Sid Bennett’s film follows explorer Jonathan Marchant (Richard Dillane) and his team as they search for the legendary Mokele-mbembe. A camera crew is along for the journey, as is Jonathan’s son Luke (Matt Kane), who has stowed away with enough recording equipment to document every awkward family conversation. Once the expedition goes spectacularly wrong, all those cameras give the film a believable reason to keep recording. For once, the question of why nobody has put the camera down is not quite so distracting.

The real pleasure, though, is the setting. The jungle begins as the sort of place you might recognise from a conventional expedition film, before gradually feeling like a world cut off from everything outside it. We liked that suggestion of a hidden ecosystem, somewhere the familiar rules no longer quite apply. It gives the adventure a genuine sense of discovery even when there is no dinosaur on screen, and makes the surroundings part of the attraction rather than merely somewhere for the cast to run about.

A mild spoiler for one particularly enjoyable sequence: a small dinosaur, nicknamed Crypto, ends up carrying a camera into the water and towards a submerged passage. The resulting journey hints at another environment tucked away beyond the obvious routes through the jungle. That moment stuck with us. It is the sort of imaginative detail that helps a modest production feel more adventurous than a succession of computer-generated attacks ever could. And yes, there are actual dinosaurs. They do not appear every five minutes, and anyone expecting an endless parade of prehistoric creatures will find the film rather restrained. We appreciated that. When they turn up, the effects are generally respectable for a production working on this scale, even if the occasional shot shows its limitations. Pushing them into every scene would probably have done the film no favours. Sometimes the threat of what might be nearby is enough to keep the expedition moving.

The performances are a mixed bag, although not in a way that wrecked our enjoyment. Peter Brooke makes Charlie Rutherford interesting to watch, while Kane brings a useful energy to Luke and Natasha Loring makes an impression as Liz Draper. Other moments are less convincing, and bits of dialogue could certainly have used another pass. Still, the relationships give us something to follow between creature encounters, and the story is easy to keep track of without constantly abandoning ideas it has introduced.

The Dinosaur Project is unlikely to convert somebody who cannot stand shaky cameras or the usual found-footage conventions. But we have a soft spot for it. It knows roughly what sort of adventure it can afford to be, offers a few memorable discoveries and remains an easy, enjoyable watch. Not a lost masterpiece, then. Just a rather likeable little dinosaur film that deserves a fairer chance.

We’ve always regarded these first two films as complementary halves of the same story. You can certainly watch Hellbound independently, and there’s enough here to understand what’s happening, but the experience is considerably better when you’ve already spent some time with Kirsty, Julia, Frank and their rather unhealthy relationship with a particular puzzle box. Watching both films together makes for an excellent double feature, although perhaps not one to accompany a large takeaway.

Tony Randel’s sequel follows Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence), now confined to a psychiatric hospital following the events of the first film. Unfortunately, Dr Philip Channard (Kenneth Cranham), the man responsible for her care, has an interest in the Lament Configuration that extends considerably beyond professional curiosity. Before long, Julia (Clare Higgins) is back in the picture, and we’re heading towards another encounter with the Cenobites.

One of the things we appreciate about Hellbound is its commitment to continuing the existing story. The atmosphere, characters and general unpleasantness remain recognisable, with the consequences of the original film driving much of what happens here. There’s no need to manufacture a completely different threat when the first film established a world with so much unexplored territory.

Having said that, by the time Hellbound reaches its conclusion, we’re quite comfortable leaving the Cotton family behind. Kirsty has been an important character, and her involvement provides the audience with a way into Barker’s peculiar mythology. Ashley Laurence remains an effective presence throughout, but there comes a point when the people pursuing our protagonists become rather more interesting than the protagonists themselves.

For us, that’s always been part of the attraction of Hellraiser. The Cenobites, their origins and the strange order governing their existence offer considerably more possibilities than simply following another unfortunate person who happens to open the wrong box.

Bradley’s Pinhead remains one of the franchise’s greatest assets. His appearance is immediately recognisable, but there’s something about the character’s composure that makes him particularly effective. While everyone else is panicking, running around or being pulled apart, Pinhead conducts himself with the quiet authority of someone who knows exactly how this particular nightmare is going to end. Bradley never needs to make the character especially animated to establish his presence.

It’s difficult to imagine these early films without him, and Hellbound gives us another welcome opportunity to spend time with the original incarnation of the character. More interestingly, it begins exploring the Cenobites as part of a much larger supernatural hierarchy, rather than leaving them as mysterious visitors who occasionally appear to make somebody’s day considerably worse. That expansion of the mythology is probably our favourite aspect of the film.

The first Hellraiser offers glimpses of what exists beyond the Lament Configuration. Hellbound takes us through the doorway and introduces the labyrinth, an enormous, seemingly endless arrangement of corridors and chambers presided over by Leviathan. This strange geometric entity sits at the centre of a realm that feels governed by its own disturbing rules.

There’s something wonderfully unsettling about finally seeing where the Cenobites come from. It gives their existence greater context without requiring every aspect of their world to be explained. Leviathan itself raises plenty of questions, particularly concerning its relationship with the Cenobites and the amount of control it exercises over them. We’re given enough to appreciate that there’s an entire order operating beyond the human characters’ understanding. The labyrinth also happens to be one of the most interesting examples of the film’s distinctly 1980s production techniques.

Having watched Hellbound numerous times over the years, we’ve become increasingly conscious of how the filmmakers created the impression of such an enormous environment. Look closely at Kirsty’s journeys through the labyrinth and you’ll begin noticing familiar corridors, relatively narrow spaces and what appear to be painted backgrounds extending the scenery beyond the physical sets.

Some of those corridors seem to get quite a workout. Kirsty can run through what feels like half of eternity, despite the surroundings occasionally looking suspiciously familiar. There are moments when the supposedly endless labyrinth betrays its soundstage origins, and the illusion of enormous distances depends heavily on how the sequences are staged and edited.

We rather enjoy noticing these things.

Nearly four decades on, it’s easier to recognise the physical limitations of the production, particularly if you have an interest in how films are constructed. But there’s a certain pleasure in identifying the practical solutions filmmakers employed to suggest something far larger than they could actually build. The labyrinth might occasionally look like a collection of rearranged corridors, but it still establishes a distinctive environment that we’d happily explore further. Preferably without anyone attaching hooks to us. The same affection for practical filmmaking extends to Dr Channard, whose transformation into a Cenobite introduces another particularly interesting development.

Kenneth Cranham gives us a doctor whose fascination with the supernatural has already pushed him well beyond anything resembling medical ethics. His involvement in Julia’s resurrection is disturbing enough, but his eventual encounter with Leviathan takes the character somewhere considerably more unpleasant. The transformed Channard is a formidable creation, suspended and connected to the machinery of Leviathan’s realm. His abilities appear to exceed those of the Cenobites we’ve already encountered, particularly when he confronts Pinhead and his established companions.

Now, this is a sequence that has understandably raised a few eyebrows among Hellraiser enthusiasts. Having spent two films establishing Pinhead and his associates as extraordinarily powerful supernatural beings, Hellbound allows Channard to dispatch them with surprising efficiency.

We can understand why that might frustrate some viewers, but we’ve never particularly regarded it as a problem.

Our interpretation is that Channard’s connection to Leviathan gives him an advantage that the other Cenobites simply don’t possess. He’s effectively operating with power supplied by the entity responsible for the labyrinth itself. If that’s the case, his ability to overpower Pinhead’s group becomes much easier to accept.

It’s not an explicitly explained ranking system, and we’re certainly not suggesting the film provides a definitive answer about who outranks whom in Cenobite society. Nevertheless, the circumstances of Channard’s transformation offer a reasonable explanation for his extraordinary abilities. It also raises some interesting questions about what Leviathan might be capable of creating, given the opportunity. We can’t imagine the transformation itself being an especially pleasant experience either, although unpleasant experiences are hardly in short supply around here. There’s also a fascinating production detail concerning Channard that becomes more noticeable during repeated viewings. In certain wider shots, the transformed character appears to have slightly different facial features and physical proportions. It turns out there’s a genuine explanation for this. Cranham suffered a neck injury during production, and stunt performer Bronco McLoughlin subsequently portrayed the Channard Cenobite for much of the remaining filming. Cranham’s time performing in the elaborate Cenobite make-up was consequently very limited.

Once you’re aware of the substitution, it’s interesting to revisit those sequences and look for the differences. It’s another example of the practical complications involved in making this sort of film, particularly when actors are expected to perform while attached to elaborate effects equipment. The finished scenes are memorable enough without knowing the difficulties involved in producing them. Something else we’ve become increasingly aware of over successive viewings is the rather peculiar geography of the early Hellraiser films.

The original emerged from a distinctly British creative background, with recognisable British surroundings and much of its production rooted firmly in the UK. Yet both films have an occasionally confusing relationship with their supposed geographical setting.

There are British-looking houses, familiar surroundings and then, rather unexpectedly, American police officers wandering about as though they’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere over the Atlantic.

Hellbound continues this strange mixture. Given that the film was produced in England, there’s something amusing about watching American law enforcement turn up in environments that don’t always look particularly American. It’s almost as though the Cotton family’s house occupies some unexplained transatlantic territory where geography has become another casualty of the Lament Configuration.

Perhaps these decisions were influenced by the desire to appeal to American audiences. It would certainly make commercial sense, although that doesn’t explain every inconsistency. Whatever the reasoning, it’s one of those peculiar details we barely registered during earlier viewings but now find difficult to overlook. It doesn’t bother us in the slightest. If anything, it’s become another little curiosity to enjoy.

And that’s generally how we feel about the film’s other visible production limitations. Some of the effects betray their age, the enormous labyrinth isn’t always quite as enormous as it would like us to believe, and certain sequences reveal the practical realities behind the illusion. None of this prevents the film from being enjoyable. We can appreciate what the filmmakers were trying to achieve without requiring every technique to remain completely convincing nearly forty years later.

What Hellbound leaves us with is an expanded understanding of the world Clive Barker introduced in 1987. We know considerably more about the Cenobites, we’ve encountered Leviathan, and we’ve glimpsed the environment that exists beyond the puzzle box. Channard’s transformation also suggests that the supernatural order we’ve witnessed so far may contain far more dangerous possibilities.

Kirsty’s story, meanwhile, has reached a point where we’re perfectly happy to see her walk away. She’s certainly earned a break from the family business.

There are countless corridors left unexplored, and we’d much rather see what else might be lurking within them.

After all, this is the era that gave us A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser and the wave of slashers that followed the original Halloween. Films where surviving the night was a considerable achievement and common sense usually met a horrible death somewhere around the second act. *American Horror Story: 1984* understands these influences perfectly, and in terms of atmosphere and presentation, it gets an awful lot right. Unfortunately, having all the ingredients for a terrific horror story and knowing what to do with them are two very different things.

The premise is wonderfully straightforward. A group of young adults leave Los Angeles to work as counsellors at Camp Redwood, a remote summer camp with a particularly unpleasant history. Years earlier, a massacre left several people dead, their ears removed as trophies by a killer supposedly responsible for the slaughter. That killer, Benjamin Richter, better known as Mr. Jingles, has become something of a local legend. Naturally, the camp is reopening, because apparently nothing says sensible business investment quite like resurrecting the scene of a notorious mass murder.

Initially, this works rather well. John Carroll Lynch’s Mr. Jingles gives me exactly the sort of antagonist the setting deserves, and the unfolding mystery surrounding the original killings provides a solid foundation for the season. Better still, the revelation that Richter was framed for the massacre by Margaret Booth, played by Leslie Grossman, adds a welcome twist. Margaret’s development from a disturbed young woman into an equally disturbed older one is a particularly enjoyable element of the story. Suddenly, the supposed monster isn’t quite the monster I thought he was, and the respectable woman overseeing the camp has considerably more skeletons in her wardrobe than the guests might appreciate.

There was enough in that storyline alone to make ‘1984′ something special. A wrongly accused killer returning to the place that destroyed his life, the woman responsible maintaining her elaborate deception, and a fresh group of potential victims caught between them. I could have happily spent considerably more time exploring that particular mess.

Instead, the writers appear determined to squeeze every conceivable horror convention into nine episodes, whether it belongs there or not. The relatively straightforward slasher mystery soon finds itself competing with Satanic intervention, supernatural resurrection, vengeful ghosts, family tragedy, multiple timelines and enough additional serial killers to warrant their own police department. Several of these ideas are interesting individually, but they increasingly struggle to coexist within the same story.

Which brings me to Richard Ramirez.

Now, American Horror Story has never been shy about incorporating actual historical figures into its fictional horrors, and I have no fundamental objection to that approach. Ramirez, the real-life Night Stalker, was a deeply unpleasant individual whose documented crimes already provide more than enough material for a frightening story. He was eventually captured, convicted and imprisoned, dying in custody in 2013.’ 1984′, however, decides to take his existence in an altogether more supernatural direction.

Played by Zach Villa, Ramirez becomes increasingly entangled in Satanic resurrection and the bizarre happenings at Camp Redwood. The difficulty isn’t that American Horror Story has suddenly abandoned reality. This is, after all, a programme where witches, ghosts and demons regularly turn up and ruin everybody’s evening. The problem is that Ramirez was an actual person with a known history, and the more supernatural liberties the writers take, the harder I find it to reconcile their character with the man they’re supposedly portraying.

Had Ramirez been an entirely fictional serial killer, I might have accepted the whole business without much complaint. Give him another name, make him a deranged Satanist with an unusually reliable arrangement for returning from the dead, and off we go. By insisting that he’s Richard Ramirez, the writers introduce a complication that increasingly distracts from everything else happening at the camp.

What’s particularly peculiar is that the franchise had already handled this character rather effectively. In my previous review of American Horror Story: Hotel, I discussed the infamous Devil’s Night gathering hosted by James Patrick March at the Hotel Cortez. Ramirez appears alongside the likes of Aileen Wuornos, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy and the Zodiac Killer, all attending a thoroughly unpleasant dinner party that makes your average family Christmas look positively civilised.

That appearance worked because it was relatively contained. These historical murderers existed within an established supernatural setting, and their presence made sense within the peculiar rules of the Cortez. Ramirez didn’t require an elaborate alternative life story or an ongoing arrangement with Satan. He simply appeared, did his thing and left me to contemplate the world’s worst guest list. Hotel gave the character enough room to work without allowing him to consume the entire narrative.

I’ve seen the franchise use actual history to its advantage elsewhere, too. American Horror Story: Cult incorporated Valerie Solanas, her SCUM Manifesto and the attempted assassination of Andy Warhol into its fictional storytelling. Considerable liberties were taken, certainly, but the historical material had a purpose within the narrative. With ‘1984′, the Ramirez storyline increasingly feels as though the writers were more interested in the possibilities of using the Night Stalker than whether those possibilities made sense together.

Unfortunately, the supernatural complications don’t end there. Camp Redwood gradually reveals itself to be another location where the spirits of the dead remain trapped, unable to venture beyond its boundaries. It’s familiar territory for American Horror Story, and perhaps rather too familiar by this point.

Season 1 Murder House established the idea of spirits being bound to a particular property, while Hotel returned to similar territory through the Cortez. AHS: Roanoke also explored supernatural horrors connected to a specific location, albeit through its own mythology. These seasons don’t operate under identical rules, but the underlying device has become increasingly recognisable. So when ‘1984′ introduces yet another collection of ghosts condemned to remain where they died, it feels rather less imaginative than it probably should.

There is, admittedly, a potentially fascinating explanation lurking beneath the surface. The introduction of Lavinia Richter, played by Lily Rabe, takes the story back to the tragedy that devastated Benjamin Richter’s family. Lavinia’s younger son, Bobby, died after being struck by a boat propeller while swimming at the camp, an accident for which she blamed Benjamin. Her grief and subsequent murderous rage eventually become connected to the supernatural curse surrounding Camp Redwood.

It’s a grim little story, and one that deserved much more attention than it received. The suggestion that Lavinia’s suffering and hatred somehow poisoned the location gives the haunting a personal foundation, rather than simply declaring the camp cursed because somebody needed somewhere to keep all the ghosts. Yet the explanation arrives without enough development to make the mythology particularly satisfying. I’m given the broad idea, but much of the interesting detail is left for me to piece together.

The programme treats the lake as an ominous place, closely connected to the Richter family tragedy, and there are suggestions of something considerably stranger lurking beneath its waters. I couldn’t help wondering whether the writers were hinting at some sort of supernatural gateway, perhaps something resembling a hellmouth a’la Buffy. That would certainly have been an interesting direction, and it might have given Camp Redwood a mythology more distinctive than another haunted property with inconvenient boundary restrictions.

Instead, the lake becomes central to Benjamin’s eventual reunion with his deceased family. After being attacked by the other ghosts and placed in a boat, Benjamin is dragged beneath the water by the spirit of his younger brother (possibly?!). He subsequently finds himself reunited with Bobby and Lavinia, whose rage finally appears to have subsided. There’s a genuinely appealing idea here, particularly given everything Benjamin has suffered, but I’m left wanting to know considerably more about how this resolution works and what it means for the spirits involved.

Benjamin then effectively disappears from the other ghosts’ experience for decades, only to return when his adult son, also named Bobby, arrives at the camp. The story gives me enough to understand the intended emotional resolution, but I never felt that the supernatural mechanics surrounding it had been explored properly. Once again, an interesting development arrives, makes its contribution and moves aside before I’ve had much opportunity to get comfortable with it.

Meanwhile, Ramirez has somehow become the subject of a thirty-year supernatural security operation. The ghosts of Camp Redwood repeatedly murder him whenever Satan resurrects him, preventing the Night Stalker from escaping and threatening Benjamin’s surviving son. The immediate purpose is clear enough, and there’s something wonderfully absurd about a group of ghosts maintaining a permanent rota for murdering the same individual. But the wider implications of this arrangement raise questions the season never adequately resolves for me.

Am I supposed to accept that the real Richard Ramirez abandoned his documented historical fate entirely? How does this account sit alongside the version already introduced in Hotel? The writers can certainly invent whatever supernatural rules they please, but I still need enough confidence in those rules to follow the story without continually stopping to untangle them.

The increasingly crowded narrative isn’t helped by the noticeably different ensemble. One of the great pleasures of American Horror Story has always been its recurring performers, almost like a theatrical company whose members return each season to inhabit entirely different personalities. Familiar faces become part of the franchise’s character, even when the stories themselves have little obvious connection.

For ‘1984′, the absence of Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters and Angela Bassett leaves some noticeable gaps. That’s not to suggest the remaining cast is incapable of carrying the season. Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd, Leslie Grossman and John Carroll Lynch are all established members of the AHS family, while Matthew Morrison’s appearance as Trevor Kirchner brings another recognisable face into proceedings. Nevertheless, the ensemble doesn’t quite have the familiar weight I’ve come to associate with the programme.

Dylan McDermott’s arrival as Bruce initially seems like an opportunity to restore some of that familiar presence. Having appeared in Murder House, he’s certainly a welcome returning face, but I’m left questioning what his character really contributes. Bruce is another dangerous serial killer whose storyline includes some particularly unpleasant encounters, not least the (spoiler folks!) removal of his thumbs. He eventually meets his end outside the camp’s boundaries, preventing him from joining the resident ghost population. It’s all suitably horrible, but was another killer really necessary when the existing story was already struggling to accommodate the ones it had?

By the time I arrive at the finale, ‘1984′ has accumulated an extraordinary amount of narrative baggage. There’s the original massacre, Margaret’s murderous history, Benjamin’s tragic family, the camp’s supernatural conditions, Ramirez’s repeated resurrection and a collection of ghosts who have spent decades occupying the same patch of woodland. The strange thing is that, despite everything happening, the season still manages to feel unfinished.

The final episode introduces Benjamin’s adult son Bobby, played by Finn Wittrock, who returns to Camp Redwood in search of answers about his father. Through his encounters with the surviving characters and the trapped spirits, more is revealed about the events of the intervening years. The ghosts have been protecting him from Ramirez, and the concluding encounters allow Bobby to understand something of his family’s history before leaving the camp behind.

I can appreciate what the writers were attempting. There’s a bittersweet quality to Bobby’s eventual departure, with the spirits gathering near the camp boundary to watch him leave. Benjamin and his family have found a measure of peace, and Bobby has the opportunity to live a life free from the horrors that consumed theirs. It’s an appropriate emotional destination for this particular story.

But the moment Bobby turns around, acknowledges the gathered spirits and walks away, I couldn’t escape the feeling that something was missing. The credits arrive, the season is over, and I’m apparently expected to be satisfied that everything has reached its natural conclusion.

It genuinely felt as though I’d reached the middle of a much longer story. Not necessarily because I needed another nine episodes of people being stabbed in cabins, although the decade certainly had plenty of practice at that, but because so many of the season’s more interesting ideas deserved further exploration. Some developments are resolved with surprising speed, others are simply absorbed into the supernatural mythology, and a few seem to have wandered into the woods without anybody noticing they never returned.

Of course, American Horror Story has revisited earlier narratives before. Apocalypse brought together elements of Murder House and Coven, demonstrating that seemingly separate seasons can become part of something larger. Further exploration of Camp Redwood’s mythology could provide additional context for some of the ideas introduced here, but ‘1984′ still needs to stand on its own nine episodes.

And that’s where my disappointment really lies. I didn’t hate American Horror Story: 1984. Far from it. I enjoyed the aesthetic, the music, the slasher influences and a good deal of the initial mystery. Mr. Jingles and Margaret Booth provided some genuinely entertaining developments, while the Richter family tragedy suggested a much more interesting supernatural story than the one I eventually received.

Yet for all those individually appealing elements, ‘1984′ never quite manages to bring everything together. It is probably the weakest season of American Horror Story I’ve encountered so far, which is especially disappointing given how perfectly its premise seemed suited to my tastes. I went in expecting a potential favourite and came away feeling distinctly underwhelmed.

I could write all day about this season, but in the spirit of AHS: 1984, I’ll stop before I’ve properly finished. A wonderful concept, unfortunately let down by its execution.

The film announces its personality before anybody has even died. Danny Elfman’s unmistakable opening music accompanies a sweeping camera movement over a seemingly ordinary American town, gradually revealing that we’re actually looking at Adam Maitland’s miniature model. It’s a wonderful piece of practical filmmaking, bringing together the camera, the constructed environment and the story itself. There’s something particularly satisfying about that opening, especially knowing the town has physically been built rather than conjured up digitally. Elfman’s music is equally important to the experience. We only need to hear those first few bars to know exactly what’s coming, and having always paid particular attention to film scores and the individual signatures of composers, his work on *Beetlejuice* played an important part in developing that appreciation. His theatrical, occasionally frantic compositions fit Burton’s visual imagination perfectly.

The story is wonderfully straightforward. Adam and Barbara Maitland, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, are a happily married couple whose lives come to an abrupt end following a car accident. Unfortunately, being dead doesn’t release them from the responsibilities of home ownership. Their beloved house is soon occupied by the Deetz family, whose ideas about interior decoration are considerably less restrained than those of its previous occupants. The Maitlands understandably want them gone, but haunting people turns out to be rather more complicated than expected.

It’s a brilliant reversal of the traditional haunted-house scenario. Instead of following frightened homeowners trying to escape unwanted spirits, we’re rooting for the ghosts attempting to evict the living. Much of the narrative is fairly predictable once the premise is established, but that has never bothered us. Burton understands exactly what kind of film he’s making, and the story provides ample opportunity for the characters, humour and supernatural nonsense to do their thing.

Both Baldwin and Davis are excellent as the Maitlands. They bring a believable ordinariness to proceedings, which becomes increasingly funny as their circumstances spiral into absurdity. They’re decent people who would probably struggle to complain about a disappointing restaurant meal, let alone terrorise an entire family. Baldwin plays Adam beautifully, particularly when his attempts to understand their predicament meet yet another supernatural obstacle. However, Geena Davis has always made the stronger individual impression on me. There’s something about the warmth, humour and sheer naturalness she brings to Barbara. Davis really occupies that character. She owns Barbara Maitland. We can recognise Alec Baldwin the actor in Adam, whereas Barbara feels almost inseparable from Davis herself. That’s no criticism of Baldwin, because the relationship absolutely needs both performances to work.

The Deetz family provides an equally entertaining contrast. Catherine O’Hara is terrific as Delia, whose artistic ambitions and spectacularly questionable design choices are almost as alarming as anything the afterlife can produce. Winona Ryder’s Lydia, meanwhile, is the one member of the household capable of recognising the Maitlands for what they are. Her gloomy fascination with death makes her strangely better equipped to deal with the situation than the adults, who remain largely preoccupied with their own concerns.

Burton’s interpretation of the afterlife is quite possibly our favourite aspect of the entire film. Forget fluffy clouds, pearly gates or eternal damnation. Apparently, dying means entering another administrative system, complete with appointments, caseworkers, waiting rooms and an assortment of rules that nobody seems especially interested in explaining. It’s such a wonderfully ridiculous concept, taking something completely unknowable and turning it into the sort of frustrating bureaucracy we’re already familiar with while alive. You can almost imagine the Maitlands being told they’ve completed the wrong form and need to join another queue.

Sylvia Sidney’s Juno is especially memorable. Despite having relatively little screen time, her permanently unimpressed manner and matter-of-fact approach to the supernatural make her a wonderful supporting character. The waiting room is equally entertaining, populated by deceased individuals whose appearances explain precisely how they met their unfortunate ends. There’s the football team, the flattened dude complete with tyre marks, and various other unfortunate souls carrying the physical evidence of their deaths. It’s grotesque, funny and remarkably economical storytelling. These characters barely need to speak because their makeup, costumes and physical appearances tell us everything necessary.

We’ve always loved that attention to detail (i’ve probably spent hours actually watching the background of scenes because there is so much richness!). It creates the impression of an entire supernatural society operating beyond the Maitlands’ immediate problems. Frankly, we could happily spend considerably longer exploring those offices, corridors and waiting rooms. That’s not a complaint about the film’s pacing, which works perfectly well. It’s simply a world so entertaining that you naturally want to see what else is hiding around the next corner.

The practical effects are a huge part of what makes this peculiar world so enjoyable. Michael Keaton’s grotesque transformation when demonstrating his frightening abilities is a particularly memorable example. The exaggerated facial distortions are wonderfully unpleasant, but they’re also completely appropriate for a character whose entire existence seems dedicated to making everybody else uncomfortable. The same imagination is present in the deceased waiting-room occupants, where elaborate makeup and physical construction turn some fairly horrible circumstances into visual comedy.

Keaton deserves enormous credit for the character’s enduring appeal. Of course, Beetlejuice himself is the product of the writing, direction, makeup, costumes and effects teams working together, but it’s Keaton who injects the personality that has lasted for decades. Not to say that Beetlejuice On Stage isn’t just as iconic, because he is – no matter who is playing him. His physical comedy, unpredictable delivery and outrageous expressions turn what could have been a fairly conventional supernatural troublemaker into something extraordinary. It’s remarkable how thoroughly he dominates the identity of the film despite his comparatively limited screen time. He doesn’t need to be constantly present because every appearance leaves such an impression. Burton and Keaton would reunite for Batman the following year, but this earlier collaboration had already demonstrated how effectively their rather unusual creative instincts could work together.

Barbara’s excursions into the strange Saturn landscape, complete with enormous sandworms, are another memorable example of the film’s handmade approach. Watching those sequences today, it’s impossible not to recognise the influence of the sort of stop-motion work associated with Ray Harryhausen. The movement has that slightly mechanical quality familiar from older effects-heavy films, and yes, modern CGI could undoubtedly produce something smoother and technically more sophisticated. We can appreciate that the animation shows its age without considering it a weakness. There’s a tremendous amount of charm in those creations, and their slightly exaggerated movements feel perfectly suited to Burton’s peculiar environments.

I personally have always preferred practical effects where they’re appropriate, much as we as a whole at POTC tend to favour traditional film photography over digital capture. That doesn’t mean CGI has no place. It’s an extraordinary tool for creating impossible environments, extending sets and achieving things that would be impractical or downright impossible physically. However, there’s something wonderful about seeing an object, creature or miniature that somebody actually constructed, animated and photographed. The limitations can occasionally be visible, but they also contribute to a film’s personality. Technical sophistication doesn’t automatically make one approach artistically superior to another.

Interestingly, my teenage step-daughter watched this original Beetlejuice and absolutely loved it. She doesn’t have those childhood memories attached to the film, nor does she seem particularly bothered by the age of the effects. She simply watches what’s happening on screen and enjoys it. We can recognise the older animation techniques and appreciate the craftsmanship behind them, while she experiences the same sequences without viewing their age as an obstacle. It’s rather lovely to see something that meant so much to us growing up still entertaining somebody who approaches it from a completely different generation.

It’s also telling that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, (which we will review!), released an astonishing 36 years after the original, deliberately returned to practical effects and stop-motion animation despite having modern digital technology readily available. Those techniques had become such an important part of the original film’s personality that revisiting them made artistic sense. We’ll give the sequel its own proper discussion, but that particular decision says plenty about the lasting appeal of the first film.

Burton’s ability to combine gothic imagery, grotesque characters and genuinely funny situations is something we’ve always admired. There’s a similar pleasure to be found in the 1990s Addams Family films with Raúl Juliá and Anjelica Huston, where death and the macabre become sources of wonderfully eccentric comedy. Beetlejuice belongs comfortably alongside them, although it has an identity entirely its own. The exaggerated environments, strange supporting characters, theatrical music and moments of deliberately ridiculous horror all work together without ever feeling particularly at odds with one another. Burton has always had an exceptional eye for this sort of material, and Beetlejuice remains one of his finest examples.

It’s difficult to think of many films from the period that remain quite so immediately recognisable (yes we know, bold statement!!). Mention Beetlejuice to somebody familiar with the character and there’s a good chance they’ll respond with another two Beetlejuices. His name, appearance and behaviour have become part of popular culture, and that doesn’t happen simply because a film has been around for a long time.

For me, Beetlejuice remains a solid film because the things we loved about it as children are still working today. The humour lands, the performances are terrific, the world is endlessly entertaining and the handmade effects possess a character that technological progress hasn’t made redundant. Having watched it countless times over the years, we still find ourselves enjoying those same peculiar details, particularly whenever the Maitlands venture into the administrative nightmare of the afterlife.

Apparently, even death doesn’t get you out of dealing with paperwork.

That immediately makes everything slippery. Lily Rabe is Shelby, but Sarah Paulson is Audrey Tindall playing Shelby. André Holland is Matt, while Cuba Gooding Jr. is Dominic Banks playing Matt. Adina Porter is Lee, with Angela Bassett stepping into the reconstruction. I am watching American Horror Story pretending to be a programme about people watching actors dramatise the worst things that happened to them. It should feel like somebody has left three mirrors facing each other in a haunted corridor. Somehow, it works.

Roanoke does not use the format as decorative packaging. Halfway through, My Roanoke Nightmare has been a success, so producer Sidney Aaron James does what any morally responsible television professional would obviously do: reunites the traumatised people with the actors who played them and sends everyone back to the house for Return to Roanoke: Three Days in Hell. Nothing bad could possibly happen.

This is where the season becomes particularly fun. The reconstruction and the supposed reality crash into each other. Actors meet the people whose pain they have borrowed, while the survivors discover that having your trauma turned into successful television does not necessarily make anyone wiser. It just gives the producers another series. The whole thing becomes a neat dig at how television chews on real stories once ratings and production get involved.

That perspective is interesting to revisit almost ten years later. In 2026, audiences live among livestreams, phone footage, reaction videos and reconstructions where the camera itself is part of the story. I already liked this sort of storytelling, so Roanoke worked for me at the time, but its switching between testimony, performance and recorded evidence feels less alien now than it once might have.

Beneath all that television machinery sits a wonderfully simple bit of horror construction: the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Even outside the United States, Roanoke and the word CROATOAN have escaped the history books and wandered into folklore. English settlers disappeared, clues remained, and nobody can close the case with absolute certainty. That uncertainty gives horror writers a huge empty plot of land to build on.

AHS takes full advantage. The season is not pretending to offer a documentary explanation for what happened to the real colonists, but the historical gap gives its supernatural mythology something firmer to cling to. Ghosts, blood rituals, Scáthach, the Butcher and the colony can grow around a mystery that already exists. One theory suggests at least some colonists may have relocated towards Croatoan, but the fate of the settlement remains unresolved. That is much more useful to Roanoke than a neat historical answer would be.

And, given that this whole colonial enterprise began with the English, I probably have grounds to file a small jurisdictional claim for a British Horror Story (if you’re from the UK there is a ‘BHS/high-street decline’ joke in here somewhere)….

The horror itself is less about one defining monster or one enormous revelation than steady pressure. Roanoke keeps producing moments that make me sit forward and mutter something unpublishable at the television, but it rarely feels as though the season is saving everything for one colossal detonation. That rhythm worked for me. When the second half becomes nastier, the bigger change is that the safety barrier created by My Roanoke Nightmare has disappeared. What once looked like reconstruction now feels immediate and increasingly difficult to control.

Kathy Bates is particularly good because the format lets her performance become part of the plot. She is not simply the Butcher. She is Agnes Mary Winstead, an actress playing Thomasin White, and Roanoke gradually makes that distinction matter. Sarah Paulson gets a similarly peculiar assignment as Audrey Tindall playing Shelby, before another familiar door into the wider AHS universe opens through Lana Winters. Cuba Gooding Jr. also fits comfortably into the established ensemble as Dominic.

Let’s talk about Evan Peters, who once again materialises around old money, ancestral property and a family history that should really have come with a structural survey. Here he is Rory Monahan playing Edward Philippe Mott, linking Roanoke back to the Mott family from Freak Show. Peters may be the Japanese knotweed of horror anthologies, he’s like the invasive species of the AHS universe – whenever dubious property development is detected, enter Evan. These connections reward anyone who has followed the anthology for years, but Roanoke still works perfectly well as its own horrible little machine.

Roanoke is not my favourite American Horror Story season. Hotel remains a much bigger personal favourite, while Asylum and Freak Show helped set an absurdly high bar. But judged on what season six is actually trying to do, the format is not something to forgive. It is one of the reasons the whole thing works.

There is no single scene where Roanoke suddenly becomes brilliant, no monster that owns the season and no late revelation doing all the heavy lifting. It simmers, keeps changing the lens through which I am watching, and lets television itself become part of the horror. Pair that with a historical mystery nobody has managed to neatly finish for centuries and you have a season with plenty of room to haunt.

The premise is beautifully simple. Frank Cotton has pushed ordinary experience as far as it will go and acquires a puzzle box promising access to pleasures beyond conventional limits. He solves it and discovers that the beings who answer have a fairly elastic understanding of the word pleasure. Later, Frank’s brother Larry moves into the family home with his wife Julia, whose history with Frank proves considerably more dangerous than Larry realises. Blood gives Frank a way back, Julia becomes central to that process, and Kirsty is pulled into the nightmare.

What keeps pulling us back is the extraordinary amount of world-building Barker achieves while explaining remarkably little. There is a box. There are beings who respond to it. They have rules, authority and a relationship with sensation that sits far outside ordinary human morality. They behave as though this arrangement has existed for far longer than the people unlucky or curious enough to encounter it. Frank, Julia and Kirsty matter enormously to this story, but their crisis feels like one tiny corner of something vast.

That restraint is crucial. Hellraiser does not hand us an instruction manual. The Cenobites are not conventional monsters charging in to kill whoever happens to be nearby. They are calm, ritualistic and horribly certain of their purpose. Pain and pleasure are not opposites to them but part of the same territory. Doug Bradley’s Lead Cenobite would become Pinhead in the wider cultural imagination, but this is not yet the Pinhead show. Bradley is commanding and eerily composed, while Grace Kirby, Simon Bamford and Nicholas Vince help create a collective presence that feels organised rather than random.

Their design does a great deal of the storytelling. Leather, exposed flesh, metal, wounds and deliberate bodily modification make them look less like creatures that have been attacked and more like beings who have accepted transformation as a kind of order. They look horrific, but never chaotic. There is precision to them, and that precision hints at a much larger system operating somewhere beyond the room.

That fascination with flesh runs through the entire film, which is why the practical effects remain so important. Frank’s reconstruction is still revolting because it appears to occupy real physical space. Wet tissue, bone, blood, organs and skin do not simply decorate the scene; they are the scene. Hellraiser is interested in what bodies are, what can be done to them and what happens when sensation becomes an obsession rather than a warning system. The gore is doing narrative work.

There are seams that belong to 1987, and moments where the mechanics are easier to spot now. That hardly diminishes what the film achieves. Hellraiser benefits from surfaces that actually look wet because they are wet, prosthetics that deform faces and blood that genuinely occupies the room. This is not a tired practical-effects-good, CGI-bad argument. It is simply a film about flesh gaining something from effects that possess physical weight (and a lack of technology!).

The human story is just as corrupted. Frank is monstrous well before the supernatural finishes making him look the part, while Julia becomes one of the film’s darkest forces because she chooses how far she is willing to go. Clare Higgins gives her a cold determination that stops the story becoming a simple tale of a woman trapped by a terrible man. Their relationship is a perverse love story where desire, violence and obsession become difficult to separate. Ashley Laurence’s Kirsty gives us the closest thing to solid ground.

So, the Lament Configuration itself, one of horror cinema’s great objects because it does so much with so little. It is beautiful, intricate and obviously something no sensible person should manipulate, which naturally means someone will. The box is invitation, mechanism and threshold at once. Barker does not drown it in exposition, and its danger is strengthened by the fact that we do not fully understand what it connects to. For a film suggesting such enormous possibilities, Hellraiser remains surprisingly domestic. Much of it unfolds around a house, a marriage, an affair and an attic room. Somewhere inside that grubby, recognisable space sits a doorway into an entirely different order of existence. Barker does not need endless landscapes from another realm. Four figures stepping into a room are enough.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II would push the door wider the following year and explore more of the world hinted at here, but that is a conversation for another review… What matters in Hellraiser is the first glimpse. The effects are superb, Bradley is iconic and the human story is nasty enough to work without supernatural assistance, but the real spell is the feeling that Barker has shown us only a fraction of what exists beyond the box. In 1987, none of this had become familiar yet. A man solved a puzzle, hooks came out of nowhere, four impossible figures appeared, and suddenly horror had access to a universe much larger than the film containing it.

That gives High Spirits an obvious nostalgic advantage, but nostalgia alone cannot explain why I can still happily put it on. Peter Plunkett, played with enormous commitment by Peter O’Toole, is trying to save his failing ancestral castle by selling American tourists a manufactured version of haunted Ireland. His staff stage the supernatural business themselves, only for Castle Plunkett to reveal that it has perfectly serviceable ghosts already. It is a wonderfully dishonest business plan.

The headline cast is ridiculous for a film with this reputation: O’Toole, Daryl Hannah, Beverly D’Angelo, Jennifer Tilly, Peter Gallagher, Liam Neeson and, because apparently no corner of 1980s Hollywood could remain Guttenberg-free, Steve Guttenberg. He feels slightly crowbarred into proceedings, but is perfectly good fun once inside the gates.

More importantly, the film is not held together by famous names alone. The less-celebrated performers around Castle Plunkett give the place its character. Donal McCann, Ray McAnally, Liz Smith, Connie Booth and the wider Irish/British ensemble make the castle feel genuinely populated, not decorated with extras waiting for O’Toole. Their fake-haunting routines are a huge part of the comedy, and the collision with the visiting Americans works because both sides play against each other so well. The stars dominate the poster, but plenty of the film’s personality comes from further down the billing.

Dromore Castle in County Limerick gives the film a physical identity that modern effects could easily sand smooth. The practical and visual effects have that unmistakable late-1980s character too: ambitious, sometimes visibly of their period, but full of craft. Some of it has dated. That is not the same as saying it has stopped working. There is a handmade quality to the supernatural chaos that remains enormously appealing.

The plot is hardly difficult to predict now, but surprise is not why I return to High Spirits. It is the people, dialogue, stormy corridors, gothic furniture and slightly chaotic enthusiasm of the whole thing. Neil Jordan lost control of the final edit and disliked the broader comedy the released version became. I would dearly love to see the film he intended, because the difference could be fascinating.

That is the strange contradiction behind High Spirits. Jordan had legitimate reasons to be unhappy with what reached cinemas, yet that compromised version became one of my earliest film memories and has survived repeated viewings remarkably well.

Until somebody manages to summon that elusive version, I remain extremely fond of the one we got. High Spirits may be compromised, dated and critically underloved, but after decades of rewatches Castle Plunkett is still somewhere I’m very happy to revisit. Watch this at least once, you will enjoy it!

Harlin returning to shark territory is interesting because Deep Blue Sea remains a great example of a filmmaker knowing exactly how far to push this sort of thing. Deep Water is much more restrained, and that is where the frustration starts. It spends a surprising amount of time being an aviation survival film, then remembers there are sharks, then shifts back towards the damaged aircraft. Neither side is badly made. They simply keep pinching oxygen from one another.

Aaron Eckhart is extremely comfortable in the middle of it all. He has that very specific disaster-film quality where you immediately accept that, once everybody else is panicking, he is probably the bloke who will start working out what still functions. He has occupied similar territory before, notably in The Core, and Deep Water fits him neatly. He is believable as the capable adult you would quite like standing nearby when the Pacific has just swallowed your plane.

Then… Sir Ben of Kingsley, the ultimate awesome Brit, turning up in a shark film and instantly giving the opening stretch considerable weight. The disappointment is that the film does not make nearly as much use of him as I wanted. Without wandering into spoiler territory, his contribution to the developing survival story feels much shorter than the casting initially suggests. Kingsley in a wrecked aircraft surrounded by sharks feels like an ingredient you squeeze every last drop from.

Angus Sampson fares differently as Dan. He is funny, useful and increasingly ever punchable, which is quite an entertaining combination. Dan will your raise blood pressure and, within minutes, make you wonder whether somebody could quietly confiscate his life jacket. There is another shark film called ‘Chum’ I am yet to see but Dan would make great chum… i’ll leave that there! Wenhan Li, Lakota Johnson and Richard Crouchley also give the wider group enough personality that they do not simply become anonymous shark snacks.

Technically, Deep Water is difficult to complain about. D.J. Stipsen gives the film the scale and finish expected from a modern survival thriller, and the blend of practical work and CGI is generally convincing. The sharks work. The crash material works. Nothing here looks as though the production ran out of money and sent somebody to buy a rubber fin from a seaside gift shop.

Which makes the central problem more irritating. There are good shark moments, but not enough memorable shark-driven sequences or escalating attacks to make this the gripping sharksploitation thriller it could have been. At the same time, the aircraft-disaster material never grows into a completely satisfying disaster movie either. Deep Water establishes a fantastic playground for aquatic trouble, then seems strangely cautious about going completely overboard. For once, going overboard would have been exactly the correct decision. The strangest comparison is Sharknado. Deep Water is obviously better acted, better photographed and vastly more respectable as a production, yet I enjoyed Sharknado more. That is not because Sharknado is secretly superior cinema. It is because Sharknado knows precisely what ridiculous thing it wants to be and commits to it. Deep Water has Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Renny Harlin and sharks circling a commercial airliner, yet somehow produces less sheer entertainment than those ingredients promise.

There is still enough here for committed shark-film and disaster-movie fans to get something from it. This is not terrible filmmaking, and it certainly is not a cheap-looking disaster held together by bad effects. It is simply a good premise, a strong cast and a polished production that never quite becomes the movie lurking inside its own setup. Worth seeing if shark films are already your thing. Worth hunting down the Ultimate Pressed Extended Edition Director’s Cut Blu-ray 4K Ultra HD…. Probably not!

Elliot Goldner knows exactly what sort of film he is making. The familiar found-footage language is all here, and anyone who has spent enough time wandering around the genre since The Blair Witch Project will probably anticipate a few of its smaller moves. Deacon arrives as part of an investigation into strange activity at an old village church, accompanied by Gray, the technical specialist responsible for much of the equipment recording what happens. The apparent question is whether something genuinely supernatural is occurring within this deeply Christian setting. The far more interesting possibility slowly creeping into the picture is whether Christianity arrived rather late to whatever was already there.

That is where Final Prayer gets its claws in. The suggestion of something pagan, ancient and extremely difficult to fit neatly within the Church’s understanding of events gives the film a much stranger flavour than its opening suggests. Goldner wisely avoids explaining the mystery to death. Christian interpretations rub against older beliefs, and the possibility of something underneath the church, figuratively or otherwise, becomes far more intriguing than another straightforward haunting would have been.

Gordon Kennedy is excellent as Deacon because he simply feels right in the role. We hadn’t knowingly seen Kennedy in anything else before this, although a quick look afterwards revealed a substantial career behind him. Here there is none of that faint sense of an actor dressing up as a religious investigator. Deacon sounds and behaves like somebody accustomed to balancing faith, scepticism and the tedious practicalities surrounding supposedly miraculous events.

Robin Hill’s Gray is just as important. His technical role conveniently gives the film its cameras, but he never feels like a walking found-footage device. The contrast between Gray and Deacon gives the investigation some warmth and personality, and their relationship becomes one of the main reasons we remain interested while the film takes its time assembling the larger mystery.

Even the rough visual presentation becomes increasingly suspicious. By 2013, perfectly clean HD footage was hardly exotic technology, so some of the distortion, degradation and ugly digital artefacts feel quite deliberate. Then Goldner occasionally slips in something unexpectedly polished. There is a small moment involving a headstone, for example, that is far more cleverly executed than the production around it has prepared you for. No explanation required. You’ll know it when you see it.

The frustration comes when Final Prayer finally starts pushing hardest into its strangest material. The first two acts need the breathing room they receive because the characters, investigation and religious background matter, but they take slightly too much of the available running time. Once the third act reveals how far Goldner intends to take the idea, the film suddenly bolts for the finish line. And we wanted considerably more.

That isn’t because the destination disappoints. Quite the opposite. Final Prayer ends just as its collision of Christianity, pagan belief and something much older becomes especially fascinating. It is not a horror epic, but we’d comfortably place it somewhere among the 50 horror films worth seeing at least once. I wont give anymore away, for anyone with a weakness for theological horror, found footage and tiny productions hiding unusually large ideas, this deserves far more attention than its modest appearance suggests.

Going in, I expected something much closer to a theological mystery. The ingredients certainly point that way. We have the Shroud of Turin, religious institutions, clandestine groups, ancient mythology and enough solemn corridors to suggest somebody resembling Robert Langdon might appear carrying a notebook. That flavour is present, particularly early on, but The Devil Conspiracy has considerably more interest in becoming an action-horror film than sitting around deciphering symbols on church floors.

The setup works because it starts with material most of us already recognise in some form. Lucifer rebels against Heaven, Michael defeats him and the fallen angel ends up imprisoned in Hell. The film does not need twenty minutes of mythology lessons before getting on with things. It can use that familiar battle as the foundation and then start building its considerably stranger conspiracy on top. In the present day, a Satanic organisation steals the Shroud of Turin, intending to use the DNA of Christ as part of a plan to create a body capable of hosting Lucifer. Religious relics and biotech laboratories are not obvious neighbours, but The Devil Conspiracy moves them in together anyway. That mixture is probably where the film will either win people over or lose them. Anyone hoping for a restrained religious thriller may wonder why their theological mystery has suddenly developed such an enthusiasm for guns, demonic creatures and angelic warfare. I rather enjoyed the escalation. The film keeps enough of the secret-society atmosphere to maintain that conspiracy flavour, but it is eventually much happier getting Michael involved and turning the whole thing into a supernatural battle between very literal forces of good and evil.

The cast is a little uneven, although there are some choices that work extremely well. James Faulkner is one of them. As Cardinal Vincini he brings exactly the sort of authority this material needs, with something distinctly Edward Woodward-ish about the way he occupies the role. He does not appear to be standing outside the story apologising for it. When the plot starts talking about Lucifer, sacred artefacts and the impending consequences for humanity, Faulkner looks perfectly comfortable being the person explaining why everyone should probably be concerned. Peter Mensah is another excellent piece of casting as Michael. His appearances are relatively limited, so there is no point pretending the entire film belongs to him, but Mensah has the physical presence necessary for the character. When Michael does appear, you believe this is somebody who could have personally put Lucifer in the basement of creation and expected him to stay there. Mensah already carries himself with a natural sense of stature, and the film makes good use of it without needing to spend half its running time insisting that Michael is important.

Elsewhere there are likeable characters and solid performances without everybody demanding their own paragraph and commemorative plaque. Alice Orr-Ewing has the difficult job of providing a human route through increasingly enormous supernatural events as Laura, while Joe Anderson gets the rather less subtle assignment of being Lucifer. Once the story really starts throwing its ideas around, simple human reactions become useful ballast. Someone has to look appropriately alarmed while ancient evil, cloning science and the possible return of Satan are being discussed in the same conversation.

The other pleasant surprise is how well the film generally manages to put its ambitions on screen. The Devil Conspiracy does not feel like a huge Hollywood production, yet it repeatedly attempts things that could have exposed its limitations very quickly. Hell, angels, demonic forces, large action sequences and the film’s religious imagery all have to coexist without making the whole enterprise collapse into something that looks dramatically smaller than the story being told. There are certainly moments where the scale stretches what is available, but much of it holds together better than expected.

That ambition also gives the film some personality. It would have been much safer to make a conventional possession movie or keep everything confined to a religious conspiracy thriller. Instead, Nathan Frankowski and writer Ed Alan keep pushing outward. By the time the film is properly underway, the original stolen-relic mystery has become merely one part of a story involving Heaven, Hell, genetic engineering and an increasingly physical war against Lucifer. Sensible behaviour has left the building, but it remembered to lock the door behind it. The Devil Conspiracy was never going to work for everyone. Its mythology is delivered with a straight face, the genres are thrown together with considerable enthusiasm and some viewers will undoubtedly find the whole thing ridiculous rather than entertaining. I landed firmly on the entertaining side. There are enough familiar religious-conspiracy ingredients to scratch that Robert Langdon itch, but the film then heads somewhere much louder and stranger with them.

There is also enough left in the world for another film. The ending does not feel as though the filmmakers considered this mythology completely exhausted, and it is easy to imagine Michael, Lucifer and the wider supernatural conflict continuing beyond a single story. Given that the theatrical release made less than $1 million worldwide, seeing that continuation now feels unlikely. That is slightly unfortunate, because for all its rough edges The Devil Conspiracy has ideas under the bonnet and seems genuinely interested in building something bigger.

A forgotten masterpiece it is not, this sits comfortably in the much more useful category of films that are simply enjoyable despite being imperfect. The Devil Conspiracy has a good premise, a couple of particularly smart casting choices, respectable production values and enough theological lunacy to separate it from the endless procession of interchangeable supernatural horror films. I watched a secret Satanic biotech organisation attempt to clone Christ so Lucifer could escape Hell, and I was entertained. Sometimes a film has already done its job.