Good day, zealots for all things horned and hooved. I suppose we’re all sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to see which studio or indie filmmaker (or Syfy, elder gods willing) will be the first to put a horror spin on the disappearance of Malaysian flight 370. Will it be aliens? Will it be ghostly hijacking? Perhaps a genre twist on a Non-Stop sequel where Liam Neeson gets text messages from a rip in reality’s fabric before he punches it in the face. I bet good money Blumhouse puts something out by the year’s end.
In mini-news, skateboarder-turned-designer Eli Morgan Gesner’s feature debut Condemned is about an infection turning a squalid apartment building into a den of psychos, and it’ll be the first feature role for Dylan Penn, the daughter of master thesps Sean Penn and Robin Wright. We've got the anthology A Christmas Horror Story coming from some of the filmmakers behind Splice, Darknet and the Ginger Snaps sequels. And speaking of anthologies, Legendary head Thomas Tull has not forgotten about the proposed sequel to the cult fave Trick ‘r Treat, and says director Mike Dougherty is writing the script and "hopefully we’ll be shooting that in the near not-too-distant future." Woo! And from that super good news to marginally interesting news we go.
Amityville May Have Found Its Director
While sequels and remakes for 1978’s The Amityville Horror are as plentiful as the windows on the spooky house at the original’s center, Hollywood still clings to the "remake it and they will come" template to approaching horror, and the upcoming Amityville is going the extra modernist mile with its found footage approach to the material. The film may have landed its director, if BloodyDisgusting’s sources are correct, as Blumhouse Productions and Dimension Films are possibly in negotiations with filmmaker Franck Khalfoun to take over the position originally set for Crystal Lake Memories director Daniel Farrands and Grind’s Casey La Scala.
No word on why those two left, but Khalfoun is an intriguing replacement, as he directed one of my favorite horrors from 2013, the completely polarizing serial killer flick Maniac. With that film, he utilized a first-person P.O.V. that didn’t feel anything like a found footage film, and was more in line with Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void. It’s sad that Khalfoun, who also directed 2007’s P2, is back-stepping from that somewhat novel approach for this budget-saving faux doc, which is set to follow a news intern who brings together a group of "experts" in different fields to figure out what happened on Ocean Ave, only to unleash an even greater evil. Amityville is already set for a theatrical release on January 2, 2015, so expect to hear some casting news soon.
WolfCop Blasts Faces Off with Amazing New One Sheet
Fuck yeah, WolfCop! Canadian filmmaker Lowell Dean is bringing his second feature WolfCop to theaters on June 6, even though it probably won't be very widespread. No matter, though, as I’m dead certain WolfCop will be equally successful on any screen it is seen on. In short, it’s about an alcoholic cop (Leo Fafard) who gets cursed and tortured, and then turns into a werewolf. WITH A GUN! If you need more plot than that from a movie called WolfCop, you’re trying too hard in life. The poster above, from the ridiculously talented artist Tom "The Dude" Hodge (via AICN), should cover walls everywhere, and the concept trailer seen below should play on bar TVs across the nation.
This is one of those projects that began life as the simple concept, which was used to build fan fervor before the feature was even truly conceived. And when you have a concept as solid as this, with the added draw of using mostly practical effects, you have a cult film just waiting to be consumed by the public. Listen to Dean explain the process in more detail below, and get ready for the most WolfCop-iest summer of your life.
Crazy First Trailer and Viral Teaser for Sci-Fi Thriller The Signal
William Eubank’s low-budget thriller The Signal only showed up on our radar initially because it stars Laurence Fishburne, whose career over the years has been marked by roles in really solid sci-fi pics like Event Horizon and The Matrix. Now that the film started its marketing campaign, this looks like it’ll be another check in Fishburne’s win column. The plot is still something of a secret, which makes the jumpy and cryptic trailer all the more effective. Plus, it looks like Eubank directed it as if he were shooting for "Shane Carruth on Crank," which is awesome.
Brenton Thwaites plays Nic Eastman, a guy who may or may not have heard a signal from what may or may not have been aliens. He and a group of others, including Olivia Cooke and Sarah Clarke, all head out into the desert by a hacker, where I’m assuming Fishburne’s Dr. Damon and his crew are set up to interrogate the group to see what they know. About what? I still don’t know. But there’s no lack of craziness involved in both the trailer and the viral teaser seen below, which is seemingly filled with clues, as well as a link to the mysterious website RUAgitated.com. I’m way more excited than agitated about this one, especially with the positive buzz it created in Sundance earlier this year. Let’s all listen to The Signal when it makes its limited theatrical run on June 13.
The Sacrament Stars Re-Team for Demented New Thriller
A.J. Bowen, who broke out in the 2007 comedic thriller The Signal, will soon be seen in Ti West’s mock-doc The Sacrament as a journalist trying to find a friend’s sister in a religious compound run by a mysterious man called Father (Gene Jones). These two actors will team up again for the thriller Dementia, the feature debut for cinematographer Mike Testin, which is set to go into production this week in Los Angeles.
The film is described as being in the same realm of Misery and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane – not lofty at all – and tells the story of "an elderly war veteran who is forced by his estranged family to hire a live-in nurse after finding out he has been diagnosed with dementia, only to find that she harbors a sinister secret." The film, which also stars Kristina Klebe (Proxy) and Marc Senter (Red, White, and Blue), was written by newcomer Meredith Berg, and might not have drawn my attention that much if not for Testin, who has created a handful of pretty solid short films during a career working with mostly low-budget thrillers. Check out his take on the Franz Kafka short story "The Hunger Artist" below.
A Haunted House 2 Conjures up New Poster
If you’ve ever found yourself in a position where you have way too many 12-packs of beer and trash bags full of weed, then you’re in the perfect setting to experience Michael Tiddes’ upcoming spookshow spoof A Haunted House 2, the sequel to the second horror parody franchise from Scary Movie co-creator Marlon Wayans and Rick Alvarez. The new poster, like each of the others for these films, is based on another film’s poster, in this case last year’s mega hit The Conjuring. Instead of a noose, Wayans is swinging on a tire swing. Comedy gold! (I’d definitely spend some time on that swing, haunted house or not.)
In this sequel, Malcolm (Wayans) finds a new girlfriend, Megan (Jaime Pressly), after his previous one Kisha (Essence Atkins) gets into a car accident. He moves into a new house with Megan and her children, but they soon become the victims of paranormal hilarity, or whatever is passing for that these days. To make things worse, the zombified Kisha moves in across the street and makes Malcolm’s life even more uncomfortably awkward. Co-starring Gabriel Iglesias, Dave Sheridan, Affion Crockett and Cedric the Entertainer, A Haunted House 2 will desperately try to leave you in stitches when it hits theaters on April 18, 2014. Check out the chicken fight in the trailer below.
