Ariadne's Thread

Netflix’s 'Love and Monsters,' a Review: ‘You don’t have to settle, even at the end of the world.’ Lucy Nield @lucy_nield1 Netflix’s Love and Monsters (2020), promises the viewer a post-apocalyptic adventure, with lashings of romance, community spirit and heroic determination to survive. A comet called Agatha 6-1-6 was heading towards Earth, threatening to kill every living thing on the planet. So in true and predictable human fashion, those in power responded to this threat by launching rockets, nuclear weapons and missiles to prevent the pending collision. Unfortunately, they failed to consider the aftermath of blowing up Agatha, which included a ‘Monsterpocalypse.’   The chemical compounds and radiation form the weapons used to obliterate the comet, rained down over the world, infecting insects a various nonhuman animals, causing mutations and exponential growth in size. The mutated creatures displace humans at the top of the food chain, devouring cities and and ruining ...

“But what if someone died wearing it?”              This refrain is familiar to anyone who has a penchant for vintage or pre-loved clothes, usually uttered by a friend whose expression contorts in distaste at the thought of wearing clothes that another person has lived, loved and potentially perished in.  Admittedly, this sort or sartorial squeamishness is becoming less common, as environmental awareness increases and secondhand clothes become items of sustainability, rather than eccentricity.           And yet it’s a concern that is located at the heart of Peter Strickland’s In Fabric (2018), a peculiar film that can be found at the point where the Italian giallo horror genre and David Lynch meet.  The plot, if you will excuse the pun, is threadbare.  There is no comforting three act construction that audiences have gotten used to in their films; no conclusions, no resolution.  Instead, there is...