Bone Keeper review – there’s a critter in the caves in serviceable Brit horror

An unconvincing group of friends is briskly picked off one-by-one while searching for a beastie that hitched a ride to Earth on a meteorite You get the measure early on of the tentacled predator in this British horror film when it makes mincemeat out of a hairy tough-guy Neanderthal. The movie opens with some punching-above-its budget special effects explaining the origins of the flesh-eater, which crash landed on Earth with a meteorite. Like Neil Marshall’s The Descent, it’s a creature that makes its home in caves – though unlike the earlier movie, Bone Keeper lacks a sense of sweat-trickling-down-your-back claustrophobia, despite a couple of good scares. Sarah Alexandra Marks plays Olivia, whose journalist grandfather vanished in the 1970s while investigating reports of a creature in a cave somewhere in the UK. Now years later, Olivia’s mother has disappeared while searching for him. So Olivia heads to the caves with a group of mates, who feel as if they’ve been dreamed up in a 20-...

Anqa review – women in Jordan share harrowing testimony of their abuse

Helin Çelik’s documentary mixes impressionistic visuals with chillingly matter-of-fact accounts of abduction, incarceration and domestic violence

Helin Çelik’s otherworldly, impressionistic documentary opens with lines from a poem by Rumi evoking Mount Qaf, a mystical mountain erected by Allah. In this place that encircles the Earth and touches heaven dwells the anqa, a fabled female bird that symbolises resurrection after misfortunes.

The three Jordanian women at the heart of Çelik’s film are going through their own journeys of healing and rebirth. Mostly shot in profile or from behind, they speak of the horrifying violence they have endured. Their stories of abuse, abduction and incarceration starkly contrast with their domestic surroundings, which are shot with amazing warmth. From the rustling of the curtains to the gentle shimmering of a dallah coffee pot on the stove, the sights and sounds of the everyday are at once calming and eerie. It seems unimaginable that life can go on in all its normalcy while these suffering souls are still walled in by their harrowing experiences.

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