New on Netflix: March 29th, 2019

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Wicked Horror is the author of New on Netflix: March 29th, 2019. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Welcome to New on Netflix, a feature here at Wicked Horror in which we provide the latest updates on what’s coming to the streaming service for the week. In recent times, Netflix’s shift in content has been interesting. While many fan-favorite movies and TV shows have been Netflix staples for the better part of a decade, they’ve been taken off the service with more frequency. Some of them return, some of them don’t, and while these are all simply the result of licensing deals that were already in place before these properties even hit the service, they do shed some light on the content provider’s new focus. Netflix is continuing to shift gears away from movies and TV shows owned by other studios or companies and is producing their own content with staggering frequency. As we continue to provide updates on what’s been added to the service, it will always be interesting to note the balance between original and licensed content being added to the Netflix library. With that in mind, here are the latest Netflix additions for the week of March 29th, 2019. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil  One of the best horror comedies of this decade, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil has returned to Netflix. There’s really no bad time to give this one a rewatch and if you’ve somehow missed it, well, it’s the weekend and there’s no better time to check it out. Both Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk give genuinely hilarious performances in this clever breakdown of backwoods horror tropes.

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Check Out the Full Length Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Trailer

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Wicked Horror is the author of Check Out the Full Length Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Trailer. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

We’re still a few months out from Guillermo Del Toro’s hotly-anticipated adaptation of classic book series Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, but in the meantime there’s a spooky, full-length trailer to whet our appetites. Time to retreat under the covers, y’all. The original kids’ horror stories, from Alvin Schwartz, were published from 1981-1991. There were three collections total, inspired by a variety of older folk tales and urban legends, featuring all manner of monsters, ghoulies, and vengeful spirits. Maestro GDT was brought on for the film adaptation a few years back. He’s serving as producer on the project as well as scripting the flick, while André Øvredal (the brilliant Autopsy of Jane Doe) is at the helm. Previous teaser trailers invoked some of Schwartz’s most infamous tales, including the ghastly “Big Toe.” This latest full-length trailer, ominously scored to “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” references “The Red Spot” and the Pale Lady character from the books, among others. The Pale Lady also features in a brand-new character poster, which you can check out above. The flick takes place in the late sixties, in a small town called Mill Valley. It follows a group of teens investigating the mystery of a young girl who perished years earlier, leaving behind her haunted journals that, it soon becomes clear, have an evil life of their own. Zoe Margaret Colletti, Michael Garza, Austin Zajur, Gabriel Rush, Dean Norris, Austin Abrams, Gil Bellows, Lorraine Toussaint, and Natalie Ganzhorn are all slated to appear. The original stories were disconnected, but Del Toro’s adaptation seems to tie them all together. This latest trailer showcases the inventive, childlike creepiness so beloved of the horror auteur, so fans of the series should be suitably excited. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark drops in theaters on August 9, 2019. Stay tuned to the site for more info as the date draws closer.

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Review: The Haunting of Sharon Tate is a Moderately Entertaining Murder Melodrama

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Wicked Horror is the author of Review: The Haunting of Sharon Tate is a Moderately Entertaining Murder Melodrama. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

There’s been quite a few movies made about Charles Manson and his ragtag assortment of drugged up hippie psycho murderers over the years, spanning from tabloid made for TV exploitation shlock like 1976’s Helter Skelter to pioneering found-footage flicks like 1984’s “Manson Family Movies” to super gory, no budget puke-fests like 1997’s The Manson Family. Hell, even Quentin Tarantino appears to be getting in on the act with his upcoming film Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. But The Haunting of Sharon Tate is a drastically different film from most Manson-centric movies, considering its focus isn’t on the victimizers, but the five victims slain in August of ‘69 in the Hollywood hills. In fact, the Manson Family is only on the periphery of this movie, more or less representing the wolves at the door and hardly anything more. And as you will soon see, that’s both a positive and a negative for the movie as a whole.  There’s no way around it, though — seeing Hilary Duff portray the protagonist of a glorified slasher movie is just plain weird. That’s right, we’ve got Lizzie McGuire herself playing Sharon Tate, and no matter how gruesome or bloody the movie got, I kept expecting Miranda and Gordo to show up at any moment — or, at least, to see a crudely animated caricature of Duff pop up for some random (and preferably sassy) musings. Still, she does a pretty good job portraying Roman Polanski’s 8-months pregnant wife, and the rest of the cast likewise turn in better-than-the-norm-for-the-genre performances.  The film begins with Tate giving an interview to some TV anchor about this vision of her own death, and then we get the setup of how she ended up living at the infamous 10050 Cielo Drive residence. We meet the rest of the gang — coffee heiress Abigail Folger, hairdresser to the stars Jay Sebring, Romanski confidant Wojciech Frykowski and roustabout tech wizard Steven Parent — shortly thereafter, and they find this weird fortune telling board game where you roll a ball around a giant eyeball and it tells you how soon you’re going to die. Then the fivesome start getting these weird door knockings at 3 in the morning and they start getting stalked by strange women while they’re going on nature walks and somebody keeps leaving copies of “Cease to Exist” on vinyl on the front patio.  Also See: Terrible Places: What Makes a Horror Setting Scary  And that’s around the part where Tate starts having these extremely grisly nightmares about everybody in the house getting gagged and bound and stabbed to death by a dude in a denim jacket and having hallucinations about her housemates leaving maggot-infested roadkill in the fridge, right next to the good cheese. Then Steven figures out there’s Satanic backmasking messages on that weird album people keep sending to the address and … well, I really can’t tell you much of what happens after that, but like I was saying earlier, if you know all of the sordid details of what really happened during the infamous murders 50 years ago, you’re going to be thrown for an enormous curveball watching the rest of this flick play out. All I’m going to say is if they let director Daniel Farrands direct Titanic he probably would’ve ended it with the boat sinking the iceberg.   Let’s hit the highlights of the movie real quick, why don’t we? We’ve got five dead bodies … possibly eight … maybe as few as three, it kinda depends on your perspective. No nudity, male or female. One dead dog, with maggot infestation. Gratuitous poolside chain-smoking. Gratuitous slow-motion stalking. Gratuitous Charles Manson music. Throat-slitting. Gratuitous bloody bathtubs. Ceramic toilet lid to the skull. Attempted drowning. One bullet to the face at point blank range. About 1,768 stab wounds. Shovel fu. Subliminal message fu. And the thing that more or less makes this movie possible in the first place … uh, alternate reality fu, maybe? Starring Hilary Duff as Sharon Tate, who keeps having bad dreams about getting butchered by a sex cult while her husband’s off filming Day of the Dolphin; Jonathan Bennett as Jay Sebring, the beefcake who spends half the movie flexing his pecs near the pool; Paweł Szajda as Wojciech Frykowski, the guy who runs outside at 2 a.m. in his underwear yelling swear words in Polish; and Lydia Hearst as Abigail Folger, who does her best to convince her bestie that they aren’t all going to get massacred by a maniac cult, no matter how many times that darned Ouija Board tells them they are.    Writer/director Daniel Farrands — the same guy who directed the Crystal Lake Memories and Never Sleep Again docs — definitely has a knack for making the CGI blood splatter with panache. It’s not the best “true crime” splatter movie you’ll see this year, but The Haunting of Sharon Tate certainly has its moments. And if nothing else, you have to at least give it some credit for trying something different with the source material … although your mileage will definitely vary on whether the “artistic license” herein makes the film or completely sinks it.  Wicked Horror Rating: 6 / 10                                                                     Director(s): Daniel Farrands                                                                        Writer(s): Daniel Farrands                                                                             Starring: Hilary Duff, Jonathan Bennett, Pawel Szajda, Lydia Hearst, Ryan Cargill Release Date: April 5                                                                         Studio/Production Co.: Skyline Entertainment, ETA Films, Green Light Pictures, 1428 Films / Saban Films, Voltage Pictures                                              Language: English                                                                                          Length: 90 minutes (approximately)                                                                   Sub-genre: Home invasion, biopic, slasher, psychological drama 

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Terrible Places: What Makes a Horror Setting Scary

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Wicked Horror is the author of Terrible Places: What Makes a Horror Setting Scary. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Horror fans can debate what makes something scary until everyone is blue in the face, but there really is no way to actually win an argument like this right? It’s all just opinion? Yeah, no. I’m going to lay out everything you ever wanted to know about why a horror setting is actually scary by defining for you the concept of the “Terrible Place.” The five conventions of horror named in Carol Clover’s academic examination of Friday the 13th, “Her Body, Himself,” are killer, terrible place, weapons, victims and the final girl. While all these conventions are worthy of discussion, it seems to me that “terrible place” is something seen in every sub-genre of horror and something that might be more important in the horror genre than in others like mystery or romance. I say setting is more important to horror because a lot of times three quarters of the scares actually come from the physical location of the film. The ambience. The lighting. The personality. It’s all in the unique location. S***, sometimes (and I’m looking at you haunting films) the only thing that sets one horror movie apart from another is the specific setting of the film. The setting can also be the only reason a film is watchable, like with Chernobyl, or the one thing that pushes a film from okay to great, like with As Above, So Below. What is a Terrible Place? The Terrible Place, Clover writes, is “most often a house or tunnel, in which the victims sooner or later find themselves.” I find it interesting that she mentions “tunnel” here. House makes sense, think of the traditional gothic roots of horror, but why tunnel? She goes on to mention that “What makes these houses terrible is not just their Victorian decrepi-tude but the terrible families” (Clover). I think that is where tunnel comes in. And I think this opens up the discussion from setting to be the physical set where the movie is filmed, and to think about the setting as also being representative of theme and character. The setting is only effective when it reflects the horrific concept of the film. Clover explains, stating that within the “Bates mansion enfolds the history of a mother and son locked in a sick attachment, and so the Texas Chain Saw mansion/labyrinth shelters a lawless brood presided over by the decaying corpse of the grandmother.” These are the tunnels within the homes. The key to what makes a horror setting into a Terrible Place. I contend, then, that every effective horror movie must have a partially unique, memorable, and horrifying Terrible Place in which the story unfolds to be considered scary. That there can not be a “good” horror movie without a “good” setting. So what makes an effective terrible place? Courtney Carpenter (hurray for C.C. initialed female horror writers!), in her article titled “Horror, Mysteries and Setting: Playing on the Unexpected,” asserts that “Horror stories play on the reader’s private fears, exploiting the frightened child within … hoping the bogeyman is not lurking in his closet.” The setting must then expose something the viewer didn’t necessarily know they were scared of. Or force them to confront something already there, I suppose. Therefore nothing too unfamiliar could be the focus of a truly Terrible Place. It’s not a Terrible Place because the place is inherently terrible. The horror comes from something familiar being flipped. Like Carpenter’s point concerning Stephen King’s The Mist, “[in which] people are trapped in a supermarket when a fog filled with nightmare creatures surrounds the store. This if frightening not because a supermarket is frightening, but because “we all need to visit supermarkets,” tapping into “…the leftover-from-childhood dread that no place is safe.”Horror films work when they force us to look at something close to us and be afraid of it. Effective and Ineffective Terrible Places So what is an example of a film that pulls this off well? I don’t think anyone would disagree with me if I said that Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s setting is truly terrifying. Of all the horror movie Terrible Places, I think I would least like to be stuck in that 1900s Victorian style house in Anywhere, USA. Not insignificantly, this house could be just down the road from YOU even. That abandoned-looking old house could hide a dark secret if you just had the misfortune of looking.But having a forgettable or ineffective setting can lead to a lack of a terrible place. This important element, when absent or poorly executed, can lead to a failed horror film. An effort that should be scary but just isn’t. Blair Witch 2: Book Of Shadows has other issues than just the setting, but choosing to set the follow-up to a unique and groundbreaking horror phenomenon in a… well… can you finish that sentence? Is there any standout setting from Blair Witch 2 someone could point to? It says something that I literally could not write a single of this paragraph without doing a good amount of research to remind myself why I thought the setting was forgettable. It wasn’t like I thought the setting was bad. I just couldn’t remember what it was, it was so bland. And do you know why? It’s because it is set everywhere and nowhere. Attempting to repeat on the success of the first film, the movie features characters retreading the terrible places of the first (which is sort of the entire yawn-inducing plot of the movie). When it isn’t trying to simply repeat what originally worked, Blair Witch 2 is just throwing in places like graveyards, crumbling stonework, creepy Victorian mansions, and any other cliched horror setting that is shorthand for “scary.” Why is that? Why can settings be scary sometimes but not others? Early Horror Settings According to Erin Blakemore, in her article “How Victorian Mansions Became the Default Haunted House,” there is actually a very simple reason for the Victorian mansion’s transformation from a symbol of wealth and beauty to one of the most iconic Terrible Places in film history. Blakemore explains that “in the 1870s, Victorian houses were just…houses.” But within fifty years that common style had become a sign of terror, death, and decay. In the minds of the average American, the aging houses had drastically fallen out of style by the early twentieth century. Beyond simply being left abandoned and in disrepair, all things Victorian had begun to be seen in isolationist American as ugly, excessive, and un-American. Adding to this new perception, Blakemore adds that “Returning soldiers saw death in the once uplifting factories and bright dreams of their Victorian fathers” due to their experiences overseas. They now saw the houses as “ghostly remnants of a corrupt past.” If you recall Courtney Carpenter’s explanation of what makes Terrible Places terrible, she mentioned that the setting need not only “play on the reader’s private fears” but also invert something familiar and safe. The transformation of the ubiquitous Victorian houses, visible in any neighborhood across the United States at the time, to a symbol of an un-American corrupted past, is an example of this. So What is the Victorian Mansion of the Twenty First Century? It’s been more than a hundred years since that style home was the pinnacle of creepy. Unless you are making a purposeful throw-back Gothic Romance like Del Toro’s Crimson Peak, you are most likely going to need a fresher setting for your horror film to actually inspire fear in your audience (I would argue this was not Del Toro’s primary goal with Crimson Peak, and one of the reasons why the film is not particularly frightening to modern audiences). You need to find the 2019 version of the Victorian style home. Something once considered normal, but because of the passage of time and changing of popular opinion, has transformed in the minds of the general population. This change happened in the middle to late part of the 20th century in horror with the focus on the suburbs as Terrible Place. Halloween’s Haddonfield Illinois. This is an effective setting not because of the crumbling architecture, monstrous statues, or sinister past of the Victorian mansion. No, Haddonfield is scary because now the horror is coming to you. You probably don’t live out in some isolated manse. However, you most likely do live in some quiet little neighborhood. But there has been forty years of great horror set in the familiar and this-should-be-safe suburbs. Where do we go from there in a new era that knows by now the suburbs can be a scary place? I point you inward. And backwards in a way. One could make the argument that the truly terrifying setting in A Nightmare on Elm Street was not in the suburbs, but the mind itself. The dream spaces Freddy invades. If modern films are scrutinized with the Terrible Place in mind, this same interior setting seems to show up time and time again. Take The Babadook, a scary horror film, but also widely viewed a film about postpartum depression, exhaustion, regret, shame, and the general uncomfortable feeling when you hate someone you love. This setting is more about the uncomfortable, trapped living situation of the characters and less about the type of home. Similarly, films like It Follows, A Quiet Place, and The VVitch all use this interior setting as a way to invoke horror in their audiences. While, yes, each one has a different exterior setting, the films’ Terrible Places are more similar than you might think. It Follows explores the horror of knowing something inevitable is coming for you. Set in a sort of bleak modern city, its Terrible Place is actually the combination of the shameful head-spaces of the characters. This is shown outwardly as they travel throughout the cityscape. From parents’ homes, to backyards where they played as children, to the beach, and finally to a high school. None of these on their own are frightening, but in this context of the inevitability of aging or death made tangible in a monster, these familiar childhood locations are made all the more terrifying. The same could be said about A Quiet Place and The VVitch. Their settings reflect the interior challenges of the characters: the isolation of deafness and overbearing religion. Again, it isn’t the farm that is scary in The VVitch. It’s the fact that this family, with their strange beliefs and tension-filled interactions, are stuck on that farm. Which brings us to Get Out. What I consider to be them most important horror film of the 2010s. The Terrible Place isn’t the suburbs or that particular house in which the story plays out. The scariest location in Get Out is the concept of The Sunken Place. Which is, as defined by Urban Dictionary, “The metaphorical place an oppressed person goes when they have become silent or compliant to their own oppression.”We see this physically in the movie, but also metaphorically throughout wherever the protagonist goes. This, and not the style of the windows or columns of the Armitages’ home, make the movie terrifying. Terrible Place categories So we know what Terrible Places are. We know what makes them effective or ineffective and how that has changed over the years. But are there a few basic settings every horror movie uses? I’m not talking Hotels, or Forests, but something more like a series of classifications that can apply to every movie in the genre. I’d like to suggest the following 4 classifications of Horror Film Terrible Places: The Wild – It’s the fear of the isolated and untamed. Think Evil Dead or The Thing. The Crumbling Decadence – It’s the fear of the fallen beauty. Think The Haunting of Hill House. The Underneath – It’s the fear of what is hidden. Think The Descent or Don’t Breathe. The Right Next Door – It’s the fear of the mundane or familiar. Think Rear Window. Let me know if I missed any categories or if you can think of a movie that doesn’t fit into these four.It’s no surprise that some of the best Terrible Places of all time effectively combine these classifications. Something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes all four for example. There is a sort of unexpected horror underneath the crumbling decadence of the family’s Victorian home. This Terrible Place is right next door, perhaps in your own state even. And yet also in the wild, the unknown stretches of road between civilization, where no one can hear you scream if something were to attack you. It seems that no matter the decade, no matter the classification, the only constant with every horror film setting is the theme of isolation. Even within the films located in the suburbs, there is a certain isolation to the characters at times that seems central to building a sense of dread. I believe that setting plays a larger role in horror films than in any other genre. A well thought out Terrible Place can save a mediocre film and catapult it into film history. A lazy or cliched one can hamstring an otherwise superlative movie. While every horror fan has their own distinct favorites, I think understanding exactly where these setting tropes come from is a valuable way to gain a greater understand of our fears. We all can agree, however, f*** an old Victorian Mansion. You couldn’t pay me to go in there. For more on Terrible Places: Ten More of the Most Chilling Settings in Horror

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Larry Fessenden’s Depraved is His Best Directorial Effort Yet [Review]

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Wicked Horror is the author of Larry Fessenden’s Depraved is His Best Directorial Effort Yet [Review]. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

​Horror hero Larry Fessenden makes his welcome return to the director’s chair with Depraved, which naturally he also wrote, produced, and makes a small cameo in. The flick is a Frankenstein story for the modern age, replete with ruminations on humanity and sexual deviancy, and sprinkled with plenty of gross-out body horror. It’s rough around the edges but scrappy and inherently likeable — much like the great man himself. The story begins with a young couple, Lucy and Alex (The Ranger‘s Chloe Levine and Super Dark Times’ Owen Campbell), having sex, dinner, and eventually an argument about whether or not they want to have kids some day. He storms out, leaving her to clean up through tears, only to get jumped and stabbed almost to death on the walk home. Next thing Alex knows, he’s waking up on a makeshift operating table, with different body parts sewn onto him. Alex is then rechristened Adam (but not for the reasons you think), as actor Alex Breaux (Bushwick) takes over from Campbell, by his ostensible creator, Henry (The Magicians star David Call). The two develop a sort of father-son relationship as Henry teaches Adam how to eat, speak, think, and act like a real boy. Er, man. But what’s the end game here? And what does your man from The Blair Witch Project have to do with this “project”? See Also: Chloe Levine and Granit Lahu Talk The Ranger [Interview] Depraved does quite a lot with very little. Most of the action takes place in a glorified warehouse but, although Henry is impatient with Adam, Fessenden doesn’t rush through things to cover his low-budget tracks. The makeup and SFX are hugely effective, from the gruesomely real stitching on Adam’s sewn-together body to his one milky Marilyn Manson eye. Fessenden’s Monster kind of looks like Richard O’Brien, at least at first, but Breaux’s movements are too robotic to ever flirt with dance. As is standard with these kinds of stories, Depraved is more about the mad scientist behind the creation than the creation itself. Fessenden establishes an interesting good cop/bad cop dynamic with Breaux and the dastardly Polidori — a name so strikingly odd it must be a reference to legendary vampire enthusiast and physician John William Polidori — played by The Blair Witch Project‘s Joshua Leonard, looking even farther from his most famous character than he did in last year’s Unsane. Here, Leonard ditches the nerdy glasses and adopts a mop of sandy-colored hair. He’s wide-eyed and pompous, hoovering up lines of coke and pawing at poor Adam in a strip club to ensure he’s having the proper physical reaction to his new environment. Henry’s nerves are deadened by PTSD, but he wants to do the right thing, at least on some level. Polidori, on the other hand, is completely unhinged. When things do eventually go off the rails, the blame should be placed squarely at Polidori’s feet, even if he’s not the type to ever take responsibility. Throughout Depraved, Fessenden utilizes splashy graphics to signify Adam’s brain-firing activity. For the most part, they’re not strictly necessary, but when Polidori forces his creation to snort cocaine with him, they illustrate the effects of the drug to a disconcerting, fascinating extent. This is a very different role for Leonard, even though he’s still technically playing the villain. He’s a captivating, and intriguingly strange screen presence and it’s nice to see him given more to do here than even in Unsane, which was an equally great showcase for his unique talents. Breaux, too, does a good job playing a damaged man torn between his morality and his cause. Nobody in Depraved is 100 percent good or bad, but everybody is human. I almost wish we’d spent more time with Alex and indeed Lucy (Levine is wasted here, but it’s still great to see her onscreen regardless) prior to the big transformation, because once he becomes Adam, there’s very little connecting The Monster to his previous incarnation. The creation’s struggle to understand his place in the world would have had more emotional weight if we knew his past life a bit better — particularly considering Alex goes from discussing kids to, essentially, regressing back to being one himself. Related: Frankenstein 2015 [Frightfest review] Depraved draws obvious comparisons to Bernard Rose’s devastating, and criminally underrated, Frankenstein from 2015. There, Xavier Samuel played The Monster with an uncanny sadness. Fessenden’s Adam is a shaggier creation, but his plight is no less compelling for it. His story hints at a greater mythology and a darker world just beyond the edges of society where all kinds of untold horrors likely exist. With any luck, the great man will get to explore some of those threads next time he heads behind the camera. Hopefully, we won’t have too long to wait. WICKED RATING: 8/10 Director(s): Larry Fessenden Writer(s): Larry Fessenden Stars: David Call, Joshua Leonard, Alex Breaux, Ana Kayne, Maria Dizzia, Chloë Levine, Owen Campbell and Addison Timlin Release Date: March 21, 2019 (WTF Fest) Studio/ Production Co: Glass Eye Pix Language: English Length: 104 minutes Sub-Genre: Body horror

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Exclusive Interview: Nicholas Vince Talks Book of Monsters

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Wicked Horror is the author of Exclusive Interview: Nicholas Vince Talks Book of Monsters. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Nicholas Vince has been an integral part of horror history since being buried under makeup as the iconic Chatterer in Clive Barker’s 1987 masterpiece, Hellraiser. Appearing in both Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Barker’s follow-up Nightbreed, Vince has also written for both the Hellraiser and Nightbreed comics, as well as becoming an accomplished author in his own right with books like What Monsters Do and Other Peoples’ Darkness. He directed his first short film, The Night Whispered, in 2015 and has also hosted a successful YouTube show/podcast, Chattering With Nicholas Vince. We caught up with Vince to talk about his role in Book of Monsters, the latest from Epic Pictures’ Dread label, as well as horror comedies, the legacy of Chatterer, the upcoming Ultimate Cabal Cut of Nightbreed, Queer Eye and more. Wicked Horror: What’s the most exciting thing for you about being a part of Book of Monsters? Nicholas Vince: I think it was working with young up-and-coming horror film directors. But also a young cast, a young crew, I think that was what was really exciting and really interesting. I was really impressed with what Stewart Sparke and Paul Butler had done with their previous film, The Creature Below. It’s not a great film, but what they managed to do on the budget was incredible. It really showed their love and passion. I really just kind of wanted to work with them. Wicked Horror: The film began with a unique kickstarter campaign back in 2017. When and how did you get involved with it?   Nicholas Vince: Well, I’d met Stewart and Paul, in fact I’d first interviewed them for my YouTube show. And then we met at Fright Fest Film Festival, where they screened Book of Monsters, and then a few months later they just asked me to get involved in the kickstarter. I thought it was such a cool idea that if you contributed to the kickstarter, you got to choose deaths, you got to choose… death by dildo was one of my favorite choices [laughs] I thought it was just such a cool idea. And I remember talking to them when I was interviewing them, and again because they came on the show a second time, and I’d had the idea that they had the plot line and they’d just drop in the different deaths. But they explained to me that basically, depending on what was voted for, the plot would change. So it was kind of like “Build Your Own Adventure” for anyone who remembers those books, it’s just such a unique, original premise. So that’s really how I first got involved with it.  Wicked Horror: There’s been a kind of minor resurgence in horror comedy over the past few years. What do you think makes those two genres such a great pairing?   Nicholas Vince: Oh, that’s an interesting question. I often go back to Clive Barker, who says “You can’t have horror comedy, you either have horror, or you have comedy.” I’m not sure I agree with that. I do think… Vincent Price always said, about horror, “at least make it funny.” You should have some fun. Unrelenting torture porn style horror is really not my thing. Intelligent horror, something that asks me to think, and the best way to engage an audience is to have some humor. And having gory fun I think is just… fun, really. I mean, Scream is one of my favorite comedy/horrors. But that’s actually scary! The opening, “Do you like scary movies,” but it’s really quite funny as well. I think you can have them both. Has there been a resurgence? Yeah, possibly because there’s so much wrong with the world in real life, people are just after escapism, perhaps. Perhaps that’s why there’s been a resurgence. Wicked Horror: This is obviously a very effects-heavy, creature FX-heavy movie. You’ve of course acted under heavy makeup yourself. Has having played characters like Chatterer and Kinski changed the way you see these creatures in movies? Nicholas Vince: Oh, that’s a great question. Yeah, often I will sympathize with the actor. Initially, you look at the makeup and think, “Oh my God, I wonder how many hours they had to spend to get into that makeup.” How comfortable was it to wear, and so on. Doug Jones is the master of wearing this kind of thing, he’s just amazing at it, and I remember talking to him about it at a convention and he was saying, “Yeah, it’s tough. It’s really draining to do these roles.” So yeah, I probably do kind of sympathize with the actor immediately, rather than with the creature itself, perhaps. But then after awhile you suspend your disbelief and you concentrate on what it is that the actor is trying to portray and the soul of the person that they’re trying to portray. Wicked Horror: A couple years ago, I reviewed and was impressed with your debut short The Night Whispered, have you thought much about directing another short or possibly even a feature? Nicholas Vince: Since then, I’ve directed a couple of shorts. I’ve written and directed two shorts, Necessary Evils is one and Your Appraisal, is another. They’re going to be coming out fairly soon. To the kickstarter backers first and then they’re going to be made available more generally. In fact, Necessary Evils is going to be an extra on the DVD/Blu-ray for the horror anthology film, For We Are Many. I’ve got other things I really can’t talk about, and I can’t talk about them because they don’t exist yet, and other stuff I’m working on. But yes, I’d love to direct a feature film. Wicked Horror: Apart from Pinhead, Chatterer is the only character to really appear in nearly every Hellraiser installment in some form or another. What do you think it is about the character and that image that lends to that kind of longevity? Nicholas Vince: I think one of the powerful things about Chatterer is that A, unlike the Female Cenobite and unlike Pinhead, you can’t negotiate with Chatterer. The character in the first two films, there’s no reasoning with him. And there’s just the sound of those chattering teeth. There’s something very primal about that chattering image, like a scared monkey. You can’t negotiate with him and he’s the only one that physically attacks people in the first two movies. Apart from the flying chains and the hooks, Chatterer is the only one in the first movie who actually lays his hands on Kirsty or physically threatens people. I think it’s just the look. There have been versions of him, a dog if you like, other versions which Gary Tunniclife did in the later films. I think it’s just one of those things, it’s a powerful image.  Wicked Horror: We’ve also got the new Ultimate Cabal Cut of Nightbreed on the way as well. Considering the reaction at the time, how does it feel to see the way this film has been embraced and restored over the past few years?   Nicholas Vince: I think it’s wonderful. I’m really glad for Clive, more than anything else. I think Clive was so delighted with the director’s cut of it. I was lucky enough to be in Los Angeles when it was screened there, with Clive present. It really teed him up and I think he was incredibly happy and delighted. I know absolutely nothing about the new three-hour version. I think that means that then there will be four versions of the film, and I think that really does speak to the fact that people have taken it on in so many different ways. There’s comics and there’s—well, I was going to say figures but of course there aren’t any figures—but there’s a mask, there’s definitely a Kinski mask, there’s a Peloquin mask as well, you see Decker masks as well. The film has had many forms, so I think it’s just extraordinary. And I’m really lucky to have been a part of all of Clive’s work. Wicked Horror: Having been interviewed by horror nerds like me for so long, how has it been to be on the other side and get to interview so many of the genre’s best and rising talent on the YouTube show, Chattering With Nicholas Vince?   Nicholas Vince: That’s been a real delight! I think it’s kind of my way of paying forward some of the luck that I had in meeting Clive, in being involved with—I guess I said “all,” but some of his work I’ve been involved with—but I think it was just kind of my way of showing my gratitude and encouraging other people, I think Clive is one of the most intelligent and encouraging people you’re ever likely to meet. He always wants people to do very well, and I think that what I wanted to do when I started the show was just give people a wider audience in some cases, introduce people who are into Hellraiser and Nightbreed etc. to some of these really cool people I’ve had a chance to work with in the last few years. Or up-and-coming people, because it’s a tough business and what I love about horror fans and horror filmmakers is that they are really, really encouraging. It was my way, as I say, of paying it forward. And all of the love that I’ve received, I wanted to be able to share that, and I just got to talk with some really, really interesting people. I love talking to people and finding out their stories. Over the years I was doing the show, I was really lucky to meet some incredible people. Wicked Horror: And one of the things I’ve always admired about you is that your love and respect for the genre is kind of all-encompassing, in front of the camera, writing, directing and talking about horror, is there a particular form you enjoy best? Nicholas Vince: It’s always the one that I’m either doing at the moment or the one I’m not doing at the moment, depending on how well it’s going. If it’s going really well, then I love whatever I’m doing at the moment. Or if it’s not I’m thinking, “Why am I acting? I should be writing” or something else. I kind of enjoy all forms. I’ve been concentrating on the acting for the last few weeks, in terms of technique. I’m doing something called a “Self Tape Challenge,” which is 21 days of getting a script at 7 o’clock in the evening and having to deliver a self tape by 7 o’clock the following day. I’ve got day 18 to do tomorrow. I’m finding it really, really interesting. As far as I’m concerned, I mentioned earlier on that I’m really interested in intelligent horror. I watch an awful lot of other stuff as well, I watch an awful lot of crime shows, and so on. As long as horror, like any other art form, shows us something about the human condition, makes us feel something, helps us understand other people’s points of view. I have to say, one of my guilty pleasures I’ve discovered in the last few days is watching Queer Eye on Netflix. And that’s absolutely fascinating as well, as far as I’m concerned. Because there’s these five gay guys down in Georgia, you’ve got five gay guys with a Trump supporter. And it’s really interesting, the dynamics were very interesting. And to me, it’s a reality TV show and normally I’m not interested in reality TV, but I find it fascinating just because it ticks all of the boxes in terms of showing us something about the human condition, showing us something about people from different crowds, and showing us how people who are on totally different ends of the political spectrum can actually find some common ground. I find that very interesting. But I think what I like about horror particularly is that it’s people in extreme situations, and how do they deal with extreme situations? Now, obviously with horror it’s extreme fantasy situations. Mostly because that’s what I’m interested in, I like ghosts and the supernatural in my storytelling. Book of Monsters is now available on VOD/Blu-ray.

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New on Netflix: March 22nd, 2019

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Wicked Horror is the author of New on Netflix: March 22nd, 2019. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Welcome to New on Netflix, a feature here at Wicked Horror in which we provide the latest updates on what’s coming to the streaming service for the week. In recent times, Netflix’s shift in content has been interesting. While many fan-favorite movies and TV shows have been Netflix staples for the better part of a decade, they’ve been taken off the service with more frequency. Some of them return, some of them don’t, and while these are all simply the result of licensing deals that were already in place before these properties even hit the service, they do shed some light on the content provider’s new focus. Netflix is continuing to shift gears away from movies and TV shows owned by other studios or companies and is producing their own content with staggering frequency. As we continue to provide updates on what’s been added to the service, it will always be interesting to note the balance between original and licensed content being added to the Netflix library. With that in mind, here are the latest Netflix additions for the week of March 22nd, 2019. Green Door One of the more intriguing horror additions this month is the Taiwanese series Green Door. It centers on a psychologist opening his own clinic in which he meets many mysterious clients and encounters all manner of strange occurrences. It’s at the very least got me curious, and definitely seems worth the watch.

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Jordan Peele Does it Again with Us (Review)

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Wicked Horror is the author of Jordan Peele Does it Again with Us (Review). Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

In a famous interview with François Truffaut, Alfred  Hitchcock said, “Psycho has a very interesting construction, and that game with the audience was fascinating. I was directing the viewers. You might say I was playing them like an organ.” Jordan Peele’s first two feature films, 2017’s Get Out and this year’s Us are doing the same thing. Watching them in a crowded theater, it’s clear that Peele has audiences eating out of his hand. People laugh when he wants them to. The theater goes silent in moments of suspense. And when he decides it’s time, his viewers scream. Peele is taking a page from Hitchcock’s book (or would it be a frame from Hitchcock’s film?) in Us, using dopplegangers as Hitch did in Vertigo. These doubles — “the Tethered” — show up outside of Adelaide’s (Lupita Nyong’o) recently deceased mother’s beach house about 15 minutes into Us. They invade the home and sit face to face with their doubles. Adelaide’s, Red (also Lupita Nyong’o), handcuffs her to a table. Red’s voice cracks from lack of use as she explains, “We are America.” Then she sends Abraham to kill Adelaide’s husband Gabe (both Winston Duke), Umbrae to kill Adelaide’s daughter Zora (both Shahadi Wright Joseph), and finally Pluto to kill Jason (both Evan Alex). Every actor in the film had the same challenge: to play two characters. One, a modern day human. The other, a Tethered, which had to be embodied through gestures because with the exception of Red, they were non-verbal. Without an exception, the cast does phenomenal work. Oscar Winner Nyong’o does much of the emotional heavy-lifting while Adelaide deals with a childhood trauma and mourning her mother before flipping her hair down and exuding menace as Red. Winston rattles off pitch-perfect, cringe-inducing dad jokes as Gabe, before hulking onto screen as Abraham. Winston’s performance, like both of Peele’s features, mixes horror and humor in the perfect amounts. The jokes work because they’re organic to the film. No one breaks character to deliver a punchline. The dad jokes keep coming, but in moments that show us that they’re a way of coping rather than poking fun at the situation. All of that’s amplified by a pitch perfect soundtrack. Like Get Out, Us has a mix of pop songs that the characters themselves play, and the choral chanting mixed with bluegrass of Michael Abels. The juxtaposition is, intentionally, jarring. The effect sometimes adds to the discomfort, and at others disarms audiences (particularly with N.W.A.’s “F*ck the Police”). It’s one of the many ways that Peele manipulates audience reaction. Like I said in my review of Get Out two years ago, Peele makes great use of his inventory. So many of the details he works in early on seem meaningless, but actually shape the plot of the film. He’s pays attention to detail in the same way that led to James Cameron’s career skyrocketing in the 80s (which allowed him to make his not-so-good films later on). That is to say, the proverbial gun introduced in the first act goes off and Peele scatters more throughout the film. The other thing that separates Peele and Us from so many other mainstream films (and while you might make a case for Get Out being an underdog, Us’s trailer has 6 million views at the time of this writing, opening night) is the willingness to challenge viewers. There are icebox questions, another Hitchcock parallel, that this film makes no attempt to answer. And then there’s the symbolism of the Tethered. They could represent any number of things. The Tethered may be a visual of the way trauma splits people in two, who they were before and who they were after. It could be a metaphor for codeswitching or W.E.B. Du Bois’s double consciousness, the way Black Americans are forced to switch personalities when interacting with White Americans and Institutions. The Tethered could be a stand-in for the lives Americans create on social media, the way the person on Instagram or twitter is curated to be an elevated version of the person posting. The key may be the references to magical realism: Frida Khalo’s The Two Fridas or Julio Cortazar’s “Blow Up.” That ambiguity around the Tethered is what drives repeat viewings and the thousands of explanation articles that will no doubt be published in the coming days. I’ll be reading all of them.  Us is in theaters starting yesterday night, March 21st 2019. WICKED RATING: 9/10 Director: Jordan Peele Writers: Jordan Peele Stars: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elizabeth Moss Studio/ Production Co: Monkeypaw Prodcutions Release date: March 21st, 2019 Language: English Length: 114 min

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Horror Heroes Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer Team Up Again for Halloween-Themed Slasher Trick

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Wicked Horror is the author of Horror Heroes Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer Team Up Again for Halloween-Themed Slasher Trick. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

This week sees the beginning of production on upcoming Halloween-themed slasher Trick, the latest movie from director Patrick Lussier, in New York. Character actor Omar Epps is set to appear as the lead, Detective Mike Denver, in the flick. The role was previously slated for Dermot Mulroney. Epps’ Denver is a cop on the edge, obsessed with a serial killer who’s eluded him for many years. The actor’s 20-year career includes roles in House, Love & Basketball, and most recently the USA Network’s Shooter. Lussier will be well known to horror fans for helming the 2009 remake of My Bloody Valentine, as well as Dracula 2000, Drive Angry, and White Noise 2: The Light. The script for Trick, by he and Farmer, marks the duo’s third collaboration following My Bloody Valentine and Drive Angry. Lussier’s impressive career began working alongside the legendary, and dearly missed, Wes Craven on the Scream franchise, as well as Red Eye, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, and Vampire in Brooklyn. Farmer is beloved of horror fans thanks to his no-holds-barred revelations about how difficult his life in Hollywood has been, most notably in his devastating op-ed From Hollywood to Homeless, as well as his appearance on The Movie Crypt with Adam Green and Joe Lynch. The prolific screenwriter penned the likes of The Messengers, which starred Kristen Stewart, and cult hit Jason X, among many others. Trick is notable for re-teaming these two fan faves, as well as boasting a great hook, with the story centering on an elusive serial killer who hits a small town annually (around the spookiest season, reportedly), committing gruesome murders, all of which are seemingly unrelated. Although nobody seems to think it’s the same killer, Denver knows better, having faced the elusive Trick once before. Featuring alongside Epps as Denver are Ellen Adair (Homeland, Billions, The Sinner) as the sheriff of Benton, survivor Cheryl Winston (Blindspot’s Kristina Reyes), the last person to have seen Trick and who can possibly corroborate Denver’s theory, frequent George A. Romero collaborator Tom Atkins, and Scream vet Jamie Kennedy. Producer Ellen Wander stated enthusiastically, “We are thrilled to get into production with Omar and Patrick and can’t wait to have this film be seen by audiences everywhere.” Stay tuned to the site for more info on Trick as it becomes available.

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The Rabid Dog’s House: Critters (1986) Review

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Wicked Horror is the author of The Rabid Dog’s House: Critters (1986) Review. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

The Rabid Dog’s House is a new reoccurring feature here at Wicked Horror. WH contributor Justin Steele has created a video series for horror fans that enjoy watching and/or listening to reviews of all things horror. He will discuss an array of topics covering films, books, and television series. Check out the first episode below. In this installment  we’re looking back on Critters! In another part of the universe, a group of malevolent aliens escape capture by stealing a spaceship. These aliens are known as the Krites. They are small creatures that are a cross between porcupines and hedgehogs. The Krites are pursued by two bounty hunters (played by Terrence Mann and Jeremy Lawrence) as they head to Earth. On Earth, the run-of-the-mill Brown family are about to have their simple life turned upside down. Related: Check out Nat’s retrospective on why this film is a surprising but effective addition to the home invasion sub-genre! Critters is a 1986 science-fiction horror comedy directed by Stephen Herek. Filled with the kind of fun only the 1980s can provide, this feature is a mix of laughs and mild suspense. Horror heroine favorite, Dee Wallace, and former child actor, Scott Grimes, lead the cast of Critters through some hairy scares and fur ball frights. This cult-classic is an 80’s throwback to the Sci-fi flicks of the 1950’s and 60’s. Critters is for the horror fan that enjoys a solid mix of suspense and comedy. You can watch our full discussion of Critters on the first episode of The Rabid Dog’s House below:

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Terror Tropes: Trauma in Horror

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Wicked Horror is the author of Terror Tropes: Trauma in Horror. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Jack Burgos is a writer and mental health professional based in Tulsa Oklahoma. He earned his Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Tulsa in 2013. His first book, Stormborn: 13 Hearts to Start a Storm, tells the story of, Ash, a transgender magic-detective, who is tasked with killing the charismatic rocker Theo, who killed the heart of a city. It’s available from A Murder of Storytellers (where the author works with Burgos) now. Burgos sat down with us to discuss the way trauma is portrayed in horror films. Wicked Horror: This conversation started when I reached out to talk about The Possession of Hannah Grace, which ends (spoilers ahead) with the main character having her trauma cured by more trauma. When we asked if this was feasible, you said, “No,” but it’s become a trope ending, finishing horror films again and again. A character, who’s suffered trauma, goes through another equally bad or worse experience and leaves the film healed, or at least with a shot of them smiling as though the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is gone. Why doesn’t it work that way? Jack Burgos: I’d like to give you a little more nuanced answer than my previous one. The idea that the character is fine at the end of the movie is fine. The idea that the character will never have problems again as a result is wrong. The character can be fine now. That might be right. Today, the character might actually be smiling. One of the things I was thinking about is that PTSD is adaptive if you’re still suffering from trauma. WH: What does “adaptive” mean in this context? JB: It means it’s a healthy reaction to a situation that’s going on right now. I’ll give you an example: a child who was beaten regularly by an alcoholic parent might have a PTSD reaction where they respond to certain emotional cues that the parent gives off with withdrawal, which is a PTSD reaction. If the parent were healthy and were not aggressive and were not violent, this would be a bad reaction. You wouldn’t want to shy away from someone who’s supposed to provide love and comfort, but since this person is unpredictable, your brain is doing a good thing by telling you, “Stay away from this person,” “Walk on eggshells”  because at any moment this person could hurt you. WH: What about in horror films? JB: The state of being in shock because you’ve experienced a trauma lasts as long as the person needs it to, as long as the person needs it to to heal, physically at least.   There have been stories of people who’ve been so violently assaulted that they wind up being catatonic for a couple of days. For the most part, someone who’s suffered a trauma is fine afterwards. If you talk to a rape victim immediately after their rape, they’ll describe it in very surgical terms. They seem perfectly rational and reasonable about it. It’s very uncanny, because it gives the impression that nothing happened. Very often it leads untrained police officers to think that nothing has happened, which is actually why some rapes don’t get reported. So in terms of the horror movie, the person can actually seem happy at the end because they’re experiencing an endorphin and GABA rush of these two neurotransmitters that all release when you’re okay, after a bad situation. WH: So they’re on a survival high, but they’re going to crash? JB: Exactly. You get PTSD as the result of a trauma, and the “safer” you are afterwards, the more uncomfortable you become, the worse it is. This is why homeless people have a really hard time not being homeless. If you give them a house and you put them in all bills paid housing so all they have to do is get a job and put their life in order now then you might think, “They’ve got a house now and they can put their life in order.” But one of the things we find is that all the trauma they experienced while they were homeless makes their brain unable to function. It doesn’t deal with safety well. They wind up doing everything in their power to lose their housing and then lose their housing as a result. You also see this in trauma victims like POWs, who sleep under the bed or try to find other more constricted positions. They’re more comfortable being tied or restrained. The safer you are, the more uncomfortable you are. Your brain tells you something bad is going to happen. When you’re safe, you never know where it’s coming from. You’re always waiting for this bad thing to happen. So yes, they’re going to crash. WH: And the safer they are, the worse that crash will be. So in horror sequels — Ripley in Aliens for example — the protagonist often seem to feel happier, more alive in unsafe conditions. Does that happen to real people? JB: Sometimes, yes. There are a lot of people who actively seek out dangerous situations because of their PTSD. It helps them to feel more, I wouldn’t say “happy,” but more alive. WH: How do portrayals of trauma in films, book, television, and comics impact your patients who’ve suffered trauma? Does a bad portrayal of trauma harm someone who’s suffering from it? JB: It does. It teaches people to think of trauma in ways that it doesn’t work. Bad portrayals of trauma will show a person getting better after a movie full of drama and conversation because having an epiphany makes the person feel better. All of their symptoms are cured. That makes it seem too simple. They’re not wrong, but too simplistic. They leave out the components that we see that are less intuitive. When you miss those things that people see in real world it ends up with the example of the rape victim where the police officer says, “This person is being very clinical and claimed to survive the assault but they’re not reacting the way they would in a movie so it must not be real.” But it is. That’s actually exactly how it works. WH: Are there any examples of stories that do a good job of portraying trauma? JB: I really like the Marvel films and shows. The Punisher actually does a very good job. It portrays a lot of people with a lot of traumas who deal with it in very different ways. It’s interesting to see the various coping methods. Some are aggressive. Some are more demure and restrained. The Punisher is great. WH: Season 1 or season 2? JB: Both. Season 1 has the more clear example of the kids who’s struggling and actually digs himself a ditch to sleep in because he’s more comfortable waiting for someone to shoot him than he is sleeping comfortably in his own bed at home. WH: Is there anything else you’d want our readers to know about trauma? JB: If you know someone who’s been through a traumatic experience, be patient.

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Why From Dusk Till Dawn is Still Going Strong After More Than 20 Years

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Wicked Horror is the author of Why From Dusk Till Dawn is Still Going Strong After More Than 20 Years. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

More than twenty years ago, filmmakers Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino spun the vampire genre on its head with From Dusk Till Dawn. In that time, the film has only grown in popularity, having been reimagined as a TV series produced by Rodriguez. It’s not hard to see why it was so successful, though. The movie had a great script, a great director, and an excellent cast including George Clooney, Juliette Lewis, Harvey Keitel, Salma Hayek, and Danny Trejo. Not to mention a surprisingly chilling performance from Tarantino himself. The thing that’s always most impressed me about From Dusk Till Dawn compared to other vampire movies is the fact that for the first hour, it’s not a vampire movie. It’s not even horror for that first half. It’s just a very straightforward, Rodriguez and Tarantino-esque crime drama. The film is simply about two brothers trying to get to Mexico and the trouble they get into along the way. Then, halfway through, there’s a complete and total shift in tone, but it works because you’re already so invested in these characters. It’s almost impossible to pull off, but they make it seem somehow easy. Because the Gecko brothers, the family they’ve kidnapped, none of these people were expecting vampires to come along and ruin their day, either. More than that, one of the most brilliant things about From Dusk Till Dawn is that the bar is the safe haven they’re trying to reach. If gives you a sort of typical crime movie plot saying, “Okay, look, if we can do these things without getting caught, if we can get across the border, then we will get to the bar and everything will be fine.” There’s exposition that almost says exactly that, so that when they do reach the bar and have those few quiet minutes you actually feel a sense of relief. It’s set up in such a way that it makes you feel safe, because everything we’ve been taught from movies is that once you reach the destination, the threat is over. Of course, in From Dusk Till Dawn, once they reach the bar, that’s when the horror starts. It’s a simple concept when you think about it, but it works really well. Just about everything in this film is trying to be unconventional. Not only is it not structured like your typical horror movie, but these aren’t your typical vampires, either. The KNB crew did an amazing job creating all sorts of weird and memorable creatures, each one different from the last. While most vampire films adhere to the same general Eastern European/Germanic mythology, Rodriguez remains very true to form and makes a big change by basing his vampires off of Mexican and Central American folklore. There are some deviations from that, of course, but by and large these are Aztec vampires—just as the temple at the end of the movie reveals. Every time you think it’s going to turn left, From Dusk Till Dawn goes right and that’s just what makes it the cult classic it has become in the last two decades. One of the things that makes this style and tonal transition so easy to pull off is that the element of horror is there the whole time, it just doesn’t manifest itself in the form of vampires until halfway through. Even though the first act is very much an action/thriller, there’s a strong element of psychological horror in the form of Richie Gecko, played by Quentin Tarantino. Most of the time, when Tarantino shows up in his own material, his acting is less than stellar. Luckily, From Dusk Till Dawn is a perfect exception. It helps, of course, that this character is supposed to be flat and unresponsive to most things, because Richie is a violent psychopath. When he goes off the hinges, Tarantino’s natural, much angrier persona shines. One of the scariest moments in the film comes long before they even reach the bar, with Richie being left to keep an eye on the motel maid they’ve taken hostage when Seth goes out. He comes back, finds Richie sitting calmly on the bed—alone. There’s nothing nearly as explicit here as the violence we find later on in the movie. The horror here is accomplished through editing and cinematography. This subtle horror is very different from what we get later on, but crucial in setting everything up. Now, the fear doesn’t come out of nowhere. The vampires are an easier sell when we’ve seen moments of horror before them, and we reach that big reveal thinking that the only thing we have to worry about is Richie. In the hands of lesser filmmakers, From Dusk Till Dawn would be an absolute tonal mess. It required the perfect blend of action, horror and humor to pull it off with even the smallest bit of success. On paper, it’s not a movie that should work. But Rodriguez, Tarantino, the cast, the KNB crew, all the way down the line, they knew exactly what they were making. They all shared in that vision. And that, above all, is why we’re still talking about this film more than 20 years later.

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Who Will Voice Chucky in the Child’s Play Reboot?

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Wicked Horror is the author of Who Will Voice Chucky in the Child’s Play Reboot?. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Last month, we brought you the frankly underwhelming trailer for the upcoming Child’s Play reboot due later this year. After watching same, and perusing the flick’s IMDb page, one thing became abundantly clear — nobody seemed to be voicing, or even was listed as the voice of Chucky or, er, Buddi as he’s now known. Was this a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers? It seems not. Test screenings are currently taking place, leading to the leakage of some key details about the movie. If you’re not pushed about spoiling the thing, check out YouTubers Jimmy Champagne and 3C Films’ dissections HERE and HERE. We won’t ruin it, but suffice to say the most tantalising detail to be gleaned is that Orion have yet to cast the voice of Buddi. At the moment, the killer doll is voiced by the head of animatronics. Orion is apparently courting an A-list actor (no word yet on whether they’re looking for an adult or a kid, so Jaeden Liberher or Finn Wolfhard may yet take the mantle) to take the place of series stalwart Brad Dourif who, along with Chucky creator Don Mancini, is not involved with the upcoming movie and not happy about it either. Separately to the upcoming film, ancini is working on a Chucky TV series for SyFy. Appearing on the Flickering Myth podcast towards the end of last year, Mancini had some choice words for the reboot and those behind it. He admitted to feeling hurt, particularly considering Chucky is still in pretty good health. You know, I had just done two movies…forgive me if I sound defensive, [they] were both at 83 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Even though they didn’t get theatrical releases, they were well regarded. And I did create the character and nurture the franchise for three f*****g decades Mancini revealed he did not sign off on the new film, and both he and producer David Kirschner refused to executive produce it themselves, when asked. We have our ongoing thriving business with Chucky… The producers of that movie are the producers of It. How would they feel if there was some legal loophole that allowed David Kirschner and I to swoop in and make our own It movie with our own version of Pennywise and say, ‘Hey guys, we would love to put your names on it?’ I imagine they wouldn’t like it Mancini went on to explain that it’s not about the money, but rather how personal Chucky is to him, and how Child’s Play 2019 might negatively affect his ability to revisit the killer doll on the big screen in future. Echoing his sentiments, the legendary Jennifer Tilly, who features in the movies both as herself as well as voicing Chucky’s paramour Tiffany, took to Twitter to express her displeasure. From Orion Pictures, Child’s Play 2019 is billed as a “contemporary re-imagining” of the original film, whatever the hell that means. It follows Aubrey Plaza’s single mother, who gifts her young son (played by Gabriel Bateman) a Buddi doll, which is basically an A.I. toy with murderous intentions. So no voodoo, no serial killer soul, no Chucky essentially. The flick is directed by Norwegian filmmaker Lars Klevberg (Polaroid) from a script by Tyler Burton Smith. Bryan Tyree Henry co-stars. Child’s Play boasts some heavy-hitter producers too, in the form of Seth Grahamhe-Smith and David Katzenberg, who produced the brilliant IT movie adaptation. Child’s Play hits theaters on June 21, 2019. We’ll keep you updated as the date draws closer. Child’s Play hits theaters on June 21, 2019. We’ll keep you updated as the date draws closer.

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Jump Scares: Cheap Thrills or Legitimate Chills?

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Wicked Horror is the author of Jump Scares: Cheap Thrills or Legitimate Chills?. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

If there is one fight worth having about horror in 2019, it’s in regard to jump scares. They are quite possibly the most divisive trope in the horror filmmaker’s repertoire. Sometimes called “cheap”, “easy,” or “annoying,” jump scares are down-right loathed or avoided by an increasingly vocal subset of horror fans. If you troll the haunted message boards of the  Internet looking for discussions about on-screen blood, murder, and mayhem like I do, you may have noticed a tendency for posters to gate-keep the genre–referring to jump scares and apologists of the tactic as childish.  I’ve seen posts like this at r/horror honestly as long as I’ve been checking out that subreddit (dating back to at least 2013). But I noticed an uptick in early 2018. It’s hard to tell exactly why a certain sentiment or popular opinion regarding a community can take hold at a certain time. With that in mind, I’ve set out to explore the full-throated jump scare hate, and determine if it’s truly a recent, trendy problem like some Internet commenters seem to think. Well, if you checked that link out, you know the answer isn’t very simple. According to wheresthejump.com there has been “a gradual increase in the frequency of jump scares with a spike occurring during the 1980s.” However, according to that same table, “…the number of jump scares per movie seems to have leveled off at around 10 per movie.” There are more jump scares in modern movies. But since 2000, the number has really only fluctuated between 8.4 and 10.2 JSPM (Jump Scares Per Movie). So I guess it isn’t really a modern convention of horror. Which begs the question: is there a seminal horror movie jump scare?  I’m sure there are some film aficionados much smarter and better dressed than me who would point to early films like George Albert Smith’s The Haunted Castle (1896) as one of the earliest instances of a jump scare in a horror movie. I tend to disagree for 2 reasons: I wouldn’t really call the film a horror movie, and… The scene in question most likely scared audiences at the time with visuals showing up without much warning, but that alone does not a jump scare make. I don’t know, watch the whole thing and tell me what you think. I’ll entertain an argument for The Haunted Castle to be considered a horror movie, but I don’t think I can get to the point where I consider the simple appearance of something a jump scare. Which probably means we need to define exactly what a jump scare is. I could look this up and find some very boring definition that overstates what is most likely obvious to every horror nut already. You know it when you see it: A jump scare is an abrupt sound and action cue coming in the middle of, or directly after, a scene of rising tension.   With that in mind… what could be the first jump scare? Seems to me, like so many other firsts in the genre, the first jump scare shows up in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960s thriller, Psycho. One could make a case for either the infamous shower murder of Marion featuring that deliciously discordant score, or, if that scene is too telegraphed for jump scare purists, the murder of Arborgast, which features barely any hint of the violence about to jump off.  But why has this discussion seemed to ramp up so much in the past year or so online? My guess is the recent popularity of A24 films such as The VVitch, It Comes at Night, and Hereditary. All three films were well received by critics and horror fans, with mature, subdued approaches to the genre in stark contrast to the frights of the scare-a-minute style style of Final Destination, Paranormal Activity, or the modern slasher and zombie movie remakes.  This alternative way of frightening audiences, coupled with the basic fact that if you jump at a jump scare you have in some way lost to the filmmaker, goes a long way towards explaining the recent conversation around the trope. It doesn’t so much feel like the director has earned the reaction from you. It’s more like you were tricked. Fans don’t like that a lot of times. They want their films to execute on all the unique aspects of horror films that make them love the genre, and then, by that unique combination of expectation, surprise, and skill, s**t their pants in public. Speaking of pants s**tting… that scene in The Haunting of Hill House. You know the one. It’s an example of a jump scare done right–and I don’t think even the most hard-line jump scare critics would go so far as to disagree that, when done right, the genre convention can be deliciously entertaining.  But is there a best jump scare of all time? I wracked my brain and I thought of a moment in Saw involving a camera flash, that one scene from Signs, and the tv scene from The Ring. Without analyzing my choices too much it seems like all three utilize secondary views through televisions and cameras, characters showing up where they are not expected, and poor lighting or visibility. I may be on to something. Doing a bit of quick research I found a survey on Ranker.com with 20,000 votes and 5,000 voters who, in their twisted wisdom (I call that for a band name), agreed that the hand clapping scene from The Conjuring was the “all-time best jump scare in horror movies.” Seems pretty definitive to me. Definitely jives with my poor lighting and visibility angle. But Ranker and I might be completely off base, let us know what you think. Jump scares may not be the most elegant way to go about entertaining your audience. They play to a more primal place in viewers than I I think we like to admit. There isn’t any sort of intellectual or emotional horror going on. There is no empathy to a jump scare. You don’t need to put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist, or have a delicate combination of lighting and music set the stage for the perfect horrifying moment. It’s much more base than that. It’s heart racing, cold sweaty palms, screams, and defensive postures. All some sort of lizard brain mechanisms to keep us safe from what stalks moors in the night. So it stands to reason we don’t like that feeling when it gets us. And maybe it is the mark of a lazy filmmaker who only uses these tactics to get a reaction from their audience. Jump scares aren’t, however, completely devoid of value. They have been used to some degree since filmmakers first attempted to scare another human being. There is something to be said for the careful, cerebral treatment horror has gotten from the variety of slower-paced, more societally-focused films we’ve seen in the last half-decade. But think back to some of the iconic moments in your horror memories. The moments in film that kept you up at night. The scenes you talked about the next day in class–other children crowded around you at the lunch table. How many of those times were jump scares involved? How many of those scares got you into horror in the first place? For more scary moments from your childhood, see: Traumatizing Moments From Kids Movies That Feel Straight From a Horror Film

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Latest Three From Hell Shot Shows Otis Locked Up

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Wicked Horror is the author of Latest Three From Hell Shot Shows Otis Locked Up. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Three From Hell still doesn’t have a release date or a trailer, but fear not because Rob Zombie has gifted us with yet another glimpse at the upcoming flick. Maybe if we gather them all together we can create our own trailer. Three From Hell is due to drop…some time this year. It’s definitely finished, as the man himself has confirmed, with the edit currently being done as we speak. The movie is set to close out the trilogy started with 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses. The Firefly family (Bill Mosley, Sheri Moon Zombie, and Sid Haig) are all slated to return, in spite of having been gunned down in The Devil’s Rejects (er, spoiler?). Joining them will be a whole host of bizarro guest stars including Chaz Bono, Barry Bostwick, and, as we reported just last week, Jossaro Jinaro whose character, last time we saw her, was running from the Fireflies while wearing somebody else’s face. This latest glimpse at the film finds Moseley’s Otis sitting in what looks to be a prison cell. Rather than being despondent, he’s happily listening to the radio while drying some washing on a makeshift clothesline (since when is Otis clean?). The pic doesn’t really tell us much but it’s something to latch onto while we wait for the movie to drop. Check it out below. Alongside the black-and-white shot, Zombie wrote tantalizingly, “Otis may be spending his days behind bars but at least he’s still got his music. #freethethree.” From what we can gather, Three From Hell sees the murderous trio put on trial for their crimes. And, judging by this latest shot, they might even end up imprisoned for a time. Of course, this is just conjecture. Fans have suggested the whole thing might be a supernatural return-from-the-dead style take, which would be fun too (and not completely outside Zombie’s wheelhouse given the trippy Halloween 2). Starring alongside the Fireflies are Emilio Rivera, Danny Trejo, Kevin Jackson, Wade Williams, Zombie stand-in Jeff Daniel Phillips, Pancho Moler, Daniel Roebuck, David Ury, Sean Whalen, Austin Stoker, Lords of Salem‘s Dee Wallace, 31‘s Richard Brake, Bill Oberst Jr., Dot-Marie Jones, and Tom Papa. Stay tuned to Wicked Horror for more info on Three From Hell as Zombie drip-feeds it to us.

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Not Quite Horror: You, Season 1 (2018)

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Wicked Horror is the author of Not Quite Horror: You, Season 1 (2018). Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Not Quite Horror is back from the dead. After resting for a bit in its kind-of creepy but still-normal-enough-to-pass-as-regular crypt, our biweekly series returns. In each installment, Joey Keogh will argue why a chosen film not generally classified as horror actually exhibits many of the qualities of a great flight flick, and therefore deserves the attention of fans as an example of Not Quite Horror. This week, it’s Netflix’s stylish stalker series, You. N​etflix’s You generated major controversy primarily with regard to certain viewers’ obsession with Penn Badgley’s dishy stalker, Joe. ​Personally, I didn’t really understand the hoopla. Although Badgley is considerably less irritating here than in Gossip Girl (give me strength), he’s skinny and wide-eyed and…odd. There’s a predatory slavishness to how he watches Elizabeth Lail’s Beck. He stands outside her apartment and wanks. He isn’t attractive, he’s creepy. Still, it makes sense to cast someone like Badgley in this kind of role rather than, say, a Caleb Landry Jones (who I adore and would happily watch in anything, don’t get me wrong), the mere sight of whom would send most normal women running for the hills. Joe has to be somewhat conventionally good looking in order to explain why Beck is such a dumbass about him, and why she ultimately falls victim to his charms. You has been on Netflix for a while so if you haven’t binged it yet, there’s probably a reason. It’s not the kind of series one really recommends to friends, although it’s obviously been a major water-cooler topic the past few months, both figuratively and literally speaking. Horror fans will be impressed by just how gory the series gets, particularly considering someone is badly beaten up right off the bat with a blunt object and then locked in a cage. Sure, the thing makes little to no sense and most of the episodes flit by in a haze of “huh?” meaninglessness. Each bizarre revelation makes the story even less plausible and yet you keep watching in the hopes it will all eventually make sense. It doesn’t, but there’s enough dark insanity to enjoy that the denouement isn’t a deal-breaker. But, to the series credit, it does stick the landing. Lail and Badgeley are both fine in the lead roles but the real standout character is Pretty Little Liars star Shay Mitchell as the diabolical Peach, a scheming socialite who’s more than a match for Joe and just as infatuated with Beck, if not more so. That she isn’t allowed to be the true antihero of the series is a real shame, but no matter, she gets the best outfits, the best lines, and the most shocking end (that’s not really a spoiler, just prepare yourself). You has that same sheen to it that Leighton Meester’s (another Gossip Girl alum) Single White Female redux, The Roommate, had in that it exists in a world (in this case, New York City) practically nobody on Earth will recognise, but that you enjoy spending time in regardless. This is a world of popular bookshops and bottomless cocktails and stunning country homes where even the supposedly poorest character lives in a massive apartment. It also boasts an idea of stalking, coercion, and manipulation that clearly resonates with certain (female) viewers in a way that’s slightly worrying. Is Badgley’s character attractive because he’s so obsessed with Beck? Is he more or less of a jerk than her on-off boyfriend who rolls up for a shag and then quickly exits once it’s all over? You isn’t really interested in answering these questions. It presents the thesis and lets us make up our own minds. The show also features up-and-coming trans actress Hari Nef (Assassination Nation) as a snobby character whose trans-ness has absolutely no bearing on anything she does. It’s a refreshingly progressive take that shouldn’t be discounted just because the show around it is slightly dodgy. Regardless, if you’re looking for a darker binge-worthy show, you could do a lot worse than You.

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Story Within a Story: Why the Structured Narrative of Candyman Works so Well

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Wicked Horror is the author of Story Within a Story: Why the Structured Narrative of Candyman Works so Well. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Candyman is, without a doubt, one of the best horror films of the 1990’s. This was a decade in which horror was constantly questioning and trying to redefine itself. What had worked in the 1980’s? What hadn’t worked? This sort of questioning ended up actually being what defined the genre in that decade, truly giving birth to the age of the meta horror on film. Scream was notorious for this and, appropriately, also became the decade’s most famous work of horror. New Nightmare also did it in a more subversive manner. While it’s become fairly well regarded as a classic, Candyman doesn’t get nearly enough credit for being as perfectly metafictional as it is. This goes back to the short story on which it’s based, Clive Barker’s “The Forbidden.” Inherently, it’s a story about the power of stories. Why they exist and the power they have on their own. In the short story, Helen is exploring the urban neighborhoods of London doing a project on graffiti, hearing the local urban myth of the Candyman, a hook-handed boogeyman. Like any adaptation, there are changes. But this is one of the rare cases where every single one of those changes is brilliant. It’s now set in Chicago, in Cabrini Green. Helen is working on a thesis on urban mythology. The Candyman is not only a hook-handed boogeyman, but one who can be summoned by saying his name five times in a mirror, and now has an added tragic backstory. These things are not forced. They cement Candyman as what it is: A film about urban legends. The narrative of Candyman is so great because it looks so simple at the onset, but it’s not. Because it raises questions. Is the Candyman’s backstory true? Does the Candyman even really exist? Did his story get told enough times that he actually became real? And, if the Candyman is only real because the stories are so wholly believed, would that mean Helen isn’t real? Is this a woman’s descent into madness, or just another urban legend being told and retold? There are so many different ways to read this one film, it’s staggering. Both Cive Barker and director Bernard Rose have to be congratulated for that. Sure, as the franchise goes on it becomes more straightforward, the Candyman’s backstory is exactly the backstory that was given, but that doesn’t affect the way one can read the first film. At its core, it’s a story about the power of stories. It’s about the power of urban legends, it’s about why we need them and why they are told so many times, over and over again. And there’s a romance to it as well.  The great thing about the Candyman as a character is how it feels almost autobiographical for the filmmakers themselves. Candyman is so romantic, what he says is so alluring because he represents the passion for stories that his creators have. Of course, Helen Lyle is the audience’s focal point. She’s the person in over her head, the character everyone can attach themselves to and relate to. Everything is getting worse and worse for her throughout the film. The Candyman’s motive is so interesting and does so much to set him apart from other villains. The thing that drives the Candyman narrative is that he wants Helen to die. Which is what all monsters want. But he wants her to die so that she will be a story like him. He wants to turn her into an urban legend. Which seems like it would be a very short movie, but the brilliant thing is that he doesn’t want an unwilling victim. He doesn’t want to kill her until she wants to die. This kind of makes Candyman the storyteller in many ways. He is the writer manipulating her life, the narrative, until death is basically her only option. It’s her way out. He wants to wait until he’s actually appealing to her. All of these elements go into making Candyman one of the best horror movies of the 1990’s and one of the most underrated meta-horror pictures of all time. Bernard Rose turned down the opportunity to direct the second film, which would have been based on Barker’s “Midnight Meat Train” in order to do his excellent Beethoven piece Immortal Beloved with Gary Oldman. Which makes Candyman another excellent entry in a great career from not only Rose, but obviously Barker as well. Will the upcoming Jordan Peele produced reboot/spiritual sequel do justice to its predecessor? Only time will tell. But with a talented creative team already on board, we are hopeful.

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Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone Adds Two New Cast-members

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Wicked Horror is the author of Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone Adds Two New Cast-members. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Get Out director Jordan Peele’s highly-anticipated follow-up to his Oscar-winning horror movie, Us, is due out in just a couple of weeks. But the busy filmmaker is making another foray into the world of horror with his reboot of the hit anthology series The Twilight Zone, due…just after that. And, in keeping with Peele’s skill for casting great actors, his cast-list is swelling to epic proportions. The Peele produced and hosted Twilight Zone reboot drops on CBS All Access on April 1st with two brand-new episodes right off the bat. Details are scant about both, naturally, but the cast is loaded with big name stars including Taissa Farmiga, Seth Rogen, Greg Kinnear, Kumail Nanjiani, Adam Scott, Jessica Williams, Ike Barinholtz, and Steven Yeun. Now, Deadline reports that joining them will be Get Out‘s own Betty Gabriel and Deadpool 2 breakout Zazie Beatz. Both are slated to appear in an early episode of the rebooted series, which is being produced by CBS Television Studios alongside Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and Simon Kinberg’s Genre Films. The original Twilight Zone, created and hosted by Rod Serling, ran on CBS from 1959 to 1964, comprising a 156 episode run. The hit show, a mixture of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, featured Serling essentially playing its mascot as the executive producer and writer of the majority of episodes. Peele will be stepping into his shoes introducing each episode and, reportedly, delivering monologues at the close too. Little is known about the mysterious series as of yet, but suffice to say with Peele helming the thing and a whole host of interesting actors set to feature, our interest has been suitably piqued. Stay tuned to the site for more info on the show in the coming weeks.

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New on Netflix: March 8th, 2019

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Wicked Horror is the author of New on Netflix: March 8th, 2019. Wicked Horror is the internet's only horror fan site for free original horror movies, news, review & more.

Welcome to New on Netflix, a feature here at Wicked Horror in which we provide the latest updates on what’s coming to the streaming service for the week. In recent times, Netflix’s shift in content has been interesting. While many fan-favorite movies and TV shows have been Netflix staples for the better part of a decade, they’ve been taken off the service with more frequency. Some of them return, some of them don’t, and while these are all simply the result of licensing deals that were already in place before these properties even hit the service, they do shed some light on the content provider’s new focus. Netflix is continuing to shift gears away from movies and TV shows owned by other studios or companies and is producing their own content with staggering frequency. As we continue to provide updates on what’s been added to the service, it will always be interesting to note the balance between original and licensed content being added to the Netflix library. With that in mind, here are the latest Netflix additions for the week of March 8th, 2019. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street  Tim Burton’s 2007 adaptation of the hit musical (itself based on a longstanding London legend) is not often spoken of as one of the director’s best, but it’s very much a Burton film boasting all of his usual flair. The music is great and Alan Rickman in particular gives an underrated performance. 

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