Stephen King News - because I don't care about anything else

Well, well, well......

I have returned....

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People who have been following this blog for the past few years know I basically disappear every summer and I apologize for that. This summer has been notoriously worse because I travelled quite a lot and I got promoted at work so I've been busy living out my career dreams ~~~

So let's check in with the summer so far shall we? We've had some insane trailers coming out, some interesting movies have premiered and lots of great old and new movies added to Netflix and Shudder. I also got cable and so have spent most of my time watching things like America's Got Talent and Dr. Phil and letting my brain get melted. I REGRET NOTHING!

I actually haven't watched a horror movie in months? I think the last one I watched was when I re-watched Get Out with Mitch. I'm missing out on a lot and I'm pretty bummed about it but then I get home and I'm like ahhh yes, "my daughter is my mother is my uncle who's a sex predator" ...SIGN ME UP. But I am recognizing my bad habits and trying to move on....."trying" being the important word here...

Let's talk about some horror news I've been excited about lately:

First up of course is IT, it's crawling closer and closer and we just got our third trailer which looks incredible. It premiered during San Diego Comic Con and honestly, I'm trying not to let my expectations get too high but holllllyyyyy shiiiitttt does this movie look scary or what?! Joe Hill recently saw the full film and said it was one of five scariest films he's ever seen. I MEAN HOT DAMN! I am absolutely going on opening night and I am ready to get my pants scared off of me.

The adaptation is brought to us by director Andy Muschietti and stars Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise.

In this new trailer I like that they showed the adults not seeing what's happening to the kids, they just turn a blind eye as all of this is happening and at first you think it's because they're dumb adults but soon realize the town is doing something strange to them. I'm so glad they're including this because it's such a great part of the book where you feel such fear and frustration. We hear Pennywise talk and it's perfect. We get even more balloons. We get an extended look at that terrifying scene of Georgie in the cellar. We see what I hope to be that horrifying refrigerator scene with the leech like creatures. Also that score is just so incredible and jarring. WE JUST SEE SO MUCH WITHOUT GIVING TOO MUCH AWAY AND I'M SO FUCKING EXCITED!!!!!!!!

Check out the final trailer here and let's start counting down the days until IT premiers in theatres on September 8th.

Speaking of Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes premiers next Wednesday (August 9th) on DIRECTV and I'm hoping iTunes the next day for those of us without fancy cable. The trailer has given me a lot of hope that for once a Stephen King TV show will work, and early reviews are positive so woohoo! The casting is spot on and the vibe is a match for the book. I'm really excited for this and here's the trailer which premiered recently:



Executive produced by Stephen King, David E. Kelley and Jack Bender, Mr. Mercedes follows the story of a serial killer taunting a retired police detective. This trailer has got me hyped and I'm totally going to re-read this book this weekend.

The Jigsaw trailer came out a little while ago and I am 100% onboard. I've never been a huge fan of the Saw franchise. I used to be really sensitive to torture scenes in horror movies but two years ago I actually watched Saw for the first time and it was incredible! I would like to actually watch the whole franchise before the premier of Jigsaw.....challenge...accepted? Maybe? Next week?

One of the highest grossing horror franchises is coming back with a bang and it looks like it has a lot of the stuff people love about Saw with some fun new twists. Directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig, it premiers October 27th. I'm going to try and convince my coworkers to go on a work trip to see it for Halloween week.

Check out the trailer below

Lastly - Eli Roth and AMC have been incredibly busy lately bringing us the horror content we deserve. AMC will be creating three new horror anthology series - the first is a horror/sci-fi mix called Shock Theatre which the incredible Greg Nicotero will direct and produce. Every week a new episode will pay tribute to those B movie classics we all love.

Teaming up with A Fish Ladder, Chris Hardwick's production company, AMC will also be premiering a show called Underbelly which will take a hard look at the dark side of pop culture like fan obsessions, greed, vanity etc. This one is intriguing as I have no idea what kind of format this will be and if it's just going to be hella depressing.

Then there's Wicked West coming from Jason Blum, obviously from Blumhouse, which was will be a non-fiction series about some of the most horrific and true tales of the wild, wild west. This is super awesome as I am a huge fan of the gritty old west and all those depressing but insane stories.

Lastly, what I'm most excited for is Eli Roth's new show. We all know Eli Roth is a massive horror nerd and this show will be a 6 part series about the history of horror. "Sadly, we lose more of these masters every year and with them go their stories and experiences. This show will serve as a record for future generations..." Eli commented. This is such a solid idea - obviously we've lost some horror greats in the past few years, most notably to me Wes Craven and most recently George A. Romero so this show sounds like a really thoughtful idea.

Also huge shout out to AMC for bringing us horror nerds from real quality programming lately!

And that's it for my news wrap-up. Hopefully I'll be back on this thing more now that summer is coming to a close. And hopefully I watch some more horror movies because my life is lacking miserably.

Stay spooky!

Day 5 - Clown - October Horror Movie Challenge

CLOWN (2016)

It lived up in the mountains with a skin as white as snow and the red nose blistered by the cold, it lured children out of the villages into its cave. Five children. One for every month of winter...

(There will be major spoilers so skip if you don't want to be spoiled)

Technically this movie was released in 2014 but not in North America. We got it this year as a VOD release and I was so stoked!

Kent is a real estate agent with a wife, Meg and a 7 year old son Jack. Jack's obsessed with clowns and for this birthday Kent promised to dress up as one. But he forgot and last minute searches through a house he's selling only to find a trunk with the perfect clown costume inside. Excited, he throws it on and shows up to his sons birthday to save the day.

The next morning Kent realizes he can't get the suit off. The nose is jammed on, the wig won't move and the suit doesn't have a zipper. He manages to get most of the makeup off but it keeps coming back. After attempting to cut the suit off he instead slashes his wrist open by accident and then breaks off a saw blade attempting it again. Meg finally manages to remove the nose by basically ripping it off but along with it comes a few layers of Kent's skin.

He starts to panic and so tries to find the origin of the suit. The house it came from belonged to Marty Karlsson who is now deceased. Kent tracks down his brother Bert who asks him to meet him with the promise he'll help him remove the suit. After sharing a terrifying story of the origin of the clown, the original clown, it was not funny at all, he drugs Kent and attempts to cut off his head. Apparently that's the only way you can stop the suit...it's not a costume, it's skin and hair of a demon.

Kent rushes back to his family who now think he's insane and instead he's left to hide away in one of the properties he's trying to sell. His body begins to change and for some reason he's incredibly hungry all the time...especially when he sees children.

Alright...so what did I love about this movie?

• The attempted suicide scene is so well done and it's stuck with me since I originally saw this film almost two years ago. The splatter of rainbow blood and the pause where you think it actually worked...
• I love that the film just jumps right into the story, there's no messing around. The suit is on within the first 5 minutes.
• The backstory is great and once again, it doesn't mess around and is straight to the point. It's a demon skin that slowly turns you into the demon.
• If you don't want to cut the head off of the demon, the other way to get rid of it is to feed it five children. This leads to one of the most tense scenes in the film where Meg basically kidnaps a child and has the tough decision whether to feed her to her husband or not. 
• The transformation is subtle but incredibly amazing. The final scenes with the clown are nightmare fuel.
• One of the final scenes is with the clown inside a child's play set/arcade and it's so creepy and terrifying. Incredibly well done.

What I didn't love?

• Frankly, I have no complaints. 

Overall?

Presented by Eli Roth, this film was written and directed by Jon Watts who did an absolutely phenomenal job. This is body horror at its best and most subtle. There aren't a lot of scenes that are really gory except for a notable shot of Kent's fingers and toes elongating and when he spits out his teeth in the sink. The fact that this movie shows children getting murdered without flinching from the shot makes me happy too. Ya'll know I love a good children being killed movie.

Clown reads like a fairy tale gone wrong in all the best ways and it's a simply horrific, terrifying film that has stuck with me since I first saw it. I recommend it a lot and will continue to do so. When I preach about supporting indie horror - these are the movies I'm talking about. This movie still doesn't even have a DVD release yet, but we have to support indie horror because sometimes we get near perfect movies like this.

10/10

Stay Spooky!

The Green Inferno ....finally.

No matter what, KEEP STREAMING!

I watched The Green Inferno after what's been a long and painful wait.

Let's talk about it!

In 2013 we were told about a new Eli Roth film that involved gore, cannibals, and the jungle. And we patiently waited until 2014 to see it. But then the production company ran out of money and The Green Inferno was removed from release. We mourned, we were angry, we thought about protesting but then worried that would be ironic. And eventually it was released last September through Blumhouse.

Green Inferno is a splatter horror film directed and written by Roth. It stars a pretty great cast including Lorenza Izzo and Daryl Sabara and the film is inspired by all those old Italian cannibal films during the cannibal boom of the 70's and 80's. Specifically of course, Cannibal Holocaust which is where The Green Inferno actually gets its title.

The film follows Justine who is a college freshman whose father works for the United Nations. She becomes interested in social activism like most college freshman do and joins a group led by a guy named Alejandro who is extremely passionate about the cause, along with his girlfriend Kara. The group are planning a trip to the Amazon rain forest where they plan to protest and stop a big company who are logging the rain forest and destroying the homes of the ancient native tribes that live there.


When the group arrives in Peru they meet the young guy who is apparently funding it and organizing it all, Carlos. The protest involves the group wearing masks, chaining themselves to the trees and equipment and filming the entire thing while streaming it live to the internet to hold the bad guys accountable. Alejandro and Kara make sure that Justine's lock doesn't close so when the loggers come over and start grabbing at the kids, Justine gets pulled from her perch and has a gun held to her head. Alejandro yells out that her father works for the United Nations and basically just uses Justine as a pawn. Needless to say, Justine is pissed. But the protest works and the group get back on their plane thrilled to have made a change.

But then the plane crashes. And everything goes to hell in a hand basket.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

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After a gory plane wreck, including one idiot walking in front of the still spinning propeller after the plane's landed and getting the entire side of his head demolished, the survivors begin to regroup and find a way out. But the ancient native tribe they were just protecting come out of the jungle and knock them all unconscious with darts.
You see, the group are wearing the same clothes as the logging company, and they're a bunch of white folks who speak English. So to the tribe, they're the enemy.

When the group wakes up they are led into the village and there is a very intense scene where there's hundreds of tribes people grabbing and groping the girls, touching their face and their hair. As someone who can't stand people touching her, this scene really had me shook. And the girls did a great job of acting out the emotion of this crazy, claustrophobic scene.

Immediately one of the guys, Jonah is killed, very slowly - eyes gouged out and eaten, tongue ripped out, legs cut off, arms ripped off while Jonah screams and bleeds like crazy. It was a tough watch. The tribe then prepares Jonah's body and cook it while the rest of the survivors are kept in a cage in view of everything. While in the cage, Alejandro reveals to everyone that the protest they partook in was a fraud. They were hired by a bigger logger company to get the smaller logging company off of the land so the rival operation could move in. Which....I mean....maybe just keep your mouth shut at that point?

Alejandro was a great villain, but sometimes not so believable. There's one point where Alejandro is jerking it in the cage with everyone around him and he's doing it because it helps him "clear his mind". And some of the comments he makes especially when some of them are trying to escape are just nuts. I just don't believe that a guy in a situation like this would act like that.

During a very intense scene, our lead Justine and two of the other female survivors, Sam and Amy, are pulled out in front of the tribe and stripped down to their underwear. The lead woman of the tribe discovers Justine is a virgin in a very uncomfortable way and decides to perform genital mutilation on her. You've probably heard whispers of this scene. When Sam and Amy are put back in the cage, Sam distracts the tribe and manages to escape. I'm assuming she dies? I may have missed the reveal. But I didn't see her/or hear of her again.

When Justine is put back in the cage while the tribe prepares for the mutilation, they are offered some food. All of them eat quickly but when Amy reaches the bottom of her bowl she notices a piece of skin with one of Jonah's tattoos on it and realizes they've all been eating Jonah. Which, duh. What else would they feed them? Amy loses her shit, smashes her bowl, and slices her throat wide open. Which seems a tad dramatic. But she was a vegan. So....

Things get a little weird at this point....Lars finds weed that he stashed in his boot from earlier and decides to shove it down Amy's throat. The thought being that when the tribe cooks her, they'll get high as fuck from eating Amy. And strangely enough it works? The tribe are all giggling and falling over. This scene seemed way out of place and the logistics behind it? I don't think so.

During this mess, Justine and Daniel escape, Lars tries but Alejandro stops him by stabbing him because he doesn't want to get eaten. Justine and Daniel make it back to the original plane crash site only to find the tribesmen have hung up all the dead bodies. The duo manage to find a working cell phone in Kara's pocket but unfortunately the tribesmen capture them again and drag them back to camp.

Justine is now being prepared for her genital mutilation ceremony while Daniel is tied to a post, has all his bones broken and then is fed to ants. Which gave me major flashbacks to the time when I was 6 and lived in the jungle and fell into a fire ants nest. I was covered in those motherfuckers and it was one of the scariest moments of my life. Moral of the story? Maybe don't raise your 6 year old in a jungle? I had waaaayyyy too many close calls including a rattlesnake I thought was an actual rattle, and swimming with a tarantula.

ANYWAY, after a very tense (like crazy tense - one of the best moments of the film) moment where the tribe leader is waving her knife around Justine's vajayjay, the tribe is suddenly interrupted by a member wielding a head in a yellow helmet (which is the uniform of the loggers) and all of a sudden the entire tribe goes running into the jungle. A small boy comes forward and releases Justine. After grabbing the phone from Daniel she escapes into the jungle and stumbles upon the tribe being gunned down by the loggers. She steps out of the jungle, holding up her phone, and pretends she is filming/streaming the situation. The logger grabs her and she is finally sent back home to America.

Back in America, Justine lies about what happened. She tells her father and the UN that the tribe helped her survive, fed her, and tried to help her get out of the jungle until they were gunned down by the loggers. When Justine looks around the campus she sees a new group of social activists wearing a picture of Alejandro on their shirts.

Apparently there's also an after credits scene which was not included in my itunes rental (GODDAMNIT ITUNES) which sounds bad ass - Justine is talking to Alejandro's sister and finds out the sister has located Alejandro....and he's alive....DANNNNGGGGG

END OF SPOILERS

Well....I enjoyed it. I think unfortunately we all hyped ourselves up too much about this film. People who first got to see it back in 2013 were talking about how people fainted and puked while watching it. And then we had two years to sit there and stew and obsess over this film. So of course, it will never live up to our expectations.

But putting those expectations aside - it was a fun watch. I think it would've been more fun to watch it with a group of people so you could all scream about the violence and gore. The gore itself isn't so much you can't stand it. Obviously, some of the scenes I wouldn't recommend if you're a little sensitive but I'm not big on gore and I didn't care. I enjoyed the watch immensely and I'll definitely be watching it again.

The story itself isn't super strong, but it gets the point across. You'd have to be an idiot not to understand what Roth was preaching.

Watch this trailer first, then figure out if you're down for the Green Inferno:
Click here because youtube won't let me embed it

I give it an 8/10. Eli Roth haters can suck it. CANNIBALS YEY!

Stay spooky!