One of the much-hyped books this year has been psychological suspense thriller The Nowhere Child by Christian White. The book was the winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and has been raved about for its intriguing premise (a child kidnapped in the US turns up years later in Australia). Here’s the blurb: ‘Her name is…
Ignorance is bliss, they say. And in the case of Fede Alvarez’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web, they might just be right. The film is a continuation of the so-called Millennium saga, originating from Steig Larsson’s books. You’re probably familiar with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was made into both Swedish (2009)…
John Krasinski – that all-round good guy from The Office (US) – never struck me as an action hero. But somehow he makes it work in Amazon Prime’s spy drama Jack Ryan (or to give it its full title: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan). Remember, this is a character that’s been played by Alec Baldwin (in…
This revisit of Halloween from the ‘70s features a good story – and it’s genuinely scary. \In this Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode, as she comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers. He of course is the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped…
The Sunday Girl by Pip Drysdale – this snappy, fast-paced debut thriller hooked me in right from the outset and kept me on tenterhooks. Here’s the blurb: Any woman who’s ever been involved with a bad, bad man and been dumped will understand what it feels like to be broken, broken-hearted and bent on revenge….
Paul Feig steps away from broad comedy and onto the darker side with A Simple Favour. This pulpy thriller certainly has Feig’s fingerprints on it, but it’s easily his most expressive film in ages – maybe ever. Of course, the film invites comparisons with the David Fincher’s wonderful Gone Girl. But A Simple Favour is…
Most film franchises seem to run out of inspiration before too long, but the Mission Impossible series seems to have gone from strength to strength. The Brad Bird-helmed Ghost Protocol was arguably the strongest film to date. Rogue Nation took the series in a slightly different direction under the direction of Christopher McQuarrie (Oscar winning…
I’m a sucker for a good spy drama – and Killing Eve is an exceptional spy drama. This BBC production (available here on the ABC) is a taut psychological thriller as you might expect. But its insight and its determination not to treat the viewer as an idiot are remarkable. If any TV series is…
Big Brother is watching in Upgrade, a futuristic horror-thriller from Leigh Whannell (Insidious: Chapter 3). Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) barely makes a living fixing old cars. His attractive wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) works in IT. The pair have a good relationship. All that changes though after Grey delivers a vehicle to Eron (Harrison Gilbertson). Eron is…
Toni Collette puts in a dominant performance in the dramatic thriller Hereditary. When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter Annie’s (Collette) life begins to unravel. Their relationship was always prickly, and they were estranged for an extended period. Now cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about the family’s ancestry will come to…
