This is my first Petzold film, so I suspect I'm coming at it without picking out the themes that are the hallmarks of some of his major works.

The film creates a beautifully tense, strange and ambiguous atmosphere in its opening, but for me the stretch where it's most compelling is the one where there's more of a sense of give and take between Laura and Betty. Their conversations about Tom Sawyer and Betty's herb garden, sharing bicycles, the secrets…

After how badly Dream Scenario let me down I was worried about this one, but it was actually really good. Obvious caveat that I am not American - though neither is the director - so any discussions about whether the film's use of "school shooter aesthetic" is appropriate isn't something I have any standing to comment on.

The film, in a way, isn't really about school shootings anyway - it doesn't have quite the same grip of social commentary as…

I was hoping for a campy, vampy horror comedy from this, and it did not disappoint. It's a film that probably hits better the more familiar you are with what the director is drawing on - corn syrup gory gothic horror films set in sweeping manors, melodramatic soap operas, the bracingly blunt to the point of corniness gay dramas that outfits like Peccadillo Pictures put out in the 2000s, before there was a more mainstream cinematic outlet for LGBT+ cinema…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025

There is a moment in this film where one of the residents is being interviewed on the radio. The interviewer asks him what's so special about this place, this community, that makes them not want to leave?

The film cuts away before he answers.

This is the core of my frustration with a film that appears to have spent years with access to people in a truly intriguing situation. What is it that makes people…