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Horror Pride Month: Dan Hass’s ‘Magic H8 Ball’ Hits Vimeo this Week

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Magic H8 Ball

There are break-ups…and then there are break-ups when you find out your ex-boyfriend mixed a little low-key chlamydia into the bargain. That’s what happens to poor Adam in Dan Hass’s dark horror/comedy short film Magic H8 Ball.

As the film opens, Adam (Nathan Mohebbi) pays a visit to his local clinic. When the doctor informs him he has chlamydia, Adam obviously goes through a torrent of emotions until he discovers a very special Magic 8 Ball.

This isn’t your garden variety toy from Walmart, however. This 8 Ball has a sinister edge, and Adam soon finds himself following its instructions to the letter.

Steal a bicycle? Sure! Eat a ton of junk food? Absolutely. Go make a scene at your ex’s house? We’re there! Kill your ex? Wait…what?

I mean, we’ve all been there, right?

“The film was kind of born out of that awkward Sunday morning visit to the clinic that gay men make a lot more often that straight people do,” Hass told me. “And you’re sitting there and you try not to make eye contact. And you all kind of know that you’re there for the same reason, but it’s still slightly uncomfortable.”

WARNING: SHORT PSA AHEAD!

The feeling certainly resonates for a lot of the queer people I know. Especially after the initial onset of the AIDS crisis in the 80s, we’ve learned to pay attention to our bodies and make those regular visits.

It’s a lesson, quite frankly, that the straight male community could learn from us. As recently as 2017, the CDC reported that the most commonly treated demographic for chlamydia, the most commonly diagnosed STD, is straight women at 45% of reported cases. Gay men follow behind that demographic in second, and men who identify as bisexual in the third.

It doesn’t take a degree in math to recognize that a small portion of bisexual men are infecting 800,000 women per year, and if there was anything we can pass along to our straight brothers across the aisle, it’s that testing saves lives and improves overall health.

This lack of testing seems to fall back to government regulations and recommendations. It will surprise hardly anyone at all that the CDC and other government agencies have rarely put forth protocols for recommending asymptomatic straight men be tested for most STDs unless they are or have been in prison with the assumption that they of course came into sexual contact with other men while incarcerated.

This has further stigmatized the queer community, with a government sponsored cloud that hangs over us that we are somehow dirtier or more prone to disease. The fact is that we are more prone to being diagnosed with STDs or STIs and that is because we more actively have ourselves tested.

But let’s get back to Magic H8 Ball.

“With the Magic 8 Ball, it’s all about asking questions and getting answer,” Hass continued. “When you’re in the situation that Adam’s in, nothing can give you those answers really. It’s time to look at yourself and figure your shit out. He wasn’t ready to look that deep so it feel on this toy that’s supposed to magically answer your questions to force him to look at himself and deal with his emotions.”

Hass, a 20-something Associate Creative Director at Viacom, worked with an almost exclusively LGBTQ cast and crew in creating Magic H8 Ball, and it’s one of the best dark comedies I’ve seen in a long time. His comedic timing is on point, and he isn’t afraid to shine a light on some of the darker parts of our Id in the film’s exploration.

Magic H8 Ball is available now on Vimeo. You can see it by clicking here! Hass also says that it will be available on YouTube in the next couple of weeks!

For more great queer short horror films, check out these titles!

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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