"Actor: Sandra Thigpen"

• The Ring | DVD | (03/07/2006) from £4.99   |  Saving you £15.00 (300.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An unexpected marriage of big-budget production values and low-budget instincts, The Ring offers chills to be savoured. Usually when Hollywood indulges its cash-hungry game of remaking foreign films the result sacrifices much of what made the original so special. Clearly, the supremely eerie supernatural vibe that permeated the legendary 1998 Japanese horror film must have done something to those Hollywood suits, because Gore Verbinski's remake is actually rather good. Certainly, it's not superior to the original, but it's undoubtedly a cut above most modern horror efforts, expertly wringing every drop of suspense. The impressive Naomi Watts (Mullholland Drive) plays a journalist investigating an urban myth of a videotape that kills the viewer a week after watching it. Succumbing to curiosity, she watches it herself--big mistake--and has a week to solve the mystery or fall victim to its sinister power. While transferring the action from Japan to modern-day Seattle may weaken the impact of the plot's mythological elements, and the film may be guilty of pointless padding (belying the original's lean format), Verbinski's effort is no less squirm-inducing, bolstered with a tremendous shocker of an ending. Exquisitely utilising the strong visual sense displayed in The Mexican, Verbinski creates a thick atmosphere of dread and suspense that never lets up, thankfully favouring old-fashioned scares, rather than retreating to blunt CG spectacle. In Watts, the film has a horror heroine who far exceeds the average wide-eyed scream queen, perfectly conveying the endless stream of bone-chilling moments. --Danny Graydon

• Monkeybone | Blu Ray | (27/03/2017) from £14.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Henry Selick’s Monkeybone is another of the director’s brave experiments in combining various forms of animation following his successes with The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. Two-dimensional, stop-motion, CGI and muppetry effects whizz by with casual dazzle, but sometimes a collection of great ideas isn’t just enough for moviegoers, and audiences summarily dismissed Monkeybone at the cinema. Shame really, because the eye-popping design deserves as big a screen as possible to drink it all in. Adapted from a graphic novel the story concerns cartoonist Stu Miley (a suitably schizophrenic Brendan Fraser) who finds himself in a hellish purgatory called Downtown after a freak car accident puts him in a coma. Once there, he must find a way to cheat Death in the person of Whoopi Goldberg. There are complications, however. In the real world his girlfriend (Bridget Fonda) is battling to prevent his family pulling the plug, and his comic character alter ego Monkeybone has come to life as a randy stop-motion whirligig of bad taste and ideas. Although visually the film is a feast of inventive ideas--the amazing look of the Pyjama Party and the Land of Death are truly impressive--ultimately Monkeybone stands or falls by its sense of humour. But then it’s all a matter of taste. If the sight of a possessed organ donor jumping off the operating table and running around with a broken neck isn’t for you, avoid. If seeing Fraser ham it up as he’s enjoyed doing before in the likes of George of the Jungle, then enjoy!--Paul Tonks