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Book Review: ‘Meddling Kids’ Out Just in Time for Summer Reading

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It’s time to start getting ready for Summer, and if you’re an old school horror fan, have I got a book recommendation for you. It’s called Meddling Kids and its author, Edgar Cantero, has created the perfect vacation adventure to put at the very top of your reading lists.

Take one part Famous Five, one part Scooby-Doo, and go way back to grab some H.P. Lovecraft. Mix them all together and you’ll begin to understand the genius that is Meddling Kids.

For those unaware, the Famous Five was a series of popular books in the UK written by Enid Blyton that involved four best friends and their faithful dog who would solve mysteries and hunt for lost treasure together.

Sound familiar?

It’s not a leap to say that they’re the precursors for the Scooby Gang that many Americans grew up with starting in the late 60s.

So what’s going on in Cantero’s novel?

Once upon a time, a group of youngsters (Peter, Kerri, Nate, and Andy) would spend their holidays in Blyton Hills. (See what he did there?) Every Summer they would band together to solve the mysteries that eluded the local authorities.

They called themselves the Blyton Summer Detective Club, and everything was going well until their final case. Something went wrong; something was just a little more real than a man in a mask.

Their lives spun out of control after that and they drifted apart, and Cantero doesn’t shy away from showing that aftermath.

Peter is dead; Kerri’s an alcoholic; Andy’s a wandering badass in trouble with the law and Nate is in a mental institution.

Andy has decided the only way their lives will ever be back on course is to go back to Blyton one last time and confront the real life monster that’s been chasing them for 13 years.

It isn’t only their dangers that have grown up, however. Andy, whose real name is Andrea, is ready to come out of the closet and Kerri has been the object of her desire for over a decade.

The author handles the story line beautifully, delving into the emotional depths of awakening desire and the uncertainty of a friend confronted with a love she’s not sure she can accept or be a part of.

Cantero’s prose is fast-paced and engaging, switching from action to comedy to horror and back again with the ease of an old pro. Essentially, he’s created an adventure story for the kid inside all of us, but raised the blood, tension, and monsters to match our grown-up outsides.

It isn’t only his storytelling that’s innovative, however. The author fuses together different styles of writing from multiple points of view to keep the reader on their toes. One moment, we’re inside the head of Andy, and the next, he’s switched to script format to support the rapid-fire (and often hilarious) dialogue.

My favorite moments, however, come when Cantero takes us inside the mind of the group’s faithful dog, Tim. They are moments of purely innocent observation and contain, quite frankly, some of the best one-liners in the entire book.

In an odd way, the book was created specifically for the crowd who enjoyed the Scooby-Doo/Supernatural crossover that took place a few weeks ago, though it was written long before “Scoobynatural.”

Meddling Kids will be released in a brand new paperback edition on May 29, 2018. You can pre-order the new edition, which comes with a special bonus scene, on Amazon!

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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 SĂ©bastien VaniÄŤek 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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