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INGRID GOES WEST While Plaza Gets Scary Good

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That latest Instagram picture you posted of your avocado-enriched soy toast latte might have been a pretty great idea on Sunday funday during brunch hours, but what if it turns out one of your Instagram followers is Ingrid. Or at the very least, Ingrid-esque. In director, Matt Spicer’s latest Ingrid Goes West, we get an all too familiar look at an obsessive behavior that has become an accepted and popular way of getting away with being stalker-lite.

In the beautifully lit and directed, Ingrid Goes West, Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) moves out to California after receiving her recently deceased mother’s inheritance. Ingrid isn’t interested with any sunshine or beaches though, she is moving specifically due to her obsession with social network influencer, Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen). When she arrives, she finds a way to find a way to burrow her way into Sloane’s social circles using her knowledge of Sloane’s Instagram hangouts, but her obsessive nature quickly takes her from friendly to frightening.

Plaza does some amazing work here. Since playing her engimatic character Lenny Busker in FX’s Legion, she has shown that she is capable of doing severely creepy and threatening surprisingly well. In Ingrid Goes West, she uses that dark side to create a very ominous character, but stays likeable enough to give the character merit in her actions. We are never not on her side, even at the most cringe-worthy moments. Plaza dispalys a nervous volatility that will put you at unease. Doesn’t change the fact that you still want to see her succeed despite knowing her stalker intent. Plaza is ultimately scary good.

The film is told through a no filter, concentrate examination of millennials, and the view a lot of that generation has of and on the world. The films dialogue is spoken through superlative millennial speak that becomes just as much a character as Ingrid. A lot of the central characters are totally unlikeable people, due to their narcissistic routines. Rather it’s Sloane’s delusions of grandeur, her brother Nicky’s trust fund baby issues or her boyfriend Ezra’s dismal hipster art, each brings enough unlike ability to assist in making Ingrid’s stalking nature a high point of character. Arguably, the most likeable character in the film has to be Ingrid’s landlord/boyfriend, Dan Pinto (O’Shea Jackson). Jackson brings on buckets of charm and like ability to his Batman obsessed, drug dealer with a heart of gold. His character is also the most do good of the bunch and ultimately (despite being a drug dealer) is purely good and genuinely cares about people. Warning, Jackson has a got a smile that has the power to make ya melt. After his breakout in Straight Out Of Compton followed by this, I’m hoping to see this dude in a lot more stuff soon.

There is a playful, satirical tone throughout that paves the way with funny and lite intent, only to lead you down a darker path in its final act once the rot sets in. It’s no spoiler to say that this film comes with a sort of pessimistic catharsis for both character and a generation.

Spicer creates a film that is self-aware of its own nature. Its frames are perfectly lit to match the best of your Instagram pictures. It’s an interesting take on stalker culture. The scariest part of which, is society basically mimicking Ingrid’s behavior in more concentrated instances, and how it has become an accepted social more. Next time you or I am obsessively hitting that refresh button on our favorite social media app, just know in a way you and I are all Ingrid… or at the very least have an Ingrid waiting for us to leave so they can kidnap our dog.

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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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