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“House on Willow Street” is a Diabolical Good Time

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Fresh this week from IFC Midnight in association with The Darkside and Fat Cigar Productions brings us House on Willow Street, a solid horror thriller written by Catherine Blackman, Jonathan Jordaan, and Alistair Orr.  Orr, who also directed the 2014 indie film Indigenousonce again steps into the director’s chair and it’s easy to see from frame one that he’s grown much more comfortable and self assured in the role.

As the film opens, Hazel (Sharni Vinson), Ade (Steven John Ward), Mark (Zino Ventura), and James (Gustav Gerdener) are finalizing plans to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy man whom they all believe has wronged them in some way.  They zero in on Katherine (Carlyn Burchell) and the planned kidnapping seemingly goes off without a hitch despite the strange symbols carved into the home’s walls and the fact that Katherine looks like she might have been finishing a week long bender when they show up to take her.

The crew takes Katherine back to their hideout and records a video demanding a ransom in priceless diamonds from the girl’s parents.  Up until this point, everything seems fit to fall into your average kidnap film and one could almost anticipate Liam Neeson’s voice answering Hazel as she makes the ransom call.  But this isn’t your typical kidnapping film, and Neeson is not about to kick ass and save the day.

On the contrary, the crew begins to notice there is something very strange about Katherine.  She stares just a little too long at her captors; she has an almost feral quality to her, and knows just a little too much about her kidnappers.  In fact, it isn’t long before they realize that Katherine’s a woman with a ton of demonic baggage she’s about to unpack all over them.

No spoilers here, but what follows is a masterful attempt at melding two sub-genres (kidnapping/crime and possession) into something altogether unique.  And I have to tell you, under Orr’s direction and with solid performances by the actors, they almost universally succeed.  In fact, Orr, Blackman, and Jordaan, managed to tell a story about the heavy toll that grief and loss take on the body and spirit of those in their clutches.

The remarkably small cast (only five actors are credited on IMDb) works as a solid unit throughout.  Ventura and Gerdener attack their roles with sadistic gusto.  These guys have no problem kidnapping this girl and they don’t mind hurting her if necessary to get what they want.  Meanwhile, Vinson and particularly Ward play out their character’s humanity.  They didn’t want to do this, but they saw no other way to make Katherine’s father pay for what he’d done.  It gives the crew a nicely balanced effect without giving over to the cliche’s their characters could have been.

Steven John Ward and Sharni Vinson

But there’s no denying that in a possession film, the person possessed always takes the lead and Burchell’s Katherine is the center of every scene.  Possessed Katherine radiates menace and power in stark contrast with the vulnerable Katherine we see in videos leading up to her possession.  Burchell plays both with a steady hand and never lets her performance become less than real.

Overall, House on Willow Street, is a fun and genuinely scary film that, like the best horror, pushes the audience to look deeper into themselves.  As the lines blur between villain and victim, captor and captured, I found myself asking who was the real bad guy here? Who should I be rooting for?  Those answers, as in real life, aren’t clear cut, and Orr and his cast do their level best to remind us that when the chips are down, black and white are rarely present and it’s all too often in the shades of grey that we find ourselves.

House on Willow Creek releases on VOD and select streaming services this Friday, March 24, 2017.  Make sure to check it out!

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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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