Good day, horror fans. Jumping junipers, January is almost done. Not that February will be a horror fan’s haven or anything, but it gets us that much closer to better releases. Richard Bates Jr.’s Excision follow-up Suburban Gothic is now out on VOD, along with Edward Boase’s micro-budget horror The Mirror. I suppose if you think Gone Girl is scary – and not just the Batdong – you can rent that on VOD now, too.
In smaller news, The Babadook is getting a sweet Blu-ray Special Edition on April 14 that comes with pop-up book packaging and a slew of special features. The festival fave It Follows has been given a release date of Friday, March 13. All-around badass Frank Grillo is headed back to the horror genre for Akiva Goldsman’s next feature, the supernatural thriller Stephanie. And Nicolas Winding Refn’s first trip into horror, The Neon Demon, has signed model and Mad Max: Fury Road star Abbey Lee.
And now, ch-ch-ch-ch not-yet, not-yet.
Friday the 13th and More Sequels Get Dates
Remember when the next Friday the 13th movie was supposed to come out this year? That isn’t happening anymore, as Paramount has decided to shift the release date from November 2015 to May 13, 2016. Gotta lock up that actual Friday the 13th release date, especially since this will be the thirteenth film in the franchise. Why the delay? Probably because this sequel/remake/whatever doesn’t have a script yet, or even screenwriters to put one together. That’s a bit of an obstacle.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, the fifth installment in that franchise (not counting the Marked Ones spinoff), is also being pushed back yet again, although this move is understandable. The supernatural pic has moved from March 13 to October 23, just in time for Halloween box office. Finally, Paramount announced a release date of November 13, 2015 for F. Javier Gutierrez’s reboot Rings. Can we assume that the latter date will be pushed back to April 2016 a few months from now? Let’s check the videotape.
Jena Malone is a Haunted Hornball in Angelica’s First Trailer
I don’t know what I thought Mitchell Lichtenstein would do for his third film, after 2007’s Teeth and 2009’s Happy Tears, but a Victorian era libido-driven supernatural thriller was not in the top 1,000 choices. In Angelica, Jena Malone plays Constance, a shop owner and wife of a vivisectionist. When giving birth to their daughter years earlier, the Angelica in the name, Constance’s health is put in danger, and she is thereafter forced to live a life of abstinence. "No sex or you’ll die" is quite possibly the most depressing diagnosis ever. And so, her horniness turns into ghosts, or something, and her family life is torn apart.
The trailer above looks like it was put together by someone who was doing the same thing as husband Ed Stoppard. (It’s masturbating, if you didn’t watch the trailer.) The scene snippets are jumbled together and don’t really convey a sense of what’s happening, but that doesn’t put me off of watching it, as it looks gorgeous. Oscar-winning production designer Luciana Arrighi (Sense and Sensibility) put this together with Oscar-nominated costume designer Rita Ryack (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), and it was shot by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Dick Pope (Mr. Turner). And I love Jena Malone, so I’m all in. Here’s hoping the actual first trailer paints a better picture than this.
Evil Dead Remake Alternative Cut Played on U.K. TV
After Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead remake came out in 2013, fans were wondering why the theatrical cut didn’t have certain things seen in the trailer, and soon an "extended cut" version of the film turned into the stuff of legend. It looks like the U.K.’s Channel 4 got a hold of, if it isn’t the extended cut, at least a cut of the film with several deleted scenes inserted, along with an alternate ending that sees Mia (Jane Levy) saved by an S-Mart van driver. Check it out below, and mind the mediocre quality of the vid.
While it hasn’t yet been explained (to my knowledge) what happened here, Alvarez took to Twitter to respond to a fan, saying that Channel 4’s version wasn’t the extended cut at all. Did he watch, I wonder? And if this isn’t it, how many more deleted scenes could there possibly be? Evil Dead wasn’t exactly a movie bustling with big ideas. But here’s hoping the U.K. airing is a sign that a new director’s cut of the film will hit Blu-ray one day. You can find the rest of the deleted scenes and their descriptions here.
Jay Baruchel is Directing a Horror Movie Finally
The last time Jay Baruchel talked about bringing Random Acts of Violence to the big screen, it was 2011 and he hadn’t yet tried to survive the apocalypse in This is the End. Thankfully, it looks like the Man Seeking Woman actor is ready to head back to that project, which will adapt the comic book from Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. Baruchel says he and writing partner Jesse Chabot have locked in the financing and the leads, and that it looks like he’ll be getting behind the camera on it this year. Woo! Here’s how he describes the "not un-meta" film with Collider.
Our villain is called ‘the Slasherman’ and basically it’s about two guys who write a comic book with this character, and as they’re going out on this press tour they see somebody’s killing people based on the ways that their killer killed in the books. It’s very much about the nature of creativity, the cyclical nature of inspiration, murder as a form of creative expression, and also the wrong artistic journey of how someone can be swallowed whole by their own ideas. It’s fucking crazy and I’m really really proud of it. It’s probably one of the best things we’ve written.
Sign me up. Baruchel also says Hobo With a Shotgun director Jason Eisener will be doing him a favor and edit the finished film, and it will be shot by cinematographer Bobby Shore, whom Baruchel worked with on Goon. Here’s hoping less than four years go by before we see this thing hit theaters.
1980s Throwback Turbo Kid Mixes Gore with…BMX Bikes?
It didn’t take very long for this Turbo Kid festival trailer to make all of my "holy shit" receptors stand up to take notice. From the thwompy synth music to the Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic setting (complete with snazzy costumes) to the oh-so-80s title font, this trailer is everything that’s been missing from my life. With the addition of heads on sticks. I’m currently trying to stop myself from running outside and showing it to all my neighbors. Check out the clip below, which has one of the wickedest uses of a blender you’ll see this week.
Yesss! Directed by the Canadian trio of François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell, Turbo Kid centers on The Kid (Munro Chambers) who teams up with a girl named Apple (Laurence Leboeuf) to cleanse their Wasteland of evil vermin like the murderous Zeus, played by Michael Ironside in an eyepatch. And one of the bikes looks like a unicorn! While there’s no release date set just yet, Epic Pictures Group will be releasing Turbo Kid later this year hopefully.
