Puffball (Nicolas Roeg, 2007)

Once upon a time, Nicolas Roeg was a filmmaker of singular vision whose works stood out for their air of alienation and psychosexual menace. Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Don't Look Now, Eureka and Insignificance all unsettled the senses whilst feeding the intellect.
But that was 25 years ago. Judging from the low-fi smudged carbon copy of his former glories that is Puffball, Roeg should have retired to rest on his laurels long ago. The disquieting eeriness is still there, but the plot of a female architect having her pregnancy remotely meddled with by her batty voodoo-practising neighbour in inbred rural Ireland is derivative of not just Don't Look Now, but Rosemary's Baby amongst many others, uncertain of its tone, and riddled with pointless and clumsy features, not least the sub-standard digital effects, a gratuitous burbling cameo by Roeg's old mucker Donald Sutherland, and a cringeworthily am-dram rendition by Kelly Reilly as the lead in peril.

4/10