The Morrigan review – spirit of pagan demon queen unleashed in Irish burial chamber horror

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Archaeologists blunder into an ancient and unwittingly release a vengeful monster – with predictable and conventional results In Irish folklore, the Morrígan is a powerful goddess of death and war. This horror movie imagines her as an actual historical figure: a pagan queen massacred with her followers by Christians. A quick scene at the start of the film shows the dirty deed. The Morrígan’s rage against misogyny has screamed down through the centuries – so it’s a shame the film frames her not as a feminist icon but a highly conventional horror movie nemesis; a malign vengeful female to be crushed and destroyed. There is nothing to punch the air about in the end. Saffron Burrows plays an archaeologist called Fiona who has been repeatedly passed over for tenure at her US university. When Fiona presents her radical theory that the myth of the Morrígan may have a basis in real life, her slippery colleague Jonathan (Jonathan Forbes) is made the lead on the dig. Fiona is forced to bring al...
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The Surfer review – beach bum Nic Cage surfs a high tide of toxic masculinity

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An office drone must suffer the machismo of an Australian coastal town in this barmy, low-budget thriller about a would-be wave-chaser

Here is a gloriously demented B-movie thriller about a middle-aged man who wants to ride a big wave and the grinning local bullies who regard the beach as home soil. “Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” they shout at any luckless tourist who dares to visit picturesque Lunar Bay on Australia’s south-western coast, where the land is heavy with heat and colour. Tempers are fraying; it’s a hundred degrees in the shade. The picture crash-lands at the Cannes film festival like a wild-eyed, brawling drunk.

The middle-aged man is unnamed, so let’s call him Nic Cage. Lorcan Finnegan’s film, after all, is as much about Cage – his image, his career history, his acting pyrotechnics – as it is about surfing or the illusory concept of home. The Surfer sets the star up as a man on the edge – a sad-sack office drone who desperately wants to belong – and then shoves him unceremoniously clear over the cliff-edge. Before long, our hero is living out of his car in the parking lot near the dunes, drinking from puddles, foraging for food from bins, and scheming all the while to make his way down to the shore.

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