Okay, some of these are a little blurry, but the way parts are shown, they purposely make the image look bad. Plenty of the red stuff, though! Click on any image to enlarge. Horror Boom does not own the rights in any ay, shape, or form of these images from As Above, So Below.
I’m pretty sure you couldn’t see in the green band trailer that she was holding what appears to be a dead infant…
We say “possible spoilers” because this extra-long, final trailer has so much action (not to mention blood) that we are actually kind of concerned–especially because we watched it– that they don’t hold much back for the actual movie. Since the trailer is not on You Tube as of this writing, we have a link to it on Yahoo! Movies. You have been warned… oh, and it made us want to drive directly to the nearest movie theater showing it and see it ASAP. Consider yourself warned–watch at your own risk!
So! Does it make you want to bolt out and catch the movie right away, or are you concerned there’s too many scares given away in the trailer? We haven’t dug deeply to ask someone if this new trailer kinda shoots As Above, So Below ‘s load, but we will find out and report back to you. Oh, and screencaps are coming!
I’m pretty sure you couldn’t see in the green band trailer that she was holding what appears to be a dead infant…
Well, we knew it might be underwhelming, but we weren’t expecting it to be boring. True Blood deserved a much better send-off than it got on Sunday night. Click “view original” in the lower left to read the whole piece, which does make some pretty good points.
All right, we’ve sort of danced around it till now and tried to keep negativity about the seventh and final season of True Blood to a minimum (unless you’ve read any of Mrs. Horror Boom’s comments on the A.V. Club/Disquis, where all tact goes out the window and there’s as much cursing as a Tarantino movie). In particular, our venom is spewed in the direction of new showrunner Brian “Bucky” Buckner,* whom even one of the most hot gracious, professional regular cast members have vented about (citing great character arcs, plotlines, and missing scenes that were cut as a casualty of the change in showrunners). However, let’s not get too detailed about that right now. We’re just explaining why the ten ways to kill time till the series finale airing tonight on HBO have the tone that they do. We do feel this way, but take it with a grain of salt as we included this post as comic relief,
Naturally, spoilers abound, so beware!
1. Wonder what seasons six and seven would have been like if Alan Ball hadn’t retired as showrunner after season five (“I don’t even have the words to tell you how much I love this show, but I’m just too old and tired and beat-up to keep up after five seasons,” he explained honestly and apologetically during the panel at SDCC 2012) and handed the reins over to “Bucky”.
2. Decide there’s no way in hell they could have been worse if Ball had stayed on; brood about characters he probably wouldn’t have killed off
3. Remember how there used to be True Blood finale parties up (until season 6 got going), held in friendly local bars and clubs; recall how sparse you found out they are for the series finale after you looked it up just for the hell of it.
4. Strongly resent the way Tara’s character (and the wonderful Rutina Wesley) was casually discarded in the pre-credit sequence on the premiere, killed off-screen. Remember how you were positive she wasn’t dead, then at least pretty positive there was going to be a great –of at least satisfying– pay-off down the line during the season to justify killing her off, with it only really seeming to bother Tara’s mother.
5. Remember what actually happened to Tara’s character instead to “resolve” the plotline, recall how the writer of the episode (in the EW.com ‘post-mortem’ to the episode where it was finally explained) actually sounded apologetic and couldn’t muster up much pride when asked to explain the resolution of the storyline. Start getting all pissed off again.
6. Start imagining how, if you ever ran into “Bucky”, you would probably assault him on sight. Remember that this is a felony and you shouldn’t even joke about it on your blog. Instead, imagine what you would say to his face (that would not get you into any legal trouble) and seeing that smug look wiped off.
7. Miss Joe Manganiello, remind yourself he’s still going to be around, then really miss his character Alcide. Wish they hadn’t killed him off so fast. Wish they hadn’t had to kill him off at all. Remember all the times Joe Manganiello said playing Alcide was a dream come true, but how he got frustrated towards the end because “the showrunner switch” took away a ton of planned scenes explaining his complicated back-story with his father and turned his character with one of the biggest hearts on the show into someone who was a total asshole, hit women, and didn’t have any more decent sex scenes.
8. Remember the good old days (well, years) when you eagerly anticipated every episode and the episodes delivered every time: at least A. one shocking thing, B. something that made you gasp or curse in shock C. something really dirty D. something really gory, and E. several good laughs. Then the episode would end with a cliff-hanger and half the time, a rockin’ song.
9. Strongly resent Brian Buckner some more. Get pissed off all over again, lower the bar further for your series finale expectations. Remind yourself this is not constructive and take a deep breath. Pray Pam and Eric will both survive the finale.
10. Despite all of the above, wonder if there’s somewhere you can go out and buy a bottle of “TruBlood” (yup, the show was so popular that by the end of S2, you could actually buy the stuff) in time to drink while you watch the series finale.
BONUS ACTIVITIES:
1. Hope desperately that (insert name of character you lust for the most) will get a nude scene/sex scene in the finale.
2. Wonder if you’ll ever meet (insert name of actor who plays character/s you lust after most here) and if so, if you’d be able to keep it together enough to even have a rudimentary conversation with them. Hope that if you do meet them, they aren’t even hotter in person to the point where you just snap and end up having to be dragged off them by security.
3. Remember when you defended True Blood to people who slammed the show, wonder exactly when it was you started having trouble defending it quite so strongly. Feel sorry for yourself.
4. Think that if nothing else, at least Buckner didn’t fuck up the awesome theme song, which you practically sprained your fingers in your haste to order from iTunes once you got the title and singer. If you ever got so excited you got up and danced to it when an episode aired, smile (even if you’ll never admit you did it).
5. Be happy and proud of yourself when remembering that when the show was great, you never once took it for granted, and made sure you took in every detail and soaked up every bit of fun. And goddamn, when True Blood was fun, it was REALLY fun. It truly was.
I’d like to say that Justin Chang just hates found-footage horror (though this has a tiny bit of “mockumentary” style added) but he knew enough to name Afflicted as an example of a “far more effective” found-footage thriller. Unfortunately, he also points out that the special-effects work (which I’ve heard is mostly practical) is ‘impressively nauseating’ and earlier in the review mentions ‘grisly supernatural shocks’. Goddamnit, now we’re going to have to see it eventually. It doesn’t hurt that Dread Central (among others) had good things to say about it, either.
Check out the trailer below, and read the rest of Mr. Chang’s review on Variety.com by clicking “View original” in the lower left.
Oh, and a note on the premise of the movie (we’ve only seen the trailer, but read quite a few reviews, enough to state the following): the lead character starts to mess with the supernatural due to the death of his wife, which has destroyed him. He wants badly to find any evidence that the supernatural exists, because if he can, that means there is an afterlife and he’ll get to see his wife again eventually, which obviously will help soften the blow of her death. If you know the motivation of Sigourney Weaver’s character in Red Lights, it’s similar; in that movie she plays an agnostic who has spent a good part of her life and career debunking anything remotely supernatural, especially scams …because deep down, she finally admits, if she can find even a grain of proof that there’s an afterlife, she can take her son off life-support. I highly doubt this movie is anywhere near as intellectual, but there it is. Also, Michael King doesn’t immediately start trying to actively invoke demons to possess him minutes after she dies; from what we have read in reviews, he works up to it. Not the entire movie, since this IS an 80-minute long found-footage flick, but still. If it turns out I totally misread the reviews and he just goes batshit the minute she dies and starts carving pentagrams into his chest immediately, we’ll amend this post.
Yeah yeah, we’ve been watching too many Seinfeld re-runs, so what. YOU try thinking of a clever headline after you see this. We’ve, well, re-calibrated our expectations after we were left disappointed by Coven… however, we absolutely consider this the best début teaser in the history of the series. Step right up!
This is more like it! Anyone else think the chicken-like look to that hand, limb, whatever you want to call it, might be an homage to the final scene in Todd Browning’s Freaks?
The fourth season of American Horror Story will premiere October 9th on FX. Bring on more of those teasers!
We were hoping for a release date at the end of this one (we couldn’t take it if another distributor pulled a “Green Inferno” on us), but alas, none yet. However, we have been told that The Babadook will be out by the end of the year. Probably it will only have a limited release in select theaters (which Seattle never seems to be included in, goddamnit, unless they announce the screening less than 24 hours before it actually happens and it’s already sold out) and have a VOD release. Don’t know about you, but this looks like something we would love to see in a theater with a crowd. Take a gander at trailer #2 for Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook! Oh, and we advise headphones– not because there’s some huge jump scare that will make you soil yourself, but because of the incredibly creepy sounds that really add to the overall fright factor.
If you want a direct link to the website, click here. As of this writing there isn’t much, other than a couple social media links and those extremely unsettling inhuman sounds, but it’s still cool. When I checked it out earlier, at around 3:00 AM, those sounds kept going even after I closed the browser window. I had to just quit Firefox completely and start it over. This did not have a beneficial effect on my insomnia issues.
Here’s the plot description (though the trailer gives you a pretty good idea of the themes):
Six years after the violent death of her husband, Amelia struggles to discipline her “out-of-control” six-year-old Samuel – a son she finds difficult to love. Samuel’s dreams are plagued by a monster he believes is coming to kill them both. When a disturbing storybook called Mister Babadook turns up at their house, Samuel is convinced that the Babadook is the creature he has been dreaming about. As Amelia begins to see glimpses of the creature herself, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her about may well be real.
So yeah, we heard some rumors, but decided they were too much of a drag to really be true. I mean, this movie had its world premiere LAST YEAR for Chrissake! Around this time!
We reproduced it here but do NOT claim any ownership or copyright, all the credit and the copyright belongs to Mike Fleming Jr]:
EXCLUSIVE: Green Inferno, the Eli Roth-directed film about student activists who travel from Gotham to save the Amazon rainforest only to be pursued by a cannibal tribe, has been taken off Open Road’s release calendar. The film was scheduled for wide release on September 5. I’m told this happened because financier Worldview Entertainment is balking at ex-CEO Christopher Woodrow’s commitment to provide the P&A.
Since this is Roth’s first directorial outing in six years and his budget conscious fright fare almost always scares up profits, this is almost as shocking as the subject matter and also a tasty bit of dish. I’ve confirmed from Open Road that the release date is scratched, though the distributor won’t comment further, including whether there will be a later release date or if this goes straight to video. Worldview has been going through a restructure since the abrupt and largely unexplained exit of CEO Woodrow, which Deadline revealed last June.
The company, now run by Molly Conners, put a freeze on all of Woodrow’s extravagant commitments and is scrutinizing every deal that was made. Green Inferno has been caught in that snare and is not alone; there is reportedly a lawsuit by Hoyt David Morgan, who claimed he staked $3.7 million in Worldview in exchange for exec producer credit on the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-directed Birdman, only to be stiffed on the money and the credit.
Worldview is still squarely in operation, I’m told, with Conners determined to responsibly put the pieces back together. She will be in Venice to premiere Worldview pics Birdman and Manglehorn. It looks from here like the scrapping of Green Inferno from Open Road’s fall schedule has little to do with the quality of the film Roth directed, co-wrote and produced. Green Inferno was acquired by Open Road after it premiered in the Midnight Madness program at 2013 Toronto City to raucous response. It got a 77% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a stat that makes it seem like if you hunger for one incredibly violent nightmarish Amazon cannibal film this year, Green Inferno might be just for you. It got a similar reaction last week at the Fantasia festival.
Roth is currently editing his latest film, the Keanu Reeves-starrer Knock Knock …[Roth] wouldn’t comment here, but he clearly likes his cannibal extravaganza, recently producing and releasing a mobile game for the movie.
I’m told that Worldview doesn’t intend to leave Roth high and dry, and behind the scenes talks are going on to try and figure this out. If that doesn’t rescue the wide release of this film, I imagine that someone will provide the P&A spend (it’s the first money to get refunded), or else another distributor will show an appetite and step to the plate for Roth’s cannibal fare.
[end of exclusive from Deadline.com]
OK, deep breath… count to ten…
First of all we’d just like to say: Fuck Worldview and whoever is responsible for this. There was a new DVD release Tuesday and we rented it Wednesday; they had the entire Green Inferno trailer and continued to state COMING SEPTEMBER 5th. We relaxed (and okay, were in denial at the time). By the way, all this went down last week and we managed to miss it, sorry we couldn’t spread the word to you sooner.
THEN, Movieweb.com ran a story a couple of days later. Eli Roth himself confirmed the story via Twitter. He kept his tweet short, apologetic, but vague (we’re pretty sure all this shit with the distributor mere weeks away from the release hasn’t exactly been a picnic for him, either; he’s made it very clear the movie was a labor of love).
Here is what Brian Gallagher at Movieweb.com had to say after that bummer of a tweet:
The film, which centers on a group of college activists who find themselves hunted by a tribe of cannibals in the Amazon jungle, was initially slated for release on September 5. Former Worldview Entertainment CEO Christopher Woodrow had previously committed to providing publicity and advertising for the horror film, but, following his abrupt exit in June, the studio is now questioning that commitment. It isn’t clear if the film will get a later release date, or if it will only receive a straight-to-video release at this point.
New Worldview CEO Molly Conners has put a freeze on all of Christopher Woodrow‘s reportedly “extravagant commitments” and is going through each deal once again. The production company is also facing a lawsuit from Hoyt David Morgan, who claimed he invested $3.7 million in Worldview in exchange for an executive producer credit on Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s Birdman, although he never received credit or reimbursement.
It is believed that Worldview’s decision to pull The Green Inferno from its slate has nothing to do with the quality of the movie itself. As Eli Roth mentioned in his tweet, the filmmaker and the studio are working to resolve this matter, and we’ll keep you posted with any updates as we receive them.
And we at Horror Boom will also be keeping an eye out for updates. Hey, maybe we can all start a support group…
Didn’t see Ryan Murphy going in this direction, but he did! This photo was (heavily) doctored in Photoshop; that is, unless a character trait of Jessica Lange’s “Elsa Mars” is that her hands and wrists are bigger than her head (even though they made her head larger, too). We’re not trying to ruin the fun, it’s just distracting how waaaay out of proportion her hands and wrists are. We’re not doubting that Jyoti Amge is the world’s smallest woman, just saying hey went a little apeshit manipulating the photo, and we’re having trouble focusing on anything but Ms. Lange’s giant hands. We can’t wait to see more!
Also, Patti Labelle’s casting was recently announced. We would have got that information to you faster, but it was the same news cycle that broke the story of Robin Williams passing (and the shockingly tragic circumstances surrounding her death), so everyone was kind of preoccupied (and sad). No word on who LaBelle is cast as, but we’ll keep an eye out!
Both will be wonderful additions to the cast. Now let’s cross our fingers that Naomi Grossman returns as Pepper (we’ve heard a rumor–someone on a message board said that they heard that Ms. Grossman’s name showed up on a casting sheet, but we don’t want to get our hopes up until it’s confirmed. I bet she’d love to reprise the role, and the character has a huge fan base, so it could happen!
HORROR BOOM 