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The Weekly Scream
New: Cold Storage (VOD)
There is no tougher tightrope to walk than horror-comedy. Too much horror and the jokes feel out of place; too much comedy and there’s not enough tension and suspense. COLD STORAGE clicks in with two charismatic leads (Stranger Thing’s Joe Keery and Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell), plenty of gross body horror, and daffy escalations, like an intelligent mutated deer, that won me over to its monster movie charms. Rent it on VOD now.
GORE-O-METER 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 5
Classic: The Wailing (Disney+/Hulu)
Korean cinema possesses the rare ability to mix and match tones without suffering from whiplash, and nothing illustrates this more than 2016’s THE WAILING. Part Exorcist, part regional police procedural, the film concerns a string of violent murders in a small Korean village that may or may not be linked to a Japanese stranger in town, and a cop whose daughter is exhibiting disturbing signs of madness. A horror achievement worthy of your streaming budget. Highly recommended and now on Disney+/Hulu.
GORE-O-METER 🩸🩸🩸 out of 5
“How Is This Free?” Stir of Echoes (Tubi)
Buried far beneath the box office dominance of THE SIXTH SENSE when it first hit screens in 1999, this dense and suspenseful thriller from frequent Spielberg collaborator David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Premium Rush, and Cold Storage) is underseen and undersung. Kevin Bacon is dazzling as a regular guy who gains flashes of psychic powers after a party game hypnotism and becomes obsessed with a long-buried crime in his neighborhood. An absolute banger! Watch it now on Tubi!
GORE-O-METER 🩸 out of 5
FRESH BLOOD
JOIN US TOMORROW for our first Scream Share Virtual Watch Party on Friday the 13th - FREE!
The movie: Jason X. The time: 9ET/8C/6PT.
Just click the button below to add to your Google Calendar - it’s just that easy! We will update the link 15 minutes before the screening so you can join us on Teleparty. Make sure to add Teleparty to your Chrome browser ahead of time + have a Tubi account (sign up free).
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The Big Clap Back
Director James Wan has found a new horror-adjacent milieu to play in! Deadline reported that Wan has attached himself to a Paramount remake of the Korean serial killer flick, THE GANGSTER, THE COP, THE DEVIL. Considering Wan’s Saw and Furious 7 history, this could be a potent combo. The original stars Don Lee smacking the hell out of people - which is one of my favorite genres. On Hulu right now!
Korean action star Ma Dong-seok slaps someone silly in the poster for THE GANGSTER, THE COP, THE DEVIL (credit: WellGo USA)
Ashes To Ashes
FANGORIA checked in, so you can check out the first full trailer from this summer’s HOKUM. This haunted hotel flick comes courtesy of Damian McCarthy (Caveat, Oddity) and stars Adam Scott (Severance) as an author who jets off to Ireland to scatter the ashes of his deceased parents at the hotel they spent their honeymoon at - only to discover the rooms have some dangerous baggage of their own. The movie hits theaters on May 1st.
Adam Scott explores another darkened crawlspace from HOKUM. (credit: NEON)
The Autopsy
Tomorrow night will be the debut of our Scream Share Virtual Screening, and as it will be Friday the 13th, we’re of course watching JASON X. Is it the best Friday? NO. But it is one of the more interesting entries to discuss. It’s messy, highly incoherent, and filled with characters doing the weirdest things possible with little to no motivation. It takes place in the dumbest future. Honestly, what would you expect from a “Jason goes to space” movie?
But one has to wonder, what is it about the Friday the 13th movies that I (and so many other horror fans) like so much? They’re certainly not great cinema, and most entries aren’t something I’d call great horror either. For me, at least, it’s a weird kind of comfort. Like revisiting a record you know every note of or scratching the family pet behind the ears. I know what’s going to happen once I hit play, but the little details that no one was paying attention to when the cameras rolled are what keep me coming back. For example, why does the cruise ship in Part 8 that’s carrying graduating high school seniors have a kitchen filled with smoldering food under the heat lamps but not a single cook on the line?
The mounds of smoking bread under heat lamps from Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (credit: Paramount)
Another fave: the lights built into the armor of the space marines in JASON X that shine into their faces. How does being blinded by your own breastplate help you shoot anyone, let alone a cryogenically frozen killer who dons a leather poncho now for some reason?
At least her neck is illuminated.
Every one of these Friday entries has dozens of insane details hidden within. It’s not like no one was paying attention, but they probably figured that no normal person would ever be watching these cheap, tawdry slasher flicks with this amount of attention to detail. None of these random decisions affects the plot really, but when you know the movie by heart, your mind starts looking for other elements you haven’t considered before. It’s a scavenger hunt for the oddest detail inside a movie franchise that’s unconcerned with continuity, since that wasn’t something most moviegoers ponied up their dollars for. They wanted scares, and a hatchet to the face, and maybe some skinny dipping if they were lucky. If everything in the franchise was always super competent, it just wouldn’t be as interesting. At least not to me.
Die Laughing
Just one meme that made us laugh this week…
Killer Conversation
Let’s all get to know each other a little better…
Last week’s poll concerned horror remakes, giving everyone a chance to pick their faves. EVIL DEAD 2013 led the pack by a fair margin, but every movie got a few votes along the way. While I might be surprised that Evil Dead won over Carpenter’s THE THING or Cronenberg’s THE FLY, I think I understand why: EVIL DEAD contains a hidden well of empathy and deeper emotion that the others don’t quite touch.
Finest Friday
Make sure to check back in next week to see if your pick took top honors and why I think they slayed the competition!!
Pod People
This week on the Kill By Kill podcast, we discussed 2005’s remake of THE FOG, debating why this movie would need two Crazy Ralph characters, wondering who dreamt up the Fog’s-eye-view, and giving producer Debra Hill her well-deserved flowers!! All this, plus indoor/outdoor decorators, death by not letting go of a rope, MTV’s The Grind, shower sex body horror, super leprosy, wet footprints, and a defenestration-heavy edition of Choose Your Own Deathventure. Whatever you do, don’t watch the movie. Instead, listen to us rant and rave about it today!
