The schedule is as follows.

13-Feb   HOUSE OF WAX

20-Feb   THE AMITYVILLE HORROR

27-Feb   LAND OF THE DEAD

6-Mar   THE HILLS HAVE EYES

13-Mar  SLITHER

20-Mar  DEEP BLUE SEA

26-Mar  HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

Working under the presumption that the first two and fourth film are the remakes, the inclusion of Land of the Dead, Slither, Deep Blue Sea, and especially House of the Devil actually make me grin a shifty grin of amusement. I would have expected films like Prom Night, or Sorority Row, to appeal to the base demographic of the channel. Which is fine. They have a job to do and appealing to dyed-in-the-wool horror fans is probably not on their list of things to do. But they threw me for a loop, throwing in a mix of gory remakes, cheesy zombie flicks, comedies, pseudo-cult classics, and a new and incredibly well-received bonafide horror film.

Whether or not the films will be edited to appease the parents of MTV’s core demographic is anyone’s case, though one can easily be led to believe they won’t be, as this promo demonstrates. It features scenes from House of Wax, they’re graphic, and it opens with Paris Hilton gettin’ all stabbed and shit.

Someone at MTV has the right idea. Kudos. Tune in, especially if you haven’t seen House of the Devil. I wasn’t too fond of it, but no self-respecting horror fan should go without seeing it.

MTV, if you’re listening, here are some recommendations for your next horror installment, should you choose to do so. Whether or not you can acquire the rights to air any of these films is none of my concern. Just do it. For the fans. And for me. ‘Cause I asked politely. Kinda.

The Burrowers (review)
Session 9 (review)
[REC]
Pontypool

Just a thought.

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Whether you want to admit it or not, zombie movies are becoming passe. Animated zombies films, however, are still pretty cool. If you need evidence of this, scoot on over to Zombie Info for a bunch of hi-res images and an exclusive interview with the creators, who hope to turn the awesome trailer below in a feature length film

The animation looks fucking sick. It’s dark, gritty, and heavily stylized, and the zombies have that emaciated, freshly-risen-from-the-grave-and-ready-to-eat-some-humans looks about them that is criminally underutilized in live-action zombie films. The beauty of this is that animation opens up so many more doors in terms of what can logistically be done with the way the zombies look without compromising the overall look of the movie (i.e. shit CGI).

This trailer is just too fucking excellent, and completely belies the film’s meager $50,000 budget.

To get straight to the point, I do not think this movie will be very good, but I do admire MTV for both abandoning their normal tripe and producing a horror film, the caliber of which is far beyond anything bullshit remake that has recently come out (read: anything by J.S. Cardone). The film is (obviously) a send up of that insipid My Super Sweet 16 show, which if the trailer is indication looks to be genuinely bloody and, dare I say, a damn good time. Plus, it’s directed by Jacob Gentry, who directed the second “transmission” of the beyond stellar thriller The Signal, so with luck the humor will be bloody dark and hilarious. Also, ignore the fact that it was written by two individuals whose writing credits are ironically mostly reality shows.

Bonus: the film stars Juliana Guill, who is banging hot and totally got naked in the Friday the 13th redux by Platinum Dunes.

Decide for yourself. Thoughts?

1. The success of Diablo Cody’s screenwriting debut Juno

and

2. Megan Fox

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And the plot is indeed ridiculous. Utilizing the same theme found in the far superior The Hottie and the Nottiei starring Paris Hilton and the tomboy from Step by Step, uber hot flag girl Jennifer Check, played by Megan Fox has a best friend named Anita “Needy” Lesnicky who is apparently the exact opposite of Jennifer. Unfortunately for Jennifer, she gets sacrificed to the Devil by a rock band looking to garner a record deal. This is totally normal and not retarded on the myriad of levels it seems to be. Unfortunately, high school students aren’t too adept at conducting sacrifical rituals, and Jennifer becomes possessed by a demon with the urge to eat the boys at her school. Anita must stop her best friend from killing all the boys in her school. Girl power!

The ridiculous plot and inane subtext notwithstanding, Megan Fox simply sucks. She is a poor man’s Jennifer Connolly, and she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. What are two prior credits? Both Transformers movies. Was she good in them? No. She was eye candy. And that’s all she’ll be in this film.

I’m aware of my cynicism, considering I haven’t even seen the film, but God dammit, I fucking hate Megan Fox. I hope I’m proven wrong, I really am, I just don’t have high hopes. Also, this picture is just ridiculous, and of the main reasons I think the movie will be stupid.

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A team of several researchers travel to the Swiss Alps to investigate a scientific discovery on human evolution. The trip, however, turns into a deadly fight for survival when the team crash into a gully and find themselves falling prey to someone…or something.

Peter Hall, Allocine, and Scott Weinberg for introducing me to this little gem.

And is that…Placebo playing over the end of the trailer? Awful, awful choice.

For fun racial musings, check out Horror’s Not Dead’s piece on the conspicuous lack of black vampires in the trailer.

After viewing the trailer, I think the movie would work better as an outright thriller, devoted more to the moral and ethical consequences surrounded with the power the couple is given as opposed to the basic cat-and-mouse vibe the trailer seems to be giving off. Also, the poster fucking sucks. Cameron Diaz’s face shouldn’t be on anything.

According to Wikipedia, which once proved for one minute that Nancy Grace had the Sarlacc coming out of her vagina (damned editors), the Arcade Fire will be providing an original score for the film. This is good news for someone like me who actually gives a shit about soundtracks to convey mood and tension. Additionally, Kelly had this to say about the film: “My hope is to make a film that is incredibly suspenseful and broadly commercial, while still retaining my artistic sensibility.” Good fucking luck.

The synopsis, as per B-D:

Norma and Arthur Lewis are a suburban couple with a young child who receive an anonymous gift bearing fatal and irrevocable consequences. A simple wooden box, it promises to deliver its owner $1 million with the press of a button. However, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world…someone they don’t know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the crosshairs of a startling moral dilemma and face the true nature of their humanity.

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As an aside, Hellboy II apparently received Best Horror Film at the Saturn Awards, proving once and for all that anything remotely connected to horror in any way can be deemed horror. I’m looking at you, Twilight. Full list of winners can be found here and a whole host of other places.

Despite this, I am looking forward to their sophomore effort Daybreakers, a post-apocalyptic vampire flick boasting an all-star cast. The synopsis:

A deadly plague which breaks out in the year 2017, turning most of the human population into vampires. The dominant vampires plot a way to ensure their survival in the face of dwindling blood supplies, but a researcher (Hawke) works with a rogue group of vampires to save humankind.

The all-star cast includes Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam fucking Neill, and a couple of women I’ve never heard of. If the eerily familiar plot and cast wasn’t enough to sell me on the film, the poster is.

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Special thanks to Quiet Earth for bringing this to my attention.

I know he was just beaten mercilessly and nailed to a tree, but why does Jesus look like a homeless man?

From Fangoria: Ira Hunter of The 13 Flames Empire and Nick Parsons of Monster Media sent along the eye-catching trailer for their in-the-works feature project CORPUS DELECTI (THE PASSION OF THE ZOMBIE CHRIST), which promises to put a spin on the story of Jesus that Mel Gibson never dreamed of. You can check out the clip below.

Parsons, who’s serving as a producer on the movie, provides some background: “Ira is the creator of the cult underground comic books CHAMPIONS OF HELL and ZOMBIE JESUS,” he tells Fango. “About 12 years ago, he entered a local filmmaking contest in Victoria, Canada called Scrapshots. The criteria were that the movies had to be done entirely in one shot, with no postproduction whatsoever. Ira entered one called CORPUS DELECTI (THE PASSION OF ZOMBIE JESUS), and surprised everyone by taking first place! Ira won the following year’s event as well with his film UNEARTHED.” Both of these, along with other horrific shorts from the Scrapshots competition, can be found on a DVD compilation called ZOMBIEFEAST, available at the CHAMPIONS OF HELL official website.

Read the rest here.

Blasphemy is always fun. See? And I think my zombie Jesus is way better.

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I don’t normally fawn over posters, and I’m aware this has been floating around the interblags for a very long while, but the poster for Paul Solet’s Grace is, to me, everything a horror movie poster should. Instensely minimalistic with an amazing tagline, it makes me want to finally get off my ass and write my own damned horror film.

The buzz this film has been generating is impressive in its own right. Heather Wixson wrote an open letter to Anchor Bay on Dread Central, arguing for a widespread theatrical release for this film.

Having audiences from both ends of the spectrum clearly speaks volumes for just how powerful Grace is. This is a movie that not only crawls under your skin, but relentlessly digs in throughout the whole experience until the end when you are left sitting in that theater completely unraveled by what you’ve just seen. Frankly, you just can’t get the film out of your mind. It’s been a week, and I still have certain aspects of it lodged in my brain because Grace is that impactful.

We’ll just have to wait and see, now won’t we?

Told from the point of view of a zombie struggling to understand what is happening to him, Colin was made over a period of 18-months and enlisted the help of a myriad of actors, make-up artists, and assorted crewmen, none of which received any monetary compensation for their work. It was filmed on a ten-year old camcorder and in the end, after a year and a half of filming, cost a whopping £45 to make.

And now it’s playing at Cannes.

What have you done with your life?

The trailer can be found here, and more details on the production of the film can be found here.

So now you know. On to everything else.

Who here has heard of Neil Blomkamp? He was attached to what I can only presume is the now dead-in-the-water adaptation of Halo written by Alex Garland. Not many people know of him, so here is your opportunity to learn how he and Peter Jackson are going to blow our minds with District 9.

Some time ago he directed a short film called Alive in Joburg, a brilliant little piece filmed in part-documentary/part-cinema verite style that centers on a South African town and the alien refugees within. Much like Shawn Aker’s 9, which was picked up by Tim Burton and made into a feature film, Blomkamp and one Peter Jackson have teamed up to adapt Joburg for the big screen in a film titled District 9. It looks incredible, and will surely have people inventing a whole host of allegorical connections between the film and contentious issues such as immigration and the war and some other bullshit no one really cares about anymore. Short film and trailer below.

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At no point did anyone realize just how God awful both the poster and tagline truly are?

This movie is going to suck so hard, I’m going to orgasm.

Pseudo-pornographic horror starring one of the ugliest actors in the history of cinema by one of the coolest directors alive, Lars von Trier. To say I’m excited is an understatement. For those unfamiliar with von trier, check out Dancer in the Dark. Not only will the ending make you depressed as Hell, but you’ll rethink your opinion of Bjork as more than just that annoying and eccentric Icelandic warbler who attacks journalists in airports.

As soon as I read the story I recalled the song “Phantom Limb” by Polkadot Cadaver, which everyone needs to listen to on account of it being face-meltingly awesome. Listen here.

We’ll drink to the dead
as we gulp down the blood
we’ll chase it with whiskey and swallow the flood
that wash away the souls that which I can’t forgive
that hover like a phantom limb

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Workplace safety videos are generally pretty boring, but this one manages to make the day-to-day prospect of being impaled on a piece of rebar genuinely frightening. Some of the gore effects look pretty damned good, too. via Boing Boing again.

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Sam Rockwell of Choke and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is starring alongside a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey in the science fiction thriller Moon. It looks quite wonderful.

Now horror stuff.

Those kind folks over at Quiet Earth, which I maintain is one of the few horror/thriller/genre film sites that isn’t populated by drooling retards, has given us a little peak at the low-budget indie thriller Phasma Ex Machina. The honkey over at QE described it as having a sorta Primer feel, which, if this film is anything like Primer, will make you feel incredibly stupid and endlessly entertained at the same time.

The plot, you say? Here. Don’t say I never gave ya anything.

An ambitious mystery, with strong elements of science fiction and the supernatural, Phasma Ex Machina follows the lives of two brothers and an electrical engineer trying to decipher a series of strange events. Everything changes when they discover that the distance between the living and the dead isn’t all that far.

Phasma Ex Machina Trailer from Phasma Ex Machina on Vimeo.

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Paul Solet’s upcoming Grace, which serves to prove my theory that babies are inherently evil, gives off the notion of being “the next big thing,” a la Inside or some other foreign flick. The flick is being praised across the board, and its next screening will be at the SXSW Film Festival. Unfortunately, it stars Jordan Ladd in the lead role, but I’ve been surprised before.

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Sam Raimi’s most recent foray into disappointment comes with a surprising and apparently anticipated return to his directorial roots. Drag Me To Hell tells the story of a young loan officer who has a curse set upon her by an elderly woman whom she kicks out of her home. The fact that Justin Long was cast as a professor, that Sam Raimi is pretty much dead in the water when it comes to horror, and that this movie reeks of The Unborn all but guarantees it will be a monumental disappointment.

Look people: just because Raimi wrote and directed the Evil Dead Trilogy does not mean everything he touches within the realm of horror is gold. Pretty much everything he’s done with Ghost House has been shit, and I’m fairly certain he shoots up a mixture of heroin and liquified hundred dollar bills every night before he goes to sleep.

Uncle Creepy over at Dread Central seems to be salivating over this. Let me know what you think of the trailer.

I think my cynicism is beginning to take over. To alleviate this, I will be holding a contest. Details to come when I get home from work and have real time to update.

Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas in two hours of B-movie brilliance.

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There was a pun in there, and it was brilliant.

The remake will no doubt be an excuse to showcase their “talents,” as it were, and do little to foster the idea that Hollywood isn’t run by a psychopathic group of unoriginal malcontents.

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Quiet Earth reports that Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Apian Way will be remaking The Neverneding Story. That sound you hear? That’s my childhood dying a slow, painful death.

Fun fact: the Appian Way of Rome is well-known for hosting the lovely crucufixion of 6,000 slaves after the failed revolt of 10,000+ slaves led by Spartacus. The bodies were left up for years, proving that once and for all Rome was a very smelly place to live in 70 BC and an appropriate moniker for DiCaprio’s apparently soul-crushing and childhood-destroyig vehicle fo cinematic pain.

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Finally, on a more upbeat note, if you head on over to ilovehorror.net you’ll get a sneak preview at what will soon become the new home for I Love Horror. The design, as you can see, is basically the same thing as what I have now, but as time progresses and I start to make sense of CSS, it will begin to take shape into something so epic you’ll crap your fucking pants. Until then, keep coming here and inflating my ego until I give the go ahead. Special thanks go out to Peter Hall of Horror’s Not Dead for all his help.

All that unnecessary lead in notwithstanding, the video below contains the final song from Dog Fashion Disco’s climactic final album Adultery. Their instrumentals and orchestration, both bombastic and incredibly creepy, belong in a horror film.

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The trailer for [REC]2 is popping up everywhere. What’s one more to inform people of the successor to one of the best horror films in horror memory?

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Sadly, movies of this ilk – The Exorcism of Emily Rose, An American Haunting, among others – tend to be really, really awful, so my optimism might be relatively misplaced. Here’s hoping this can buck the trend.

The plot as per that bastion of unfounded knowledge, Wikipedia: When Sara (Virginia Madsen) and Peter (Martin Donovan) Campbell’s son Matt (Kyle Gallner) is diagnosed with cancer, they uproot their family to a home in Southington, Connecticut where they would be near a hospital for his treatment. As the family settles into their new home, which turns out to be a former mortuary, Matt grows increasingly disturbed by paranormal activity that seems to inhabit and possess the house. At a loss to help her frightened family, his mother turns to an enigmatic priest (Elias Koteas) who appears to rid the house of its ghosts– until the boy’s condition takes a sudden and unexplained turn for the worse and their lives are put in grave danger.

Casey Jones is totally gonna bust some ghosts.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRJA3lN0xCQ&hl=en&fs=1]

I think I just came a little.

The trailer gives off an air of pop-horror sensibilities, a fact made all the more terrifying by the dreaded PG-13 rating. IMDB states it was edited to give it such a rating, so fear not, we’ll probably get an unrated cut on DVD once it’s finally released. It also stars Christopher Meloni, who is good in pretty much everything he does, so I have high hopes for this one. Perhaps we can finally have a PG-13 horror film done right.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgo7z5oc6bk&hl=en&fs=1]

Special thanks to Quiet Earth and Horror-Movies.ca for informing me of this.

Zombie Girl is a documentary about 12-year old Emily Hagins. Unlike most 12-year old girls, she recently wrote, directed, produced, and edited her own feature length zombie film called Pathogen. In an age where kids are taking camcorders and throwing together loose short films with a modicum of effort, she’s taking it a step further and owning the ever-loving shit out of every aspiring filmmaker under the age of eighteen far and wide. Shit. I don’t even think I knew what the word ‘pathogen’ meant when I was twelve, let alone have the guts and drive to make a feature length film. I think I was just interested in boobs.

The maddest of props to you, Emily. Trailer below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoAYyr2DxEM&hl=en&fs=1]

After reading the original script for the forthcoming, stuck-in-development-hell Castlevania movie, I take back everything I said.

Thankfully, this script is near two and a half years old, and a recent interview with G4 (about five months old) with PWSA revealed that the film will have “so much whipping it could be an S&M movie” and will “focus on Trevor Belmont,” who is conspicuously absent from the script I read. Here’s the interview, the first five minutes of which discuss Death Race, the final 45 seconds discussing Castlevania.

[http://www.g4tv.com/video_detail.aspx?video_key=28012] in case embed does not work.

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Is it just me, or does the creature in the third pic look a little too…human?

You can view the rest of the photos here.

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Zombie comedies are everywhere now, and this one looks absolutely hysterical. It did beat Worst Case Scenario, which is bad because I really wanted it to be the first Nazi zombie film, and good because I was sick of waiting for a Nazi zombie film.

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Those fine fellows over at Quiet Earth gave us a look at the upcoming Norwegian film Børre. The film seems fairly low budget, but never say never. The final ten seconds is simply eerie.

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From the website: “Set in a wasteland enclosed by a large white wall, the last survivor from a brutal child internment camp reluctantly takes on one final bounty hunting job to protect the idyllic life he has rebuilt.”

This is the first I have heard of this film, and after viewing the trailer I’m beyond surprised that this is the first site I have found to report on it. I’ve been wanting a new movie to salivate over, and this seems to be it. EDIT: It seem Dread Central reported on the film as well, getting their info from Quiet Earth.

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White Wall teaser from white wall on Vimeo.

Note: I have no idea why the teaser won’t embed. My apologies.

This is the trailer for The Living Dead, an upcoming anthology of zombie fiction with contributions by some of the greatest science fiction and horror authors alive today, including George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and my personal favorite, Neil Gaiman.

Most zombie films aren’t really that scary, but this simple minute long trailer is pretty damned freaky. If the book is half as good as this is, it will be a monumental success and definitely worth a look see.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raNWFhPxi5Q&hl=en&fs=1]

Source: Tor.com

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