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Horror Short Sunday: ‘Intruders’

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December’s icy grip is already taking hold, and what better way to welcome the cold this Horror Short Sunday than with writer/director Santiago Menghini’s melancholy short film Intruders (2014). This chilling piece stars Joshua Young, Charles Sirard Blouin, Sarianne Cormier, Alain Gendreau, Lynda Lapierre, and Tristan Gabriel Chaput. The film was produced by Katerine Lefrançois.

Here is the official synopsis:

“In the aftermath of a deadly haunting in a small suburban home, a sinister omnipresent entity proceeds to cause havoc in the private lives of a young boy, an unsuspecting teen, and an absent minded inspector.”

Intruders plays out like an episodic horror story told in three parts. The first two segments of the film are adapted from short comics titled 5:45 A.M. by Al Columbia and Jacov by Uno Moralez, while the final segment titled Inspector is an original creation.

Here is a breakdown of Intruders’ three segments:

5:45 A.M.

We open on a suburban home now still and quieted in the aftermath of something terrible that occurred. The interior is left in disarray, as an older woman’s lifeless body sits with eyes wide open on the living room couch. But there is someone else with her. We hear a ruckus outside as eggs pelt the windows, and two young vandals are seen making a run for it into the cold night.

Jacov

One of the vandals now sits alone in the bedroom of his high-rise apartment drawing at his desk. As the snow falls softly outside, Jacov suddenly pauses sensing a strange presence. Something has followed the boys home from the sleepy suburban house they antagonized.

Inspector

An inspector wanders into the disheveled home seen in the first segment to investigate what occurred. He makes his way from room to room, snapping photos of the scene. As he continues searching for clues, he suddenly feels he’s not alone.

Intruders is a unnerving experience, as we drift in and out of each ambiguous segment like a bad dream. Jacov’s story is terrifying in such a surreal way. The monstrous woman inexplicably spots Jacov from the window, makes her way to him at impossible speed, and somehow knows exactly where he is in a large building. The pacing and tone feels like it was pulled directly from someone’s nightmares. It’s a horrifying call-back to Hitchcock’s Rear Window that absolutely stands on its own.

Director of photography Ray Lavers does a gorgeous job bringing the panels from the comics to life. The disheveled interior of the suburban home sits undisturbed and bathed in shadow like a mausoleum, with outside streetlights and headlights revealing the horrors within. The short has rich visuals with many stunningly lit shots resembling classic chiaroscuro paintings. The visual storytelling in Intruders is so strong you may not even realize until after you watched it that there is no actual dialogue.

Intruders has an eerie peacefulness to its snowy winter aesthetic. The sound department lends a delicate subtlety to the cold atmosphere with soft wind blowing outside, and no stinging jump scares breaking the mood. The score by Hugo Mayrand is subdued, creeping in and out of the silence during key moments.

Santiago Menghini’s Intruders is a dark force to be reckoned with that will keep you unsettled long after it’s over. This ominous film would pair well with the heavy atmosphere of Ju-On and Let the Right One In. Check out the full short film below!

Be sure to curl up on the couch and take a look at some of our other Horror Short Sunday picks! We’ll be back next week with another great short film for you to enjoy!

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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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