One of my favourite short films of recent years is the creature feature film ‘Dead Air’ which allowed me to join the wonderful girl band Monster Kitten as they enjoy a plane ride during one of their recent tours. But all was not well on that plane as we soon learned as its not just people that are onboard this plane. There are wonderfully creepy creatures on the plane with nasty plans in their little minds.  Written by Peter Hearn ( Scrawl), and directed by Geoff Harmer ( Addict) and starring Stacy Hart, Charlie Bond, Kate Speak, and Johanna Stranton as the band members, Dead Air is definitely a film you should check out.  I followed the film through its development, and also had the pleasure of chatting with some of the cast and crew on stage at the Scifi Wales convention in 2016.  

Geoff Harmer was there,  (hes the one on he left of the photo you can see above) Lovely guy, friendly, good sense of humour, and loves movies.  So as the memory of Scifi Wales faded and I carried on watching lots of films, recording podcasts and attempting to make my own films. I was very happy one day when I saw that Geoff had made another film. I reached out to him and said something along the lines of ‘Hey Geoff, Hope you are well, p.s whats this new film you’ve made? When can I watch it’  Geoff replied with a lovely message and the day after I was able to sit down at my desk and on my big screen. Check out Geoff’s new film ‘ Hosticide.

Now I knew nothing about the film, I often like to watch films that way, it means that I don’t have any built up hype for a film, but with a film from Geoff, I am a fan of his work, with the creature etc from Dead Air and Monster Kitten, so I was excited to see what delights Hosticide had in store.  Well.- I will say there are no little critter creatures in Hosticide, there are no girl bands, and no airplanes. There is no master puppetry from Andrew Spooner (who handled the creature duties on Dead Air), but what there is, is perhaps one of the most unnerving wonderfully brutal and just plain creepy performances from actor Paul Kelly who plays ‘David’ in the film.  David is sales manager and to say he is a little delusional  would be the biggest understatement since ‘2021 being a little different from 2019’  David is perhaps the most mentally unhealthy human being since Patrick Bateman and right before our eyes sets off on a path of realistic self destruction that gives brutally the right to be written in bold

He is one creepy ass human being and Geoff has created (along with the cast and crew of course) a wonderfully tense character drama spearheaded by the performance of Paul Kelly but with a supporting cast (that also includes Dead Air’s Stacy Hart) that helps this film not only feel like a character study of a deranged mind, but also a genuine edge of the seat film that will make you want to slap your screen and know our the character of David. 

Looking back I don’t know if perhaps I should have read up on Hosticide before watching it, but I do know that when I sat down in the dark to watch the film, It got under my skin and stayed there!, Hosticide is perfect proof that Geoff Harmer, whilst wonderful when it comes to creature features set on a plane, is also one of my favourite filmmakers who brings many different things to the cinematic table.  

Hosticide will be released January 2022