Call of the Dead Trailer

I take back EVERYTHING I said about being sick of zombies.

Dibs on (Buffy) Machete!

The Confined : Silent Hill inspired fan film

Stolen from Kotaku.

This is apparently a segment from an upcoming Silent Hill-inspired fan film. I like it. It's eerie.

Detention Trailer

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Okay, this looks pretty good. In a year that's as dry as this, I'll take anything.

Well, maybe not. I did skip over The Rite.

Dead Island Trailer

Our fine friends at Geekologie posted up two trailers for the upcoming game Dead Island. Yeah, I'm burned out on zombies, but this is really good stuff.





Enjoy!

The Rite Trailer

Is it reasonable to enjoy a story you emphatically don't believe in?

I like possession films, cliched as they often are, but I don't agree with the themes presented in them. Two of the most famous ones, The Last Exorcism and The Exorcist, tell the story of modern day conflicted priests confronting old-timey evil in a way they're unprepared for. Only by returning to the superstitious roots of their faiths are they able to overcome the forces of hell, usually at the cost of their own lives.

I don't believe in gods or devils and I think such ideas are detrimental to society at large and, more than any other aspect of the genre, I think that the demonic possession subgenre is the most conservative and regressive thematically (Constantine being a notable exception.) The Rite looks incredible and dramatic and beautifully themed, but it's the same sort of Old Testament sturm und drang you see in this genre.

Still gonna go see it.

New Nightmare on Elm Street Trailer

W00t!

A Nightmare on Elm Street trailer

Oh. Man.

I'm generally a fan of the Platinum Dunes remake series. Sure, they're a little too formulaic and polished to really capture the gritty nastiness of the originals, but they're clearly made with some degree of reverence to the legacies that spawn them.

Freddy, more than other monsters, succeeds or fails based on the actor who plays him. Jackie Earle Haley is a pretty good fit. From the limited dialogue he has in the trailer, it sounds like he's playing Freddy Krueger with a speech impediment. This adds a certain creepy weakness to the character, the kind of personality tic you'd expect from a child murdering pervert janitor. He seems less confident, less obviously malicious, and more creepily evil. The trailer starts with a powerful man chasing a scared Freddy into the boiler room and we get the sense that he's a damaged and weak man, preying on kids, and the Elm street parents are a little too eager to see justice done. Maybe I'm wishful thinking here, but I really hope that the death of Freddy Krueger isn't as cut-and-dry as it was in the original.

The Platinum Dunes monsters have mostly been confined to the real world. This has worked well in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th but it may work against them for the Elm Street remake. Given the flair and visual artistry of the previous entries, there isn't a lot of razzle-dazzle in the trailer. The dream sequences look brightly lit and barren and vaguely post-apocalyptic. The film makers have a lot of nods to the original, particularly with the bathtubs and the levitating bodies and the corpses dragged down hallways, but I'm hoping that the dream sequences keep that disjointed, creepy vibe from the originals.

Bottom line: looking forward to it.

Sorority Row Trailer

So Carrie Fisher is now getting herself murdered in slasher movies, huh?

Is Sorority Row, as some boards are calling it, a chick slasher flick? I kinda hope so. I approach the genre with the novel notion that artificially-constructed horror is a universally appealing emotion and I'm interested in what scares different types of people. When you go to most mainstream horror movies, you often see groups of 12-15 year old girls clumped together shrieking and laughing as the movie goes. I think they should get a horror flick targeted to 'em.

I hope it's good. God knows, the last one I saw sucked.

Apologies for my unexplained absence, plus a trailer for Jennifer's Body.

Greetings to all my loyal readers and the people of taste and class who visit my site.

I wanted to drop a long-overdue line about how sorry I am that I've been lax about keeping up the blog. I promised myself I'd load new content on this thing once a week, but it's been over two weeks and I haven't touched the horror blogosphere with my titanic wit and charm. Even when I was incapacitated with my car crash I was able to write a semi-coherent concussed article on The Shining. I don't have a better excuse beyond the following:

1) I turned 29 this past week. All in all, this has been a happy event. I have a lot of awesome friends and they have given me a lot of love and support over the last few weeks.

2) Got laid off. Shit happens.

3) The workload in my class jumped up. I'm trying to get into a creative writing MFA program and I'm taking classes at UC Berkeley's extended learning program. I really like the courses, but they are a lot of work. My downtime is packed with reading and writing.

4) Started taking guitar lessons. Go me!

5) I started writing this elaborate article on my adolescent experiences playing Vampire: The Masquerade, but it wasn't going anywhere and I got frustrated and chickened out. I'm coming back to it, Vampire was a big part of my upbringing, but writing the blog became an exercise in tedium. Cry me a river.

Anyway, I've taken my break and I'm refreshed, recharged, and ready to go. I still love doing this blog and I'm gonna keep at it. Thanks for your understanding.

Anyway, on to Jennifer's Body



Okay, yes, Megan Fox is plenty attractive. And despite all the snotty backlash that followed in the wake of Juno, I still like Diablo Cody's writing. I was looking forward to this flick, especially since there isn't much for the horror fan this summer.

Then I read this.

Is the movie just goofy, distasteful fan service? Post third-wave feminism's sex-as-a-weapon taken to the nth degree? A big wacky joke? Who knows? I am looking forward to it, but I'm totally ready to kick in a few bucks to NOW.

What do y'all think? Also, in a quest to learn the art of podcasting, I'm now a part of the Comic Outpost podcast in San Francisco. Check out my first show here.

Shutter Island Trailer

Okay, I eat a lot of crap from people for stretching the definition of what a horror movie is, but take a look at this new trailer from Martin Scorsese flick Shutter Island and TELL me this doesn't look like a horror movie. Exteriors from The Ring, interiors from Silent Hill.

Feel Trailer

Hey all. Apologies for the sporadic posting. I've got houseguests for the next couple of weeks and I can't go snorkeling in the tenebrous waters of horror as often. My next big post will probably be my essay on Amityville 2 for the Final Girl Film Club.

Anyway, I was cruising around Kotaku earlier today and I came across the trailer for Feel. According to the article the game is being overseen by Grudge director Takashi Shimizu.

Not much to go off of so far. The brief glimpses of the gameplay certainly LOOK creepy enough and The Grudge/Ju-On are a couple of my favorite movies. Plus, using the Wii remote as a flashlight control could be very cool.

I'll keep an eye on this one. No need to thank me. Part of the job.

Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 Trailer

You've probably seen this by now. And, if you're like me, you've been to the forums and heard the endless bitching and complaining. Hobo Myers? Blaaaaah! Sheri Moon Zombie? Blooooh! Myers without his mask? Bluuuuuh!

Meh.

Okay, I didn't actually like Rob Zombie's Halloween. While I'm not necessarily as dogmatic as the horror orthodoxy, I think the story he told didn't quite fit the the Shape (wokka wokka) of what I expect Halloween to be. I always hesitated joining the howling mob baying for his blood because I LIKE Zombie's enthusiasm for the medium and his willingness to go completely nuts. I hate the weird need horror fans have to tear into creators.

I'm not saying I don't agree with them on some level. I'm not saying there isn't stuff I've seen that makes me wince. But I'll give it a shot. Love 'em or hate 'em, I've never been able to dismiss a Rob Zombie movie.

Gobstopper Trailer

Alright, so this trailer is bullshit. But wouldn't it be so coooool if someone actually did it?

I like telling people that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the first haunted house/slasher movie I've ever seen. Willy Wonka is pretty fucking menacing, we never see the kids who disappear into the factory again, and every child still has a touch of trauma from the boating scene.

Images of corrupted childhood always gives root to interesting horror. Enjoy!

Laid To Rest Trailer

Um. Sure?

I'm getting a bit burned out on slasher movies lately but I saw this trailer on the His Name Was Jason DVD and I just got a feeling, y'know? At this point, I've inundated myself with so much genre crap that it's permeated my senses and I get gut feelings about this stuff.

My gut reaction has been telling me to give this a shot, so give it a shot I shall. Besides, I'm really curious about the camera-looking thing the killer has strapped to his shoulder. Is he filming this stuff? Is he framing his rampage as some sort of demented movie?

One of the tropes of horror that always fascinated me are the tales centered around the line between story and suffering and the people who can't tell the difference between the two. Horror as a genre is all about exaggerating themes, and the ghastly notion of people doing evil because they see their victims through the prism of fiction strikes me as the sort of idea that hits home for horror fans. I don't need another thinly disguised lecture on the evils of horror cinema, as I am exposed to a ton of this stuff and I came out humane and kind, but elements of something deeper might elevate this above the stalk-and-slash crowd.

Or maybe it won't. Fuck it, just so long as they do it right.

Drag Me To Hell

Um. Sure?

Like every other horror guy, I had a Pavlovian drool response when I heard about Sam Raimi doing something in the genre. So far I've only been able to watch the trailer at work, where sound is not allowed. It looks cool. Something about a bank?

New Friday the 13th Trailer

All I want for Christmas is Jason friggin' Voorhees.