★★★☆☆
One of the memorable scares from Kubrick’s The Shining provides the basis for an entire movie of deliberate yucks in this confident comedy horror. The “old woman in Room 237” (Remember? She smooches Jack Nicholson) is reinvented here as a randy and psychopathic Texan pensioner called Pearl.
The cute production twist is that Pearl is played by 28-year-old Mia Goth, layered in “ancient crone” latex make-up. Goth also plays Maxine, the ostensible star of a pornographic movie being shot in the summer of 1979 in a sweltering Texan farmhouse.
The farm is owned by Pearl and her equally wizened husband Howard (Stephen Ure, also under latex), who struggles to keep Pearl’s primal urges under control. When the pair, ornery and conservative nonagenarians, discover a skin flick being shot in their backyard, it’s a cue to fully unleash Pearl, who subsequently attempts to seduce, snog and fatally stab (often at the same time) anyone in her path. It’s deeply silly, but eminently watchable.
18, 106min. In cinemas from March 18