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2Survive Loses Itself in the Desert

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When I was a kid, I was a big fan of the choose your own adventure books.  It was so cool to me to be able to plot my own course through the stories and try to avoid that catastrophic ending.  I remember, once, taking one of the books and reading it from start to finish without making the jumps to the pages that would create a cohesive story.  It was a rambling mess where nothing made sense, random plot points popped up out of nowhere, and other plot points came across like afterthoughts to the story.  I was reminded of this sensation last night as I watched writer/director Tom Seidman’s new film, 2Survive.

The premise of the film is pretty straightforward.  Six contestants for a reality TV show are taken out into the Mojave desert.  They are a motley crew comprised of a nurse, an animal psychic, a former marine, a desert biologist, a gay Buddhist, and a leggy blonde savant.  This would have been a fun group to get to know, except that we were never given the chance due to nearly non-existent character development.  The show’s host, Erik Estrada, steps out of a trailer and explains how they win the contest.  The point of the show is simple and just a little twisted.  The fewer people who cross the finish line, the more money you make.  Contestants are not allowed to impede one another, but nothing can stop them from striking out on their own except that each one carries an essential item (water, food, a compass, etc.) for the journey.

At this point, everything pretty well begins to fall apart, mostly because the movie couldn’t decide what kind of movie it was.  There are those films who can cross genres and sub-genres with ease and perhaps this one could have with a more experienced writer.  Seidman has been in the business for a long time, obtaining most of his credits as a stage manager and assistant director.  2Survive is his fourth writing credit and the second  with a horror angle.  Most of his other work, no matter what role in the crew he inhabited has been spent in family friendly, feel good movies and crime dramas.  This isn’t necessarily a problem.  A good writer is a good writer, but he just couldn’t seem to pull it all together.  His attempts at misdirection felt more like random, meaningless scenes that confuse the plot and that probably should have been cut.

For example, as the group makes plans to settle for the first night, out of nowhere a Native American Elder (that’s how he’s listed in the credits) magically appears in their midst.  He delivers the perfect, campy, over the top setup for a movie about Native American spirits seeking revenge against those who stole their land.  He then promptly disappears, never to be heard from again, and the only thing that happens in the aftermath of his visit is that the animal psychic caught a death vibe off the snake the Elder had as a companion and decides to leave the contest.

For the rest of the hour and a half run time of the film, we wander through the desert.  A cameraman dies…one contestant sets off on his own after stealing the water supply…dehydration begins to take its toll on the contestants, and a killer is revealed.  All of this sounds like it could make for a great film, and it could, except that the pacing of the film does nothing to raise tension.  Never once did my pulse race as they moved through the desert.  Never once did I sit up in anticipation of what was coming next, because the filmmaker gave me nothing to be excited about.

I gave this film every chance to make me a fan.  I really did.  It just never came together for me.  There’s a part of me that hopes that Seidman will learn from the mistakes of this movie and try again.  This wasn’t a good movie; it wasn’t a bad movie.  It was just a movie that lacked the focus to become one or the other.

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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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