While preparing the award-winning crime drama, Two Down (2016), the husband-and-wife film-making team of Matthew Butler and Tori Hart were commissioned to make a record of a rare production of David Garrick's 1747 play, Miss in Her Teens. Adapted from Florent Carton Dancourt's La Parisienne (1691), this was the great actor's third outing as a playwright and it retains much of its intricacy and wit in this brisk adaptation, which boasts some stellar names and makes the most of Wroxton Abbey, the Jacobean manor that is now home to Farleigh Dickson University.

Following a prologue spoken by Sir Ian McKellen and further introductory remarks spoken directly to camera by The Player (Alex Hassell), the scene opens with Captain Bob Loveit (Adam Alexander) and his Irish servant Puff (John Fitzpatrick) taking leave from the war in Flanders to pay court to Biddy Belair (Tori Hart), who has lost her heart to the captain in the guise of Rhodophil. While he waits at the inn to avoid running into his father, Sir Simon (Gil Sutherland), Puff seeks intelligence and not only discovers that his old rival Jasper (Graham Butler) has been hired by Sir Simon, but also that he has been trifling with his Scottish wife, Tag (Emma King), who is now the trusted maid of Biddy's aunt (Carol Royle), who has agree to marry her niece (who is worth £15,000 a year) to Sir Simon.

To stave off boredom in Rhodophil's absence and keep Sir Simon at bay, Biddy has been home to calls from the dashingly bellicose Captain Flash (Dominic Charles-Rouse) and the simperingly foppish Mr Fribble (Matthew Butler), who is more interested in altering Biddy's fashion and beauty regimes than in winning her hand. But, after Tag manages to persuade her mistress to delay a formal announcement of the betrothal to Sir Simon, Biddy has to find a way of ridding herself of the now unwanted attention of Flash and Fribble.

The lengthy sequence in which Biddy toys with her suitors is played with pantomimic brio, as Fribble recites verses he is persuaded not to sing and Flash unsheathes his sword in anticipation of a duel with his rival. But the story fragments somewhat after Captain Bob releases he is in competition with his father, although Tag tidies the loose ends before we hear both wedding bells and an eloquent summation from the boards of a makeshift stage by Simon Callow, as The Author.

Ahead of its time in showing the maiden and her maid outwitting the menfolk, this makes for lively entertainment, with Hart and King revelling in their confrontations with Charles-Rouse and Butler, The latter steals the show with a splendidly fey performance that recalls Kenneth Connor and Hugh Paddick's ribald turns as the actors in Blackadder the Third (1987). But Hart also makes a spirited heroine, while she and Butler deftly rework the source material to give it some cinematic energy. Pete Wallington's photography and Tom Kane's score are also commendable, while Ben Lee merits mention for a droll display as various drunken members of the household staff.

Two more Video On Demands offerings from Walk This Way have gone live this week and can be viewed via Sky, iTunes, Google Play, Sony, Microsoft and Amazon Prime.

Debuting writer-director Renars Vimba affords a rare opportunity to examine everyday life in rural Latvia in Mellow Mud, which won the Crystal Bear presented by the youth jury at the Berlin Film Festival. Essentially a coming of age picture, this is also a study of the use and abuse of authority, the problems facing country dwellers and the position of the Baltic States in the wider world. Evocatively photographed in the austere realist style that has become known as Dardenneseque, the story also provides a striking showcase for newcomer Elina Vaska, a student of audiovisual and stage art at the Latvian Academy of Culture, who has the potential to go far.

Furious that grandmother Ruta Birgere is selling land around the house bought by her late father, 17 year-old Elina Vaska gets into trouble with the police when she resists attempts to clear the apple trees she has been tending with younger brother, Andžejs Janis Lilientals. Social worker Zane Jancevska warns Vaska that they will be sent to an orphanage unless they agree to stay with Birgere. So, when the bitter old lady dies suddenly, the siblings decide to bury her in the woods and keep claiming her pension to keep up the pretence she is still alive.

Feeling isolated when her best friend leaves the village, Vaska keeps trying to make contact with the mother who left to find work in London some years earlier. She persuades English teacher Edgars Samitis to let her enter a language competition with a first prize of a trip to Britain and she surprises him when she wins, especially after throwing up having stuffed herself with biscuits during the interval. Before catching the bus home, they wander around the town and kiss when Samitis lends her his jacket to keep warm. They become lovers and meet at his lodgings. But Lilientals becomes jealous after he sees them cuddling after an idyllic birthday by the lake and starts acting up. Moreover, Jancevska begins snooping around the remote homestead and, when Birgere fails to appear at the graduation ceremony, she instigates a search that prompts Vaska to take her London trip early.

Recalling Émilie Dequenne's harrowing performance in the 1999 Dardenne drama Rosetta. Vaska excels throughout this similarly gruelling saga, whether she is flirting with the elderly postman, fretting about Lilienthal after he gets drunk with his mates, coquettishly enjoying the effect she has on Samitis or confronting the estranged mother holding her new half-brother outside a council flat in Bromley. The support playing is strong, with Jancevska's stern compassion contrasting with Samitis's careless exploitation. But Vimba also makes a fine impression with his spare storytelling and exceptional use of the rain-sodden landscape. He is ably abetted by production designer Aivars Zukovskis, costumier Liga Kräsone and Eriks Esenvalds. However, he is most indebted to cinematographer Arnar Thorisson, who delicately captures Vaska's touching transformation from pugnacious tomboy to resourceful young woman.

Growing pains also come under scrutiny in Home, the fourth feature from Belgian director Fien Troch after Someone Else's Happiness (2005). Unspoken (2008) and Kid (2012). Co-scripting with editor husband Nico Leunen. Troch opts to shoot in the boxy Academy ratio that not only emphasises the limited options of the juvenile characters, but also complements the mobile phone clips with which they chronicle their dead-end lives.

When mother Els Dottermans refuses to allow 17 year-old Sebastian Van Dun to return home after a spell in a detention centre, he goes to live with aunt Karlijn Sileghem, uncle Robbie Cleiren and cousin Loïc Batog. The latter is dating Lena Suijkerbuijk, who looks as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. However, she is reprimanded for suggesting that one of her teacher keeps children in his basement and seems to have as flagrant a disregard for authority as classmate Mistral Guidotti, who has a severely dysfunctional relationship with his own mother, Els Deceukelier, who has divided their home into exclusion zones.

However, Deceukelier is quite prepared to overstep other boundaries and Guidotti asks Sileghem if he can stay with them for a while. She refuses and also turns down Van Dun's request to give up his plumbing apprenticeship and go back to school (after Cleiren criticises his poor spelling). He confides to Guidotti that he has a short fuse and he beats up the over-insistent Soufiane Chilah when he tries to renew their friendship. Despite his blonde good looks, Van Dun exudes a simmering sullenness that Suijkerbuijk's mother, Katelijne Verbeke, tries to warn her about. But she develops a crush on him, even though she is dating Batog, who is also starting to rebel against his parents.

Knowing nothing about his cuckolding, Batog stands by his cousin when he is picked on by a macho guest at a family wedding. But Sileghem is becomingly increasingly concerned by her nephew's behaviour and warns him that he is on thin ice when he borrows Cleiren's car in the middle of the night to meet up with the distraught Guidotti, who is close to the edge after another run in with Deceukelier. She humiliates him on parents' night at school and Van Dun and Batog call to collect him to find him fighting with his mother in the kitchen. Seeing his friend in trouble, Van Dun punches Deceukelier before Guidotti strangles her. Batog stands stunned, while Van Dun helps clear up the blood from the floor and cupboard doors and they return home to wash their clothes while Guidotti disposes of the body.

He gets caught by the police, however, and Sileghem feels guilty for not helping him. All the talk at school is about incest and boys and girls alike laugh at the distasteful jokes. But the guilt of doing nothing to intervene begins to weigh on Batog, who has hopes of going to law school. He confesses to Suijkerbuijk, who is so disgusted with them that she gives Van Dun the cold shoulder. Following an uncomfortable interview with the police over a sinister message he had posted on Facebook when he was bored, Batog also tells Sileghem that he witnessed the crime and she urges him to say nothing to anybody else (while struggling to cope with the knowledge herself). During questioning, Guidotti protects his pals, even though cop Jan Hammenecker disbelieves him. However, Van Dun appears to have learnt a lesson, as he keeps his cool when he is baited by a stranger when hanging in the supermarket car park with his crew.

Dark shades of Gus Van Sant and Larry Clark colour this downbeat study of youthful disaffection. The focus falls primarily on mothers and sons, but Troch also provides some intriguing insights into the dynamics of social groupings and the impact of malign influences on seemingly established bonds. Van Dun tries to keep his head down at work and has an affecting reunion with his younger brother. But his reputation helps turn Suijkerbuijk's head and prompts both Batog and Guidotti to stand up to their strong-willed mothers.

The speed with which Sileghem is prepared is prepared to sacrifice her nephew to protect her son contrasts with the way in which Deceukelier shames Guidotti in public and manipulates him in the privacy of their divided home. But Troch struggles to prevent events from becoming implausibly melodramatic in the final third, after having striven so successfully to that point to present the antics of Botag's circle in the most insouciantly candid and realistic manner. The shifts to smartphone footage feel a little contrived, but Frank van den Eden's visuals have a jittery energy that suits the subject matter and the skittish personalities of the protagonists. The performances are solid across the age gap, however, as Troch wonders why adults never learn from their own juvenile experiences and why kids always feel the need to kick against parental control regardless of how fortunate they are. But one suspects that few teenagers will be engrossed such a raw record of their daily rituals, while the majority of grown-ups will be too shocked to fully comprehend it.

Spanish horror has a long and intriguing history. Its pioneers were director Jesús Franco (The Awful Dr Orloff, 1962) and actor Paul Naschy, who starred in the likes of Enrique Lopez Eguiluz's Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (1968). But, while there was a strong element of subversive humour in these early outings, a darker side emerged in such transition era chillers as Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's The House That Screamed (1969) and Who Can Kill a Child? (1976), Amando De Ossorio's Tombs of the Blind Dead, Vincente Aranda's The Blood Spattered Bride (both 1972) and Jorge Grau's The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974).

The latter typified the genre's readiness to spread its wings and not only venture abroad, but also to welcome film-makers from other hispanophonic countries. Indeed, the 1980s also saw a diversification of styles, thanks to such contrasting classics as Agustí Villaronga In a Glass Cage (1986), Bigas Luna's Anguish (1987), Juan Piquer Simón's Slugs (1988), Álex de la Iglesia's The Night of the Beast (1995), and Alejandro Amenábar's Thesis (1996) and The Others (2001). The latter, however, belonged to a sequence of slow-burning creepers that included Jaume Balagueró's The Nameless (1999) and Sleep Tight (2011), Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (2001), JA Bayona's The Orphanage (2007), Guillem Morales's Julia's Eyes (2010), Paco Plaza's Veronica (2017) and the entries in the excellent TV series, Films to Keep You Awake.

It's not all been about unsettling subtlety, however, as Spanish horror can do gross-out splatter with the best of them, as Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza demonstrated with [•REC] (2007) and [•REC]² (2009) and Plaza's [•REC]³: Génesis (2012) and Balagueró's [•REC]4: Apocalypse (2014). Debuting director Roberto San Sebastián and screenwriter Guillermo Guerrero are clearly big fans of the splatterfest formula and there is gore galore on show in The Night of the Virgin.

Following some interminable New Year's Eve schtick between tele-hosts Ignatius Farray and Rocío Suárez, we meet snaggle-toothed nerd Javier Bódalo trying to get lucky at a nightclub party. As midnight strikes, his eyes meet those of Miriam Martín, a middle-aged vamp in a green spangled dress, who takes him home with a warning not to step on the cockroaches, as it brings bad luck. Naturally, Bódalo crushes one of the insects and stuffs its squashed remains in a trouser pocket. So keen to break his duck that he fails to notice how inquisitive Martín is about his innocence, Bódalo listens with wide eyes, as she tells him about Naoshi, the Nepalese goddess who had her face disfigured and was banned from bearing children by her grieving father.

Desperate to escape the filthy apartment after Martín tells him about the kantaras who serve Naoshi as dutiful daughters, Bódalo gets teasing texts from his mates about copping off with a granny. However, Martín turns on the tears to persuade him to stay, only to fall asleep in the middle of foreplay and leave Bódalo to pleasure himself in her lounge. Unfortunately, his onanistic antics incur her wrath and she orders him to leave. But, as he searches for his phone, Martín hears the lift carrying jealous boyfriend Víctor Amilibia and barricades herself inside to prevent Bódalo from being ripped to pieces. He wants to pose as a gay friend, but Martín is keen to teach Amilibia a lesson and feigns noisy intercourse to wind him up further.

Realising they're in for a long night, Martín suggests they go to sleep. But, when Bódalo tries to call the police, she loses her temper. Having hidden his phone in a most unusual place, she stabs him in the leg with a pair of scissors. Seeking sanctuary in the bathroom, Bódalo upsets a chalice of Martín's menstrual blood and he starts to feel woozy before passing out. By the time he wakes, Martín has gone into a trance and she emerges to notice that her underwear has stuck to his hand. She asks if his semen and her blood have mingled and the baffled Bódalo is too disturbed by the sight of her peeling facial skin to listen.

He manages to lock Martín in the bathroom, while Amilibia informs him that things have changed and that Bódalo now needs to have sex with Martín if they are all to survive. Breaking down the door just as his girlfriend escapes the bathroom, Amilibia holds the virgin down to be deflowered. Within what seems like minutes, Bódalo is experiencing stomach cramps and Martín congratulates him on becoming pregnant. He tries to lock himself in the bathroom, but she knocks a hole in the door and watches as he gives birth through his anus in the midst of much projectile vomiting and the spurting of blood and other bodily fluids.

As Martín cradles the bawling infant, Amilibia pulls Bódalo into the lounge by the umbilical cord before he loses consciousness from having had the scissors jammed into his neck. But, before Martín can emasculate Bódalo, his phone rings and slips out of its hiding place. Taken aback, Martín is stabbed through the stomach with a bottle of Nepalese hooch and (as the scene suddenly turns monochromatic), Bódalo takes the opportunity to jump out of the window as the crawling, would-be flesh-eating baby self-immolates.

A credit coda shows a news team reporting a year after these gruesome incidents on the anniversary of the demented Bódalo's hideous assault on defenceless new parents Martín and Amilibia. Whether this is a satirical jab at the notion of fake news is unclear. But only the least discriminating fanboy will care after this tiresome exercise in excess. Bódalo and Martín should be credited for their commitment, with the former breaking all records for the amount of time a single character spends screaming in a horror movie. However, while San Sebastián and Guerrero are clearly au fait with the body horrors of David Cronenberg and the young Peter Jackson, they are such strangers to the concept of less ever being more that this grisly farrago rapidly outstays its welcome and eventually becomes something of an ordeal.

The smutty jokes about body parts and excretions are resolutely unfunny, with the business with the mobile phone likely only to raise a faint smile of recognition from those familiar with Walerian Borowczyk's The Beast (1975). Similarly, the spurting special effects are too exaggerated to amuse, while the monstrous infant attempting to terrorise the exhausted Bódalo is almost laughably awful. Leticia Argudo's sound mix and Ibon Belandia's editing are equally guilty of going to extremes. Yet Yon Gijón's filth-encrusted production design, Adrián Hernández's unflinching photography and Jorge Granda's playful score have merit and it would come as no surprise to learn that this excruciatingly eked out and self-consciously shocking splat-com has acquired a cult following.

Seeking to do for film music what Todd McCarthy, Arnold Glassman and Stuart Samuels's Visions of Light (1992) and Wendy Apple's The Cutting Edge (2004) respectively did for cinematography and editing, Matt Schrader's Score isn't on a par with its predecessors. The debuting documentarist deserves credit for corralling so many front-rank Hollywood composers. But therein lies the problem, as he has so many voices striving to say something significant that the majority of them wind up spouting platitudinous soundbites rather than examining the artistic and psychological role that a score plays in making a movie work.

Following a disappointingly brief trot through the first 80 years of film music, Schrader lingers for a while over such game-changers as Bernard Herrmann and John Williams by showing how their compositions shaped the mood of their collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. But, apart from showing how the shower scene in Psycho (1960) would have played without the shrieking strings, none of the talking heads explore the creative process and the dynamic that exists between a director and a composer.

We eavesdrop on spotting and recording sessions and are taken round the Air and Abbey Road facilities in London before dropping into a couple of Hollywood studios. But, even though a couple of contributors show us their inner sanctums and a few twiddle knobs or click icons on their computers, this is window-dressing rather than an insight into how they actually work. Nothing is said about inspiration or the demands made by specific genres, although psychology professor Siu-Lan Tan is allowed a couple of interesting interjections on audience response. Mention is also made of Alex North's epochal jazz score for Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Jerry Goldsmith's instrumental experimentation on Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes (1968), while Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman are credited with introducing a brand of rock swagger into modern movie composing. But there is no depth to the observations and no sense of the artform evolving.

Schrader and co-editor Kenny Holmes stuff the picture with clips, but the emphasis is too firmly on fanboy fodder to convey the diversity of screen music currently being produced. Thus, while this is never dull, it's nowhere near as informative and illuminating as Sounds of Cinema: The Music That Made the Movies (2013), which director John Das made with pianist-composer Neil Brand for the BBC.