Battle of the Blockbusters: The Hide vs Big Bad Wolves

Spotted the severed foot yet?

We're all likely aware of the concept of a 'bottle episode', even if you've never heard of that particular term before. It's when, in a TV show, the characters and sets are whittled down to their absolute minimum and the drama all takes place in this kind of closed ecosystem for an episode. We've seen it in Breaking Bad where Walt and Jessie chased a fly around the lab for a whole day; Community even riffed on it marvellously back in Season 2 when Annie lost her pen and I'll be, those are the two examples used in the Wikipedia article about this very phenomenon. Freaky. It's used because it works well as a chance for writers to build on character relations without having to worry about all the extra guff that you usually have to shove into an episode as filler.

Like getting round to giving Walt Jr. any meal that isn't breakfast.

Bottle episodes aren't limited to TV though, and a restricted set and cast are a go-to for anyone trying to make a movie on a budget. Our two films for today take a claustrophobic single location and use it to their advantage: First up is The Hide, a darkly comic and twisted British thriller about two men and a murder in a bird hide, and second is Big Bad Wolves, a darkly comic and twisted Israeli thriller about three men and a murder in a basement.

Wasn't Tom Selleck in that one?

Battle of the Blockbusters: Contagion vs The Flu

"There was nothing they could do to stop...The Flutagion!"

Christ, it's been a month since I reviewed a movie; and nearly two since I reviewed a horror film. The fuck is going on around here? This will not do, this will not do at all. To rectify the situation, I bring you yet another new kind of post where I pit two similar movies against each other and force them to battle to the death, Star Trek style.

No modified kayak paddles were harmed in the making of this article.

In the red corner we have Contagion, the 2011 disaster thriller about Gwyneth Paltrow fucking everyone's shit up by eating badly cooked pig. In the blue corner is Flu/Gamgi, South Korea's 2013 answer to that other film I just mentioned.

The idea here will be to look at both movies side by side, pick out their similarities and differences and eventually name one of them the ultimate victor. Maybe I'll even come up with a suitable killing blow to the loser, something that would make Mortal Kombat proud.

Because if you've already punched off their frozen head, you might as well shatter their torso too.

Without further ado...