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The Dog Dies: ‘I Won’t See the Movie’

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Several modern supernatural films have taken to killing dogs, often times in the first reel. A family moves into a rural house and the dog runs outside never to return.

Said family goes on the hunt for Rover only to find him or her torn apart, like a pair of bloody Christmas slippers, within a few feet from the front porch.

“Awww” cries the audience, but that same family could endure the worst supernatural abuse inside their own home and never elicit the same collective response.

Remember Harry in the original “The Amityville Horror?” Dad actually stopped the car and ran back to save the poor fellow. Unfortunately in the 2005 remake the family dog isn’t so lucky.

Although this phenomenon seems to infiltrate all movie types, one might more likely forgive a film wherein the animal becomes deceased in an emotional way; the death is actually a lesson to the main character about love, devotion and friendship, even revenge. Take John Wick for example, that whole movie is about canine death vigilantism. I wonder if people fast forward through the first ten minutes when re-watching it?

But place that same animal in a horror movie and rip him apart and audiences are more than likely to be instantly put off.

There’s even a whole website devoted to doggie-death movie spoilers called “The Dog Dies.”

These canine deaths could be set in our subconscious attachments. Not only do these creatures protect us and trust us, they also become our spiritual guides, thwarting the unseen from taking aim at our souls.

Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that dogs have a sixth sense, able to see things that humans cannot. They not only protect us from the worldly home invaders they also secure the ethereal penumbra.

Pet psychologist Marti Miller understands that we can’t prove dogs can see spirits, but, “If you observe a dog standing in the corner, barking at nothing visible, then there’s a pretty good chance that he’s barking at an entity, spirit, or energy that doesn’t belong there.”

Of course, there is also the simplest of answers: most humans are equipped with a bleeding heart.

We take offense when innocence is snuffed out in a violent way. We have learned to bond with animals and as a part of that trade-off, we must never turn on them without good reason.

As humans, we are empathetic and can place ourselves in the animal’s situation. In contrast, we also have questionable judgments about equality.

That means we can forgive seeing a human in a horror movie be decapitated, because well they are cognitive with critical thinking skills, able to remove themselves from the danger had they just moved out right after they heard the first disembodied footsteps coming from upstairs.

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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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