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‘Attack of the Murder Hornets’ Explores One of 2020’s Biggest Horrors

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Hornet

2020 was a horror movie all its own. Whatever insanity you could dream up, 2020 could almost without any effort meet your hand and raise you a murder hornet. Murder Hornets went viral last year after they showed up on several news broadcasts these news reports were running parallel to the deadly pandemic we were already in the midst of. And yet somehow – already we were experiencing another horror. The murder hornet could reportedly kill a grown man and was a bit of a Ted Bundy when it came to killing innocent honey bees. It wouldn’t just kill these poor friendly little guys, it would pull their heads off and could do so with the speed of a murderous assembly line. Director, Michael Paul Stephenson explored the insane phenomena of Murder Hornets in a documentary on Discovery+ titled, Attack of the Murder Hornets.

Hornet

The title is a great fit for the atomic age of horror with films like Godzilla, Attack of the Giant Leeches, The Amazing Mr. X and Earth Vs. The Spider among a ton of others that made up sci-fi throughout the 50’s and most of the 60’s. The films were cautionary tales that revolved around the fallout of mans dealings with the Atomic bomb and foray into science. And, Murder Hornets are a great fit for that era, they do look quite a bit like the monsters in some of these films.

Part of the synopsis for Attack of the Murder Hornets goes like this:

‘The international phenomenon of the hornet first struck the nation with ferocity and destructive force last year, as scientists quickly discovered detrimental impacts on other species, such as honeybees. “Murder Hornets” use their enormous mandibles to behead every honeybee they catch; a single hornet can behead 20 bees a minute, and a small group of hornets can destroy a hive of 30,000 bees in just 90 minutes. The danger of the hornet in the U.S. threatens our fragile food supply, putting the livelihood of honeybees — the world’s most important pollinator of food crops — at risk. A threat to a honeybee is a threat to all of us. How does one take down an apex-predator whose sting is strong enough to kill a human? As the largest species of wasps on the planet, the goal is to eradicate the “Murder Hornet” while the population is presumably small in the U.S. Harmful to agriculture and the pollination that honeybees do for our food supply, the small-town crew faces difficult odds in their hunt for the hornet by setting traps, tracking the hornets, and following any tips that may lead them to the queen.’

Michael Paul Stephenson is one of our favorite documentary filmmakers here at iHorror. He was the guy who explored Troll II in the documentary Best Worst Movie. Stephenson also worked on another documentary titled The American Scream which explored Massachusetts communities whose spooky passions turned their neighborhood into a bit of haunt central during Halloween. Both film are great and explore very specific and fascinating subcultures.  Attack of the Murder Hornets once again explores a subset of subcultures this time ones that make up the world of bees and hornets.

Hornets

Stephenson achieves this by way of his usual methods, it combines the bizarre, the terrifying and the hilarious. I mean, the initial thought for this guy when he discovers all of his honey bees beheaded is that it might have been the work of “a satanic cult.” It’s definitely a fun documentary that is very inline with Stephenson.

You can watch Attack of the Murder Hornets now on Discovery+ and even join the conversation online via #MurderHornets.

Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and friends get supernatural in The Irregulars. Check out trailer here.

Irregulars

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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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