Movie Scum

In spite of positive critical acclaim for it’s first season, The Exorcist was not very likely to be renewed due to low ratings on Friday nights. But miraculously, Fox tapped the series created by Jeremy Slater for a second season pretty early.

A movie about a killer app? That was the gist of the plot synopsis I read on the Redbox kiosk so I picked it up. I figured it would either be a) really, really bad or b) surprisingly good. In reality, it’s option c, for kind of competent.

Everytime someone does a ranking of Friday the 13th sequels is wrong. The reason: I have never seen Part VI, Jason Lives , at the top.

With the recent news of Jamie Lee Curtis returning to the new Halloween film in 2018, another exciting franchise vet is coming back: creator John Carpenter .

As of this writing, Wikipedia lists 456 American films classified as slashers. Sprinkled among the well-known franchises like Friday the 13th and semi-famous one-offs like Dr. Giggles are a hodgepodge of lesser-known titles. Here is a sampling of films that I want to see based solely on their titles.

As I was revisiting my Eight Legged Freaks review after rescuing it from the obscurity of my old site archive, I began to ponder: why don’t we get giant killer bug movies anymore?

We could have had a brand-new Jason Voorhees film this weekend had Paramount not pulled the plug in what I hope turns out to be a daily ass-kicking around there. So in return, we get a new-ish? horror film and a prestigious biopic.

It’s Happy Hour! Let’s see some highly questionable kills from everyone’s favorite series featuring the unseen force of death.

I don’t think there was really any demand for a remake of Joel Schumacher’s Flatliners . Yet, Sony went ahead anyway and boy does it look like a bad investment.

Information has been slowly trickling out about David Gordon Green ’s untitled Halloween continuation coming in 2018. Now, we know who Michael will be facing ... again.

After shattering box office records this weekend, in less than a week, Andy Muschietti ’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It has become a legitimate phenomenon. While other corners of the internet debate over whether It is a horror movie or not (spoiler: it totally is), production of the story’s second half is gearing up as Muschietti and writer Gary Dauberman are hard at work on the script. Chapter 2 is presumed to be released sometime in 2019. In the meantime though, for the home release on Blu-ray and Digital later this year, Muschietti tells Yahoo Movies that he is working on a director’s cut to add back approximately 15 minutes to the film. Given the original novel ran over 1000 pages, one would suspect there was quite a bit on the cutting room floor. More and more movies recently have included “Director’s Cuts” on home video release and this is certainly not a new development in home media. But most of these titles reek more of justifying a purchase to a film that view...

Creepy husbands or John Wick Jr.? Who will will this round? Mother Darren Aronofsky has plenty of acclaimed films on his resume including the Oscar-nominated Black Swan and the oh-my-god-so-depressing Requiem for a Dream . His movies generally aren’t the standard Hollywood type which makes it all the better that he continues to get the big projects and attract the big stars that normally would be relegated to the single screen Indie theater. I can’t tell you much about Mother ! other than Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem have the seemingly perfect life until he goes a little whacky (shocker). Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer round out the top-notch cast in what looks to be a potential mind-fuck of a movie. I, for one, can’t wait. American Assassin Based on a novel by Vince Flynn, American Assassin looks to be a greatest hits of the past fifteen years’ worth of action and espionage. Dylan O’Brien, who is definitely an actor I haven’t heard of, is going after a ter...

As it turns out, making a successful Star Wars film is hard. Fans were excited for new chapters in their favorite franchise among the stars when Disney announced it was purchasing Lucasfilm and the rights to further films in 2012. But it has not all been smooth sailing since then. The first new Star Wars film in over a decade, The Force Awakens , made close to a billion dollars worldwide and was received favorably, even if the tide of fandom has turned on JJ Abrams and his over-reliance on elements from previous films. In December 2015, any Star Wars fan likely would have been gushing over the film. Now, it’s met more with a shrug. Since The Force Awakens though, most of the other announced properties have gone through an upheaval. Josh Trank was fired from his spinoff. Gareth Edwards was forced to do massive retooling on Rogue One . Chris Lord and Phil Miller were let go during production of the upcoming Han Solo film. And just last week, Colin Trevorrow , who was in pre...

Send... more... paramedics. For all the zombie movies I’ve seen, including the worst of George Romero’s output, I never got around to Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead for one reason or another. Considering I wrote a senior-year high school paper on the original Night of the Living Dead, I knew of the existence of co-writer John Russo’s offshoot to the seminal zombie flick but never had much interest. But when one come across a pristine Blu-ray special edition to a highly-regarded film, what choice does one really have?

I do not care for these Avatar movies. I have made that case before. In between stepping on a deserved landmine about feminism and over-promising a return to greatness for his signature series , James Cameron has apparently been spending the past eight years honing his talents for not one, nor two, but FOUR sequels to his CGI Dances with Wolves property. Granted, Avatar is somehow the highest grossing worldwide film but the demand for these additional sequels is ... what’s the opposite of palpable? The Dissolve had a great piece back in the day about the disposable nature of Avatar and it’s legacy only a few years after its release. For such a huge movie-going experience, no one talks about Avatar except for the promised forthcoming sequels. Have you seen any Avatar cosplay recently? Any Halloween costumes since Obama was elected a second time? Avatar is currently at its nadir of pop-culture relevance. And yet, we still supposedly have four ... more ... sequels coming so...

On the heels of Tom Cruise’s announcement of a forthcoming Top Gun sequel , MarketWatch published an article this weekend titled ‘Hollywood is running out of hit ’80s movies to reboot.’ A sequel to the Tony Scott-helmed 1987 film is just the latest in a long line of film properties from the 1980s that have been updated for “modern” audiences like RoboCop , Friday the 13th , and Ghostbusters to varying degrees of success.