Posted by Jason Wiener in Movie Reviews on February 25th, 2008

Then it was back to the Roxie for “Paranormal Activity”. This movie is fucking awesome! On the surface, it’s a simple ghost story. A young couple moves into a new house (in San Diego, but that’s not really important). All was well until the wife Katie believes the house is haunted, possibly by the same spirits that haunted her as a kid. To assuage her fears, her husband Micah sets up a video camera in their bedroom to watch them while they sleep. This movie is all made of their home videos (new trend hitting the mainstream, what with “Cloverfield” and “Diary of the Dead”?) And it’s a slow buildup. There’s a good 30 minutes before the first “scare”, and that’s a door moving 2 inches back and forth. Could be the wind, but all the windows were closed! But the sloooooow buildup continues, and without giving anything away I’ll say by the end it was kicking everyone’s ass. The slow build is absolutely vital for building up the realism, and although 30 minutes of not much happening might sound boring, it’s absolutely vital. I haven’t heard real screams like this in a theater in quite a while, and this is a jaded Indiefest midnight audience. Wow!

Now I’m actually a little relieved that I haven’t had time to write for a week. You see, something has happened to this movie. It played at Slamdance, where it was bought up by Dreamworks–so they can remake it. With a remake in the works, they don’t want people watching this version. It’s already been pulled from Cinequest, and they tried to prevent Indiefest from seeing it. I was pissed, and more so after seeing this little buried masterpiece. I’ve now calmed down somewhat (partly because I know last Wednesday night’s screening happened, with a Dreamworks rep in the house), and what I write now is addressed directly to the executives at Dreamworks:

Gentlemen, you’ve picked up a wonderful property, now please don’t fuck it up! I’m not a hard-liner who’s against remakes. Honestly, I’m curious to see how you will handle this material (I have a hard time believing a major studio will give the audience enough credit to go 30 minutes just to see a door move back and forth as the first “scare”, but we’ll see how it goes). I liked the original enough that nothing short of universally awful reviews will keep me from seeing your remake. With that said, please don’t keep the original version hidden forever. I’m still displeased you got it pulled from Cinequest. I was looking forward to running around Cinequest telling everyone to see it, now I’ll have to run around telling everyone how awesome it was and how they should cry because they don’t get to see it. Anyway, I just want to beg you (seriously, I’m on my knees as I type this), please please please pleeeeease! After you’ve had fun with your remake, please release the original version in some form. Perhaps a special edition DVD with both versions? Because this movie is excellent, and if you hide this away the world of cinema will be missing a treasure. Thank you for listening to me.

Posted by eric ringer in Trailers on February 25th, 2008

A dark and scary movie with dramatic effects. Four friends come to old and abandoned factory in Nether Silesia where a year ago a friend died. So they try find out how and why he died but in the end they found an horrific truth about experiments conducted in the factory. A group of research workers kidnap them and use them as human guinea-pigs in an effort to attain immortality for an mysterious employer.

Posted by eric ringer in News, Photos on February 22nd, 2008

ShockTillYouDrop.com just received a pretty darn tasty vampire still from Warner Premiere’s upcoming The Lost Boys 2: The Tribe. The sequel, starring Tad Hilgenbrink, Autumn Reeser, Angus Sutherland, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim, debuts this summer.

Posted by eric ringer in News on February 21st, 2008

Author Bret Easton Ellis has signed on to adapt the novel Downers Grove for the big screen. Written by Michael Hornburg, “Downers” centers on Chrissie Swanson, a paranoid high school senior for whom graduating has become a matter of life or death. The film takes place at Downer’s Grove high School in Illinois. Ellis, whose novels “American Psycho,” “The Rules of Attraction” and “Less Than Zero” have been adapted for the big screen, has his sixth novel, “Lunar Park,” in development as a feature film with Palm Star Pictures. His novel “The Informers,” which inspired the film adaptation.

Disquieting in its timeliness, Hornburg’s (Bongwater) second novel is a tale of violence among high school cliques and a gritty portrait of adolescent pluck amid morbid chaos. Narrator Crystal Methedrine Swanson is on the verge of graduating from Downers Grove High in Illinois. Chrissie, as her friends call her, has a lot to deal with on the home front: her father has left without a trace, her brother is addicted to heroin and her mother is dating an increasingly sinister new beau. Chrissie and her boy-crazy, sexpot best friend, Tracy, also worry about “the curse” of their high school: each year before graduation, somebody in the senior class dies in a bizarre way. One year a math whiz killed several people in the parking lot before turning the shotgun on himself; other graduations were marred by suicide, drowning and several drunk-driving accidents. After Chrissie beats up a jock who tried to rape her at a party, she becomes terrified that she will be the next statistic. The jock and his buddies pursue an escalating plot of revenge beginning with a vicious car chase. They also set fire to Chrissie’s school locker and strew dead dogs on her lawn. Adding to the plot twists of this teenybopper drama is Chrissie’s obsession with a 26-year-old mechanic–cum-race-car driver named Bobby. Tough, insensitive and super-cool, Bobby is the kind of character only a teenage girl could love. Hornburg’s prose is rife with adolescent jokes and lingo, some of it hilarious and sharp. At other times the humor wears thin, especially because Chrissie’s youthful wisecracking does not segue smoothly into passages of soul-searching introspection. Yet Chrissie’s relentlessly vernacular teenage voice takes up residence in the reader’s mind, establishing her vulnerability and demonstrating the courage she shows on her stressful road to maturity.

Posted by eric ringer in Trailers on February 21st, 2008

Yessir, as the title says, a trailer is now kickin’ for Bog Bodies. In the film a 2000-year-old murder victim’s body is disturbed by a property developer in Ireland, it returns to life and does battle with the locals. Vinnie Jones, Jason Barry and Nora-Jane Noone star.

Posted by eric ringer in Trailers on February 20th, 2008

Sweatshop is an ultra-violent horror film set within America’s industrial raver subculture. Charlie (Ashley Kay of Domain of the Damned) has invited her friends to a labyrinthine warehouse to help her set up for an impromptu rave, unaware of the fact that living in the building is an evil presence known only as “The Beast” (portrayed by newcomer Jeremy Sumrall). The end result of their bloodsoaked confrontation will be the thing legends are made of.

Posted by eric ringer in News on February 20th, 2008

Though still best known around the world as Michael Haneke’s regular editor, Andreas Prochaska stepped behind the camera a couple years back as both writer and director of Dead In Three Days (In 3 Tagen Bist Du Tot), a lean and effective slasher film - a rarity in his native Austria - that went on to become a major box office hit.  How big a hit?  Big enough that it played to good reviews on the festival circuit all around the world and a sequel got the immediate greenlight, a sequel that has just gone before cameras.

 Synopsis:

In the summer after Nina¹s graduation, her life changed forever. Three of her best friends became victims of a psychopath, herself and her best friend Mona just barely escaping death. Nina has now only one wish: to forget. She leaves her home town, breaks off all contacts and moves to Vienna to start a new life.

Now, a year and a half later, only terrible nightmares remind her of the past. A disturbing and terrified call in the middle of the night from Mona, breaks her exile. Thinking it another dream, she tries to contact Mona, but she seems to have disappeared. Her cell phone number no longer exists, and the gas station which Mona¹s father had run has mysteriously closed down. The only remaining trace of her friend leads to Tyrol, to Mona¹s place of birth, and finally, to a lonely inn in the snow-covered mountains.  The villagers avoid the place.  They don¹t like the inn-keepers and numerous rumours circulate about the woman living there with her three grown sons. Despite all warnings, Nina heads for the mountains alone.  It¹s her only chance of finding her best friend. However, what Nina finds at the inn is far more terrifying than the rumours suggest, plunging her into a new terror amid the inhospitable freezing snowscapes of the Austrian mountains.

Posted by eric ringer in News on February 20th, 2008

Oh woe is us who live on this side of the pond. According to the lads over at Bloody Disgusting Sony Screen Gems has officially dumped their film, The Cottage, to the boys over at Sony Home Entertainment. The UK horror-comedy will arrive on DVD April 29. I would love to know the reason why. We’re only weeks away from the theatrical release in the UK so our Brit readers are going to have to let us know why they think Sony has gone this route.