Cinema review
Directed by Robert Beaucage
Starring Sarah Livingston Evans, Jared Edwards, Edward Gusts
Release date TBC

Four youngsters spiral off a backwoods road and crash their car. Upon leaving to inspect the damage, the solitary male is captured and impaled by a fast-moving half man/half animal spectre, later revealed to be a well spoken, but deadly, forest dweller seeking his one true love…

Beauty and the Beast always had a subtle air of menacing, bestial sexuality to it and first-time director Beaucage has updated the iconic fairy tale to modern times with Spike.

Making its premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival, the movie is an assured and stylish debut although it is largely a feature of two halves. The first is certainly the most exciting – promising the audience a genuine, edge-of-the-seat, Wildman-in-the-woods horror picture. However, halfway through and Spike takes an odd U-turn, introducing its poetic, sensitive title character and becoming a bit too wispy to support the, often nasty, convictions of its first reel.

Even so, there are things to like here – in particular the whimsical woodland surroundings (imagine A Midsummer’s Night Dream done on a student’s budget) and a cast of no-names who put their all into a plot that wavers far too close to being preposterous.

Ultimately, Spike’s major falling is that it does not seem to know what it wants to be. However, anyone seeking something mind-bogglingly bizarre probably won’t be too disappointed by this wacky mix of David Lynch, The Brothers Grimm and Shakespeare. Calum Waddell

VERDICT: 5/10
A promising debut that might have “spiked” earlier had the director dropped the teen-horror element altogether.