Welcome back, seekers of all things spooky. Thanks for making last week’s debut a success! It’s Friday the 13th weekend, so you’d think this would be a good time for Paramount to announce that they’ve hired Justin Bieber to star in their next Friday the 13th flick. But I guess they just don’t love their fans that much.
This week, we’ve got one of the most splat-tastically gory trailers I’ve ever seen, a motion comic, and some release news, in order of importance. And here’s a bonus before we get into things. Via his Twitter page, author Stephen King announced he thinks Peter Askin’s upcoming adaptation of his short story A Good Marriage is "terrific," as seen below. But we all know how most King adaptations turn out.
Israeli Thriller Big Bad Wolves Drips With Dark Comedy In U.S. Trailer
Usually when Israel and horror are used in the same sentence, religion plays a heavier role. But in Big Bad Wolves, directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado are putting their own wicked spin on the revenge thriller, pitting a violent murderer (Rotem Keinan) against one of his victims’ vengeful fathers (Tzahi Grad) and a lawless detective (Lior Ashkenazi). The U.S. trailer above makes it clear that even though it may sound like just your average indie torture flick, the writer/directors have draped a dark shadow of humor over everything, with brains to balance the sadism.
Or at least that’s what a ton of people have been saying about it over the last few months as the film’s international festival circuit has gotten wider and more critics are imprinting it into their brains. I think it’s great that the horror genre arguably more than any other has opened the doors to the world’s audiences for a host of filmmakers from all over the globe. Keshales and Papushado first hit the scene in 2010 with the intertwining horror Rabies (Kalevet), and will direct a segment for the upcoming ABCs of Death sequel, so hopefully Big Bad Wolves gets enough attention to further the filmmakers’ careers for a long while, and maybe gets other Israeli directors more looks. We’ll know for sure after it hits some theaters and releases on VOD on January 17, 2014.
I, Frankenstein Releases The First of Three Motion Comics
While it’s undoubtedly a lot more fun to sit down and read an actual comic book, I dare say this short motion comic animation was more suitable for an I Frankenstein prequel story, because it offers those who aren’t interested only a quick escape. I’m not so sure about this movie, as it looks like a lot of CGI fluff that’s just calling itself a Frankenstein story as a shortcut into gaining an audience.
But everybody needs a little CGI fluff every now and again, and the movie certainly looks expansive. The comic goes into the background of Adam (Aaron Eckhart), but it’s mostly just Frankenstein’s narrative followed by supernatural stuff. It’s really short enough as saying anything about it would be describing the whole thing. But it looks cool, and the simple animations are fluid. As an advertisement, it’s cool, but it’s not gonna get me into the theater on January 24, 2014. But I’ll be anxious to hear how it is. Trailer time!
The Last Days on Mars - Opening 5 Minutes
Watch the First Five Minutes of The Last Days on Mars
If you’re a fan of well-directed space horror that doesn’t break the mold so much as it does adhere to it tremendously, then you’re going to like Ruairi Robinson’s Last Days on Mars. Based on a Sydney J. Bounds short story, it focuses on a group of astronauts that find their Red Planet departure delayed as an alien organism starts to infect them all one by one, turning them into hollowed out monsters. Those who don’t enjoy it will rattle off all of the examples of its derivativeness and how it’s essentially a zombie movie on Mars. But if you can recognize these things and find reasons to enjoy it, like I did for my review on our sister site Giant Freakin’ Robot, then you’ll appreciate how thoughtful Robinson’s direction can be at times, and you’ll wait patiently for his next film.
The Last Days on Mars is currently out on VOD, but you can watch the first five minutes of the film above , thanks to DreadCentral. You’ll meet the cast, which includes Live Schreiber, who is generally carrying this thing on his back, Olivia Williams, Johnny Harris, Goran Kostic, Tom Cullen, Elias Koteas and Romola Garai. It’s a nice group of performers, but Clive Dawson’s screenplay leaves much to be desired, character-wise. Anyway, I’m still recommending it for anyone optimistic enough to read through this and still have the urge to see it.
This NSFW Trailer for Hotel Inferno Makes Faces of Death Look Disneyfied
Someone out there besides me once thought to themselves, "Somebody needs to make a version of The Raid: Redemption that goes completely splatterpunk and is told from a first-person perspective." And by Hades, that film has been made by Italy’s Giulio De Santi and the gore maestros of the effects company Necrostorm, and it’s called Hotel Inferno. The film is technically the first of its kind, and looks like it earns its FPS description over being called a found footage horror. But once you see heads getting absolutely pulverized like this, your perspective on subgenres withers away in seconds.
Hotel Inferno tells the tale of a contract killer named Frank Zimosa (Rayner Bourton) who is hired by a wealthy man to go to one of his hotels and kill a few men hiding inside. What Frank doesn’t realize is it was all a set-up, and the hotel is full of crazy mofos who want to turn Frank into mincemeat. Instead, he eviscerates everything in sight. This looks like it was made in the 1980s for a shoestring budget, and I say that in the most loving way possible. Fix yourself a nice bowl of cow tongue soup and spaghetti sauce and watch this straight from Necrostorm’s website on December 16.
Festival Hits Oculus and The Sacrament Get Release Dates
If you hear about a horror movie coming out of a film festival as highly regarded as TIFF, then you know it’s probably worth watching at least once. Or at least you hope. U.S. audiences got a double dose of big release news with Mike Flanagan’s paranormal thriller Oculus and Ti West’s cult horror The Sacrament both landing dates.
Blumhouse Productions and and Relativity Media have a planned release of April 18, 2014 for Oculus, which tells the story of a woman (Karen Gillan) trying to prove that her brother (Brenton Thwaites) is innocent of a murder. Who does she say committed it? A ghost, of course. Based on a very effective short film that Flanagan also directed, the movie also stars Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane and James Lafferty. You can check out a trailer for the short below, since the full feature doesn’t have one yet.
Magnet Releasing picked up the rights to The Sacrament, according to Bloody Disgusting, and they plan on giving it a VOD release on May 5, 2014 before releasing it for a limited theatrical run on June 6, 2014. Starring indie faves Joe Swanberg and AJ Bowen, the film follows two Vice media correspondents accompanying a friend on a search for his sister to Eden parish, documenting the entire trip. The small, God-fearing community is more dangerous than it first appears, and the men are soon driven to run for their lives. Nobody ever tells a story about a really kind cult, do they?
