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Micah Gallo’s ‘Itsy Bitsy’ Fails to Successfully Spin its Web

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Itsy Bitsy

Micah Gallo’s new eight-legged creature feature Itsy Bitsy is a film that has all the elements needed for a fun popcorn movie. Unfortunately, those elements fail to fully work together to create an entirely enjoyable film.

Based on a story by Gallo with a script he wrote with Bryan Dick, and Jason Alvino, Itsy Bitsy is the story of a woman named Kara (Elizabeth Roberts) who travels halfway across the country with her children Jesse (Arman Darbo) and Cambria (Chloe Perrin) to take a job as an in-home nurse to Walter Clark (Bruce Davison), a man who has spent his life traveling the world, exploring, and collecting exotic treasures.

Now losing his mobility, Walter needs all the help he can get, especially after a mysterious artifact is delivered to his home with a deadly surprise inside: a spider tied to an ancient curse.

On the surface, it’s the perfect setup for a creature feature paying homage to its predecessors like Arachnophobia while creating their world.

Both Davison and Darbo give really great performances. Darbo, in particular, is a young actor to watch. He seems to have a maturity that others his age sometimes lack, and he brings emotional depth to his character in spite of the sometimes uneven writing.

The scenes the actors share are some of the most poignant and emotionally effective in the film.

Likewise, Gallo’s special effects team rose to the occasion, creating practical special effects for his creatures, giving them an interesting texture and allowing the actors to really interact with them during the film.

Unfortunately, where Itsy Bitsy drops the ball is in editing and pacing.

The first two acts of the film bog down repeatedly, dispersing what little tension they manage to build in key moments almost immediately. This makes for a particularly long first hour of the film which unfortunately the viewer cannot quite forget when the action finally does begin to ramp up toward the end.

Gallo manages a couple of genuine moments as Kara faces down the dog-sized spiders in an attempt to save her children, and Denise Crosby (Pet Sematary, 1989) gets to flex a bit as the local sheriff who made a connection with Jesse earlier in the film here.

It’s as if they know how to set up really great moments, but are unsure how to complete them. It’s rather like having that one person you really like asking you out on a date over and over again, but they never show.

The final showdown and denouement ultimately gives way to a somewhat saccharine, optimistic ending that just did not feel genuine given the previous events in the film.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a horror film with a happy ending. This one simply did not land, mostly because of a couple of gaping plot holes, one of which they attempted to cover in 30-second tag after the family rides away into the sunset.

Gallo and his cast and crew attempted to make a horror film with heart. Sadly, the film’s issues prevented it from solidly landing its emotional message for this reviewer, and without that element the rest just seems to fall flat.

Itsy Bitsy is currently available on multiple streaming platforms and will be available on Blu Ray on October 1, 2019 from Shout Factory so you can watch and decide for yourself.

To learn more about the film, you can visit their official website or give them a follow on their Facebook page. Check out the trailer below.

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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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