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SXSW Review: Hounds Of Love
I actually needed a few hours in order to collect my thoughts here at SXSW this year. I screened a film called Hounds Of Love and it stayed with me long after it had ended. It actually bled into all other screenings I had that day. It is poetically disturbing and a high mark in the genre world.
The film centers around John and Evelyn (Steven Curry and Emma Booth), a couple who pray on folks in their small town. They use the perceived safety of a couple into luring people into their car and then eventually back to their house where they sexually and mentally torture the unlucky person. When they abduct young Vikki (Asheleigh Cummings) their relationship begins to crack as their dynamic begins to shift.
Almost the entire film takes place within the walls of one house. The time spent in the home gives you a grounded layout and creates an atmosphere pregnant claustrophobia. The film is shot with wide lenses in tight spaces that create a subliminal need to get the hell out of the house. Beautifully shot high frame rate sequences of the suburbs show the minutia of everyday life in mesmerizing detail to contrast the prison that is created in John and Evelyn’s home.
Hounds Of Love speaks on hyperbolic levels of the most toxic and abusive relationships and how easy it is to be enabled by someone in the wrong relationship. Both Evelyn and John have created a world with each other that justifies their sickness, by turning it into sexual deviance and a way to unhealthy way to connect and express their love. Their behavior mimics addicts or those that co-exist with physical abuse between them. The more abusive John becomes the more Evelyn is willing to take him back and the further she is removed from herself.
The cast is insanely good. Stephen Curry creates a bad guy that is one of the most despicable and easily hated bad dudes in recent history. His character’s abusive nature and manipulative ways are shown in terrifying detail. Emma Booth, who I was unfamiliar with prior to this, is someone that everyone needs to keep their eye on. Her ability to zig zag between psychotic assistant to John’s deviance and then to snap back to display a mother’s intuition is staggering. The role requires a lot and her character becomes the center of the narrative because of it. Ashleigh Cumming’s character is the glue that ties the whole narrative together, which with a film this heavy can’t be an easy thing to do. The character she starts off as changes in stages throughout. A happy teenage girl, is forced to endure and share Evelyn and John’s darkness and little by little, she becomes despondent, but finds her character’s strength through that despondence. If I had awards to hand out, these guys would all get one.
Director, Ben Young achieves a film that has echoes of Wes Craven’s early work. The level of suspense and tension he builds, comes with a heavy emotional resonance. Young, uses slow motion in a way I rarely see, he actually uses to propel and at times freeze you in the tension. The shocking last ten minutes of the film, is one sustained note that fills you with a sense of dread for one of the characters. In most films, you can tell early on how things are going to go, who is going to survive and so forth, but this dude never allows you to settle and relax. He is one of those rare filmmakers that creates danger on film with the absence of a safety net.
Hounds Of Love actually shook me. It unraveled me and took me for a terrifying journey, where I was intensely invested in the characters. I can’t even remember the last times I left a theater with my hands shaking or a film that raised my pulse but this one managed to do both and I love it all the more for doing that to me.
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Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
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.
“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:
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Movies
‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
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.
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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News
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
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.
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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