American Horror Story: Roanoke Update! Ryan Murphy Spills More Details On Big Twist!

19 October 2016

Well, we’re not sure if a spoiler warning is in order here or not. There wasn’t a spoiler warning on the story, and Ryan Murphy pretty much gave the details casually, possibly because we are less than 48 hours away from “Chapter Six”. Most of it is pretty good news…

So, we got this all from a new piece that is exclusive to Entertainment Weekly. If you want to cut to the chase and read the story online, here’s the link (it’s their scoop, not ours).

Okay! First, Lady Gaga’s primal witch character, Scathach, ties in to Coven. Turns out that RM has confirmed she was the “first Supreme”. He alludes a little more to a Coven crossover, and we have to be honest: Coven was our least favorite season (admittedly, it didn’t help any that it had a tough act to follow, which was Asylum). But that’s just our opinion, and Coven did have some high points (Misty, Marie LaVeau, and Fiona was pretty fun, off the top of our heads). Murphy went on to say that American Horror Story will return to the Coven storyline in future seasons, but he doesn’t know when that will be.

Speaking of different seasons, we will see more Freak Show. To quote Murphy directly: “Next year, we will be going back to some Freak Show characters, deeper histories and mythologies. So we’re sort of still exploring season 4 in season 7.” Fine with us, especially if we get to see Naomi Grossman as Pepper again!

Taissa Farmiga fans, rejoice! She will return this season! Ryan Murphy told EW.com that he brought Farmiga back in (after her sitting out Freak Show and Hotel) because it was a matter of coming up with the right part for her.

He also confirmed that, though there are only ten episodes (GODDAMNIT!*), the finale will be a pretty big deal. “The finale is the wrap-up to Roanoke but the mythology and some of the characters will continue in subsequent seasons. So it’s the ending but not the ending,” says Murphy. Hmmmm…

Also, Murphy really stresses that the “upcoming twist” will be the biggest twist the series has had so far. Since we are on Season Six, that is saying quite a bit. We are trying to manage our expectations, but the other fans we’ve heard from are expecting nothing but being completely blown away. Several have said, in fact, they will be really pissed off if it doesn’t make their jaw hit the floor. Horror Boom is still sticking to our “Found footage, plus going behind the scenes of the filming of My Roanoke Nightmare, possibly including some American Horror Story regulars such as Sarah Paulson and Kathy Bates playing themselves” theory.

We found another Entertainment Weekly online story that went up after Chapter Five ended last week, with co-creator Brad Falchuck. In it, he says that fans should be prepared for these next batches of episodes to be their own thing. He explains, “I really think it’s three seasons: it’s like [episodes] 1 through 5, 6 through 9, and 10 is its own thing.” He also stresses, regarding the twist: “No matter what you think it is, it’s not that.” Well, that certainly doesn’t sound boring! We just hope we get to see Evan Peters again.

Here’s the teaser for tomorrow night’s episode one more time. The “never stop recording, no matter what,” found-footage statement reminds us of the original [REC] (2007). As everyone who has seen the movie will recall, that didn’t turn out well for absolutely anyone**, though we’re glad they kept recording so we could have the living shit scared out of us.

Souce: Entertainment Weekly Online

*Hell, we were really bummed out when we realized “Hotel” would only have 12 episodes. How do you think we feel now? No holiday break! What are we supposed to do now for our “post-Christmas depression”? On the bright side, we still have a chance for the two-part Halloween episode. They’d better not skip it this year.

**unless you count La Nina Medieros, AKA ‘The Attic Monster’

Our theory is that they spelled out “PIG” on purpose…

Want Intel On Upcoming ‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ Events? Lookie Here!

30 September 2016

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OK, so we don’t exactly know every single little thing (and face it, you wouldn’t want to know everything any more than we would) but this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly* features Ryan Murphy and some of his favorite talent on the cover, with a big chunk devoted to AHS Roanoke. He drops some VERY interesting teasers on the episodes to come, and though he’s not dumb enough to give outright spoilers, there is quite a bit of information on what to expect this season, even some specifics about tie-ins to other seasons (hint: they’re not the seasons you’d expect). Here’s some specific highlights from the Entertainment Weekly cover story, plus some extra goodies!

NOTE: SPOILERS INCLUDED FOR AMERICAN HORROR STORY SEASON SIX : ROANOKE. IF YOU ARE NOT CAUGHT UP ON EPISODES ONE TO THREE, STOP READING AND CATCH UP. What the hell are you waiting for, anyhow?

Dandy Mott origin story, anyone? Remember that rotten, murderous, rich little prick from Freak Show? Finn Whitrock’s Dandy turned out to be much more dangerous and horrible than Twisty the Clown. He definitely deserved the horrible death he got while the surviving characters watched while happily chomping popcorn. Ryan Murphy says that we can expect the shows to “explain how the Motts began”. We hope that means we’ll get to see Frances Conroy this season, because we really missed her during Hotel.

Roanoke might seem more stripped down–RM’s rule going in was “no script longer than 36 pages, no cut longer than 41 minutes”**–but we still will get plenty of gore. For instance, he says, “If you ever want to see how you do a human disembowling, watch episode four and you’ll learn a lot”.

You would think Kathy Bates as “The Butcher” and her gang of long-dead colonists (Lady Gaga plays one), along with the murderous bloodthirsty nurses, would provide enough scares. We also get “Piggy Man”, as another horrifying apparition (or is he?), and the EW story refers to him as “one of the main baddies”. Piggy Man, who we saw in one of Dr. Cunningham’s found-footage VHS tapes, is the same one as the legend discussed in Murder House.

While EW was visiting the set, someone was getting set up with a “crotch harness”, but it isn’t for what you’d think after watching AHS Hotel. A character is killed after a very nasty staircase fall.

Here’s the big surprise: Halfway through the season, beginning with episode 6, everything you thought you knew about Roanoke gets flipped on its head. BIG TIME. Says Murphy: “The show has a huge turn, and the thing that you think you’re watching is not what you’re watching.” We are willing to bet that is going to include a departure from the mock reality crime show format.

Here, piggy piggy…

Our speculation on the big twist? The scope of the show is going to widen, because the fact that the “real” family (Shelby, Lee, and Matt Miller) who “My Roanoke Nightmare” is based on all are alive and appear to be in one piece kind of ruins any suspense regarding who will survive and who is not. The story in the reality show might seem to wrap up, but we’ll see the evil continuing on outside the show. Maybe Angela Bassett, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Sarah Paulson themselves will be haunted, though that could get a little ‘meta’. Maybe we’ll see a little more a little more of Cheyenne Jackson (it took us a while to pick up on it, but he is the interviewer of the documentary My Roanoke Nightmare).

Your guess is as good as ours… and there are plenty of theories to explore online. Let’s hope the episodes get longer than the bare minimum, and hey, maybe we’ll even see a fish-eye lens shot or two.

We do have a few more miscellaneous nuggets from the Entertainment Weekly cover story. The whole “The Mist” misdirect isn’t mentioned (though it was pretty clever), but as far as all those involved in the filming and prep leading up to the surprise premiere date, they–and this is a direct quote– “took a blood oath not to reveal anything”. Scripts got shredded, actual security was hired, and even Sarah Paulson could only get two scripts in advance. Also, several phony semi-leaked plot descriptions were written under the name American Horror Story: Cul-de-Sac. Everything worked, up until some sleazes who wanted a payday from TMZ snuck onto the set and took a few photos, but fortunately, that was only a few days before the surprise premiere. Oh, and Murphy also knows the concept for next season… and then some.

Oh, and any rabid Even Peters fans who have been really, really upset he hasn’t shown up yet three episodes in? Take a deep breath and try to be patient, he IS signed on for this season. He isn’t even listed as a special guest star, but as a part of the main cast. They may be saving him (along with Finn Whitrock and Matt Bomer) for after the big mid-season switcheroo!

*Source: Entertainment Weekly, “Unlocking American Horror Story” by Tim Stack @ewtimstack, September 30, 2016/Issue #1433

**Not going to lie, this bums us out. The last few season’s extended episodes (“Hotel” was especially generous with these, even though there were only 12 instead of the usual 13 episodes) spoiled us, we guess. We’re going to pretend really hard that we did not only see ten “chapters” listed for this season on the reliable IMDB episode guide, though…

Want To View The Actual Blair Witch As Seen In 2016 movie? (SPOILER ALERT)

25 September 2016

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Well, we’re going to need to send you over to Spoiler-A-Rama section of Horror Boom for this one. But if your only reason for spending the 12-plus bucks to see the new Wingard/Barett “sequel” was to catch a glimpse of the brief, blurry shot at the climax of the movie, we can save you the trouble…

Click here to visit said spoiler section of Horror Boom.

Alternately, click here to go to The Movie Spoiler and just read the entire description of the movie scene-to-scene, start to finish.

Variety Calls ‘The Pyramid’ A “Likably Lame-Brained Egypto-Horror Exercise” – Read The Review Here!

9 December 2014

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Correctly ascertaining that auds will be less interested in the outcome than in the obstacles along the way, Levasseur plants and executes the pic’s exclamation-point scares with grinning, squelching gusto. It matters little that most of the jolts have been lifted from previous movies, given that much of the borrowing is from films (a Hammer Horror curio here, Renny Harlin’s “Deep Blue Sea” there) that were once cut-rate knockoffs themselves: Such hand-me-downs are still cheaply effective, and all the more endearing for their familiarity. The sight of a character impaled on an old-fashioned bed of wooden stakes, nibbled at by screeching Sphynxes, is somehow revolting and reassuring all at once.

Late in this echoic narrative, however, writers Nick Simon and Daniel Meersand do pull off one disorienting reveal: While this particular pyramid appears to be a mummy-free zone, a climactic literalization of ancient Egyptian theology is as luridly unexpected as it is patently ludicrous. Quite how alien invasion figures into the folklore, however, is a mystery for sharper minds than those presented here. (One scientist’s guileless response to the identification of dried blood on a spear: “What does that mean?”)

-From the Variety.com review by Guy Lodge

Wow, that first paragraph started out so promising, and then the second talked us out of going out of our way (i.e. leaving the house) to see The Pyramid. We’d hoped it would be worth it due to Alexandre Aja being involved, but it doesn’t sound like the good outweighs the bad, and we’ve read several reviews; this is one of the more positive ones. We will warn you up front that this is the most spoiler-ish review we’ve read in terms of plot details, so skip it if you (still) plan on plunking down money to see this one and want to preserve as much surprise as possible. It doesn’t give away the ending, and most reviews mention the impalement scene, but they are pretty casual about a couple of reveals.
To read the entire Variety review, click “View original” in the lower left.

31 Horror Movies In 31 Days – Check Out What We Saw, Including Best and Worst! (Part One of Three)

3 November 2014

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This is going to have to be split up into three posts, since we already needed to take a month to watch the movies and don’t want to take another month writing this.

Even with the number of horror movies ole Mrs. Horror Boom sees being more in a month that the average movie-goer sees in a year, you’d think finding 31 I hadn’t seen yet would be a cinch, right? Wrong! Fortunately, there was a huge number of new releases for the month of October 2014. I actually saw more than 31, but some were so shitty I don’t even want to add them to the list. A couple of them literally put me to sleep, and there were a couple of others that were so bad I blew a mental fuse just sitting through and trying to tolerate the goddamned things, and either picked up my iPad for some task/game that required most of my attention, or just said the hell with it and turned it off, then re-watched something I knew was a sure thing and would not disappoint me (thus, the few re-watches on the list).

However, let’s just start with the list. I could put them in the order I saw them, but then I would have to look at a detail of our Amazon Instant Video and the VOD cable bill, which I am too nervous to look at and see how fast the charges added up (I’ve seen enough scary movies, I don’t need scary real-life). Let’s try alphabetical order. An asterisk means that the movie was a fairly new release, say available on VOD less than six weeks.

Oh, and if there is an R-Rated and an Unrated version available for a flick, assume I watched the Unrated (such as the very torture porn-y Carver. Also if they ever tried to make an R-Rated version of The ABCs of Death 2,* it would probably cut the running time by a good 10 minutes, depending how much of a prude the ratings board members were for that project. For PG-13, there would be about 200 words that you cannot say in a PG-13 movie cut out, and some of the shorts (they usually average 3-4 minutes) would last maybe 30 seconds and you would not definitely know what the fuck was going on with most of them. So thank you, Magnet Releasing!

I also added links to the IMDB pages (or pieces Horror Boom did on the fright flick in question previously), and stuck in a few of the better trailers to keep things interesting. Turns out roughly a third of the horror movies on the list are found footage, and while at least a couple will end up on the “worst” list, there were some nice surprises (including the “mockumentary” The Gerber Syndrome).

The list, and links:

*The ABCs of Death 2 (2014)

(Here’s the gory Red Band trailer, NSFW–enjoy!)

Alyce Kills (2011)

American Mary (re-watch, 2012)

Any Minute Now (2013)

Antisocial (2013)

Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)

Black Death (re-watch, 2010)

Here’s the Black Death HD trailer (and yeah, it’s as grim and bleak as it looks)

*Cabin Fever – Patient Zero (2014)

*The Canal (2014)

Carver (2008)

Chasing The Devil (2014)

*Chemical Peel (2014)

Dark Mountain (2013)

*Dead Snow 2 – Red VS Dead (2014)

*Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

Evil Things (2009)

*Found (completed in 2012, but not released on VOD till Fall 2014). Trailer is below, and it earned every blurb and award)

The Gerber Syndrome (2011)

*Horns (2013, but only released recently)

*Housebound (2014)

*The Houses October Built (2014)

Here’s a clip for you from the above movie (yep, more found footage).

*Inner Demons (2014)

The Monkey’s Paw (2013) (quit laughing! I was scraping the bottom of the barrel by this point, I believe Day 29.)

Open Grave (2013)

The Possession of Michael King (2014)

Here’s the trailer for the latter:

*See No Evil 2 (2014)

Sleepy Hollow (1999, re-watch…on Halloween, Day 31)

*The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014 – sale rental on Amazon, free on Netflix streaming)

*V/H/S Viral (2014)

Witching and Bitching (2013)

*Wrong Turn Six- The Last Resort (2014)

Up next? The ten worst films on the list; after that we’ll get to the ten best.

* We will have a review of ABCs of Death 2 coming up where we name the top ten entries. This will actually take some work, because the shorts were so much better it’d be faster just to name the few stupid or lazy ones. In the first ABCs of Death, I couldn’t even get a list of the top ten together; after “X is for XXL”, “L is for Libido”, “T is For Toilet”, “Young Buck”, and “Dog Fight”, picking five more would be a stretch. A list of the ten worst for the same movie, however, would pretty much write itself. I was happy to discover after the sequel roared to a finish that I could barely list the five worst. But I digress…

Variety Review of ‘[REC] 4: Apocalypse’ Says The [REC] Franchise Has “Largely Bounced Back”

1 November 2014

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Well, after we just spent over an hour combing the net, trying to find out if Javier Botet is back to appear as The Medieros Girl (AKA the ‘attic monster’) in this “final” installment, we only succeeded in scaring the shit out of ourselves, especially with some of the horrifying galleries that Tumbler has put together. So we’ll let you know when we know. By the way, if you’re wondering why the word ‘final’ is in quotes when we use it referring to [REC] 4: Apocalypse, that’s because this review from Variety.com states that the door is more or less left wide open for a sequel. That’s just fine with us!

Click “View Original” is the lower left to read the entire review.

Variety.com Review: Latest Sasquatch Found Footage Film ‘Exists’ is Probably Nothing To Bother With

27 October 2014

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“Whatever one thinks of “Blair Witch,” it wasn’t just a trendsetter in the horror genre; it also functioned as a savvy experiment in the psychology of fear for its characters and the audience. “Exists” harbors no such ambitions, instead throwing out every hoary cliché in the rampaging-monster-movie playbook and practically daring viewers to find a reason to invest in its cardboard characters and borderline-indiscernible suspense sequences, alternately shrouded in darkness or rendered incomprehensible by nausea-inducing handheld camerawork.”

Yeah, Geoff Berkshire (Variety.com’s reviewer) really didn’t like this movie. No-one either of us know liked this movie– not a review, not an audience member, not an Amazon customer review (Exists is on VOD), no-one. People who found-footage horror despised it and a common comment among them was that Exists (with that lazy, blah title not exactly sweetening the deal) is the kind of FF movie that gives all the other movies in the genre a bad name.
Feel free to make up your own mind, needless to say. But we wanted to give you a heads-up: you have been warned that this movie is so bad it will actually make you angry. There’s a ton of great new VOD out recently, check out one of those and skip this one… or wait and see Exists for free when it comes to Netflix.

Click “View original” in the lower left to read the whole miserable review…

See The New Red Band Trailer For V/H/S Viral Here (Possible Spoiler Alert)!

20 September 2014

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The reason we use “spoiler alert” in the title is that we’re pretty sure most of the best moments from the latest flick in the V/H/S franchise are in this trailer. At least three big jump scares/shockers are given away. Someone gets hit by a bus very suddenly in the middle of a sentence, just out of the blue. Do you know how effective that bit it when you’re not expecting it?*

Both previous red band trailers for the first two installments gave away maybe one or two moments, but saved the best, most memorable moments. Now, the reason this trailer for V/H/S Viral concerns us here at Horror Boom as far as spoiling all the best moments is that, frankly, the reviews haven’t been that enthusiastic. The word we hear most to describe the movie from paid reviewers and casual message-board users is “disappointing”. The other complaint is there’s only three stories and the framing story shoots itself in the foot by trying too hard to tie the stories together and ends up confusing the viewer by being too self-consciously non-linear.

Yes, one ticket for” V/H/S Viral”, please!

So, there’s a good chance you could watch this Red Band trailer, get your anticipation all cranked up, then see the movie and think, Man, I wish they hadn’t put so much in the fucking trailer. Who knows, though? There could be a ton of great stuff they held back.

Having said all that, hey, check out the goodies below! Other than the possible spoilers, we got pumped up enough for the movie to curse out loud when we saw the release had been bumped from this month to the end of October, because now we want this movie in our face ASAP!

Here’s the latest synopsis:

After watching on the news that an out-of-control ice cream truck is being chased by the police around the upper LA area, killing people and wrecking havoc among the way, a group of teens hell-bent on capturing the next viral video set out to chase the van. Things go from bad to worse when the content inside the van is revealed to be several tapes with bizarre stories, including that of a deranged illusionist who, after obtaining a demon-powered cloak, sets out on a killing spree; a garage scientist that manages to build a machine and open the door to a parallel world, where he and his double find out that their worlds are dangerously different; and the story of teenage skaters who unleash hordes of demonic foes after desecrating a ritual site in Tijuana.

We heard that last segment is the best. V/H/S Viral will be available on VOD October 23rd, followed by a limited theatrical run beginning on November 21st!

*The Statute of Limitations for spoilers on Final Destination (the original) have run out, but someone spoiled the bus hit in that movie for me. While everyone else in the theater got the top of their heads blown off (metaphorically of course) I appreciated it, but regretted overhearing someone’s LOUD conversation who was leaving the theater and prancing by the by the ticket-holder’s line, unaware anyone else but him and the friend he was relating basically all the shockers and reveals (including the train-track death) to existed. In the ads for Final Destination 4 (which fans agree was the weakest in the series), they ruined a bus-hit in the tagger for the trailer in the 15-second TV spot, for Chrissake.

Extended, RED BAND Trailer For ‘As Above, So Below’ Has Bloody New Footage (Possible Spoilers)

30 August 2014

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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!