Puffball

By Robbie Collin

PUFFBALL, a mystery penned by novelist Fay Weldon and turned into a film by her son Dan, has already been labelled “so bad it’s good”.

A cruel rumour I’d like to sink here and now. To nick a line from Ghost World—this is so bad it’s gone past good and back to bad again.

Packed with hideous missteps that should have been obvious to a dog, let alone veteran director Nicolas Roeg, Puffball is one of the most comfortably cack horror films ever.

Comely architect Liffey (Kelly Reilly) moves away from her overbearing boss (Donald Sutherland) to rural Ireland. But the crazy locals (including Miranda Richardson) practise weird Viking sex magic on her.

It’s the kind of baffling, sexually confused rubbish doomed to be given away free with the Daily Mail in a few years. And the mistakes are many, including setting a film that centres around Norse magic in Celtic Ireland (try 1,000 miles to the north-east, ya chumps).

The biggest scare? How such a stinker got £7 million from the likes of the UK Film Council.