PAST LIFE (2025)

4 stars

Miracle Media. Digital. 6th April

Jason Frey (Aneurin Barnard) is a war reporter – he was traumatised several years ago when a captive in Syria, where his left hand was damaged by his captors and he witnessed a woman having her throat cut. After much therapy he tells his pregnant wife Claira (singer Pixie Lott) that, much to her dismay, that he is thinking of going back to Syria.

Before he makes his final decision the direction of his life is about to change when they go to be in the audience of a TV talk show. The guest is celebrity hypnotist Timothy Bevan (Jeremy Piven), who specialises in past life regression. Jason is sceptical, that is until he volunteers to be a subject, which doesn’t end well. Initially he thinks it has brought back his trauma – but when he visits Bevan, to try and make the visions he is having go away, he is put under again – and they begin to realise that what he is seeing in his mesmerised state is a serial killer stalking and killing his female victims.

With his journalistic sense kicking in, and from clues within what he has seen, he discovers they are a series of unsolved murders in the 80s. With the police thinking he’s a crackpot, he teams up with Bevan to try and solve the mystery of who the killer is.

This is a slickly made horror thriller with a strong central concept, well directed by Simeon Halligan (who is one of the organisers of the genre film festival Grimmfest), presumably working with a limited budget, from a script co-written with Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines. It is believably played by all concerned, even as the storyline does get more ludicrous as things progress. The killings have a feel of the giallo about them, including a black gloved perpetrator and this has echoes of 1978’s EYES OF LAURA MARS. One of those films it is best just to go with rather than overthink.

Steve Kirkham