Neill Blomkamp, the director behind District 9 and a few films that were not District 9 and have since been kind of forgotten, has a new movie coming out! It’s called Demonic and it’s about a mother and a daughter and demonic forces and the Vatican apparently funding a black ops team. That sounds like a lot! Actually, it sounds likes it could almost be too much. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Here’s the trailer:
This film is set to be released on August 20th.
Horror remakes is almost as old as the history of film. I’ve tried to educate those who complain that another horror classic was being remade and it will suck. Guess what horror classics have always been remade and they don’t always suck. So, instead of telling these snobs to go in their rooms and drool and jerk one off to their classics they don’t want tarnished by a remake I just shake my head and try to see if the remake holds up to the original or, better yet, judge the remake on it’s own creative merits and see if it brings something new to the “classic” original.
In 2013 we see one such horror remake arriving on the big-screen with Fede Alvarez’s new take on a true horror and grindhouse classic horror, The Evil Dead.
The film will be produced by two of the same people who made the original film in Sam Raimi and Bruce “God when walking amongst the humans he created” Campbell. There will not be a character named Ash, but the role of Mia (played by Jane Levy) will take on a similar role in the film. This trailer first premiered for a select audience during this year’s New York Comic-Con and the response was loud, louder and even louder. One thing which everyone who saw the trailer seemed to agree was that the remake looks to honor the original film (rushing POV tracking shots to the oppressive atmosphere throughout the film) while also giving director Fede Alvarez a chance to add his own visual and narrative style to the production.
It is going to be a gory remake and very oppressive and nihilistic. What the trailer doesn’t seem to hint at is any sign of dark humor that fans of the original film are now nitpicking about. Guess what…the original was straight up grindhouse horror that had nothing humorous about (well unless you consider a possessed tree raping a woman as being hilarious). So, it’s going to be interesting to see if this remake will get a chance to impress the fans of the original while at the same time show those new to the horror genre a glimpse at what 70’s horror was really all about.
The Evil Dead is set for a 2013 release date.
While the sequel to the so-called “one of the scariest horror films ever made” has already been out in Spain since 2009 and seen in other countries it still has to make its way over to the North American territories of the US and Canada. I know that many think this Spanish-made horror film is the scariest thing to be seen since ever I’m in the minority who just thought it was good horror that got lots of hype and praise due to its first-person camera narrative style.
The US remake of this film, Quarantine, only made people think the first [REC] truly was great due to the remake’s level of awful. This sequel follows the first film just minutes after it ended and looks to add more action to the mix. When I say action it looks like a live-action version of Doom 3 but minus the demons and sci-fi trappings. Instead we get SWAT team members and a secretive government official going in to handle the escalating crisis.
Some of those who have seen this sequel make an apt comparison to the Alien franchise. This sequel is this franchise’s Aliens.
Whether it make a theatrical release here in the US or just straight to video I will most likely end up watching it, but with a tempered sense of expectation. It takes a lot for a film to make my greatest horror list and this franchise just doesn’t cut it.
Through the Shattered Lens 