2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand has one hell of a backstory, not the least of which was a director swap that found Matthew Vaughn being swapped for Brett Ratner. But why did Vaughn leave such a high-profile project, especially when it would have helped really get his career going? It comes down to Halle Berry and a phony script.
Halle Berry was lured back into the role of Storm (aka Ororo Munroe) after the script she was given showed her character tending to and saving children in Africa. Vaughn made the revelation about the swapped scripts last year, saying he made his own last stand to leave the X-Men movie once he found out that version that was being given to Berry was just a studio ploy to get her to sign on, at which point they would ditch it. To this, Berry is forever grateful. Posting to social media, Berry wrote, “Ya just never know the shady sh*t going on behind ya back! Thank you Matthew Vaughn for bringing the dark to light.” She added, “Hollywood is really political and odd. I went into an executive’s office, and I saw a script that was a lot fatter. I was like, what the hell’s this draft? They said, ‘don’t worry about it.’” At this point, we have to assume that the original X-Men script Berry was given didn’t have the infamous “toad line” in it…
On the matter of the fake pages of The Last Stand that Halle Berry was given, Matthew Vaughn said he liked the idea of giving Storm that standout moment but was told by the studio that “it was the Halle Berry script. ‘She hasn’t signed on yet, but this is what she wants it to be. So once she signs on, we’ll throw it in the bin.’ I said, ‘Wow, you’re going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress? I’m out of here.’ So I quit at that point. I figured I was mincemeat.”
With Vaughn gone, The Last Stand landed on Ratner, then between Rush Hour movies. To many, The Last Stand remains the worst movie in the entire X-Men franchise – which is really saying something! Berry – who has said she is open to playing the character again – would play Storm once more in 2014’s Days of Future Past, having not been invited to Deadpool & Wolverine.
Back in July, it was announced that Tessa Thompson of the Thor and Creed franchises had signed on to star in and executive produce a limited series called His & Hers that will stream on Netflix. Since then, we’ve heard that Jon Bernthal of The Punisher and Pablo Schreiber of Halo have joined Thompson in the cast – and now Deadline reports that Poppy Liu (Space Cadet) and Chris Bauer (Fellow Travelers) are in the cast, while Variety adds that Crystal Fox (In the Heat of the Night), Sunita Mani (GLOW), Rebecca Rittenhouse (Unfriended: Dark Web), and Marin Ireland (The Umbrella Academy) are in there as well.
The series is based on a novel by Alice Feeney that has been described as “a twisty, smart, psychological thriller. A gripping tale of suspense, told by expertly-drawn narrators that will keep readers guessing until the very end.“ William Oldroyd (Lady Macbeth), Bill Dubuque (Ozark), and Dee Johnson (Fellow Travelers) are writing the show, which will consist of six episodes and will be moving the setting. While the book took place in England, the show will be set in Atlanta, Georgia. Oldroyd is also set to direct the first episode, and Johnson is serving as the showrunner. Filming is expected to begin this fall.
Thompson will be taking on the role of Anna, who lives in haunting reclusivity, fading away from her friends and career as a news anchor. But when she overhears about a murder in Dahlonega – the sleepy town where she grew up – Anna is snapped back to life, pouncing on the case and searching for answers. Detective Jack Harper is strangely suspicious of her involvement, chasing her into the crosshairs of his own investigation. There are two sides to every story: his & hers, which means someone is always lying.
Bernthal will be playing Detective Jack Harper, “a Sheriff’s Office detective who lost his last job and is now working in his small hometown of Dahlonega, Georgia, where he lives with his sister and niece. He is married to newscaster Anna, but the two are estranged, their relationship complicated by loss and betrayal. Jack is a good man who doesn’t always make good decisions and is deeply troubled by the murder case he’s just picked up.” Schreiber’s character is Richard, “one of the best cameramen at WSK TV News, and he’s also the husband of hot new anchor Lexy Jones, who slid into her position during the recent absence of regular anchor Anna Andrews. Richard is chosen by Anna to be her cameraman when, upon her return, she picks up the story of a murder in Dahlonega as a field reporter.“ Liu will play Helen Wang, “the headmistress at St. Hilary’s Academy who is fiercely self-protective. She is a good friend of the murder victim and becomes increasingly irritated and incensed by Anna’s reporting, but Anna can’t help but feel as though Helen is hiding something.” Bauer will play Clyde Duffie, “Rachel’s husband and a pizza chain mogul who is very candid about his immense wealth. After Rachel is found murdered in the woods, he becomes a person of interest for Detective Jack Harper and the secrets he keeps may make him the perfect suspect.” Fox’s character is Alice, Anna’s mother, “who still lives in her house in Dahlonega, Georgia. Strong, says what she thinks, lives alone but maybe shouldn’t. She hasn’t heard from her daughter in a year, but she knows why. Her son-in-law, Detective Jack Harper, has been watching over her as her health has been in decline which has resulted in some odd behavior around town.” Mani has been cast as Priya: “Earnestly efficient, eager to please, and fascinated by murder, Priya is a new Sheriff’s Office detective and partner of Detective Jack Harper in Dahlonega, Georgia. Having left the big city to work in a small town, Priya brings a sharp quirkiness to the job that her mentor Jack finds both endearing and annoying.” Rittenhouse is Lexy: “Blonde hair, Hollywood smile, smart, professional, and driven by raw ambition, Lexy is now the anchor at WSK-TV News — a position the hugely popular Anna Andrews had previously held for years. As a new field reporter at WSK, Lexy capitalized on Anna’s leave of absence, leapfrogging into anchor desk position. Though she’s ‘delighted’ to see Anna back at the news station, she has no intention of giving up the anchor desk.” Ireland’s character is Zoe: “Sharp-tongued and bored, Zoe lives in her parent’s house with Detective Jack Harper, and her six-year old daughter Meg. Her love of wine and her too-tight sweatpants suggests she’s a woman who peaked in high school. She’s letting Jack stay with her till he gets back on his feet, and the murder in their small town is equally exciting and shocking when she learns who the victim is.“
Oldroyd, Dubuque, and Johnson are executive producers on the show, and Thompson is executive producing through her Viva Maude production company. Kristen Campo of Campout Productions is also an executive producer, as are Jessica Chastain and Kelly Carmichael of Freckle Films and Kishori Rajan of Viva Maude.
Does His & Hers sound interesting to you? What do you think of the cast that has been assembled for the show? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Ever since mass layoffs at Halo maker 343 Industries, fans have wondered what the future will hold for the famed sci-fi shooter. It turns out Microsoft still has big plans for Master Chief, and they involve multiple upcoming projects as well as the franchise making the jump to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, the tech that…
Ever since mass layoffs at Halo maker 343 Industries, fans have wondered what the future will hold for the famed sci-fi shooter. It turns out Microsoft still has big plans for Master Chief, and they involve multiple upcoming projects as well as the franchise making the jump to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, the tech that…
For a seemingly very brief period of time, Bruce Lee was one of the most electric personalities in pop culture; a vibrant, intense ball of fire who left the world just as he was becoming one of its most interesting personalities. While he is something of a mythic figure now, more of an image in our minds than a person who actually lived and breathed, Bruce was, like the rest of us, a person who went through highs and lows, who had flaws and inner demons. While a man unlike any other, he was also still just a man.
When he left us far too soon at the age of 32 from a still-disputed ailment, his legend has only grown… Of course, it was inevitable that his wild life would become fodder for a biopic, and in 1993 – twenty years after his death – we finally got one: Rob Cohen’s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. Not a traditional biopic, the movie blends fact and fiction in an effort to tell a more elevated version of Bruce’s life. Indeed, the director admitted he wanted the picture to play out more like one of Bruce’s movies than a standard biopic, but of course you still want to learn as much as you can about the actual man while watching his life’s story unfold. So how much does “Dragon” get right, and how much is just more Hollywood myth-making? We’re going to get to the bottom of What Really Happened to Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.
To kick things off, it’s important to know that the screenplay for Dragon was largely inspired by the book, “Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew,” written by Laura Lee Caldwell, Bruce’s widow. With that in mind, the film could be accused of looking at Bruce’s life through rose-colored glasses, elevating the man to heroic proportions while ignoring some of his less-agreeable traits and history. Apparently, Linda worshipped Bruce, even though it’s almost universally acknowledged that he was a far from perfect husband, so the movie takes on her point-of-view as opposed to regarding its subject objectively.
But let’s start with the early years: Curiously, the film depicts Bruce as almost being an only child, raised by his father in troubled conditions. Lee’s siblings and mother aren’t in the picture, perhaps in an effort to make his life look simpler than it was. In real life, Bruce had a very good upbringing; his mother was wealthy and his father was an accomplished opera singer who toured the globe, which resulted in Bruce being born in the U.S. and becoming a U.S. citizen. He was also a child actor, appearing in several Hong kong productions when he was a kid, something the movie ignores.
Despite his comfortable upbringing, Bruce was a tough and frequently unruly young man, prone to getting into street fights – usually ones that were started by him. He was so competitive that when he saw another young man excel at fighting, he wanted to know the best way to beat him, which led to his studying martial arts. In the film, it’s made to look as if Bruce’s father gets the boy to enter that particular world, but that wasn’t the case – Bruce just wanted to know how to best his rivals, so he trained with the best: the famous martial arts teacher Ip Man.
In the film, Bruce – played very well by Jason Scott Lee – heads to the U.S. after getting into a brawl with some British soldiers which leads to his escaping to the U.S. – something there is no record of actually happening. In reality, Bruce got into a fight with a teenager who got injured from the scuffle – and that boy’s father went to the police and reported Bruce, which got him into trouble. With the police sniffing around and Bruce’s violent antics becoming more unreasonable, Bruce’s parents suggested he go to the U.S. to study, as well as to claim his U.S. citizenship.
When in the U.S., Bruce became a dishwasher in a restaurant in order to make money while going to school. In the film, Bruce gets into an elaborate fight with several of the restaurant’s cooks, which of course he handily wins. There’s no record of anything remotely close to this happening, although perhaps it wouldn’t have been so hard to believe considering he was still known for being antagonistic to many of those around him. Bruce saw dishwashing as peasant’s work and resented having to do it, which made his co-workers quite annoyed. So much so that it is alleged that one of the cooks once threatened him with a knife, but no brawl ensued.
Another memorable fight scene in the film occurs while Bruce is working out at the gym and a couple of racist jerks goad him into a confrontation. Once again, there’s no record of such a thing happening – although it’s certainly not hard to believe that Bruce would encounter racism at that time in history. Furthermore, when he became a martial arts instructor, he would frequently invite the quote-unquote toughest guy in the room to come try to knock him out, so while this scene is indeed fiction, you could say it has some hints of historical accuracy inspiring it.
Yet another engrossing fight sequence is when Bruce must square off against Johnny Sun in a bout arranged by some Chinese elders who demand Bruce stop training non-Chinese people in martial arts. Bruce defeats Johnny, but the humiliated opponent takes revenge by attacking Bruce when he’s not looking, inflicting major damage to his back, after which several months of bedrest are required. This too is fiction, though it has vague roots in reality. When Bruce was teaching martial arts in California, his peers thought that he should not train anyone who wasn’t Chinese, but there was no ominous group of Elders who attempted to enforce these rules. A real fight inspired the fight with Johnny Sun with a man named Wong-Jack Man, who wanted to challenge the big-mouthed Bruce. Bruce did indeed win the fight, but his challenger didn’t attack him out of nowhere afterwards. And as there was no Johnny Sun, it goes without saying his brother is fictional too, but Dragon depicts a sequence on the set of The Big Boss in which Johnny’s brother confronts Lee and vows to defeat him – all while the director attempts to film the battle. Needless to say, this is entirely fictional.
Bruce really did suffer a terrible back injury, which disabled him for half a year, but it wasn’t thanks to a cheap blow by an opponent: it happened while he was lifting weights at the gym. Director Rob Cohen subsequently admitted to fabricating the Johnny Sun fight because the weight-lifting injury would not have been a great movie moment, and on that score we can’t really argue with him.
Lauren Holly plays Bruce Lee’s eventual wife Linda Caldwell, who is depicted in the film as Lee’s rock and close confidant. In the film, Linda is the person who suggests Lee start up a martial arts school, which he does successfully. In reality, Bruce had already opened the school when he met Linda, and he was intent on franchising the school in the McDonald’s mold so that they’d be all around the country. Linda and Bruce’s relationship is portrayed as rocky at times, but more or less stable throughout. No mention is made of the many alleged mistresses Bruce had on the side. Bruce was even in another woman’s home when he died suddenly, something “Dragon” fails to acknowledge.
In the movie, while recovering from his back injury, a defiant Bruce is convinced by Linda to dictate his fighting philosophies so that she can write them down and make a book out of it. Not long after, Bruce gets a copy of the book, much to his and his wife’s delight. While this makes for a touching montage, it’s not how things really went down. Bruce had already toyed with the idea of putting his philosophies onto paper before his weightlifting accident, and while his book “The Tao of Jeet Kune Do” did eventually get released – it wasn’t until after he died. In reality, Linda compiled many pages of Bruce’s writings after finding them in a box after he passed away. So, technically, Bruce didn’t actually write the book, though it was filled with his actual notes.
Dragon posits that Bruce Lee was supposed to star in the TV show Kung Fu – not only that, it was based on his idea, but the producers unfairly boxed him out of the project. This isn’t technically accurate, although once again, it carries the hint of truth. Kung Fu was originally intended to be a feature film, based on a 160-page script by Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander. The producer approached Bruce Lee about starring in it, and Lee expressed interest. Soon after, the idea of making the rather long script into a movie was scuttled, but out of it came a TV pilot that was half as long. Bruce auditioned for the part, but the executives at Warner Bros. Television thought his strong accent and intense personality weren’t a fit for the character, who had more of a serene composition. Lee was passed over, and after a long search for an Asian American actor, David Carradine was eventually cast, naturally spurring a controversy that remains strong today.
All that said, here’s an interesting wrinkle: it’s true that Lee was interested in creating a TV show that had some similarities to Kung Fu, called The Warrior, which was about a martial artist in the Old West. Whether or not that idea merged with Warner Bros’ Kung Fu is still being argued, but what is inarguable is that the show eventually came to life – albeit in a retooled fashion – as Warrior on Cinemax, with Andrew Koji playing the lead role.
Finally, we can’t wrap this up without mentioning the dream demon that haunts Bruce Lee throughout the film. In some of the more fantastical sequences in Dragon, Bruce is seen being threatened by a sinister phantom, with the implication being that he and his ancestry are cursed. It makes for dramatic cinema, but how accurate is it? Well, that’s tough to say. Of course, no one can possibly know what any one person has dreamt, and even Rob Cohen admitted that this was mostly a device made up to symbolize Lee’s inner demons. At the end, we even see Bruce protecting his young son, Brandon, from the demon, a scene made even more eerie in that Dragon came out mere months after Brandon’s tragic death on the set of The Crow – an event that only added fuel to the idea that the Lee’s were somehow cursed. Bruce’s wife once said Bruce had told her of a demon chasing him in a dream while he was recuperating from his back injury, but whether or not it was a recurring nightmare is unknown.
As mentioned earlier, the film ignores the fact that Lee died in the home of actress Betty Ting, who was long believed to be Bruce’s mistress. Lee died after experiencing a cerebral edema, an excess of fluid in the brain. Just why that happened is still being wondered to this day. The fact that we don’t truly know only adds to the Bruce Lee mystique, which is something that will live on forever.
It’s a story we’ve all heard before. Parents leave their kids home alone for a few days and the unsupervised kids throw a party and wreck the place. That’s how it goes when 12-year-old Glen is left in the care of his 15-year-old sister Alexandra… But these kids also get into a whole new level trouble while their parents are away. They open a tunnel to Hell in their back yard, conjuring demons that play mind games with them and then become a physical threat. This is what happens in the 1987 film The Gate (watch it HERE) – and if you haven’t seen this one, it’s the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
The Gate started with a screenplay written by Michael Nankin, who had co-written and co-directed the 1980 comedy Midnight Madness. Upset that a project he had been working on fell apart, he decided to purge his negative emotions by writing a horror script, crafting a story that centered on a young boy named Glen. He built the story around his own childhood experiences: Glen was a version of himself and Glen’s best friend Terry was based on his own best friend. They used to dig holes in the yard together, imagining they could dig from California, all the way through the Earth, and come out on the other side in China. But in this script, the hole Glen and Terry are digging ends up being a gateway to Hell. That first draft was dark and nasty and packed with death. Demonic creatures emerge from the hole and get out into neighborhood, where they invade homes and attack people in their beds. This all built up to Glen having to face off with a 12-foot-tall demon lord… who would be entirely made of bloody entrails. Nankin was able to sell his script to New Century Entertainment and the Vista Organization, but they didn’t like idea of a movie starring children if it wasn’t going to be for children. So they had Nankin rewrite the script to be more family friendly. He removed the violent death scenes and the description of the demon lord being made of guts, but he kept all of the creepiness in there. Nankin had been planning to direct the film himself, but when Canadian production company Alliance Entertainment got involved, they vetoed that idea. The movie would be shot in Canada, with a Canadian director at the helm.
Born in Hungary but raised in Canada, director Tibor Takács had pitched a project that never got made to producer John Kemeny. Kemeny wasn’t interested in the pitch, but he offered Takács the chance to work on a different project that was already in the works. One option was the supernatural revenge film The Wraith, which ended up being an awesome movie that was directed by its writer, Mike Marvin. Another option was The Gate, and Takács decided to take the job of directing that one. And he wanted to make sure Nankin would be involved throughout the process. He brought new ideas to the table that he had Nankin work in with another rewrite. First, he had the kids aged up. Glen and Terry were 8 or 9 in the original script; they ended up being 12. Glen had an older brother in the script, but Takács had grown up with a sister. So the brother became 15, almost 16-year-old sister Alexandra, who is called Al. Takács also wanted to make a child’s fear of abandonment a theme throughout and he drew inspiration from the Satanic panic of the ‘80s when it came to the demons. Nankin had the kids getting demon information from books in the library. It was Takács’ idea to make Terry a fan of demon-themed rock music. Which makes sense, given that his first movie was a dystopian rock opera called Metal Messiah. The kids learn about the demons through the lyrics and liner notes, and by playing a rock album backwards.
The whole “digging to China” idea was also dropped. The hole in Glen’s back yard comes from an old tree being removed, and when Glen and Terry notice a geode in the hole, they dig more in hopes of finding more geodes. Things they can make money from selling. But a series of circumstances turn the hole left by the tree into a gateway to Hell: Blood from a cut finger. A geode that splits open, causing demonic writing to appear on a Magic Slate board. A levitation trick gone wrong at a party thrown by Al. The family dog dying… and being dumped into the tree hole by Al’s uncaring friend. This is considered a sacrifice. It conjures demons. And while most of the demons are tiny creatures, don’t worry, a giant demon lord will show up as well.
Hundreds of young actors auditioned for the roles of Glen, Terry, and Al. Screen tests were shot with a couple dozen of them. Joshua John Miller, who had memorable roles in River’s Edge and Near Dark around this time, was in the running. But he didn’t get cast. Instead, Stephen Dorff was chosen to play Glen, with Louis Tripp as Terry and Christa Denton as Al. Kelly Rowan and Jennifer Irwin were cast as Al’s friends, the Lee sisters. with Sean Fagan as Eric, the friend who disposes of the dog corpse. Scot Denton and Deborah Grover have scenes as Glen and Al’s parents, but they’re absent for most of the action.
The plan was for The Gate to start filming in the fall of 1985, but the funding wasn’t in place, so the start date was pushed back to the spring of 1986. Takács has called this a fortuitous delay, because it gave him several extra months to polish the script with Nankin, work with special effects supervisor Randall William Cook, designing the creatures, and storyboard the effects sequences. Takács told Coming Soon, “We ended up with several similar creature looks for the minions to choose from. Technological and budgetary constraints kept us in the ballpark of what we ended up with. We knew their heights relative to a human and that they would be played by people in suits on force-perspective sets. They needed to be of a design that could easily be manufactured in multiples as a rubber suit with a lot of agility. Due to budget constraints, we could only create one head mold, so we had to choose only one expression. They ended up with a dumbfounded look on their faces. Only one had some very basic facial animatronics. Throughout the film, Randy used an encyclopedia of techniques to make the minions work. Bluescreen, trick perspective, stop-motion, and puppets were all used in rotation; once you think you have it figured out, we introduce another technique. Another process used to great effect was to shoot them at a lower frame rate so they would appear to move a little more furtively. They also had to be coached to move in special ways in order to compensate for the frame rate.” The minions were played by young adults who volunteered to get into the costumes, and they look awesome in the finished film. So does the giant, stop-motion demon lord.
According to the filmmakers, The Gate was made on a budget of 2.5 million Canadian. When it was released in May of 1987, it opened in second place at the weekend box office, and went on to earn 13.5 million dollars, U.S., during its theatrical run. Then came a successful VHS release. And the movie also got a lot of play on cable, allowing it to gather a large cult following and reach a lot of fans who consider it to be one of the many classics of the ‘80s. In 2009, Lionsgate gave it a special edition DVD release. A Vestron Video Blu-ray followed in 2017. The film was such a success, Takács and Nankin reunited for a sequel a couple of years later. Louis Tripp reprised the role of Terry in The Gate II: Trespassers… but that one wasn’t nearly as well received as the first movie. In 2009, it was announced that Alex Winter – yes, the guy who’s best known for playing Bill S. Preston, Esquire – would be directing a remake of The Gate. In 3D. But that never made it into production.
The Gate lives up to its title in more than one way. Sure, it’s about kids accidentally opening a gate to Hell. But the title also fits because this is a great gateway horror movie. If a young kid is looking to get into the horror genre, this should be one of their earliest viewings. But just because it has children in the lead roles and is family friendly overall doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some edge. A kid can test their movie-watching courage with this one, because it is incredibly creepy. It’s relentless in its attempt to scare the hell out of its characters and keep the viewer on the edge of their seat throughout. There is a thick atmosphere of dread hanging over every scene. Something is off from the start. We know things are going to go terribly wrong. And events get gradually stranger and more dangerous as the story goes on. Takács wanted to bring a feeling of being under a magic spell to the movie, and he succeeded.
The director saw the film as a dark fairy tale. As he told Daily Dead, “Fairy tales are an important part of your development, your creativity, especially when you’re young. I feel like you have to experience fear when you’re young because it opens up a floodgate to imagination. My own experience is filled with those seminal things that happened when I was kid. Like when I saw Snow White. I was a scared little kid after, but that really fueled my imagination.”
The scenes with the demons, small and large, will stick with anyone who watches this movie. But these creatures aren’t the only threats. The evil forces that have been unleashed can influence the world around the characters and tap into their deepest fears or manipulate their emotions. That brings us some of the best, creepiest scenes in the movie. Like when Terry is made to think that his mother, who passed away the year before, has returned. They embrace… only for Terry to realize he’s holding the corpse of the dog. A scared Glen runs outside and is happy to see that his parents have come home. But it’s a trick. The father lets out a demonic cry of, “You’ve been bad!” And attacks Glen while the mom just stands there laughing.
Terry told Glen that a worker had died during the construction of his house. Instead of telling the police, his co-workers just sealed him up in the walls of the house. The evil plays on Glen’s fear of that idea. A zombie worker emerges from the walls, and one of the most amazing effects in the movie involves this guy. The zombie falls forward – and when he hits the ground, his body turns into a bunch of the little demon minions.
Those mind-blowing effects. The intense creepiness. The strength of the performances delivered by the child actors. They all work together to make The Gate an enduring gateway horror classic, all these decades later. So if you haven’t seen it yet, seek it out. Whether you’re just getting into horror or if you’ve been a fan for years The Gate is a must-see.
A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
Rachel McAdams played Christine Palmer in director Scott Derrickson’s contribution to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the 2016 film Doctor Strange – but there was a time when we were told that Christine would not be appearing the follow-up, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. She did end up in that movie, though, and by working on that film, McAdams had the chance to work with director Sam Raimi. Now Deadline reports that Raimi and McAdams are aiming to re-team on the 20th Century Studios horror thriller Send Help, which Raimi will be producing and directing. McAdams is currently in talks to star in the film, but Deadline cautions that these negotiations are in early stages, and nothing is definite at this point.
Back in 2007, it was rumored that Sam Raimi would be producing a fantasy film with a screenplay written by Freddy vs. Jason and Friday the 13th 2009 writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. That didn’t pan out, but a decade later Raimi considered directing a Bermuda Triangle project that once had Shannon and Swift working on the script. Again, that didn’t pan out, with Scott Derrickson and more recently Marc Webb picking up the project after Raimi dropped it. In 2019, it was announced that Raimi would be directing an untitled island horror thriller, working from a script by Shannon and Swift. Then the pandemic hit and Raimi went on to direct Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness… but now he has circled back to the island horror thriller, and A Quiet Place writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have done a rewrite of the script. previously worked with Raimi on the Adam Driver dinosaur movie 65 and the anthology series 50 States of Fright. They wrote and executive produced the Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman for 20th Century Studios.
Raimi is producing Send Help alongside Zainab Azizi, the President of his company Raimi Productions.
When Send Help was first announced, it was said to be like “Misery meets Cast Away” in tone. That’s still the description being given, as Deadline mentioned, “the film is described as a two-hander horror thriller set on an island, falling somewhere between Rob Reiner’s Stephen King adaptation Misery and Robert Zemeckis’ classic Castaway.” 20th Century hasn’t officially given it a greenlight yet, but here’s hoping they will soon.
Film scooper Daniel Richtman recently revealed that Send Help has the following logline: Comedy-adventure horror about a female put-upon employee and her jerk boss. On a business flight together with their company, the plane crashes on an island and only those two make it. She has serious survival skills which means she’s his only hope.
Richtman also shared character details: LINDA: Smartest person in the room, but no one takes her seriously. Actor can’t be overly comedic, has to be believable in serious office setting. Eyed Sandra Bullock. BRADLEY: LINDA’S misogynistic boss.
How does Send Help sound to you? What do you think of Rachel McAdams being in talks to star in the film? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Throughout Metaphor: ReFantazio’s roughly 80 hours, the RPG’s protagonist carries a novel with him as he travels through the fantastical world of the United Kingdom of Euchronia. The book depicts an idealized metropolis of skyscrapers where equality is written into law. It’s clear this story envisions a pristine…
Throughout Metaphor: ReFantazio’s roughly 80 hours, the RPG’s protagonist carries a novel with him as he travels through the fantastical world of the United Kingdom of Euchronia. The book depicts an idealized metropolis of skyscrapers where equality is written into law. It’s clear this story envisions a pristine…
PLOT: When an eight-year-old girl mysteriously vanishes, a series of past deaths and disappearances start to link together, forever altering a broken family’s history.
REVIEW: When you stick the name M. Night Shyamalan in your marketing, you promise audiences a particular type of film. The trailer for Caddo Lake boasts Shyamalan’s credit as producer, coupled with the October debut on Max, making it seem like Caddo Lake is a dark thriller or horror film when it is anything but. Set in the sprawling wetland on the border between Louisiana and Texas, the real Caddo Lake is a protected body of water that has been important to indigenous peoples since before the United States even existed. With oil discovered in the late 20th Century, the lake took on a different importance, which factors into this mystery with an unexpected twist. With strong leading performances from Dylan O’Brien and Eliza Scanlen, Caddo Lake is not the movie I expected it to be based on the trailer, and that is a good thing.
Caddo Lake follows Paris (Dylan O’Brien), who lives and works on the titular lake. Mourning the death of his mother, which he blames on himself, Paris is obsessed with trying to figure out how her medical condition involving seizures could have been addressed sooner. We also meet Ellie (Eliza Scanlen), the daughter of Celeste (Lauren Ambrose), who struggles to look for her biological father. Ellie has a strong bond with her stepsister, Anna (Caroline Falk), but cannot help but be focused on learning about her absent father. When Anna tries to follow Ellie onto Caddo Lake, the young girl disappears. This prompts a massive search across the flooded forest to find Anna, pulling Ellie and Paris deeper into the labyrinthine body of water. With strange sounds emanating from the wooded lake, both Paris and Ellie discover something shocking about what lies in Caddo Lake.
Eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted additional details about Caddo Lake in the trailer, but the film unveils them differently. The first half of Caddo Lake focuses on showing audiences what life is like alongside the sprawling lake. The unique lifestyle is not quite rural and not quite like any typical populated areas usually seen on film before. The blue-collar population is not a direct factor in the plot, but as the story develops, we are driven to connect the natural landscape of the lake to the lives of those who reside near it. For about an hour, the film feels like a portrait of multiple families inhabiting the same general area before Anna’s disappearance draws the narratives together. At that point, the strangeness showcased in the trailer comes into play and changes Caddo Lake from what feels like an indie drama into something altogether different. Divulging what happens and how it occurs would be a disservice to the movie. While it is initially hard to follow what is going on, everything comes together in the end.
Were it not for the leads, Caddo Lake could have sunk had weaker actors portrayed Paris and Ellie. Dylan O’Brien has come a long way since The Maze Runner with turns in Love and Monsters and the upcoming Saturday Night showing his range as an actor. Eliza Scanlen is also impressive after a stellar turn in HBO’s Sharp Objects, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, and Shyamalan’s Old. Another Shyamalan veteran, Lauren Ambrose, is solid alongside Eric Lange in key supporting roles. Still, so much of the screen time focuses on O’Brien and Scanlen that without their depth in playing these characters, Caddo Lake would have crumbled under a very convoluted plot that requires a great deal of attention to understand. Whether or not you enjoy this film will likely hinge on how you feel about these two actors.
Caddo Lake is the second film by writer/director duo Celine Held and Logan George. After their well-received debut film Topside, Held and George were inspired to make a film about the title lake after seeing a photograph of it. Filmed on location in Louisiana, Caddo Lake makes great use of the bayou setting with atmospheric cinematography by Lowell A. Meyer. The ultimate problem with this movie is keeping the plot threads straight, as the lack of clear exposition requires the viewer to parse things quickly. I actually had to take out a piece of paper and jot down how everything connected. Once I did, it made tenuous sense to me, but charting a film to understand it can sometimes be too much for an average viewer to put into enjoying a movie. If you have found it challenging to piece together a standard M. Night Shyamalan plot twist, Caddo Lake will take things to the next level.
Caddo Lake is an interesting experiment that takes some familiar tropes from genre films and tries to make something new out of them. But, there are moments in the film where it feels too disjointed from what it is trying to be while others are blatantly on the nose. Both Held and George have made two intriguing films to start their directorial careers, and I am interested in seeing what they do next. Caddo Lake feels like a movie that audiences will walk away from, either rolling their eyes or scratching their heads. I doubt either is what the filmmakers were going for, but it is an interesting attempt to tell a new type of story.
