“Can you keep a secret, Larry? I’m probably leaving PBH,” Phil (Bill Murray) declares to his cameraman. “So, this will be the last time we do the Groundhog together.” He says this with palpable relish, as though the mere thought of reporting on Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania is a death sentence. Unfortunately for Phil, it’s actually a life sentence.

When Stalin dies, collapsing in a puddle of indignity after a cerebral haemorrhage, those in his cabinet gather to decide what will happen next: a void has formed, a lacuna that can only be filled by the craftiest of them all. Double-crossing, back-stabbing, and unabashedly treasonous behaviour becomes the norm. But, then again, weren’t they always?

In a dark, wet submarine, forty-two men stand in silence. They crowd into the control room, nervously awaiting their fate. Will they survive yet another skirmish? Or will the ship above them finally breach their hull with depth charges? “Deeper,” the captain (Jürgen Prochnow) commands. If they are to survive this battle, he knows that both his crew and the tensile strength of the boat’s hull will have to be pushed to its limit – perhaps even past it.

Tension evaporates when we do not identify with our protagonist. This has become a prevalent issue of the genre: character development is frequently sacrificed for the sake of more action. Because of this, one of the predominant weaknesses in bad action films is that neither time nor attention is dedicated to developing character.

Halil (Müsfik Kenter), a humble painter, lets himself into someone’s holiday home every afternoon. He often stays overnight, where he sits in a chair and smokes cigarettes, mesmerized by a picture of a beautiful woman, Meral (Sema Özcan).

Body horror repulses us; watching a person become sick and decay is positively off-putting (unless you’re one of those types that is morbidly fascinated by it). But what if the body that has become infected is a house? And what if the sickness that has consumed it is undigested trauma?