‘Southbound’ (2015)

If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you’ll know by now that I have a real weakness for horror anthology films. I will watch them wherever I find them, no matter how bad they look. ‘Southbound’ has been on my radar for a while now but I’ve never quite managed to get round to watching it, until a couple of days ago when a refund on my phone bill and the DVD being on offer coincided in the happiest of ways 😊 And because it’s me, I bought the DVD only to find that StudioCanal have made the whole film available for free on YouTube… Seriously, here it is,

I’m not going to say too much about the film then as you can watch it for yourself 😉 What I will say is that while there’s no real ‘overt horror’ here (well, a couple of moments that made me jump but no much else), the creeping sense of dread, and general ‘whatthefuckery’, really made this film work for me. Most horror anthologies have at least one ‘dud’ effort where you watch it and say to yourself, ‘well, at least the others were all good’; the stories in ‘Southbound’ are consistently excellent and I loved the way that they all bleed into each other. My personal favourite was ‘The Accident’ but they’re all good, they really are. The overarching theme is open to interpretation, and left deliberately so I suspect, and this approach adds to the sinister, otherworldly, feel of the film. There’s a real sense that our world is just the blink of an eye away and you might even find it again,  if you’re lucky, but the odds are that you’re stuck heading south and it’s a cruel road to travel. If you’re on that road though, you probably deserve it in one way or another.

 I think the fact that ‘Southbound’ is ‘From the Producers of V/H/S’ probably what put me off originally, it’s not a bad franchise but there are more duds than I’d normally want to see. ‘Southbound’ just does it better though, excellent stories linked seamlessly. I’d say that if you haven’t seen ‘Southbound’ already, you’re in for a bit of a treat.