Eek-cute: the rebirth of the frothy romcom sociopath

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The online era is pushing screen romantics to alarming extremes. Whether posing as a stranger’s fiancee or framing someone as an obsessive stalker, happy endings look harder than ever to find It’s a long-running romcom trope that the couples we’re supposed to root for are often hiding lies that threaten the chances of any happy relationship blossoming. From classics such as The Shop Around the Corner to modern blockbusters such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the genre thrives whenever it presents the audience with the most alarming red flags it conceals from its characters, raising the stakes by seeing if sparks can still fly when an ulterior motive behind each meet-cute is hidden in plain sight. In the romantic comedies we’ve seen so far this year, this trope has not only been revived but pushed far beyond its breaking point, cementing a new romcom archetype: the unlucky-in-love sociopath. This week’s new release Finding Emily is the starkest example to date, introducing psychology...
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Fear, fangs and frying pans: here’s what I learned by watching 13 horror movies in 48 hours

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London’s Frightfest shows everything from slasher flicks to arty experiments, though I wasn’t prepared for the number of deaths by kitchen utensils

I’m not sure at what point I realised I was losing my grip. Perhaps it was the moment in existential French psychodrama Pandemonium where a recently deceased motorist finds himself being introduced to hell by a 7ft-tall mega-demon; or it could have been the copious vomiting scene in Cobwebs, which was the third copious vomiting scene I’d witnessed in 24 hours. Either way, by the time I got to the third day of Frightfest, I realised it was time to go home – even though, for the crowds of gore devotees gathered outside the cinema behind me, this was just the halfway point.

Now in its 24th year, Frightfest offers both new movies (often getting their world premiere) and classic chillers, taking in the whole gamut of the genre from straight-up slasher flicks to bizarre artsy experiments. Over five days more than 70 films are shown on several screens, and there is a wonderful community feel: people dressed in Evil Dead and Cannibal Holocaust T-shirts mix amiably with cos-players decked out as mad scientists and vampires.

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