News

Review: ‘The Haunting of Sharon Tate’ Makes a Bold Choice

Published

5 years ago

April 1, 2019

It’s a bold move to create a film about a real-life murder with a new concept based on a curious interview comment, but I guess that makes Daniel Farrands a bold man.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate – written and directed by Farrands – begins with a recreation of an interview between Sharon Tate and Fate magazine in which she recalls a dream she had (a premonition?) that sounds eerily similar to the circumstances of her own murder.

From there, the film follows the very pregnant Tate (as played by Hilary Duff of Lizzie McGuire fame) in the days leading up to the Manson Family murders. She senses that there’s something amiss – there are several bits of dialogue about fate, changing fate, and being trapped by fate – and things gradually get a little creepy around the house. Ghostly figures, odd sounds, hallucinations, the whole nine yards.

Unfortunately, the “haunting” elements feel – at times – tacked-on for the sake of the scare. The most effective scenes generate tension with some genuine horror-movie moments, but their conclusion just makes that build-up fall flat. As for the story itself, the script takes some extreme creative license with the progression of events.

via Saban Films

The concept for the film is – as mentioned – a bold move, but it’s a creative way to approach a story we’re all familiar with. Is it in poor taste? Arguably, yes. There’s one particular scene about halfway through the film that feels more than a shade exploitative. But, regardless, The Haunting of Sharon Tate dives right in and refuses to look back.

From a technical standpoint, the film has an appropriately dreamy quality to it. Color filters amplify every radiant tone, and regular close-ups feel like that single-point focus that often happens in dreams. Bits of dialogue that were re-done in post-production sound isolated and unnatural — which is occasionally distracting — but it really adds to that dreamlike aura of the film. It’s easy to get lost in the unreality of it all.

via Saban Films

The film really meditates on the aforementioned theme of fate and often questions Tate’s credibility as a reliable narrator. She’s haunted by vivid nightmares and becomes increasingly paranoid about the sincerity and support of those around her. Her friends — who believe that she’s just overstressed — wave off her outbursts and concerns. The very pregnant Tate is soothed, dismissed, and placated; it’s reminiscent of the gaslighting in Rosemary’s Baby, but the effect isn’t quite the same.

There’s an earnest effort from the actors — including Duff, who clearly cares about her character –- but their interactions come off as a bit stilted. Perhaps it’s the ADR, or perhaps it’s the dialogue, but their performances sometimes feel like they’re not all acting in the same movie.

Wisely, Farrands trusts in his audience’s knowledge of the case and uses it to smooth out (some) heavy-handed exposition. He’ll allude to facts of the case (for example, that Manson believed the home was still inhabited by a record producer, Terry Melcher, who he was trying to contact), but the fictional side takes a large, heavy-handed jump, forcing you to drop the details and just go on this journey with them.

The effect is a curious one. The Haunting of Sharon Tate unapologetically takes the audience on a wild ride that puts a spin on a horrific and well-known real-world event. It’s a film that takes bold liberties, injecting its own philosophical twist into the mix. What you have to decide — as an audience — is if this concept works for you.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate is written and directed by Daniel Farrands (The Amityville Murders, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy), and stars Hilary Duff (Younger, Lizzie McGuire), Jonathan Bennett (Awkward, Mean Girls), and Lydia Hearst (Z Nation, South of Hell, #Horror).
You can see it in theaters and on demand as of April 5, 2019.

via Saban Films

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Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

17 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

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:

^{High Desert Hell}

^{The Gemini Project}

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Movies

‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

Published

19 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

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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News

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

Published

21 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

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.