Good day, horror fans. Is everybody else sick of this theatrical horror glut that’s taken over for the past few weeks? I mean, you can get your thrills (and groans) from Jennifer Lopez in the wide release of The Boy Next Door, but that doesn’t really count. Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto’s super-violent actioner Killers came out in limited release and on VOD, so we’ll have to make do with that.
In smaller news, Eli Roth revealed to Indiewire that The Green Inferno’s release issues may be resolved soon, and that they’re looking at an August or September theatrical premiere. IT screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith recently came out and said Cary Fukunaga's feature version will strive for the overwhelming terror of the novel, leaving the TV version in the dust. And ABCs of Death 2 segment director Jim Hosking will make his feature debut for the SpectreVision and Drafthouse Films thriller The Greasy Strangler. Best name ever.
And now, more disturbing mayhem from your favorite trio of quiet loonies.
The Strangers 2 is Back in Motion
Bryan Bertino’s 2008 home invasion thriller The Strangers was a successful debut for the director, and it seemed tailor-made for an immediate sequel. Though it hasn’t happened yet, despite several small starts, The Wrap reports Relativity is moving forward with The Strangers 2 with a new director and screenwriter. Marcel Langenegger, who directed 2008’s sexed-up thriller Deception with Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman, will take the helm. He’ll work from a script by Ben Katai, best known for writing and directing the 30 Days of Night sequel, as well as the non-horror Crackle series Chosen, which stars Milo Ventimiglia as a man who gets tasked with killing someone. Interesting choices.
The Strangers 2, which originally had Bertino as writer, will center on a family taking a trip to a trailer park that a relative owns, with the troublesome teenage daughter soon going away to boarding school. Only when they arrive, the man and his wife are found dead at the hands of Dollface, Pin-Up Girl and Man in the Mask, and the family then spends the rest of the night trying to survive the masked attackers. Will The Strangers 2 one day make itself familiar to everyone, or will this be another failed beginning?
This Dead Rising: Watchtower Trailer is a Bloody Blast
Dead Rising: Watchtower is a quasi-adaptation of the popular lawnmower-wielding video game series Dead Rising, and is a Crackle Original movie along with Legendary Pictures’ first film through their Legendary Digital Media imprint. That all adds up to what would seemingly be a hot mess of a project, but this flick looks like it might be a riotously good time. For a zombie movie, anyway. It has just about everything one would want: zombies munching down, a variety of weapons and weaponized items, and a few laughs. I’m going to be very pissed, however, if Rob Riggle is stuck inside a TV studio for this whole movie.
In Dead Rising: Watchtower, Jesse Metcalfe plays a guy just trying to get his survival on in the wake of a zombie outbreak. But this isn’t just some random plague, and its widespread deadliness can possibly be blamed on the very government that tried to contain it in the first place. Directed by Zach Lipovsky (Leprechaun: Origins) and penned by Sleeping Dogs writer Tim Carter, this madcap zombie pic also boasts stars like Virginia Madsen, Dennis Haysbert, Meghan Ory and Keegan Connor Tracy. Find it (before it finds you) when it starts streaming on Crackle starting March 27th.
Watch This Monstrous Trailer for Adam Green’s Digging Up the Marrow
Horrorphile Adam Green has gained a large following with his Hatchet films, his Holliston TV series, and his other standalone flicks. But for my money, his upcoming thriller Digging Up the Marrow looks like his creepiest effort yet. I was already hoping it would be, as my love for creature features knows no bounds, and the trailer above just reinforces the shit out of that. While it’s never encouraging these days to see established horror directors trying their hand at the faux documentary-style approach – I’ll never understand how or why Bobcat Goldthwait’s Willow Creek exists – the subject matter here lends itself to first-person P.O.V. Monsters all up in my face, y’all!
Inspired by the nightmarish art of Alex Pardee, who worked on the film, Digging Up the Marrow stars Green as himself, a director who decides to film an unexpected hunt for real-life monsters living beneath the surface. It’s all put in play when he receives a letter from a strange man, played by genre vet Ray Wise, who claims to know where to find them. And of course one of their entrances is in the graveyard! I love the fact that it’s not just one species of thing that they’re finding, but a plethora of weird-looking ghouls and creepfests. I’m not expecting this story to stick with me forever, but I’m hoping it makes me want to check under the bed for a while. Digging Up the Marrow will get a limited theatrical run to pair with its February 20th release on VOD.
The Man in the Orange Jacket Trailer is Dialogue-Free Suspense
A film that is being touted as the first Latvian horror movie, The Man in the Orange Jacket is a dark look at the psychological ramifications of wealth. Not that you can tell that by the film’s second trailer, which has no spoken words, though that’s not just to appeal broadly to U.S. audiences. The titular character is a man of limited dialogue, and the film relies largely on visual imagery for its tension. With no subtitles to read, we can appreciate all the positive review blurbage that much easier.
The second feature from director Aik Karapetian, The Man in the Orange Jacket centers on a guy who loses his job and a few slices of mental stability in the process. He exacts his revenge on his former boss while the latter is staying at a lush vacation home, and Mr. Orange Jacket decides to live luxuriously for a while - at least until an unexpected visitor shows up at the house. Then all hell breaks loose. Unfortunately, The Man in the Orange Jacket doesn’t have a U.S. release date set up just yet, but we can probably expect to find it hitting VOD in the near future.
Cinedigm is Launching a Horror Universe
Movie universes are all the rage these days, with the Marvel model serving as one where success is seemingly undeniable. The latest and strangest company to shoot for the interconnected stars is Cinedigm, which is gearing up for a ten-film strong line of horrors and exploitation remakes of American International Pictures releases such as Girls in Prison, all of which will take place in a shared timeline involving one overall story arc. What’s more, all ten films will be shot back-to-back, with Cinedigm handling what goes to theaters, VOD, TV, and other formats. Here are the ten flicks we can expect to see.
Girls in PrisonThe Brain EatersViking Women and the Sea SerpentTeenage CavemanReform School GirlThe Day the World EndedShe-CreatureThe UndeadThe Cool and the CrazyWar of the Colossal Beast
All ten films were written by co-producer Jeff Katz, who called this plan "binge-viewing at the feature film level," which is pretty interesting. I guess we can’t expect any huge stars to get involved in this, assuming the filming schedule is as erratic as it sounds. But the horror genre has a slew of veteran actors that would likely get on board. Co-producing the films are Lou Arkoff, who also produced the 1994 Girls in Prison with Anne Heche, and Hal Sadoff, who executive produced Hotel Rwanda. Casting and creative teams are expected to be announced in the coming months, with September serving as the tentative start date for production. I. Can’t. Wait.
