Don't Breathe 2 (2021)

Well, they've certainly fulfilled the brief, taking all that ugliness of the first movie (remember when things turned unexpectedly nasty in the basement?) and fashioning a really equally vile sequel in which that blind ex-Navy Seal kidnapper, rapist and murderer in number one returns, the victim of another home invasion but this time a kind of antihero as he resists the efforts of a group of men trying to kidnap his daughter, a crime that starts out mega-gory and ends with sickening "who thinks up this stuff?" gothic horror involving, wait for it, involuntary organ donation, some Grande Dame Guignol psycho-biddy grotesquery, hacked off arms and popped eyeballs.

★★★☆☆

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House of Secrets (1936)

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

When the new owner of Hawk's End, a property bequeathed to him in a will, visits the ramshackled house for the first time, he is told by a gun-wielding man and a mysterious blonde to leave and never return, but he repetitively goes back, each time to be told again by the gun-wielding man and the mysterious blonde never to go back, while inbetween times, he and his gumshoe friend postulate explanations for this peculiar state of affairs including the theory the house harbours a three-fingered fugitive on the run, is home to a long-lost pirate treasure, has been set up as a base for a government conspiracy, houses a murderer or, even more ridiculously, that all of these things are true, revealed in the really very silly plot's final ten minutes.

★★★☆☆

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The Tip of the Iceberg (La Punta Del Iceberg) (2016)

 

This thriller about a woman, Sofia Cuevas who in her capacity as a company director is sent to investigate a series of suicides at a branch of her employer's megacorporation, has a tricky job trying to hit the right note because although you expect some moments of solemnity in a thriller about suicide, things become outright maudlin -  scarves flutter in slow motion in the wind and workers who have suicided reappear and look pained or at peace depending on the current status of Cuevas' investigation - making this a slick corporate thriller with jarring, emotionally overwrought moments, but it is always interesting, calling into question the line between work and life and control and subservience, and features a terrific performance from lead Maribel Verdú.

★★★☆☆

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