Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.


My Letterboxd reviews of The Void, Wake in Fright, and Sorcerer

The Void:

The first ‘straight’ genre pastiche from the Astron-6 collective, The Void is a film very much in thrall of its influences in lieu of its own worldbuilding: it’s basically Carpenter’s The Thing, Prince of Darkness and a few others crossed with Fulci’s The Beyond, by way of Hellraiser and Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft flicks. What’s more, the awful lighting makes it largely impossible to appreciate the practical effects, which are Empire Pictures weird-veering-on-hokey rather than other-worldly terrifying, so I don’t know why they bothered. I didn’t hate watching it, though.

Wake In Fright:

A teetotaller’s nightmare comes true as a smug city boy homeward from a hated job at an outback schoolhouse makes a rookie error in a smalltown Australian gambling den and finds himself lost among the ockers. It’s all heat and light, sweat and blood, and lots of cheap beer. But it’s also equally scathing of and sympathetic to its subjects. Quite the film, indeed.

Sorcerer:

Thrills and spills galore in William Friedkin’s mashup of gritty neo-noir and sweaty jungle adventure, riffing on 1950s French novel The Wages of Fear (not the movie, the director says). Why it was slated by critics of the day I have no idea; it blows Star Wars out of the water by any measure. Also: now I know where The A-Team got their schtick.