Weekly Horror Round up - Saturday 9th May

It’s Saturday which means Bradley Hadcroft delivers another week of macabre in our Weekly Horror Round up with Zombieroos to Voodoo magic…

– Waterbourne

Zombeaver fan’s got exited this week with the introduction of the Zombieroo into the ever expanding horror menagerie.This new marsupial based entry into the zombie animal sub – genre arrives courtesy of a short film doing the festival rounds.It takes the form of a profile raising prequel with an infected eye on becoming a full feature.All you need to know about this puss oozing pouch dweller is here at the movies official site.

– IT

Cary Fukunaga is the latest director to follow the ongoing trend of casting talent drawn from British TV.This week he took the phenomenal risk of casting 22 year old Will Poulter(School of comedy) as child killer Pennywise.The book portrays the evil entity as middle aged so one can only guess that the youngster gave an amazing audition.Look out for more Poulter in next years intriguingly titled Brain on Fire.

– Altars of Synthness

Free to listen to here this compilation could easily be the soundtrack for an unmade horror pastiche and is what John Carpenter would sound like if he toured seaside hotels full of retired metal heads.How can you resist gems like Genital Grinder II and a 5 second Napalm Death cover by Hydraulic Anus.Someone please make a film to go with this.

– L.A. Film festival

This high profile festival announced it’s newly christened Nightfall line-up filled with some truly original content and an impressive array of world premieres.Here is a full dissection of the selections many of which should immediately begin flashing wildly on your horror radar.

The synopsis for each film comes directly from the annoyingly hard to find festival program allied with trailers where i could hunt them down:

Caught

“Allie is a dimpled American teen – friendly, hardworking and involved in a secret relationship with a hot older man. Unfortunately, her clandestine beau is married. Even worse, he’s married to Sabrina, a beautiful but wild-eyed suburban housewife who will do literally anything to keep her marriage intact – including kidnapping Allie at knifepoint and keeping her tied to a chair in the attic of her gorgeously decorated home.

Bold and delicious like female-driven, teeth-gnashing dramas of yore – but with more blood and bone – Caught is an exciting departure for director Maggie Kiley, who escalates the tension while ratcheting up the madness. Marital truths and schoolgirl crushes are rarely given this kind of treatment, where camp crashes gleefully into serious suspense.”

The Confines

“A struggling single mother, Julia takes a security job working nights at an abandoned apartment building in a last ditch effort to get her life together. As she patrols the hollow and vast superstructure, her scurrilous on-duty partner and a local vagrant begin toying with her, testing her sanity and eventually forcing her into the rotting catacombs below the building. Making his directorial debut, Eytan Rockway deftly constructs a tense, claustrophobic thriller that blurs the lines between illness and reality to mirror the traumatized psyche of the protagonist.”

Crumbs

“After decades of lying dormant, a mothership awakens in the horizon. Resolved to board the ship, an unlikely hero embarks on an otherworldly adventure across a surreal, post-apocalyptic Ethiopian landscape. Pop cultural artifacts of our present society take on new value as oddities floating in space are traded as antiquities in a bizarre storefront. With his directorial debut, Miguel Llansó, a Spanish filmmaker based in Ethiopia, has created a mystical and romantic journey for which there is no destination.”

The whole thing is as totally insane as you would expect Ethiopia’s first Sc-Fi movie to be.

Crush the Skull

“Ollie and Blair earn a dishonest living by robbing upper class homes. They decide to pull one last job but it takes a turn for the worse when they find themselves trapped inside the house. As they explore, they discover that this seemingly innocuous home is actually a sadistic torture den: a mind-screwing maze with an unseen killer separating them from one another and stalking them from the shadows.
First time feature director Viet Nguyen builds on the hybrid tone he mastered with his award-winning shorts, creating an entirely new genre: master thieves versus serial killer. Clever, gruesome and hilarious, Crush the Skull is fast-paced fun that winks at the audience but never insults its intelligence.”

Here is the original short film :

Dude Bro Party Massacre 3

“Yes, it’s back—the most notorious slasher flick that never existed! Unearthed from the golden age of 1980s teen horror movies, the third installment of the Dude Bro Party Massacre franchise leaps to the screen in all its lurid glory. Dorky loner Brent Chirino must infiltrate the hard-partying Delta Bi Theta fraternity to solve the brutal murder of his identical twin brother. In an abandoned sorority house beside a secluded lake (where else?) an unseen killer strikes with increasingly gruesome methods. Has the insanely sadistic “Motherface” returned from beyond the grave? This pitch-perfect recreation of the “boobs and blood” teen movie subgenre is a gift to those of us who fondly remember nights huddled in front of the tube watching the films our parents warned us about.”

We have featured this movie in a previous trailer watch but here it is in case you missed it :

Six Year Plan

“Juan and Mercedes use their makeshift generator to keep their housewarming party going after curfew. A cop arrives to break up the rowdy noise, warning them about the unsafe neighborhood and offering protection—for a fee. The unexpected proposition causes tension between the couple and when a mysterious stalker begins to prowl they’re helpless against an increasingly bizarre and suspenseful siege.

With this uncanny genre film shot guerilla-style on 16mm, Santiago Cendejas offers a subversive allegory about the disguised face of corruption. Six Year Plan displays Cendejas’ distinct voice and perspective, injecting his first feature with a deeply unsettling fear and distrust of the familiar.”

Ratter

“As Emma settles into graduate studies in New York City, the audience observes her life through the intimate POV of her laptop, cell phone, and other web-connected devices. But we aren’t the only ones watching her: someone has hacked into these feeds, capturing her every move and most personal moments. As her stalker becomes increasingly obsessive, Emma begins to fear she’s being watched, failing to realize that the threat is coming from the everyday technology around her.
First time director Branden Kramer takes advantage of modern culture’s reliance on technology in this suspenser that may cause you to start counting just how many cameras surround you when you think you are alone.”

Shut In

“Anna and her older brother share co-dependent lives in their time-worn childhood home. But when her brother passes away, Anna must face her crippling agoraphobia to save herself from a trio of criminals who invade her home. A deadly cat-and-mouse game ensues as the intruders discover the house is not what it first appeared to be. LA Film Fest veterans Adam Schindler and Brian Netto (Delivery: The Beast Within) return to the Festival with a home invasion narrative that explores the detrimental effects of anxiety and trauma and twists it into something truly unexpected.”

– Horror auction of the week

Rob Zombie know’s every body should have the chance to own a pig mask equivalent of the little black dress.Used in the last scene of The Lords of Salem make your play for this years essential porcine prosthetic here.

Trailer Watch:

– The Human Centipede Part 3

The full trailer for the full sequence goes full on disgusting along with glimpses of hitherto unparalleled levels of self reference with director Tom Six himself getting some serious screen time.If you need to be told this is NSFW then you really don’t need to see it at all.

– Siccin 2

Alper Mestçi(Sabit Kanca) is a director that has been threatening to break out for some time now having been responsible for some excellent but little seen genre pictures.This terrifyingly violent new trailer for the Turk’s latest film could light the blue touch paper in terms of his career if it receives the attention of festival programmers.The finale of this promo provides the most disturbing horror image of the year so far so strap your cinematic blast vest on.

– JeruZalem

The horror scene would be better served by filmmakers taking random passages from the bible as their source material rather than churning out seemingly random remakes.From Israel the Paz brothers(Phobidilia) do just that and bring us a tale of tourists versus biblical wrath with a trailer that promises plenty of frights.

Stunning actress Yael Grobglas stars as she stakes her claim as the number one Israeli scream queen having also appeared in the shrewd and imaginative Kalvet(Rabies).

– The Transparent Woman

Horror’s current fascination for all things Italian shows no sign of dissipation with yet another Neo Giallo thriller posting it’s trailer online this week.M International Films(Phantasmagoria) take the same lesser trodden path into eroticism as Peter Strickland(Berberian Sound Studio)but i doubt very much if it will arrive in the same deranged clearing as his utterly fantastic Duke of Burgundy.

– Anarchy Parlour

Deadline Hollywood ran an exclusive look at the trailer for this nasty looking torture porn movie along with this synopsis :

“Ink and blood mix and flow in the horror feature from writer-directors Devon Downs and Kenny Gage. The hulking tatster known simply as The Artist (Robert LaSardo) and his comely assistant (Sara Fabel) lure a group of lusty, partying American vacationers to their shop in Lithuania. Once there, the parlor games begin in earnest. Suffice it to say, the Artist doesn’t specialize in those cutesy band-around-the-bicep tattoos.”

Blu-ray release of the week

Wes Craven(Scream) took a late 80’s career detour into the terrifying world of voodoo with this intelligent and underrated chiller brought to you this week by Fabulous Films.

Wade Davis was voted the explorer of the millennium by the National Geographic Society and it’s his book of the same that gave birth to The Serpent and the Rainbow.Wade’s much criticised research was into zombification in the Caribbean country of Haiti and in particular it’s relationship with the nerve inhibitor Tetrodoxin.

Such prestigious source material is not wasted on Craven as he treats it with the gravitas it demands and ratchets up the tension coaxing a career defining performance from Bill Pullman(Independence Day) along the way.

Often praised for being as close as Hollywood has ever gotten to a serious depiction of voodoo it could also be described as the closest Craven has ever gotten to a serious Horror film.

This film deserves more love and attention and you can get your copy here.

Don’t let them bury me ……….. I’m NOT DEAD !!!!!