomprehensible fragments.  Instead, it delivers uncommonly naturalistic acting from the leads as well as child actors and a sense of wistful nostalgia that feels authentically autobiographical.

Kani Releasing’s packaging includes a highly entertaining and informative interview with Director Angie Chen, speaking in English, and Katherine Connell’s spirited defense of the film’s historical values and aesthetic achievements.  I do not know if this is due to KR’s judgement or not, but the title, unlike many Hong Kong titles pouring out of the US labels, comes with simplified and traditional Chinese language subtitles, immensely helpful in enhancing appreciation of the film’s dialogue and performances.  This is one title in this list that proves the adage, “do not judge a book by its cover.” 

18. Last Known Address (1970, Kino Lorber/StudioCanal, Region A)

 

One stream of Blu Ray releases that has become a reliable source of classic titles for the candidates in my year-end list is StudioCanal-controlled European, mostly French, cinema from ‘60s to ‘80s released through Kino Lorber.  Many of these are star vehicles for Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo.  This particular title, however, stars Lino Ventura and the wonderful Marlene Jobert (Eva Green’s mother), a laid-back roman policier in the mold of an Inspector Maigret opus.  Ventura and Jobert are cop partners trying to locate a witness crucial for indictment of a gangster, their only clue the “last known address” of the said witness.  This is not an action thriller or even a conventional mystery, but ultimately an affecting character study: the core of the film is the relationship between Ventura and Jobert, anchoring the ties that they develop with colorful persons of interest they interrogate and attempt to help, including the witness-in-question’s young daughter suffering from a serious, possibly incurable, illness.  For a Jose Giovanni film, it is less angry and more melancholy, but no less compelling for that reason.   

17. Antiviral (2012, Severin Films, 4K UHD Blu Ray/ Blu Ray- Region Free).

 

Brandon Cronenberg’s disturbing yet memorable debut feature, an extreme, nauseatingly clinical body horror that is simultaneously a radical critique of the celebrity worship culture and commodification of desire, both reminiscent of and utterly distinct from his famous father’s opuses, receives a deluxe special edition treatment from Severin Films.  The 4K UHD remaster from the 35mm internegative bestows Karim Hussain’s blindingly white-washed, stains-in-the-plaster-wall cinematography with the best presentation possible, giving a chance for home video viewers to appreciate this challenging film in a setting that approximates a first-time theatrical viewing experience.  Severin really pulls out all stops for this title, including the 113-minute “Cannes Film Festival” version (the UHD disc is for the 108-minute Theatrical Cut) on a separate Blu Ray. 

Beginning with an audio commentary with Cronenberg and Hussain, the extensive supplements include a quirky but informative making-of doc, conversations with the director-cinematographer pair that goes into the unexpectedly prescient ways in which Antiviral anticipated some of the more unnerving features of COVID pandemic (including the practice of nose swipe for viral infection) as well as the 35mm analogue versus digital presentations of the film, among other fascinating topics, an archival view of the Sara Gadon-Caleb Landry Jones acting together (they purposefully avoided learning about one another), deleted scenes, among others. A consummately judicious archival release from Severin that truly does justice to the virulently strange vision of a contemporary original filmmaker.    

16. Unknown World (1951, Severin Films, Blu Ray- Region Free).

A highly idiosyncratic early ‘50s SF that at first glance seems to be a cheap knockoff of Journey to the Center of the Earth turns out to be anything but.  With the screenplay attributed to Milard Kaufman (Bad Day at Black Rock) but possibly also written by then-blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, Unknown World starts out like a micro-budget programmer about an underground exploration by a typical team of scientists and engineers, but gradually transforms into a metaphorically charged, apocalyptic ruminations about the hypocrisies of American military-industrial complex.  The special effects are standard toy-like model works but serve the purpose.  The characterizations are interesting and unusual, including Marilyn Nash’s female scientist, an unapologetic feminist.  The real dangers to the mission rise out of not only conflicts among characters but also their philosophical differences about the position of humanity in the cosmos, but there is no theological moralizing in the dialogue. For that matter, neither “lizardosaurus” creature nor a gigantic spider is around.

Severin’s presentation, although its touted 4K remastering of the preserved internegative is not quite pristine due to the limitations of the source materials, is highly respectful and informative, beginning with an enthusiastic audio commentary from Stephen Bissette, along with his video essay on the special effects techniques of 1950s SF, and the interview pieces focused on the scripter Victor Kilian and director Terrell O. Morse.

15. Felidae (1994, Deaf Crocodile, Blu Ray- Region A).

 

I was very moved by Flow and almost contemplated purchasing the 4K Criterion disc and adding it to the list, but instead another animation film about cats has unexpectedly made into it.  This is the “cheat” title, by the way, as it was technically out in 2024, but no matter. And wouldn’t you know it, Felidae turns out to be like a savvily and wittily updated krimi thriller.  It has a Eugenics-infused quasi-Mad Scientist SF plot, a crime-solving tomcat, a master criminal and a Gothic femme fatale all going about their cat-business (including a fairly graphic depiction of a neck-biting sex, ur, mating between the protagonist and a slinky lady cat) with gusto.  The German-language voice talents involved are pretty amazing, including Mario Adorf (!) and Klaus Maria Brandauer (!!).  You almost expect Klaus Kinski to appear voicing a hissy demon cat. 

Deaf Crocodile, a go-to label for the more exotic and lesser-known literary fantasy-animation titles from Europe, provides a full stack of supplementary materials, including a video interview with the director Micheal Schaack as well as animators and designers and a commentary by Ryan Verrill (journalist) and Will Dodgson (academic).

14. Winchester ’73 (1950, Criterion Collection, 4K UHD Blu Ray)

The Anthony Mann-James Stewart Westerns have received their dues in the physical media format from the earliest days: Man from the Laramie and The Naked Spur, to name the two most frequently cited titles, have received multiple DVD and Blu Ray releases over the years.  The reason Winchester ‘73 got into the 2026 list is, in a way, circumstantial: I have not really watched it in any of these formats, except as a part of an AFKN or ‘70s Korean TV (Not sure which one) program many decades ago.  The Universal Pictures-Film Foundation remastered 4K version out from Criterion is splendid, again allowing a viewer to notice small details such as the ways in which puffs of smoke from guns and rifles drift, and how lanky and awkward Stewart looks in some scenes.  Among the characters, Dan Duryea’s slimy villain takes the cake for leaving an indelible impression.

Criterion’s presentation collects various supplementary materials from preceding decades, including an archival commentary with Stewart moderated by film historian Paul Lindenschmidt.

13. V Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal (1989-1994, Arrow Video, Blu Ray- Region A).

Following in the footsteps of their J-Horror super-collection, Arrow Video curates nine examples of “V-Cinema,” Toei Pictures’ effort to cash in on the then-burgeoning VHS market by churning out extremely low-budget, “direct-to-video” exploitation films.  Surprisingly, there are less here that indicate their origins than meets the eye, aside from the inevitable 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio.  They may not be your ideas of “good movies”—as some commentators and interviewees cheerfully acknowledge, some of the performances range from wooden to hilariously terrible— but, in a fashion analogous to the Nikkatsu Roman Porno genre, many of these unmistakably sleazoid features do contain quite a chunk of sincere hokum, madcap exploitation energy (flashing middle fingers to “good taste”) as well as genuinely creative touches.  The helmers include such past and future notables as Sai Yoichi (The Burning Dog), Hasebe Yoshiharu (Danger Point: The Road to Hell) and Ishii Teruo (The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses). 

The box set is adorned with gorgeous illustrations by Chris Malbon that improve on the dully barebones original poster photos, and as usual come with a barrage of excellent supplements, spearheaded by historical contextualization by Earl Jackson, an essay on the Female Prisoner Scorpion character by Hayley Scanlon, and Daiske Miyao on the speed of Toei V-Cinema.  

12. Yojimbo/Sanjuro (1961-62, The British Film Institute, 4K UHD Blu Ray)

 

I could not avoid including a classic Kurosawa title in this list, as you probably could have guessed.  I have procured more than one 4K UHD remastered versions of Akira Kurosawa classics in 2025, including The Hidden Fortress, The Throne of Blood and High and Low, and any one of them could have made into the current list (One or more of them might still make it into the Korean-language list), but I have chosen the eternally enjoyable Mifune Toshiro vehicles, Yojimbo and Sanjuro.  Yojimbo, in particular, displays a tremendous improvement in visual quality over the Criterion Blu Ray, held up upon their release as a model showcase for Blu Rays.  Watching this 4K iteration on a 70-inch-something screen HD TV proved to be a revelation: I could literally count the hairs—white ones too— right below Sanjuro’s top-knot in the close-ups. 

BFI’s supplements are just as impeccable and thorough as those of Criterion’s nearly concurrent 4K release, major differences being commentaries.  Again, Alex Cox is present, jumping up and down with enthusiasm for Sanjuro.  I also enjoyed the video essay on “natural backgrounds” in these two films by Nic Wassell.  I am curious as to see if Kagemusha’s inevitable 4K remaster would show a noticeably different color scheme from DVDs and Blu Rays.  I am considerably less happy with the 4K treatment of Kurosawa’s the other color epic, Ran, but that is a story for another day.

11. Mabuse Lives! Dr. Mabuse at CCC: 1960-1964 (1960-64, Eureka! Masters of Cinema, Blu Ray- Region Free).

 

It was at the starting point of the DVD revolution, the year 2000 to be exact, that we were made privy to a gloriously remastered edition of Fritz Lang’s last film, The One Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, published from David Kalat’s Allday label. 25 years later, we have that film and its five German-language sequels collected into one boxset.  Eureka! released several stunning boxset editions in this year, all competing for a high or top slot in this list, but ultimately two of them climbed up the ladder. Made into the present slot is this collection of the postwar Mabuse series, produced through the Central Cinema Company led by the returnee Jewish entrepreneur and filmmaker Artur Brauner, who combined a documentarian’s persistence and a commercial instinct.  The films, vaulted in excellent conditions at the CCC, are fascinating criminal-espionage thrillers with inflections of science fiction and Gothic horror, many of them starring lovably irascible Gert Frobe (Goldfinger himself), Peter van Eyck in a series of interchangeable (sometimes American) hero roles and Wolfgang Preiss. 

David Kalat returns again as the Mabuse expert, providing audio commentaries to all series titles, but other supplementary materials are quite excellent and historically informative, including introductions by Tim Lucas, an interview with the CCC managing director Alice Brauner and a video essay on krimi films by David Cairns and Fiona Watson, among others.  Oh yes, we shan’t forget the lavishly illustrated insert booklet (57 pages) chock full of archival interviews (including one with Lang) and academic essays.   

10. The Pied Piper & Jiri Barta Shorts (1978-89, Deaf Crocodile, Region A).

 

The mordantly witty The Pied Piper, an animated feature running just short of one hour, done in the style of medieval wood reliefs brought to life, along with photographic insertions of real rats that most certainly would freak out some viewers, is joined by a series of sui generis animated shorts, from The Vanished World of Gloves to The Club of the Laid Off, in a two-disc special edition beautifully curated by Deaf Crocodile.  Even though these features are not exactly obscure, especially for the connoisseurs of Eastern European cinematic arts, it is still incredible to have them collected into a single release.

The creator Jirĭ Barta enthusiastically participate in the supplements (through an interpreter in an interview, making it go on a bit longer than usual), and is a most welcome presence. 

9. Night of the Juggler (1980, Kino Lorber, 4K UHD Blu Ray).

 

Scanned and remastered in 4K from the 35mm negative, this cult thriller starring James Brolin in his most volcanic state, taking place for the real-time roughly 24 hours in the late ‘70s New York City and another take on the Ed McBain “they kidnapped the wrong kid” premise most memorably adapted into Kurosawa’s High and Low, is a surprisingly nostalgic title for me.  I watched it in a South Korean theater with the viewers palpably excited by the raw emotions and gritty action sequences— greatly boosted by performances of the likes of Brolin, Julie Carmen, Dan Hedaya, Cliff Gorman and Mandy Patinkin— but the Korean release print was subtly censored: it is fascinating to see the Brolin-Hedaya confrontation in the police interrogation room played out in full length, for instance. 

Kino Lorber’s 4K UHD edition comes with a great commentary by Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson, and most surprisingly for me, a brand-new interview with James Brolin (who at 85 looks simply great!) and Julie Carmen as well as an autopsy of the Sidney J. Furie’s take on the film and how much it survived into the final Robert Butler-credited version. 

8. Splendid Outing (1978, Radiance Films, Blu Ray- Region Free)

 

Another big surprise: I did not expect Radiance Films to branch off into classic Korean cinema, but they did, and their inaugural title is none other than Kim Soo-yong’s Splendid Outing, a resolutely artistic psychological thriller with a vague suggestion of parallel life.  The ‘70s superstar Jeong Yoon-hee stars as a female head of a corporation whose aimless wandering into a port town results in her being abducted by a fisherman who claims that she is his long-lost wife.  Scanned in 4K by the Korean Film Archive from a rare 35mm negative (and further digitally restored by Heavenly Movie), Radiance’s presentation meticulously recreates the master cinematographer Jung Il-sung’s magnificent visual renditions of the protagonist’s mental landscape, including such disturbingly surrealistic vistas as scarlet-red fishnets that ensnare Jeong's businesswoman into captivity. 

The excellent supplements include Pierce Conran’s video essay on the “island women,” a fascinating trope in South Korean cinema, a commentary by Ariel Schudson, as well as insightful and highly informative interviews with directors Lee Chang-dong (Secret Sunshine, Burning) and Chung Ji-young (The White Badge, National Security, The Boys) who had served as an assistant director for this film. 

7. Shawscope Volume 4 (1975-85, Arrow Video, Blu Ray- Region A/Free)

 

Arrow Video’s amazing collections of Shaw Brothers films, models to emulate for curation of classic genre films, massively colorful and hitting dopamine centers of all genre film collectors, and not just Hong Kong wu xia pian or “kung fu” film fans, have now come up with its fourth volume.  In 2025 Arrow had already released Volume 3, spearheaded by Jimmy Wang Yu’s One-Armed Swordsman and other period-piece action films from ‘70s and early ‘80s (the majority directed by Chor Yuen).  That boxset could have easily made it into the list as well, but Volume 4, which controversially deviates from the series’ previous focus on wu xia pian/kung fu cinema and collects the horror and dark fantasy titles from the same period, was in the end the one that made the cut. Many of them feature dodgy if charming special effects and abjectly nonsensical premises or plot developments.

The flagship title is Super Inframan (1975), a crazy Shaw Brothers riff on the Japanese Ultraman/Kamen Rider, but the collection also includes the utterly bizarre Oily Maniac ( 1976), ludicrously sleazy Black Magic (1975) and its sequel (1976), a completely bonkers Hex (1980) and its myriad sequels and knock-offs, and the sui generis weirdness galore such as Demon of the Lute (1983).

The quality of presentation is, as befits Arrow Video, superb: to cite one example, the Arrow and L’Immagine Ritrovata’s Super Inframan remaster from 35mm original negative is literally eye-popping. When I had acquired the 88 Films Blu Ray about a decade ago, I assumed that this version was for sure the best this tokusatsu extravaganza would ever look.  I was wrong.  Inframan’s armors in this Arrow remastered version sports a sumptuous scarlet hue, compared to which the 88 Films version’s armors look just… red.   The only drawback to owning this title I could think of is, perhaps, that a few movies included are frankly real clunkers.  But with sixteen titles with each one getting its own designated disc, not all of them could have been insanely entertaining like Super Inframan.  In any case, there is nothing to disprove the proposition that every volume in the Arrow Shawscope collection series is simply a must-buy, even for those who are not committed fans of Hong Kong genre cinema.

6. World Noir No. 3 (1947-51, Radiance Films, Region Free).

 

Radiance Films is fast becoming a label to watch out for, overtaking Criterion, Arrow and Eureka! in their fastidious yet innovative presentations of sometimes obscure, other times unjustly forgotten European and Japanese cinema.  Their World Noir series managed to dig up many fascinating works of film noir from Japan, Italy, France and other nations, but I personally think they really hit the jackpot with this third volume.  It contains Henri Decoin’s Not Guilty (1947), a riveting acting showcase for Michel Simon (equally amazing in Julien Duvivier’s Panique [1946], remade by Patrice Laconte into Monseiur Hire), The Lost One (1951), a sole film directed by Peter Lorre, a deeply morose affair drenched in miasma of cigarette smoke, and The Girl with Hyacinths (1950), a Swedish tragic romance/psychological mystery, the best film in the collection. 

 

Radiance pulls out all stops for the supplements, with commentaries, video essays and archival footage (including alternative endings), and a 77-page booklet (yeah right, a book-LET) with six academic essays (two per one film) specifically on the titles. 

5. Daiei Gothic: Three Japanese Ghost Stories (1960-70, Radiance Films, Blu Ray- Region Free).

The first volume of this completely surprising (and surprisingly welcome) series from Radiance not surprisingly snared the top position in the 2024 list.  The second volume is situated at no. 5, mostly because the films themselves are not as magically enticing as those in the first volume.  This fact diminishes neither the archival significance nor sheer entertainment value of the three red-blood supernatural thrillers found herein.  Demon of Mount Oe, the oldest entry made in 1960, is a formalistic, dark fairy tale that refashions the myth of the demon Shuten Doji subdued by the warrior Minamoto no Yorimitsu (948-1021) as a special effects-laden, quasi-musical heroic fantasy.  The amazing cast includes Ichikawa Raizo as Yorimitsu, Hasegawa Kazuo as Shuten Doji, Katsu Shintaro (Zatoichi himself) as the fierce compatriot of Yorimitsu, Watanabe no Tsuna.  The Haunted Castle (1969) proves to be an aggressively Expressionist Gothic horror partaking of the vengeful demon cat trope.  Ghost of Kabane Swamp (1970), finally, is an unabashedly nihilistic film noir disguised as a supernatural horror, with Yasuda Kimiyoshi’s dynamic direction foregrounding desperation and inner turmoil of the characters.

 

As is the case with the first Daiei Gothic collection, this boxset is stacked to the gills with supplements, all highly informative and insightful, highlighted by English translations of source materials for Demon and Castle by F. Hadland Davis and an analysis of Encho Sanyutei’s kodan (recitation performance) version of the Kasane Swamp tale by Daniel O’Neill.

4. Wrack and Ruin: The Rubble Films of DEFA (1945-48, Eureka! Masters of Cinema, Blu Ray-Region B).

This year’s academically most interesting boxset/title.  Even though it is headlined by The Murderers Are Among Us (1946), a title fairly well represented in the DVD pool of desirable postwar German films— with its often-quoted imagery of two lovers taking a walk backed by a vast ruin of bombed buildings— the collection also curates four other much lesser known films that range from a docudrama about the flourishing black market (Police Raid), a look back in 1930s legal corruption case aimed at framing a Jewish entrepreneur as a conspirator for murder (The Blum Affair), a gritty survivor’s tale of war orphans coping with the everyday life among the rubbles of Berlin (Somewhere in Berlin) and a dramatization of the persecution of the theater actor Joachim Gottschalk and his Jewish wife Meta Wolff (Marriage in the Shadows).  These films collectively present us with a devastatingly authentic slice of cultural archeology, showing us the postwar German society attempting to reckon with its pitch-dark immediate past and groping for a purchase on the ever-thinning thread of humanity and decency. 

 

The Eureka! Masters of Cinema presentation is obviously working with limitations of the surviving elements, but its attempt to recover this critical moment of cultural history, when motion pictures were being made and consumed with the kind of renewed urgency that could only come after a world-shattering devastation, is extremely laudable.  The films themselves, even with their occasionally staid performances and limited production resources, are endlessly fascinating and educational in the best sense of the word.

3. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976, Warner Brothers- Studio Distribution Networks, 4K UHD Blu Ray).

 

This early directorial effort by Clint Eastwood was plagued by production troubles (the screenwriter Philip Kaufman was originally set to direct, but was fired by Eastwood) and its reputation was perhaps a bit tainted by subsequent revelations about the source novel (Gone to Texas, the author of which, Asa Earl Carter, turned out to be a Ku Klax Klan member and a segregationist speechwriter for George Wallace) as well as the Eastwood-Locke romance.  Nonetheless, I could not ignore this title for 2025.  I am in the process of reacquainting myself with Eastwood’s early directorial efforts— Breezy, Play Misty for Me, The Eiger Sanction— and among them Wales remains the most fascinating and illuminating, despite the shadows cast by the negative aspects mentioned above. Even though it is economically and succinctly put together, Wales is an epic Western, giving classic Western themes—a lethal lone gunman with a traumatic past learning to care for other human beings and becoming a part of a makeshift community— a hard spin and touching upon many motifs that Eastwood would revisit in his later works, most importantly The Unforgiven. 

The 4K UHD prepared by Warner Brothers is simply magnificent, with Bruce Surtees’ cinematography shown in the best form.  The studio does not stint on supplements either, with six documentary features including a Western-focused chapter from Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy.  

2. The Betrayal (1966, Radiance Films, Blu Ray- Region Free).

 

Another triumph for Radiance, The Betrayal is the top-tier Daiei journeyman Tanaka Tokuzo’s remake of Futagawa Buntaro’s classic silent film Orochi (1925), of which only one third or so of reels remain intact today.  Fortunately, the surviving film stock includes one of the most jaw-droppingly grandiose action sequences ever committed to film in Japanese cinematic history, in which the hero Hirazaburo confronts a human tide of feudal police forces.  Tanaka and his star collaborator Ichikawa Raizo updates this sequence in an amazing series of sequences that build up spectacularly to a climax, as Ichikawa’s hero, relying on a single drawn sword, faces dozens of warriors, wooden carts and commoner policemen carrying ropes, jitte and sasumata.  Like Kudo Eiichi (13 Assassins)’s raging period pieces, Tanaka’s film bottles up the fury of the misunderstood and mistreated protagonist, maintains the tension taught as a drawn bowstring, and unleashes it in the explosive climax.  This is the major rediscovery of 2025 as far as I am concerned, and a must-have title for any discerning connoisseur of the Japanese chanbara. 

As usual, Radiance’s supplements are precise and informative, with Tom Mes’s video essay on the director Tanaka and Philip Kemp’s comparison of the 1925 original and the 1966 remake.   

 

1. The Black Tulip (1964, TFI/Kino Lorber, Blu Ray- Region A).

 

So finally herewith is my favorite disc of 2025, another Alain Delon star vehicle, a thoroughly delightful (and delightfully Gallic) swashbuckler based on an Alexandre Dumas character in which Delon plays a dual role, a cynical aristocrat who moonlights as a highwayman known as Black Tulip, and his milquetoast twin brother.  The latter, while impersonating this brother, decides to join the Revolutionary cause, smitten by an action heroine Caro (the beautiful Virna Lisi), who is capable of fencing, scuffling and kicking her way out of any dire situation.  It is a joy from start to finish, a breeze of fresh air from another time.

The Kino Lorber presentation is bare-bones except for a feature-length commentary by Simon Abrams, but its TFI-sponsored 4K restoration showcases Henri Decae’s cinematography in its pictorial resplendence, including unbelievably persuasive split-screen presentations of two Delons acting together.

It is almost March, but the list is done.  As I have said for the umpteenth time, better late than never.  There still are a slew of titles that for various reasons that did not make it into the list (some of which will no doubt show up in the Korean-language one): Finis Terrae (Eureka! Masters of Cinema), The House with Laughing Windows and Play It Cool (both Arrow Video), Sirius and Arlaune/The Student of Prague (both Deaf Crocodile), The Throne of Blood 4K UHD (BFI), Let’s Scare Jessica to Death 4K UHD, The Terrornauts, Interrogation and The Belly of an Architect (all Vinegar Syndrome), A Woman of Paris (Criterion Collection), among many, many other items. 

I face the prospect of a new year with some dread, but one thing is certain: I will still procure a goodly number of Blu Rays and 4K UHD Blu Rays in 2026.  This practice has remained a constant in my life for more than a decade now and for the likely future to come.  Classic cinema is forever, and my loyalty is to them, and their admirers, curators, preservers and fans.