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Review: ‘Monster Party’ Is A Soirée Of Carnage

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Desperate times call for desperate measures. With his father owing thousands to a violent loan shark, Casper (Sam strike) and his fellow thief friends Dodge (Brandon Michael Hall) and Iris (Virginia Gardner) need to make a big score. Opportunity strikes when Iris scores a job catering a rich family’s mansion in Malibu. The Dawson Family, including patriarch, Patrick (Julian McMahon), matriarch Alexis (Erin Moriarty), son Elliot (Kian Lawley), and daughter Roxanne (Robin Tunney) seem friendly, if a bit snobbish and quirky. They’re having a celebration with some other aristocrats led by Milo (Lance Reddick) in celebrating their sobriety. But not from drugs or alcohol… but from mass murder. And when somebody gets back on the kill wagon, the party goes straight to hell, with the caterers marked for death!

Image via Youtube

Monster Party is the sophomore feature by writer/director Chris von Hoffman, and in spite of a telling smaller budget, his style and ability really shines through. The build up to the inevitable party massacre is decently paced, with enough tension building to keep you hooked. The story deals with themes of wealth disparity and how the rich prey on the poor much like other socially conscious horror films such as Society and They Live, but doesn’t go too deep into them. The satire is apparent, but it felt more face value than anything.

Image via IMDB

The ensemble cast stands out, especially the three would-be thieves. The opening establishes their relationship well and shows the dire situation that brings them out of the frying pan and into the fire in the quest for money to save Casper’s father from his own greed. On the other side, the family and associates of killers were all right for the most part. The ones that caught the most attention were Kian Lawley and Lance Reddick’s characters. Elliot is an obnoxious and short-tempered psychopath who doesn’t care for their group’s homicide sobriety while Reddick’s Milo acts as a calculating leader to the patchwork group of millionaire maniacs. His character able to see the consequences of their actions and trying to rein them in with a charisma that leashes the others in… or at least, tries to keep them in check.

The cinematography of Monster Party by Tobias Deml is a highlight, showcasing the beauty of Malibu Beach and the Dawson Estate in parallel to the abject horrors taking place. The scares are low for the most part, operating more as a thriller like Green Room and Don’t Breathe but lacking quite the same punch. There are a few decent twists and turns by the end, but the plot line unfolds fairly straightforward once things go to hell.

Image via IMDB

While not the strongest modern thriller, Monster Party is a well made lower-budgeted thriller with a good sense of class and carnage.

Monster Party is in limited theaters and VOD/Digital starting November 2nd.

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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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