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Horror Short Film Review: Unwelcome (Starring Victor Miller)

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Unwelcome is a 2014 short film written and directed by Nathan Erdel, the guy who’s writing the script for Headless (based on the movie-within-a-movie in Found, which just got a DVD release date). The basic premise is this: “A young couple move into a new home, only to realize that they are not alone.”

Things start happening in the house that each character assumes the other is responsible for, and ultimately create tension in the couple’s relationship. At first, you might suspect that it’s going to be some kind of generic haunted house or Paranormal Activity-like story (don’t worry, it’s not presented as found footage), but as it progresses, it shoots down that notion entirely in a genuinely and refreshingly creepy way.

It’s a very small indie production, but the actors hold their own, making for a believable ordinary couple still trying to figure out if they really belong together.

Oh, and did I mention it has Victor Miller in it? Yes, the man who wrote the original Friday the 13th. He appears as Uncle Ghastly, a cheesy local TV horror host in the style of all those documented in American Scary.

 

Unwelcome also serves as a nice introduction (for me at least) to Chicago horror punk band The Necroholics, who provided a song called Unwelcome specifically for the project.

Erdel tells me he’s currently trying to get Unwelcome into some festivals.

His wife Kara Erdel produced the film, and is a producer on Headless as well (she also makes a brief on-screen appearance in Unwelcome). She tells me about how they scored the legendary Victor Miller for the film:

That was a really lucky coincidence. I’m a member of the steering committee for the Diabolique International Film Festival (formerly the Dark Carnival Film Festival). Last year – our last year as Dark Carnival – we showed a gorgeous 35mm print of the original Friday, and we had Victor in to do a Q&A, which Nathan moderated. In talking to Victor, Nate mentioned that he had a screenplay (Unwelcome), and Victor graciously offered to read it. The next day, we put him on a plane back to California, and that night, Nate had an email in his inbox from Victor, saying that he had really loved the script and that he would love to play Uncle Ghastly, which was a small but featured role. All of his work on Unwelcome was done through the magic of green screen, which was awesome, although it would have been cool to have him on set. Victor will be judging our screenplay competition this year at Diabolique, and we’re super stoked to have him back – he’s just a really cool cat.

I can attest to that. I met him briefly at a horror convention a couple of years ago. Really friendly guy.

Kara also recalled the help they got from the Forbidden Films crew – the folks behind Headless and Found – in making Unwelcome.

Leya Taylor [Found DP] was actually our Director of Photography, Shane Beasley [Headless killer] and Arthur Cullipher [Headless director] did our makeups – in fact, the bulk of that short was shot in Shane’s house. He basically re-modeled his apartment for us and let us tromp in and out of there for eight weeks – that dude is true blue. I would pretty much do anything those guys asked me to do – and it’s really cool to be a part of Bloomington’s little filmmaking community. We’re sort of a skeleton crew – which is really a pretty fitting descriptor, when you think about it – but we’re starting to make things happen! It’s really exciting.

There’s no question that Headless will be much darker than Unwelcome (Nathan recently talked about August Underground: Mordum in a video posted to the Headless Facebook page if that’s any indication – not to mention the footage that already exists). But Unwelcome is a nice introduction to the creative mind that’s been tapped to flesh out an entire story from the small sample that’s already in existence.

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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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