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‘White Willow’ Filmmaker Follows Up With ‘Panther Ridge’ Short: Review

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Ryan Swantek shocked us with his debut short film, White Willow. His newest short – titled Panther Ridge, which you can watch hereĀ – reminds us why he’s a name to watch out for.

The short film clocks in at just over 6 minutes in length and brings a deeply unnerving edge to the world of underground extreme BDSM (with an emphasis on extreme).

The film follows a young actress, Vera, as she tries her hand at her very first scene. It does not go quite how you’d expect, taking a sharp turn from sexy domination to a vicious “suffer and snuff”.

Vera initially admits that she is nervous, but her boss/director assures her that they know everything about their clients. She just needs to focus on her performance.

The audience doesn’t know Vera’s story or the circumstances of how she got there, but it’s easy to relate to her anxious hesitation in this insane scenario.

The camera doesn’t flinch, and we are left to wonder who these mysterious clients are.

Perhaps it’s the music, or maybe it’s the ominous ending, but Panther Ridge has a touch of aĀ Serbian Film vibe to it (in a way that keeps the intense creep factor, but without the disturbing details).

Panther Ridge was shot with no budget – or funding of any kind – over a weekend. The idea started as a 30-page spec script that Swantek wrote in a screenwriting class at the University of Toledo. The short is based on a collection of scenes from a feature version of the film, which has certainly piqued our interest.

The short’s crew members – excluding Swantek – and two of the actresses are student/graduates from the Ringling College of Art & Design. In true “do it yourself” style, the set dressing of the St. Andrews Cross and BDSM frame were hand built.

Panther Ridge is a punchy short with a tight story that leaves us wanting more. If you’re curious to watch it yourself, click here.

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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 SĆ©bastien 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.ā€

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. Abramsā€™ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turowā€™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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