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…

Ten Scary Things We Learned From American Horror Story: Roanoke “Chapter Five” (SPOILERS)

18 October 2016

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Once more, BIG spoiler warnings for the entire season so far of American Horror Story: Roanoke. Especially Chapter Five! And boy oh boy, do we have lots of images for you!

Evan Peters is finally here on Roanoke! In possibly the best cold open American Horror Story has had since the “Freaks” tribute in Season 4’s “Showstoppers”, we find out he plays an extremely wealthy hardcore art enthusiast named Edward Philippe Mott. In 1792, he made the horrendous mistake of using the Roanoke cursed property to build a huge mansion as retreat for him, his art, and his lover Guinness*. And yes, he was an ancestor of the narcissistic sociopath Dandy Mott from American Horror Story Freakshow. “Madness always ran in the family,” Doris Kearns Goodwin (as herself) tells us.

On the night of the blood moon (we get a great shot of it hanging in the sky, crimson and sickly), his paintings get mauled and he freaks out (reacting as a parent would if they found their child’s head on a stick), screaming at his poor staff and then tossing them in the seriously deep root cellar (where they stayed until they had rotted into skeletal remains). Mott does not locate “the thief”. Instead, Tomasyn and her murderous supernatural gang drag him out of the house, impale him with a huge sharpened stake, and then push him into the fire while he is still screaming.

So none of that worked out for anyone human.

2. If Tomasyn is really, really pissed off at you during a blood moon, she can summon all her past victims. After the female Thai Ghost girl dropped into frame– about two seconds after Matt and Shelby told her to be brave because they were going to make it out of there– and made Flora scream, we knew they were going to wrap up the “My Roanoke Nightmare” true crime/reality show portion of the season (more on that later) and that we were in for one hell of a fun episode, so we turned of all the lights but our flatscreen, and sat back and let the roller coaster-haunted house thrill-ride begin.

Oh Shit! Run!

Right off the bat, the Millers got the scary Thai ghost lady (if you are a Horror Boom regular, you already know we are huge, reverent fans of Thai ghost stories), who scuttles off speedily with poor Flora and eventually lets her go but leaves finger-shaped scars on her arms. The half-naked guy who has a pig’s head stuck over his own and makes horrible inhuman squeals, as well as the hunters who blew each other’s heads off proceed to corral the Millers for “an easy slaughter” while Tomasyn and her gang set the Miller’s cars on fire for good measure. Apparently, what Elias told them was true: all her former victims were still so terrified of her that she could control them when she needs them.

Can you find the Thai Ghost Girl in this photo?

3. It turns out that Edward Philippe Mott’s severe social anxiety is what helps The Millers escape from the interior of the house and into the woods. In an extremely welcome return, he appears to them in the cellar (“Perhaps I may be of some assistance.”) and tells them he was the original owner. He leads him through the network of tunnels he included in the building (to smuggle out his beloved and expensive paintings if they were in danger) and tells them that though everything has been taken from him, he has been left with one sliver of grace: his solitude. “I can hardly suffer three more souls,” he explains. He gets them out of there and into the woods not so much out of kindness, but selfishness, but the Millers understandably don’t really give a shit because they just want to get as far away from the house as possible. To make the scene even more unnerving, his face flickers very briefly a few times in the light of his torch, revealing something far from human…

4. Elias wasn’t killed by the arrows, but it really would have been better if he had just died in the first place. Things do not improve for the Millers after Edward Mott dematerializes in the woods, away from the house as promised. Shelby realizes that in the forest, they are nothing more than prey. But, wait! Flora sees a light! Before they can wonder where the hell they are, they get whacked on the heads by shovels and unseen figures shove burlap sacks over their heads.

Oh Shit! Run!

They end up in the same blood-curdling house where they’d seen the grotesque feral kids suckling the pig (who as I recall was dead or dying at the time–there were lots of flies around at the time, anyway). It turns out they are all members of the same terrible Polk clan, who are not only probably inbred, vicious, hostile, and insane hillbillys, but are also predatory cannibals! They kept poor Elias (who is terrified of “Mama Polk” and begs Matt to just kill him) alive so they could take his leg and his arm and eat him.As a small mercy for Elias, Mama Polk (Frances Conroy, another welcome familiar face along with Evan Peters) tries to eat a piece of “jerky” from him but spits it out, declaring that it, and Elias, are rancid. She says there’s no more use for him and they promptly cave in his head with a shovel. It isn’t pretty.

Looks like Denis O’Hare needed a head cast made at some point in the production of this season.

Oh, but it gets worse. It turns out The Polk family have had a deal with Tomasyn going back 200 years; they help provide for the blood sacrifice, and she leaves them (and their cannabis crops) alone. Could we mention that Frances Conroy can be really, really fucking scary when she wants to be? She delivers her most frightening performance–as Mama Polk– on the entire series to date.

As such, the Polks are going to return them to the dreaded house and the even more dreaded Tomasyn and her large group of murderous pilgrims.

Oh Shit! Run!

5. Did we mention that Matt means well, but isn’t a rocket scientist when it comes to escape? They ride back in the bed of the pick-up with two of the Polks; Ishmael drives and Lot, played by Chas Bono, holds a shotgun pointed at them (also in the back). Matt makes his move and forces the shotgun away from him and his family, and successfully (though also possibly accidentally) blows Ishmael Polk’s head clean off (okay, maybe not so clean, but that head is mostly gone). Then he shoves Lot Polk over the side of the truck, leaving him sort of disabled on the road! Why, this is great news! Matt can simply shove the headless body out of the driver’s seat, grab the shotgun for back-up, hop in with his family, put the pedal to the metal and drive to safety at top speed! The keys are in the ignition, and the motor is even still running! Wait, Matt? Matt? Where are you going, Matt? Don’t run off into the woods, dummy, Lot is clearly not dead and still has his shotgun! Sigh.

Jesus! We thought her foot was actually severed at first.

What is left of Ishmael’s head.

The only explanation we get for this stupidity (other than total panic) is his statement: “I figured I’d rather us take our chances in the woods than be slaughtered like pigs”. Nope, that still doesn’t make sense to us, there was very little chance of them being slaughtered if they had grabbed up all the shotguns and drove out of town as fast as they could, meanwhile NOTHING has ever worked out for them in the woods!** In fact, the woods are not even safe in broad daylight, especially during the blood moon! They run into the woods, huddle up together and hide (sort of) behind a log. Within seconds, Lot is standing over them with his shotgun pointed in their direction and soon after that, Mama Polk is so infuriated with them killing her son that she brings her shovel down on poor Shelby’s ankle, hobbling her in a gruesome mess.

Jesus! We actually thought her foot was severed at first.

7. Matt’s sister Lee, though, is thinking straight. “Whatever was going on, it was bad. Matt wouldn’t just ignore my call, especially if he had Flora,” she recalls, and immediately asks the cop leaving the station with her for a ride. When they get near the Roanoke house, with all the murderous colonists plus Tomasyn carrying torches and standing around a blazing inferno of a bonfire in front, she calls out for the cop giving her a ride to stop and tells him to call for backup. For some reason (possibly because he sees what is going on and says “fuck this, I’m outta here”) he pulls out and hastily drives off, but Lee hears Flora’s screams and heads towards them.

8. Apparently, Tomasyn’s son Ambrose (Wes Bentley) is still pissed at his mother for killing him. He has also had enough, because he snaps. Right before it looks like poor Flora is going to die horribly, Ambrose puts Flora down instead of into the fire and yells, “Nooooo! I shall not stand by and watch thou shed another drop of innocent blood!” Ambrose conks her over the head with a huge piece of wood, then pulls her into the fire with him. When the Millers make their getaway (thanks again to Lee, pulling up in a car and yelling for them to get in) Shelby looks back and sees Tomasyn engulfed in flames, but still blundering towards them.

Oh Shit! Drive!

Oh, and you know who else is not too fond of Tomasyn? Little Priscilla, who was Flora’s “invisible friend” and probably remembers Tomasyn bashing her head in with a giant rock. Seriously, watch the smile on her face as The Butcher burns.

“How do *you* like getting hit over the head, bitch?”

9. Shelby still has nightmares. We get a fake-out at the motel, when Shelby makes her way slowly on crutches towards the door and sees smoke leaking in from under it. She opens it just in time to see a burning Tomasyn before The Butcher buries a cleaver in her skull… then she jolts awake. “To this day, I still have that dream,” Shelby tells us. “I’ve tried yoga, meditation, hypnotherapy… We escaped with our lives, but I never completely got over it. I’m not sure I ever will.”

CHOP

10. “My Roanoke Nightmare” as we know it has ended, but we still have five episodes left in the season. Ryan Murphy told us that in episode six, everything would get turned on its head. From the teaser for next episode of American Horror Story: Roanoke, it looks like we are entering (at least partially) “found footage” territory. Cheyanne Jackson, who played the interviewer in the reality-show segments, is seen in what looks like some kind of studio interior telling the camera, “Rolling? The camera never stops. No matter what anyone says, even if I tell you to stop, keep rolling, got it?” Cuba Gooding Jr. also made a comment about “breaking the fourth wall”, which leads us to think we might see some of the “re-enactors” such as Sarah Paulson and Kathy Bates playing themselves. Notice how we never got any closure on Lady Gaga’s primal witch character, Scathach? We think we might see her again. Hell, the Polks didn’t get killed off either (other than Ishmael), they just drove off.

Stray Thoughts:

Evan Peters seemed to be having a blast playing Edward Mott. Nice to see a little snippet in the final act of the episode where he returns and cuts Matt and Shelby’s ropes so they “can make a grand escape”.

If we were in the middle of building a house and heard a loud, horrible sound (the Closed Captions described it as an “inhuman howl”) coming from the woods in broad daylight, we’d dismantle the house and build it the fuck somewhere else.

Doris Kearns Goodwin (who was wonderful to see cast as herself) reports that the “last Mott” died in South Florida in 1952. That story checks out. Good riddance, Dandy!
So far, the AHS stars that we were told would appear as cast members this season but have yet to see are: Matt Bomer and Finn Whitrock. We wouldn’t be shocked to have a surprise appearance from, say, Gabourey Sidibe, Mare Winningham, Connie Britton, or NPH.

Aaaand, here’s the rest of those photos! Horror Boom does not own the rights to any of the American Horror Story images in this piece, FX owns the copyright. The ones here are provided for entertainment purposes only.

Can you find the Thai Ghost Girl in this photo?

*Was I the only one that loved it when Evan Peters (as Edward Mott, that is) grabbed Guiness by his collar and pulled him in for a big deep kiss? The icing on the cake is that since Edward was part of the Mott family and had so far seemed pretty arrogant and snotty, we thought when he snapped, “Wait! Come back,” to Guiness it was going to be because he was going to bark some racist order at him. Instead, he passionately kissed him in front of his workers and staff.

**Unless you want to count Matt getting to bang Scathach (Lady Gaga), though from the look on his face, he wasn’t getting any pleasure out of it at all.

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.

Don’t Say It! Don’t Think It! See Promising First Trailer For “The Bye Bye Man” (2017) Here

25 September 2016

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So, we were checking out fresh horror trailers on You Tube, and this one caught our eye as one with potential. First, the short version of the plot:

When three college students move into an old house off campus, they unwittingly unleash a supernatural entity known as The Bye Bye Man, who comes to prey upon them once they discover his name. The friends must try to save each other, all the while keeping The Bye Bye Man’s existence a secret to save others from the same deadly fate.

Here’s the first trailer for the R-Rated flick (“Bloody, disturbing violence” is first on the list of MPAA description, so that’s a good start). Take a wild guess as to which character Doug Jones portrays…

We love the idea that “it spreads… like a virus” and tricks victims. Also, the fact that the evil of the title can possess or kill you merely by thinking about it is pretty frightening. Here is a more lengthy description from the upcoming flick’s official website:

People commit unthinkable acts every day. Time and again, we grapple to understand what drives a person to do such terrible things. But what if all of the questions we’re asking are wrong? What if the source of all evil is not a matter of what…but who? From the producer of The Strangers and Oculus comes The Bye Bye Man, a chilling horror-thriller that exposes the evil behind the most unspeakable acts committed by man. When three college friends stumble upon the horrific origins of the Bye Bye Man, they discover that there is only one way to avoid his curse: don’t think it, don’t say it. But once the Bye Bye Man gets inside your head, he takes control. Is there a way to survive his possession?

Uh, it doesn’t sound like it, since a popular way to control an entity is to find out that entity’s name, especially if it is a demon. But since you can’t say even say it out loud–let alone think it– lest risk possession, that seems problematic.

As we said before, we are big fans of the curse-that-spreads-like-a-virus theme, as well as urban legends (the title sure sounds like one), so far, so good. Written and directed by husband and wife team Stacy Title (directing) and penned by Jonathan Penner (this is his first major film screenplay), The Bye Bye Man will be hitting theaters January 13, 2017.

10 Trivia Facts About The Conjuring 2 (2016) – We Bet You Don’t Know Them All!

20 September 2016

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James Wan’s The Conjuring 2 did well in theaters and with critics, and it’s finally available for rental! There are no major spoilers here, just some fun trivia that we would be surprised if you had heard all about before now.

Javier Botet played “The Crooked Man”. Search “Javier Botet” in the content for this site and you’ll come up with a hell of a lot a pieces he’s tagged in. Mr. Botet has portrayed many of the most frightening, nightmarish characters in the last ten years of cinema, including “the Medeiros Girl” in the fucking terrifying climax of [REC] (2007) and two other movies in the same franchise, the titular character of Mama (2013), who can kill you just by showing up, and the horrifying ghostly female apparitions featured in the only scary scenes in Crimson Peak (2015), among others. He is 6 ft 7 and weighs about 110 lbs, and he is also double-jointed. If you didn’t know Mr. Botet’s work well, you would think that the Crooked Man apparition in The Conjuring 2 was created by using CGI animation …but you would be wrong.

Guess who?

2/3. See that featured image up at the top of this piece? Notice the letters on the bookshelves? V-A-L-A-K. Also, check out the colorful letters on the window below…

4. Lily Taylor blew her voice out from screaming during filming of the first Conjuring. Vera Farmiga did her one better and blew out a damned lymph node from screaming (multiple takes were needed, which made it worse) filming her role as Elizabeth Warren during The Conjuring 2. Jesus! Ouch! [source: IMDB]

5. Did you know that to promote the DVD/Blu-ray release, the studio put out a trailer that consists of the original trailer backwards, and it is somehow even creepier that way? You can watch it right here (EW.com made it an exclusive, so no insert)… and (hint) listen.

6. Speaking of very scary voices, the actual recording of the possessed Janet Hodgson is played over the end credits. The dialogue in the movie follows the recording closely. If you are feeling brave and the lights are on, you can listen to it below (this recording goes for a full twelve minutes, unlike the condensed version played in The Conjuring 2). Regardless of your level of skepticism, does THIS sound like an 11-year old girl to you? The working class Hodgson family did not exactly have access to sophisticated voice-altering technology. Today it could be easily be faked …but not back in 1977. Listeners beware, however; this made the hair on our bodies stand on end.

7. You probably spotted Annabelle (you don’t forget that thing’s face) in her glass cabinet, along with the music box from The Conjuring in the Warren’s museum, but did you see the black and white painting hanging in the Warren’s office?

It’s the house from The Conjuring, along with that very distinctive tree. Minus Bathsheba’s shadow hanging from the tree, it looks very close to the image on the theatrical poster.

8. Here’s an extremely creepy one. During the Amityville séance cold-open, Elizabeth Warren is terrorized by (among other things) a demonic-looking little boy whose eyes glow a white-silver. Director James Wan was inspired by the following notorious photo claiming to show the youngest victim of the DeFeo massacre (copyright: Paranormal Guide), AKA the “Amityville Ghost Boy”.

Click here to learn more about this photo from Paranormal Guide.

9. There is yet another image where you can pick out the demon Valak’s name. This one, you need to be looking for (thank you, IMDB trivia section, for telling us the time mark in the movie). You can see the “V” in the “love” plaque, and the rest…

How did THAT get there?

10. Finally, we are pretty sure this is just PR from the movie studio to promote the home video release of The Conjuring 2, though warning potential viewers of possible unexplained, dangerous paranormal activity directly caused by watching a copy might not be the best media strategy. Here are alleged scary incidents pointing to some kind of “visual curse” that is the result of watching…

Oh, GIMME A FREAKIN’ BREAK! Stupidest thing we ever heard, pffffft! We rented the movie on VOD and watched it Saturday night, and we’re fine! Calling bullshit on this one, because… because… what was that noise?

New Trailer For Frightening “Lights Out” Is Here… Brave Enough To Watch?

27 June 2016

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So, regular visitors and readers here might recall an award-winning short film that pretty much scared the hell out of everyone who saw it, titled “Lights Out”. If you don’t recall it, you probably haven’t seen it (it is extremely hard to forget), but you can take a gander right here. Two more shorts by the same team found their way online, and the piece featuring them can be found here.

Anyway, we caught the second trailer, and it is also the stuff of nightmares. We dare you–no, we double dare you–to watch both trailers below alone in the dark…

This is the feature film debut of David F. Sandberg. However, he previously directed the original short that the film is based on. Here’s the official plot description from IMDB… now we have a backstory!

When Rebecca left home, she thought she left her childhood fears behind. Growing up, she was never really sure of what was and wasn’t real when the lights went out…and now her little brother, Martin, is experiencing the same unexplained and terrifying events that had once tested her sanity and threatened her safety. A frightening entity with a mysterious attachment to their mother, Sophie, has reemerged. But this time, as Rebecca gets closer to unlocking the truth, there is no denying that all their lives are in danger…once the lights go out.

“Lights Out” opens July 22nd at a theater near you. Oh, and the icing on the cake? David F. Sandberg decided to focus on practical effects and avoided as much CGI as possible.

“It Follows”: Ten Things We’ve Read Online That Have Us Counting The Days Till Release!

6 March 2015

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You may have seen the “Milestone” widget in the footers counting down the days until It Follows (nice creepy title) will be out on VOD and DVD/Blu-Ray. Why, you ask? Read on.

It Follows–written and directed by David Robert Mitchell–garnered up a ton of positive buzz when it made the festival circuit last summer; reviewers went out of their way to praise the film and tell readers how frightening it is. We would include the creepy trailer here, but more than one review advised going into this movie knowing as little as possible about the details, and to avoid the trailer in particular. Some of the reviews say that the last act of the film is uneven, but none of them advise us to avoid the movie because of it.

So we will give you the official plot given out in the PR, which lets you know just about the right amount of detail:

For nineteen-year-old Jay, Autumn should be about school, boys and week-ends out at the lake. But after a seemingly innocent sexual encounter, she finds herself plagued by strange visions and the inescapable sense that someone, something, is following her. Faced with this burden, Jay and her friends must find a way to escape the horrors that seem to be only a few steps behind.

Here are ten excerpts from top reviewers that got us to put it on our Must-See List (with links and annotations, in case you want to read the actual pieces in their entirety).

1. The first is from Variety.com. We re-posted their review last summer (yep, that’s how long this has been on our Must-See List) which you can read here. What grabbed us, you ask? Well, here is the set-up from the reviewer:

“As bogeymen go, Mitchell’s monster is both intuitive (like something out of a bad dream) and impossible to comprehend (despite much discussion, no one seems to know how to beat it). The pic’s malevolent shape-shifter can take the form of anyone, from a beloved relative to a complete stranger. Sometimes it’s subtle enough to blend in with crowds. At others, it’s frighteningly conspicuous: a naked old man staring at you from a nearby rooftop, or a cheerleader leaking urine as she lurches across the living-room floor. The only certainty seems to be that it won’t stop until you’re dead. And once you’re dead, it will go after the person who “gave” it to you.“

So, Variety already had our full attention after we read this. Then it got better. This is from the IGN.com review:

2 .It’s a refreshing change for modern horror, which has become far too reliant on jump scares and deafening sound cues, in place of carefully mounting tension. Mitchell prefers a slow burn. The use of wide shots is particularly successful once Jay starts being pursued. It’s almost like a sick game of ‘Where’s [Waldo?]’ – find the plodding killer in the frame before it’s too late…

3. The rules of the damned in It Follows are intriguing and frightening. The never-named apparition will follow you forever, for instance, but it has to follow on foot. You can briefly elude the monster by driving away but it always comes back, leading to one shocking moment after another in which Mitchell’s impeccable wide shots gradually reveal a single individual gradually making their way into the foreground, while the oblivious protagonists ignore the audience’s pleas to RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! (Reviewed by William Bibbiani,* editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue MoviePodcast*).

There’s not a single character in Mitchell’s film that fails to elicit our sympathy, and so their demises always resonate like a tuning fork from Hell.

4. Once the scares start to come, they rarely let up. Mitchell, in only his second full-length, does an incredible job of creating horror not only in small houses in the middle of the night but in beachfronts with the sun shining down, in schoolyards on an overcast day, and in the middle of an empty street with nothing in sight… The highest compliment I can pay the movie is that its moments of horror play out like something from an old children’s ghost story. It’s not hard to imagine finding the tale within the pages of a collection of folklore akin to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (now with sex!).**

By this point we felt like grabbing all the cash we had on hand and tossing it frantically at the screen of the laptop we were reading on; sadly, we knew that wouldn’t get us the movie magically appear online to watch and we still had to wait. Here’s more of the praise heaped on It Follows by critics we trust.

5. It Follows is suspenseful, atmospheric and spine-tingling horror cinema which nods at the masters and completely astounds as it manages the tough feat of being striking, sensitive and utterly disturbing. (Film.list.co.uk, read more here)

6. Director David Robert Mitchell gives this an almost art-house vibe, mixed with a retro-eighties look and an amazing synth-soundtrack that sounds like a cross between Vangellis and John Carpenter. Mitchell does a brilliant job ratcheting up the terror throughout the film, and by the time the end credits rolled I was almost feeling queasy from how on edge I had been during the last act of the film. …IT FOLLOWS will likely become a big-time horror sleeper once Radius (who acquired the rights out of Cannes) puts it out, and if you can see this on the big screen that would be all the better. It’s a tremendous horror flick and the scariest film I’ve seen in years. It’s deeply, deeply unsettling. (JoBlo, click here to read the full TIFF review.)

7. Chris Bumbray at Reelfilm.com gave the movie 8/10 stars, even though he had problems with the last act of the film. Though it fizzles out to a slight degree in its final stretch, It Follows nevertheless establishes itself as one of the most inventive, exciting, and truly frightening horror flicks to come around in ages.

“More or less a contemporary horror fan’s dream come true.”

8. The movie’s a brilliantly fresh spin on a classic model – the pass-on-the-curse conceit which horror fans will know from MR James’s shivery short story “Casting the Runes”, and its numerous cinematic offspring, from Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon (1957) to the Japanese cult hit Ringu (2000) and its American remake, The Ring (2002). It Follows – which deserves even more marks for that marvellously suggestive title – does this entire lineage proud, not just by switching tacks from runic subterfuge or videotape circulation to the rather Cronenberg-y gambit of inflicting a demon on your unfortunate sex partner. It’s altogether smart, subtextually fascinating, and more or less a contemporary horror fan’s dream come true. (Tim Robey, Telegraph UK)

“It’s a tremendous horror flick and the scariest film I’ve seen in years. It’s deeply, deeply unsettling”.

8. F angoria LOVED this movie (8/10 skulls), and Chris Alexander (Fangoria Editor and the writer of this review) said this:. It Follows is an incredibly evolved, joyously alive piece of “dead teenager” cinema that likely requires a few viewings to properly assimilate its rhythms. And it could easily become part of any High School health class curriculum, because If I saw it as a kid, when I was at my hormonal, girl-hungry peak, I’d likely pack my bags and move to a monastery.

9. There’s a primal fear at work here – everyone gets nervous about being followed – and even though the monster is fiction, I suspect the anxiety may pursue the viewer home. (Luke Y. Thompson, Toplessrobot.com)

Well, that won’t be a problem, since we will be watching it at home, so the anxiety won’t have to follow us anywhere! Nope, it’ll be right there with us.

10. Finally, we can’t count the number of pieces in which the writer stated that John Carpenter was clearly a huge influence. Early John Carpenter.

It Follows will be in theaters and VOD on March 13th. The tagline is, “IT DOESN’T THINK. IT DOESN’T FEEL. IT NEVER GIVES UP.”

This just in: It Follows won the critic’s prize– AKA top honors– at the Glasgow International Film Festival. This isn’t a genre festival, either, which makes the win even more impressive. It even topped A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, which, as you probably are aware, is no small feat. Read about it here.

*Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani

** Read the full review here at ConsequencesOfSound.net.

The Walking Dead Post Mortem: [Spoiler] Reveals the Real ‘Reason Why I’m Not Alive’

11 February 2015

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We’re STILL kind of sad about this one. (OK, me, of the two of us at Horror Boom, I’m the Walking Dead fan, the other one got his shoulder cried on by me). I’m not sure Chris Hardwick has ever been as close to starting to weep on any episode of The Talking Dead before (and he knew it was going to happen). We also read a news item that Andrew Lincoln said the first two episodes of the second half of the season would be “really brutal”, (oh goodie, next week should be cheerful too) but we thought he we talking about violence. Not …this.

(SKIP TO AFTER THE PHOTO IF YOU HAVE NOT GOTTEN TO THE PRISON ARC IN THE COMICS YET AND PLAN TO)

One good thing: the character got a more peaceful send-off than he did in the comics. In the comics, he got Herschel’s death, but it was even uglier and seemed to take more hacks. If my recollection was correct, he was still conscious until the last hack. He wasn’t sitting there smiling serenely like Herschel’s …who also was not exactly cut down in the prime of his life, and had recently given wise life advice to the people I loved the most (and who needed it). I would prefer being painfully bitten (horrible as a couple of the bleeding-out hallucinations were), even twice, if it was followed by my friends saving me, cutting off my arm (by which time I was pretty worn out and not in pain so much as really, really worn out, carrying me (albeit not altogether smoothly), holding on to me, and then seeing a group of people I cared deeply about who had died recently smiling, comforting me, singing to me, and telling me it was okay to let go, in fact things would be better) in the minutes before I let go. So hey, that last part was peaceful.

Anyway, this is well worth a read if you are a fan of (SPOILER ALERT!)

Chad Coleman (already one of our favorite actors from The Wire), because it reminds you yes, it’s just a TV series, and also, no matter how big-hearted and cool of a guy you thought he was before, he’s even cooler (and very zen about the whole end of the character).
Click “View original” in the lower left to see the whole exclusive interview on TVline.com!

Ten Killer Things We Learned From American Horror Story Freak Show Episode 12 “Show Stoppers” (SPOILERS)

23 January 2015

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Note: we realize this is not exactly the ideal timing to post, since the finale has aired before this went up, but the delay is due to major technical difficulties over here (such as the goddamned images refusing to load for–no exaggeration– the first time ever since we began Horror Boom in 2012). Pardon us posting at this late date, but better late than never. We loved this episode.

Now this is more like it! Episode 12, “Show Stoppers” lived up to the title. The A.V. Club really hated the episode, but plenty of people online disagreed (the IMDB rating average for the episode was 9/10, from 7,000 votes as of this writing), and it was our second-favorite episode of the season so far, surpassed only by Pepper’s swan song, “Orphans”. This was definitely the best (and most satisfying) cold open of the season, too. Which brings us to number one…

1. If you’re going to get greedy and scam a close-knit group of circus sideshow performers, which includes killing at least one of them, see Todd Browning’s Freaks first. That way, when you’re sitting down to an elaborate dinner with them where you are clearly outnumbered, and they start to make pointed references to how brilliant and perfect a movie it is while staring you down, you can say “Oops! I’ll be back in a jiffy, I just remembered I forgot something in my car,” slip out quickly and quietly, get in your car, put the pedal to the metal and get the hell out of dodge. Stanley didn’t see the movie and had no idea what was coming until they brought him a festive-looking yet suspiciously large gift box which featured a jar containing the severed head of someone who illicitly paid large sums of money to him for the bodies/body parts.

Darling, don’t spoil the ending for him!

2. Reasoning with a gang of justifiably enraged and bloodthirsty people you screwed over will not work. Lying (especially playing dumb) will not work. I wonder, if Stanley had any idea what was coming (see above), if he could have made a run for it as soon as he saw the head of the shitty museum curator and sprinted off to his car at top speed, he would have had a chance to escape? It would have been better timing than waiting to run until after he got stabbed in the leg so brutally that he could just sort of lunge and stumble out of the tent and start slipping around in the mud. All through the episode–except when I was distracted by something I could not look away from– I was hoping they’d follow the whole Freaks homage all the way through. More on that later.

3. The freaks will turn on you pretty quickly if you lie to them, no matter what you’ve done for them in the past. While they have drinks in Ethel’s memory and look through her possessions (a little late for that, but fine) they can’t help but focus on what Stanley had blurted out to them while wildly bargaining for escape. “She… killed… Ethel. I’m telling the truth. She killed her. I helped her cover it up. She’s not who you think she is! She killed Ethel!” After Paul mentions that he knew Ethel a long time, and she would never kill herself,” they briefly mull it over and come to a somewhat spontaneous decision to kill Elsa for ‘breaking their code’–killing one of their own. Del didn’t count, that was justice for Ma Petite.

Relax, folks, it’s just a magic show! I can put her back together… watch…

4. Jimmy also does not forgive easily. In fact, he tells Elsa and Maggie flat out: “I don’t forgive.” He’s not kidding No matter how sweetly Maggie tries to tell him she will make it up to him, and how they still have a future together, and blah-de-blah (she does seem torn up over what happened to him and her part in it), he doesn’t budge. Can you really blame him? Jimmy tells her she can rot in hell for all he cares and ends up telling her, “If I was you, I’d get the hell out of dodge before I get these new hands.” Later, when Amazon Eve informs him Maggie is dead, his facial expression barely changes. Maybe it was just one too many pieces of really, really bad news and he went numb and dead inside… but we doubt it.

You saw what they did to him.

6. Désirée is maybe one notch up from Marie Laveau when it comes to holding a grudge (Marie wins as she becomes immortal and continues to hold a grudge and punish her enemies for over 100 years) . Désirée is still pretty cold when it comes to outsiders, though. She (and all the rest of the freaks) only seem dismayed a bit to see Maggie sawed in half by the new owner of the Freak Show, whose head was ‘full of bees’ after coming back from the war. Paul: “What do we do now?” Desi: “She had it coming. Steal her jewelry and bury the bitch.” She was heading up the posse to go get Elsa for killing Ethel, even though as far as I can recall she had known both of them the same amount of time. We loved the scene of them preparing in the caravan; Desi calling “ETHEL!” to the heavens, draining the remainder of a bottle of booze as the freaks went into kind of a rhythmic stomp, then her smashing the bottle for a makeshift weapon and declaring, “Let’s get our girl some justice!”

You tried to kill my dreams, but they cannot be murdered.

7. Bette and Dot still felt they owed Elsa something, and ended up saving her life by bursting into Elsa’s glamorous tent to warn her of the freak’s “Planning to kill you all day.” Though she more or less waited until the last minute to warn her, she ignored the discovery that Elsa had partially amputated legs and cut to the chase (“You need to leave,” was what she led with). When Elsa tried to protest that what Stanley said were the rantings of a desperate man, Bette (I think) replied, “Who’s desperate now? You saw what they did to him,” and we see the color drain from Elsa’s face.

8. We find out what they did to “him”, Stanley, in the second-to-last scene of the episode. When Dandy, the new owner of the entire place (eeeeek!) thanks to Elsa hastily paying him off so she could make a hasty retreat, was strolling grandly around the performance tent after being snotty to all his new employees, he heard a kind of inhuman grunting coming from the wings. He wandered over and there was a slow pan to the contents of a chicken-wire cage. Stanley’s arms and legs had been crudely amputated (along with his tongue, apparently), and he looked like he was hoping someone would just kill him as he squirmed around wretchedly and painfully, covered in feathers, wearing one of Meep’s old hats (nice touch). Dandy unsurprisingly got a big kick out of this discovery.

Now the other, don’t rush it this time.

9. In an episode full of great reveals, we were blown the hell away when it turned out none other than “Dr.” Hans Gruper, AKA Dr. Arden from American Horror Story Asylum, was the one in charge of making the snuff/torture-porn film where Elsa’s legs were sawed off with a chainsaw. Since it was a flashback, James Cromwell’s son John (who looks just like a younger version of his father) made a return appearance to portray him. Elsa was lucky they just sawed her legs off and didn’t inject her with about 5 different horrible diseases at once, then later, drag her off and leave her in a child’s playground. Guess Gruper/Arden was just getting warmed up… though when Massimo Dolcefino (Danny Huston) went to kill Gruper to avenge the “Monster In-Chief’s” savage treatment of Elsa, Dr. Gruper was, very unfortunately, ready for him. “He took it personally when I tried to kill him… very personally,” says Massimo as we see flashback shots of Gruper electrocuting his genitals (though I think most people would take someone breaking into their home for the purpose of murdering them personally). Gruper tortured Massimo so long and so brutally that Massimo says though his body healed, his spirit was so broken that he no longer has a soul and has lost the ability to love. Elsa is in tears by the time Massimo has filled in his missing backstory.

10. Speaking of Massimo, who lovingly made such beautiful legs for Elsa and nursed her back to health, he is more than happy to use his expertise to fashion a perfect pair of hands for Jimmy that will fool everybody… and when Jimmy scoffs at him, Elsa shows him her wooden legs, and he shuts up pretty fast. Massimo has an elaborate blueprint drawn up and everything, but in the final reveal of the episode, we see that Jimmy requested they look like his former “lobster-boy” hands when he could have had the next-best thing to normally formed human hands. Jimmy wanted to be himself. “They’re perfect,” he quietly tells Massimo.

Jamie Brewer as Chester’s hallucination of Majorie, her best acting on American Horror Story yet.

Stray Thoughts:

People were talking about the top hat (clue to season 5) on the dinner table during the cold open, but did you see that bizarre bird that was the centerpiece? I swear it had two heads. If you can, watch the scene again. There were four… limbs, for lack of a better word, sticking up, and usually a normal turkey/goose/pheasant, or whatever type of bird you serve up whole only has two. I wonder how many other cool creations for the prop/set dressing department for this season we missed because they were in the background?
I’m pretty sure there were more limbs hacked off this season than any other season of American Horror Story, which is no small feat.
Paul was the only one who seemed upset over Maggie getting sawed in half, yelling “WHAT THE BLOODY ‘ELL!” when the blood started flowing. The rest of the gang just looked mildly dismayed. We sure as shit didn’t hear, “What have you done to Maggie?” or even “poor Maggie!” from anyone. From what I’ve read online, people either loved this scene (like us) or hated it (sigh), but everyone loved Desiree’s heartless, but hilarious reaction.
I could write an entire piece on the genius of the magic-trick-gone-horribly-wrong scene, but I’ll try to shorten my reaction here. Everything in that scene was goddamned gold, from Chester’s costume changing when the lights went down and came back up, to the silhouette of him sawing furiously as we hear Maggie’s screams. Also, due to Neil Patrick Harris performance, I felt sorrier for Chester than I did Maggie. He didn’t kill for the fun of it (like, say, Dandy) or because someone was in his way when he wanted something (like, say, Dandy); he was a soldier who came back from the war “with a metal plate and a head full of bees,” as his hallucination of Lucy says. When he realized what he had done to Maggie, he was horrified (more than the freaks were, that’s for sure). He was upset enough to stab the shit out of “Margorie” when she tried to leave him right afterwards.
The magic rehearsal scene had caused me to momentarily forget about Stanley. However, as soon as Dandy got distracted by the strange noises coming from backstage, I started chanting, “C’mon, c’mon, please, please,…” and then burst out with “YEAH!” at the sight of at the cage made of chicken wire as I realized that my season-long wish to see someone–especially Stanley–get the Todd Browning Chicken Lady Treatment had come true.
The twins turned out not to be as much of a simpleton (or should that be plural? Wording can get complicated when writing about Bette and Dot) as we thought. Exhibit A: they were smart enough not to get in that fucking box.