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‘WRONG TURN’ Director Mike P. Nelson Talks ‘Temple of Doom’ Nods and Cuts to Avoid an NC-17 Rating

It’s sometimes in the strangest places that the sweetest things lurk. Or such is the case with Mike P. Nelson’s 2021 sequel/reboot of the Wrong Turn franchise, a film series which began in 2003 and went on to spawn five sequels. Despite a dedicated fan base, the backwoods inbred cannibal horror franchise never managed any notable critical or commercial success but in flipping the script and starting basically from scratch, Nelson and writing partner Alan B. Elroy have breathed new life into a series that now shows no sign of running out of gas and a whole new highway of ideas to explore. Read More

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Sundance 2021: ‘IN THE EARTH’ Combines Axe Slashers and Lovecraftian Horror With Hallucinogenic Style  

Creating horror has been and will always be a sociopolitical act and with In The Earth, British auteur Ben Wheatley reflects the reality of the pandemic back at us in startling, disorienting fashion. The result has notes of all kinds of horror, but most distinctly a tent-in-the-woods slasher crossed with Lovecraftian cosmic horror, all set to the backdrop of some airborne viral infection that’s driven the population into quarantine and starved them for a cure. Read More

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Brutal ‘WRONG TURN’ A Hugely Enjoyable Franchise Detour into Wild Backwoods Schlock 

A spin-off in name only, Wrong Turn (2021), from relative newcomer director Mike P. Nelson, takes the cult inbred-cannibal horror franchise in a totally new direction, pivoting away from the signature cornerstones of the slasher series towards something just as unflinching, addictive, and brutal but one that’s meant to be taken more seriously. And with no apparent cannibalism.  Read More

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The Cinematic Equivalent of the Phrase “Spooky Season”, ‘COME PLAY’ A Scare-Free Dud 

Continuing in the not-so-grand tradition of horror shorts adapted into feature films, Come Play attempts to breathe more life into its premise of a gangly boogeyman named Larry. Operative word being “attempts”. Jacob Chase writes and directs, stretching his five-minute viral short “Larry” into 100 minutes of humdrum haunting. Stretching and pulling to fill it with air but not necessarily more flavor, Chase works his material like taffy. And like the sugary confection, Come Play is little more than horror empty calories, another slickly-made PG-13 studio dud that fails to scare up much reaction or leave much of an impression.  Read More

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Benson and Moorhead’s ‘SYNCHRONIC’ A Grizzly, Drug-Induced Time Travel Mission 

Hard-drinking New Orleans EMT Steve (Anthony Mackie) is having a hard go of it. In addition to a recent brain terminal cancer diagnosis, his line of work keeps putting him face-to-face with a series of strange and horrific accidents, such as a guy run through with a ceremonial sword, a raving woman with an anachronistic snake bite, and a man found dismembered down an elevator shaft with a grin stretched across his face. A stark reminder of his impending demise, the series of grizzly deaths seem connected to a new designer drug called Synchronic, from which the new film from visionaries Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead takes its name.  Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Revenge Served Cold in Well-Acted ’ROSE PLAYS JULIE’

Writer-director team Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor put a new twist on the rape-revenge fantasy, pivoting away from the usual hot-bloodedness of the subgenre and the gory justice that often ensues. Instead, Rose Plays Julie follows in the Irish tradition of dreary realism; it’s a brooding, emotionally-charged, bluntly and quietly brutal affair. You probably will want a hot steamy shower once it’s all over.  Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Bugged Out ‘QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC’ a Pitch Black Supernatural Slasher

Three childhood friends return to the orphanage where they were grew up to pay their respects to the dying director who raised them in Kimo Stamboel’s brutal and gory supernatural slasher The Queen of Black Magic (also known as Ratu Ilmu Hitam). This Indonesian import has no qualms dialing up the blood and guts as the screenplay from Joko Anwar (Impetigore) immediately sets its stock of characters up for encounters with dark magic, free-flying viscus and so. many. CGI. bugs. Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Surreal and Disappointing ‘LUCKY’ Bungles Its Message of Female Dread 

Director Natasha Kermani is onto an intriguing germ of an idea with Lucky, a message movie masquerading as a thriller, but the execution is simply not there. The film stars Brea Grant as May, an author of a feminist-forward business series, who is assaulted nightly by a masked man. Her distant husband is bizarrely disinterested in the attacks and the police treat them as almost meaningless happenstance. Kermani obviously wants to explore the notion that women are confronted with a world constantly at odds with female safety, where public and private spaces alike are feeding grounds for male predators, and instances of assault are met with apathy and assigned a normalcy that’s both disturbing and omnipresent. Between unconvincing performances (from Grant down through the supporting cast list) and a repetitive cycling of events with fails to capitalize on the threat of invasion of space in creative and varied ways, Lucky ends up being an idea in search of a movie; the mere shadow of something potentially interesting. (C-) Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Bad Dad Exploits Power Dynamics In Discomforting Coming of Age Thriller ’DARKNESS’

The perfect Italian hybrid of Dogtooth and 10 Cloverfield Lane, Darkness (original title, Buio) creates an insular world where fiction rules over fact. Stella (Denise Tantucci) and her two younger sisters Luce (Gaia Bocci) and the mute Aria (Olimpia Tosatto) live under their father’s (Valerio Binasco) tyrannical rule. In their countryside home, he has them convinced that the apocalypse has arrived, the sun scalding people’s eyes out and causing their skin and limbs to burn away. The young girls must remain literally and metaphorically in the dark. Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Geriatric Satanists Will Do ‘ANYTHING FOR JACKSON’

There’s little in the world of Hollywood and Holly-would-be more fascinating than a director breaking out of their wheelhouse to make something completely unexpected. Think Mike Nichols’ shift from directing critical darlings like The Graduate and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to “slum it” with the campy horror outing Wolf; or Mad Max franchise director George Miller shifting gears to direct the talking pig sequel Babe: Pig in the City; or filmmaker royalty Francis Ford Coppola coming down from Godfather and Apocalypse Now acclaim to direct the family-friendly Robin Williams vehicle Jack.  Read More