News
Disaster Films Vs. Horror Films
EDITORIAL
Apocalypse TV streaming service is giving disaster film lovers everything they need to destroy the world and they are tying it in with the horror market. But it got me to thinking about the disaster film genre and if it does indeed belong under horror.
There’s that age-old debate about horror and science fiction and whether they are exclusive of one another. Is Alien a horror film, a sci-fi film or a sci-fi film with horror elements, or vice-versa?
To me, Alien is a horror film that happens to take place in space, but that’s just my opinion. Anyone else who has their own can cast their comments below.
But disaster films are completely different. I have always thought of them as being in a class by themselves, but then what about World War Z and Dawn of the Dead?
These films don’t destroy the world with meteors or extreme weather, they do it with zombies, classic horror monsters.
Then we are back to the Alien question: if a disaster film contains zombies or other apocalyptic monsters are the films then classified as horror?
Before you ask, why does it have to be classified as anything but a movie? Keep in mind every movie ever made has been filed under something.
War of the Worlds is another example. Hostile aliens destroy cities all over the world, hunting down humans, evaporating them with death rays.
It sounds like horror to me.
I know a lot of you will say, “Horror is subjective, everyone has their own definition of it.” And that is true, we have discussed this before.
But consider iHorror covering San Andreas or Geostorm, does that bruise the feelings of the hardcore fans, the purists who don’t think these films are horror movies at all? And yes, we care what you think.
Nicolás López and Eli Roth’s experiment Aftershock was a crossover between the genres. On the one hand, a devastating tragedy destroyed a city, but that released a horde of Purge-type criminals who attack our heroes in gruesome and bloody ways. Not to mention the collateral damage of falling concrete, glass, etc.
So to that end, can we classify Roth’s film as horror, or keep it strictly a disaster?
Listen, I don’t think any of us want to extend the labels of the genre to an nth degree: Shaun of the Dead is a horror/comedy/disaster/action/romance.
We want our genre classes singular; otherwise, they wouldn’t exist in the first place.
The world could probably use fewer labels, but in entertainment, they are a part of the initial pitch. Even IMDb needs to organize their database.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvLjD72Nbmk
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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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