The live-action TV series based on the Goosebumps books written by R.L. Stine that was released through the Disney+ and Hulu streaming services last October (read our review HERE) drew inspiration from five of Stine’s Goosebumps stories (Say Cheese and Die!, The Haunted Mask, The Cuckoo Clock of Doom, Go Eat Worms!, and Night of the Living Dummy). More Stine stories will be brought to the screen in Goosebumps season 2 – and now we know when the season is going to premiere! A short teaser has dropped online to reveal that the new season is called Goosebumps: The Vanishing, and poster art has confirmed a January 10 premiere date.
The imagery also makes it look like Goosebumps: The Vanishing has some kind of Venom tie-in, but that’s not the case.
The first season of Goosebumps centered on a group of five high schoolers as they embark on a shadowy and twisted journey to investigate the tragic passing three decades earlier of a teen named Harold Biddle — while also unearthing dark secrets from their parents’ past. The show is taking the anthology route, so we can expect a second season that has “an entirely new cast and setting based on Stine’s iconic Scholastic book series.” Season 2 will also consist of eight episodes, two shorter than the first season.
Season 2 will pick up when teenage siblings discover a threat within their home, setting off a chain of events that unravel a profound mystery. As they delve into the unknown, the duo find themselves entangled in the story of five teenagers who mysteriously vanished in 1994.
The cast of Goosebumps: The Vanishing includes Arjun Athalye (Are You Afraid of the Dark?), Eloise Payet (The End of the Party), Christopher Paul Richards (The Kids Are Alright), Kyra Tantao (Zombies 3), Stony Blyden (American Born Chinese), and Sakina Jaffrey (Billions), and the only details that have been shared about their characters are their names. As Deadline reported, “Athalye plays Sameer; Payet is Hannah; Richards plays Matty; Tantao portrays Nicole; Blyden is Trey and Jaffrey portrays Ramona.” Also in the cast are Sam McCarthy (Dead to Me) and Jayden Bartels (Side Hustle) as fraternal twins Devin and Cece, respectively; Elijah Cooper (That Girl Lay Lay) as CJ; Galilea La Salvia (Party Down) as Frankie; Francesca Noel (R#J) as Alex; and Ana Ortiz (Devious Maids) as Jen, “a dedicated police detective who remains rooted in her Brooklyn neighborhood after experiencing a tragic event that involved her friends in adolescence.” Friends‘ David Schwimmer is also in there as Anthony, “a former botany professor and divorced parent of teenage girls who is juggling the responsibilities of overseeing an aging parent while having his kids for the summer.“ The twins Devin and Cece are the children of Schwimmer’s Anthony.
Rob Letterman, who directed the first Goosebumps movie, created this series with Nick Stoller, and Hilary Winston serves as showrunner on the new season. Stoller is executive producing the show through his company Stoller Global Solutions. Letterman and Winston are also executive producing Goosebumps alongside Neal H. Moritz and Pavun Shetty of Original Film, Conor Welch of Stoller Global Solutions, and Erin O’Malley. The show comes to us from Sony Pictures Television Studios.
Are you a Goosebumps fan, and are you looking forward to Goosebumps: The Vanishing? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re all together ooky…Core cast members from The Addams Familyreunited at this past weekend’s Los Angeles Comic Con, more than 30 years since they first brought the gothic family to the big screen.
Gathering for the event was Christina Ricci (Wednesday), Anjelcia Huston (matriarch Morticia), Christopher Lloyd (Uncle Fester), Jimmy Workman (Pugsley), and Carel Struycken (butler Lurch). Of course, the Addams Family reunion was obviously missing the late Raul Julia, who brought a whole new energy to father Gomez. In fact, Gomez died less than one year after the release of 1993’s Addams Family Values, succumbing to a stroke after battling other illnesses. It would be his final film released during his life, with Street Fighter being posthumously released.
But Julia’s presence was still felt by his Addams family, with Anjelica Huston remembering him as “the perfect gentleman. He was always the first on set and the last to leave. He was a great dancer. I’d get really grumpy around dancing rehearsals, which I felt were unnecessary since I was such an excellent dancer. But he would insist on being there and staying all the way through…He’d always sing, between scenes and between takes. He always sang full opera! He kept us entertained.” This shouldn’t be much of a surprise considering Julia’s history on the stage, with four Tony nominations throughout his career.
The Addams Family – which is based on Charles Addams’ comics – was a smash upon release, taking in more than $100 million domestically and becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of 1991. While the sequel didn’t do nearly as well, the property has reached new heights in popularity, with Netflix’s Wednesday proving to be one of the streamer’s biggest hits. There, too, have been a pair of animated features. And who can forget the iconic pinball game, which is still the best-selling ever? (For real completists and horror road trippers, I’d recommend checking out the so-called “Addams Family house” in Westfield, New Jersey, the town in which Charles Addams and took much inspiration from; this house in particular inspired the clan’s home.)
Were you a fan of The Addams Family and its sequel growing up? What is your favorite Raul Julia performance? Let us know below!
It’s time to step into the Colosseum with the new featurette of Gladiator II. Paramount Pictures has released this brand-new look with director Ridley Scott and his stars Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen and Denzel Washington. The featurette shows just how grand a production this was and Scott was already coming off of another historical epic, Napoleon. As Washington puts it, “This is the biggest film I’ve been on. It’s huge! Cecil B. DeMille on steroids!”
Here is the plot of Gladiator II, as per Paramount: “From legendary director Ridley Scott, Gladiator II continues the epic saga of power, intrigue, and vengeance set in Ancient Rome. Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius (Paul Mescal) is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical Emperors who now lead Rome with an iron fist. With rage in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honor to return the glory of Rome to its people.”
The cast includes Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Lior Raz, Derek Jacobi, with Connie Nielsen and Denzel Washington. The screenplay was penned by David Scarpa.
While Ridley Scott and the studio are hyping this film up as the biggest movie either have ever been involved with, many skeptics who are fans of the original still view it as unnecessary as the story had a fitting end with Maximus’ story coming to a close. However, Scott is already intent on turning his saga into a trilogy. As he put it, “I’m already playing with the idea of Gladiator 3. No, seriously. The end of Gladiator II evokes that of the Godfather, with Michael Corleone who ends up with a job he didn’t want, and who wonders, ‘And now, Father, what am I doing? ‘The next film will therefore speak of a man who does not want to be where he is.”
Gladiator II is rated R for “strong bloody violence” and is set to hit theaters on November 22, the same day as Wicked.
Netflix continues to clean house as the streamer evaluates which shows they opt to continue making. Earlier, That 90s Show fell victim to cancellation. Now, according to Deadline, Netflix has decided not to renew the Jeff Goldblum high-concept series, KAOS. It had been confirmed by one of the show’s stars, Aurora Perrineau, in a now-deleted Instagram post.
In the deleted post, Perrineau said, “Well… this one hurts. I find explaining how I’m feeling to be really difficult, but I’ll try. When I started auditioning for this show, I knew it was special, mainly due to the fact that Charlie Covell’s scripts resonated with me in a way most things hadn’t. I knew all of these people, and I loved them all — every flaw, everything.”
She would conclude by saying, “Everyone was brilliant and uniquely themselves. Every performance surprised and excited me. I can’t believe I got to do this with all of you. We made something weird, dark, hilarious, deranged and absolutely tragic – something entirely human. THIS is a feeling I plan to take with me.”
KAOS was a dark comedy series from creator Charlie Covell and writer Georgia Christou. Georgi Banks-Davis directs five episodes of KOAS, while Runyararo Mapfumo shoots the remaining three. Jeff Goldblum leads the cast, including Perrieau, Debi Mazar, Fady Elsayed, Sam Buttery, Matthew Koon, Elander Moore, Susan Wooldridge, Shila Ommi, and Amanda Douge.
Here’s the official synopsis for KAOS courtesy of Netflix:
Zeus has long enjoyed his status as King of The Gods. That is until he wakes up one morning and discovers a wrinkle on his forehead. Neurosis sets in, setting him off on a dangerous, paranoid path. Zeus becomes convinced his fall is coming – and starts to see signs of it everywhere.
Zeus’ once reliable brother, Hades, God of the Underworld, is secretly losing his grip on his dark dominion. There is a backlog of dead waiting to be processed and they are growing restless. Hera (Janet McTeer), Queen of the Gods, exercises dominion on Earth — and over Zeus — in her own unique way. But her power and freedom become threatened by Zeus’ growing paranoia, and she is forced to act, while Zeus’ rebellious son, Dionysus, (Nabhaan Rizwan), is out of control and on course for a cosmic collision with his father.
On Earth people are aching for change, however Poseidon (Cliff Curtis), God of Sea, Storms and Earthquakes (and Horses) is more concerned with the size of his super-yacht and where the next party is at. The wellbeing of mere mortals is of little interest to him. Unfortunately for the Gods some of those mortals are beginning to realise this…
These mortals – Riddy (Aurora Perrineau), Orpheus (Killian Scott), Caneus (Misia Butler) and Ari (Leila Farzad) – come from different walks of life and are all cosmically connected in the battle against Zeus. Each one has a very different role to play, any one of them may be destined to bring down the Gods.
Back in 1980, author Philip Nicholson, writing as A. J. Quinnell, introduced the world to a man named Creasy, an American-born former French Foreign Legion soldier, in the pages of his novel Man on Fire. While Creasy would return for four more novels – The Perfect Kill (1992), The Blue Ring (1993), Black Horn (1994), and Message From Hell (1996) – it’s Man on Fire that has received the most attention over the year, being turned into a film that starred Scott Glenn in 1987 and one that starred Denzel Washington in 2004. Now, Man on Fire is serving as the basis of a Netflix TV series that’s set to star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman) as Creasey – and The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news that Alice Braga (Queen of the South), Scoot McNairy (Speak No Evil), and Paul Ben-Victor (Nobody Wants This) have signed on to play recurring roles on the show.
We previously heard that Bobby Cannavale, who recently starred in the hit Netflix series The Watcher, will be a guest star. Cannavale is taking on the role of Paul Rayburn, an “ex-Special Forces soldier who possesses a unique ability to read people. He is charming, nurturing, and protective of those he cares for. Despite his warm, fatherly nature, his years of service in the field have given him an acute awareness of violence and human behavior. Quick-witted and incredibly intellectual, he is likely to have all the answers, and if not, he will find them.” Also in the cast is Billie Boullet, who played Anne Frank in the recent Nat Geo limited series A Small Light. Boullet’s character here is Poe Rayburn, who has “the lanky lines of someone growing at a rapid and confusing pace and the attitude that comes with it. She is unhappy about moving to Brazil because of her parent’s decision, spending her days with her wealthy international classmates until a tragic incident changes her perspective on family and life. As the only witness to a terrifying event, Poe quickly learns that her only ally is John Creasy.“
Here’s the logline for the show: Once a high functioning and skilled Special Forces Mercenary, known for surviving even the most desolate of situations, Creasy (Mateen) is now plagued with intense PTSD. Determined to overcome his personal demons, he sets out on a path to redemption. But, before he can adjust to this new life, he finds himself back in the fire, fighting harder than ever.
Alice Braga’s character is Valeria Melo, “a professional driver with family connections to a gang that runs a favela in Brazil. Creasy hires her and quickly comes to rely on her as he tries to protect a young girl while pursuing terrorists.” Scoot McNairy will be playing Henry Tappan, “an intelligent and calculating CIA field agent stationed in Brazil.” Paul Ben-Victor is Moncrief, the director of the CIA.
Kyle Killen (Fear Street) is the writer, executive producer, and showrunner – and if you’re a Quinnell fan who has seen enough of the Man on Fire story of the years, you might be glad to hear that Killen is working elements of the novel The Perfect Kill into this eight-episode show as well.
Are you looking forward to the Man on Fire TV series? What do you think of Alice Braga, Scoot McNairy, and Paul Ben-Victor joining the cast? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The early 2000s were a bad time for Sylvester Stallone professionally. In the mid-nineties, after a short-lived resurgence of three hit movies, Cliffhanger, Demolition Man and The Specialist, Stallone’s career as a bankable action star began to sputter, with Judge Dredd, Assassins and Daylight all losing money. Copland, an indie drama directed by James Mangold, made money and earned Stallone his best reviews since the original Rocky, but his follow-up movies were disastrous. His attempt at a slasher/ horror movie, D-Tox, sat on the shelf for years, finally being released under the lame title Eye See You. His 2000 remake of Get Carterwas another disaster, with critics eviscerating him for remaking the Michael Caine classic, with even a cameo from Caine himself not easing their fury. In 2001, he teamed with Cliffhanger’s Renny Harlin on a go-for-broke would-be blockbuster called Driven.
Sporting a huge budget, for the time, a lot went wrong with Driven right off the bat. Stallone had intended to make a Formula One racing epic but eventually made it about the short-lived CART open-wheel car racing organization. To put it into context, imagine Oliver Stone had made Any Given Sunday about the XFL instead of the NFL. The film flopped badly, which wasn’t helped by the fact that the originally planned 3-hour epic was cut down to two hours, with some terrible continuity errors apparent throughout the film. Indeed, the DVD has 51 minutes of deleted footage. For Stallone, it was an embarrassing failure and a movie he always says he wished he had never done.
It was at this point that Stallone’s career, for a while anyway, seemed over. He starred in the direct-to-video mafia comedy Avenging Angelo and an indie movie called Shade, which also went direct to video. His highest-profile role was as the villain in Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 3D. Stallone mostly focused on TV, with a recurring role in Las Vegas opposite his old buddy James Caan and the reality TV show The Contender.
All in all, it was a bad time for Stallone’s career, and it seemed he would never recapture his former glory. But, here’s the thing – failure can sometimes be a great motivator, and as Stallone himself revealed in Rocky III, when you lose the “Eye of the Tiger”, you have to get it back. If you watch the Rocky series, it’s not hard to escape that in his later-era films, Stallone had become an Apollo Creed-esque figure. But Stallone had a plan. He put pen to paper and began planning a comeback vehicle where he’d once again play his most enduring role, Rocky. Indeed, the character had saved his career from purgatory twice before, with Rocky II his post-Paradise Alley and FIST comeback. At the same time, Rocky III put him back on top after a slew of early eighties flops.
It wouldn’t be easy, though. Stallone was no longer bankable. While all the Rocky movies (except the first) had been relatively lavish productions, Stallone would have to make do with a relatively threadbare budget this time and a shorter shooting schedule than he was used to. The consensus among studios was that, given the fact that Rocky V was a flop, the series was done.
Stallone thought differently. Rocky V had never sat well with him, nor did the idea of retiring Rocky due to a potentially fatal brain injury. After watching George Foreman become the oldest heavyweight boxing champion in history, Stallone began plotting Rocky’s return. It took years for him to refine the story, and some hard choices were made along the way. The most grave of all of these was the fate of Talia Shire’s Adrian. Shire, of course, is still alive and well and quite close with Stallone. But, as he was writing the film, he realized Rocky’s comeback would be more dramatic were he to have lost the one person who always believed in him – Adrian. As such, he killed her off, which gives the character a lot more pathos in that he no longer has her to lean on.
In Rocky Balboa, some of the events of Rocky V are ignored, with Balboa no longer as financially down and out as he was in the last film. He’s a successful restauranteur, owning an Italian eatery called Adrians, where he regales patrons with stories about the glory days and his friendship with Apollo Creed. It’s a satisfying place for the Italian Stallion to end up with his son, Robert, now played by Milo Ventimiglia, a young lawyer from whom Rocky is slightly estranged. In the movie, Sly is lured out of retirement when the current champ, Mason “The Line” Dixon, played by real-life champ Antonio Tarver, is ridiculed for never facing a true champ and is infuriated by an ESPN simulation that suggests Rocky Balboa, in his prime, would have beaten him. His managers want him to get some goodwill, so they challenge Rocky, who’s regained his boxing licence.
As far as the Rocky movies go, some great pains were taken to make this realistic. For one thing, Mason Dixon is far from a villain, with him just a perhaps slightly egotistical boxer, and the movie never pretends Rocky could defeat him in a battle due to the age difference. Still, when Mason injures his hand, the fight becomes closer than expected, with Mason finally meeting an opponent with real heart and Rocky getting to let loose some of the stuff that’s “in the basement.”
One thing that surprised viewers of Rocky Balboa in 2006 was how incredible the writing was, with some of Balboa’s dialogue becoming much meme’d in the following years. The fight scenes in the film were also stripped down compared to the bouts from the OG series, with Stallone saying they used more realistic sound fx in the fights to make them lower-key and more realistic. The film also offered the late Burt Young a great final turn as Paulie, with him showing more pathos than ever in his final entry into the series, while Geraldine Hughes delivers a great performance as Marie, the now grown version of the young woman who famously called Rocky a “creepo” in the original film.
When it came out over the 2006 Christmas holiday, Rocky Balboa, which box office forecasters predicted would flop, was a surprise hit. It grossed $70 million domestically plus another $85 million internationally on a modest $24 million budget. Even the critics who slammed the last few Rocky movies couldn’t deny that once that classic Bill Conti music started up, it was hard not to get invested again in the Italian Stallion. Most notably, it kicked off a great career resurgence for Stallone, who wound up recapturing the zeitgeist in a way his contemporaries like Arnold Schwarzenegger never quite managed. While he likely thought he was done with Rocky Balboa after delivering a satisfying end to the saga, this didn’t prove to be the case when a young director named Ryan Coogler came knocking. But that’s a story for another day, but as it is, Rocky Balboa is a strong entry into the saga and finally gave Stallone a comeback that’s worthy of him.
One of the horror genre’s many low budget indie classics is the 1979 film Phantasm (watch it HERE), which was made on a budget of around $300,000 by writer/director Don Coscarelli when he was in his early twenties. Shot on weekends with rented equipment, Phantasm took almost two years to complete… and the result was a box office success that is now widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made. 2024 marks the 45th anniversary of Phantasm – and it also happens to mark the 10th anniversary of author Dustin McNeill’s book Phantasm Exhumed: The Unauthorized Companion… so this seemed like the perfect time to dig up an interesting story from McNeill’s book, where he reveals that Don Coscarelli’s mom wrote a script for Phantasm II years before her son got around to working on the sequel!
Released in March of 1979, Phantasm had the following synopsis: The residents of a small town have begun dying under strange circumstances, leading young Mike to investigate. After discovering that the Tall Man, the town’s mortician, is killing and reanimating the dead as misshapen zombies, Mike seeks help from his older brother, Jody, and local ice cream man Reggie. Working together, they try to lure out and kill the Tall Man, all the while avoiding his minions and a deadly silver sphere.
Don Coscarelli would eventually go on to write and direct Phantasm II (1988), Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994), and Phantasm: Oblivion (1998), and also co-wrote and produced Phantasm: Ravager (2016), which was directed by David Hartman. But when Phantasm distributor AVCO Embassy expressed interest in moving ahead with a sequel in 1979, Coscarelli was hesitant. He thought following one horror movie with another would be a bad idea, as it would get him labeled as a director of horror and nothing else. So he turned his attention to The Beastmaster – and left Phantasm II to his parents. His mother, Shirley Coscarelli, wrote the script for a sequel that would be produced by his father, D.A. Coscarelli (who had also produced the first movie).
This Phantasm II would have reportedly “offered audiences a female-friendly adventure in contrast to her son’s more masculine original. Child star Kristy McNichol was rumored to star as Mike and Jody’s cousin, newly arrived in town to investigate the incident at Morningside.“
The sequel was announced with a full-page ad in Variety in the fall of 1979, with production expected to start in January of 1980 for a 1980 release. But that didn’t happen. If the movie had been made, Angus Scrimm was on board to reprise the role of the Tall Man (which he ended up playing in all of the films), and he told McNeill, “I remember liking Shirley’s script, which had the wit and inventiveness of the bestselling novels she soon started writing. … I seem to recall it was partly set in an abandoned old movie theater. Unhappily, the financing never fell into place, but if it had, who knows what changes it would have wrought in the Phantasm story arc as we know it today?“
That’s just one of the many interesting behind-the-scenes stories McNeill dropped into Phantasm Exhumed, which contains pretty much all the information you could ever hope to learn about the making of the first four Phantasm movies. (He later covered Phantasm: Ravager with a second book, Further Exhumed.) You can pick up a copy of the book at THIS LINK.
The Phantasm II that was made and released in 1988 has the following set-up: Released after seven years in a mental hospital, Mike convinces his old pal Reggie to join forces with him to hunt down and destroy the Tall Man once and for all. Mike’s visions lead the two to a quiet little town where a horde of flying killer balls aim to slice and dice their gruesome way through everyone.
Are you a fan of the Phantasm franchise? What do you think of this information about Shirley Coscarelli’s script for Phantasm II? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
There are some stories in the history of film that end up being repeated over and over again. Some of these are just simple categories like vampire, werewolf, and zombie films. Some of them get a little more granular and specific like the story of Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster. Finally, we can get even more granular and look at a specific title that has made the rounds a few times. I Am Legend by the wonderful and prolific Richard Matheson was made into three different movies with Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and finally I Am Legend. While King Kong and Phantom of the Opera probably have the most, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has the most consistent offerings. The 2007 iteration was a bust but the other 3 are all incredibly solid. With the 90s version turning 30 we thought it was worth seeing if it was a generic replication of the real deal or if it stands the test of time.
Plot
A script for another version of Jack Finney’s seminal sci fi novel The Body Snatchers was written by the wonderful team of Dennis Paoli and Stuart Gordon and eventually Nicholas St. John with story credits by Larry Cohen and Raymond Cisteri. It was originally going to be directed by Stuart Gordon but when he had to back out, explosive and maverick director Abel Ferrara was approached to helm. It was already completely written and decently into pre-production when he took over and even though he wasn’t thrilled about some of the aspects, the love of the original, just like that of the 78 director Phillip Kauffman, kept him on the project. Its not like the script and story doesn’t have pedigree, either. Gordon and Paoli were a great team and between them or even together wrote some of the best horror of the 80s and 90s. Things like Re-Animator and From Beyond, Ghoulies II, Castle Freak, The Dentist, Robot Jox, and Dagon all came from these two.
Larry Cohen is a legend as well both in Blaxploitation and Horror with stuff like, well, The Stuff, Q the Winged Serpent, and the It’s Alive trilogy. He too was also a good writer for movies that he didn’t end up behind the director’s chair. The lesser-known gentlemen, namely Nicholas St. John and Raymond Cisteri, are no slouches either. St. John is actually Nicodemo Oliverio, and he would end up writing 9 movies with and for director Abel Ferrara. Cisteri only has one other title to his name from back in 1972. Ferrara is the gritty and hard shooting New York director behind things like Ms. 45, Bad Lieutenant, and King of New York. The Wikipedia page says that today’s movie is his first excursion into the world of sci-fi but I think this has a lot of horror to it just like the 78 version. He also did Driller Killer and a really cool vampire movie called The Addiction to add to his horror output.
The cast is a fun collection of talent that mostly weren’t huge stars. Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker is the exception here as he would go on to a star-studded career in both TV and film. For horror though he wouldn’t have much else in horror apart from his part in awesome creature feature Species. Meg Tilly may not be the horror mainstay her sister Jennifer is but her career has been great including horror like the Chucky TV show and Psycho II as well as being part of 80s classic The Big Chill and an Oscar Nomination of Agnes of God. The stunning Gabrielle Anwar had a heck of a run in the early 90s with Body Snatchers, Scent of a Woman, Three Musketeers, and Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead. She was also amazing on the underrated show Burn Notice but if I can make a suggestion, it would be to seek out The Grave from 1996. Christine Elise from Childs Play II and R. Lee Ermey need no introduction to horror hounds and the patriarch of the family is played by Terry Kinney who you will also know from his TV work in Billions, OZ, Inventing Anna, and Good Behavior.
The movie follows Steven Malone who works for the EPA and is sent to a military installation in Alabama with his wife, daughter, and son. He is there to check on what the military may have done to the environment there and what effects that may have on the soldiers. His daughter Marti is cornered in a gas station restroom by a hysterical soldier who tells her they get you when you sleep. The military base is full of what you’d expect with typical military soldiers and their nonmilitary families. Strange things start to happen with people not acting as they should, Steve’s son Andy getting scared out of school because the other kids are way too different, and reports of people not being who they say they are. The base doctor and Steve discuss the widespread fear of falling asleep that has swept across the base, but Doctor Malone doesn’t see any correlation.
His son sees what we have come to expect from this movie, a main character being taken over by one of the alien pod invaders that are taking over the base. While no one believes Andy, the very next night both Steve and Marti are almost changed into pod people and are chased out of their lodging with a screaming pod wife alerting the rest of the doubles of their escape. A soldier named Tim who Marti met the night before is also being chased and after Steve hides his two kids in a storage area, he witnesses the base doctor end his life rather than willingly turn into a drone. Steve goes back and grabs his kids, but it is revealed he has been replaced too. Marti, Andy, and Tim try to escape but the two siblings are captured. Tim goes back to save them and is successful with Marti but when Andy runs after the helicopter it is revealed that he, too, is now a pod. They dump him out of the ship and take revenge by blowing up the base and all the pods with missiles from the helicopter. They land at another base, but it is unclear if they are truly safe.
Signs of the Time
Look at these people enjoying their pod apocolypse with nary a cell phone in sight. Just really living in the moment. All jokes aside, this was a movie of the moment. The director, replacement and all, was a staple of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Abel Ferrara was all over the place and from 1986 to 1996 released a total of 12 movies on either the big or small screen. He did things his way and while this was his first big studio backed film, it still has some of the style he brings to all his projects. Its clear from the opening scene that while the Steve character would normally be the main protagonist, his daughter Marti is the real hero, and we know that from her narration which is also something that was a prevalent framing device in the early half of the decade.
Two other trends that were big in the 90s were the opposite of the 70s nihilism and that’s the relatively happy ending. While the 50s version went nice, the 70s version has one of the best and most down beat endings of the decade. While it is somewhat up in the air on what our main characters are landing into while the movie ends, you could at least interpret that its possible the threat is over. While on the subject of the 70s, the cyclical phenomena of environmental fears also decides to rear its head again with things like The Guardian, Alligator 2, Dust Devil, and later on Mimic to name a few. Finally, the 90s was also a time where horror went back to the literary world both with readapting some of the classics with Dracula and Frankenstein but also taking chances on this remake or the previously mentioned Guardian.
What Holds Up?
The movie is just a solid experience all the way around for the most part. All of the military stuff is great from the analogy of the pod people and the stringent and logic of the military system as pointed out by Roger Ebert at the time to the PTSD that the soldiers and doctor have. You could even throw in the angle of the doctor not wanting to do something that the military, represented by the pod people here, want to force him into. The script and story hold up really well too. While the change to the military base seems like an obvious layup, they could have screwed it up really easily. How they jump right into it with the reveal in the gas station bathroom to the horror of how the people change and how quickly characters die are all sharp and biting. They even give no effs about killing off a kid, twice technically, with his human form poofing away into dust when he changes and his pod version being noped out of a helicopter. The horror is real here even if the scream isn’t quite as haunting as the previous iteration.
The acting here is really good too particularly by the two female leads in Meg Tilly and Gabriel Anwar. Meg Tilly going from playful younger mom to cold and calculated pod creature really shows her range and Anwars Marti is a good mix of scared victim and angry survivor. The other stand out for the movie are the effects. They are natural progressions from the 70’s version and look creepy and great. The pod creatures are well done and absolute nightmare fuel when they die and melt away into puddles of horror. It’s the kind of stuff you look at 30 years later and wish that CGI was never created.
What doesn’t hold up?
Some of the other performances can be wooden and I don’t mean in the requisite pod like attitudes either. The little boy is neither good nor bad, but the love interest Tim falls a bit flat. I used to think that Terry Kinny was William Hurt but he does a good job here and I wont hold that against him. One thing that does stand out is the score not quite fitting the mood of the movie. It’s not outright bad, actually it’s a good piece of music on its own, but it’s nothing special when looking at a horror film. The camera work tries a bit too hard to be 70’s and Avant Garde at times and there are a few scenes that are derivative or outright stolen from other versions that aren’t as good as they were when originally used. None of that is a deal breaker though and even my last gripe doesn’t ruin it. The one thing that stood out as kind of a cheat was that the pod people use deception at points to trick the characters and not just deception but EMOTIONAL deception which they really shouldn’t even be capable of. They do it more than a few times and while I’m all for changing of rules with anything from werewolves to vampires to zombies, but this seems to go against the very conceit of the pod people’s core. Doesn’t ruin the movie but I feel it could have been changed easily enough too.
Verdict
It’s very rare for a story to be told this many times and still be good but all three of the first tellings of this book come out on top. While the 50’s is a classic Sci Fi classic of the highest order and the 78 version is a downbeat, downtrodden, and downright downer example of peak 70’s oppression, today’s version has a few tweaks that make it unique and special on its own. It has different metaphors and changes some of the main characters and outcomes enough that its unique outlook and presentation shine. The follow up in 07 is as dull as the pod people it shows on screen, but Abel Ferrara adds some punch and elements missing from the other adaptations of the original story. While the movie was a huge bomb and failure, it’s worth seeking out and stands the test of time now 30 years on.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
James Mangold is no stranger to the musical biopic, having brought Johnny Cash’s story to the big screen with Walk the Line, which got Joaquin Phoenix an Academy Award nomination for that film. Now, Mangold takes on another musical icon with the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. Searchlight Pictures has now released a comprehensive look with the new trailer, as it shows more of Timothée Chalamet‘s performance and the events of Dylan’s life that will be explored.
A Complete Unknown, which stars Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro. The film also co-stars Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz and Scoot McNairy, with the studio also giving it a December 25th wide release. Given how well Chalamet’s Wonka did during the holiday season last year, the studio is likely hoping that lightning will strike twice. The date also gives is peak visibility during award season.
Here’s the official synopsis: “Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, A Complete Unknown follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.”
James Mangold directs from a screenplay written by him and Jay Cocks, who is known for working with Martin Scorsese on projects such as Gangs of New York and Silence. Producers on the film include Range’s Fred Berger, The Picture Company’s Alex Heineman, Veritas Entertainment Group’s Peter Jaysen, Bob Bookman, Alan Gasmer, Bob Dylan’s longtime representative Jeff Rosen, Chalamet, and Mangold via his Turnpike Films. Michael Bederman, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, and Andrew Rona are on board as executive producers.
Mangold recently talked about the setting of the film, saying, “It’s such an amazing time in American culture, and the story of Bob’s — a young, 19-year-old Bob Dylan coming to New York with two dollars in his pocket and becoming a worldwide sensation within three years…First being embraced into a family of folk music in New York and of course kind of outrunning him at a certain point as his star rises so beyond belief.”
Plot: Boston Detective Frank Shaw returns to duty after a career-altering injury leaves him with permanent hearing loss. Tasked with interpreting for Ava Fremont (Sandra Mae Frank), a deaf witness to a brutal gang murder, they find themselves cornered in a soon-to-be-condemned apartment building when the killers return to eliminate her. Cut off from the outside world; these two strangers must lean on each other to outsmart killers they can’t hear coming for their only hope of making it out alive.
Review: Joel Kinnaman has a trend going on these days with his role selection. After starring in last year’s John Woo action flick Silent Night, in which he portrayed a man who loses the ability to speak and goes on a vengeance-fueled rampage, Kinnaman is next headlining The Silent Hour, in which he plays a man who loses the ability to hear. While Silent Night benefited from John Woo’s eye for balletic action, The Silent Hour is closer to something we would expect Liam Neeson to star in. Set predominantly in a single apartment building, The Silent Hour wants to stand out from other formulaic action movies with a protagonist who uses a disability as a superpower, but aside from a solid supporting role from Sandra Mae Frank, The Silent Hour is boring and woefully lacking in any sort of energy.
The Silent Hour opens with Detective Frank Shaw (Joel Kinnaman) enjoying all of the sonic wonders of his life: jazz music, a coffee maker percolating, and all of the world’s noises outside of his apartment. Shaw meets up with his partner, Doug Slater (Mark Strong), to take down a suspect. The guy does not go quietly, leading Shaw on a chase through shipping containers. Shaw listens closely to pinpoint where the suspect is before eventually catching him just as Shaw runs into a car and falls, hitting his head on the ground. Fast-forwarding six months later, Shaw is suffering from hearing loss. He struggles to hear anything, and his hearing adds to the deadening of the world around him. Depressed, the divorced dad cannot even bring himself to attend his daughter’s band recital. Shaw’s partner comes to the rescue and brings him in to help question a deaf witness since the department interpreter is unavailable. Shaw and Slater head to see Ava Fremont (Sandra Mae Frank), who witnessed a murder.
The cops go their separate ways after Shaw and Slater finish, but not before Shaw realizes he has forgotten his phone at Ava’s apartment. He returns to find Mason Lynch (Mekhi Phifer), the dirty cop who Ava witnessed commit the murder, attempting to silence her by faking an overdose. Shaw steps in to rescue Ava, and the pair heads on the run through the apartment building to try to survive. Ava, born deaf, must help Frank come to terms with his injury-induced hearing loss, and together, the two plan to escape and stop Lynch and his cronies from getting away with their crimes. Early on, I expected The Silent Hour to play like a twist on the Dredd and The Raid formula of the apartment building being a caged-in setting full of bad guys and escapes, but the story never really takes advantage of the location. Instead, much of the film shows Shaw making bumbling mistakes like stepping on bubble wrap or not remembering that he cannot hear as he tries to call for help. It borders on ludicrous at the best of times and sloppy writing the rest. The action is usually the bad cops shooting at the good cops as the characters use fire escapes and window ledges to move from one apartment to the next.
For a film with as solid of a cast as this, The Silent Hour wastes virtually everyone’s talent. Joel Kinnaman has played a cop so many times that he barely needs to try and emulate law enforcement, but Frank Shaw is so fixated on his hearing loss that it feels like a crutch to force the story along. In contrast, Sandra Mae Frank, who is actually deaf, does a great job playing a woman struggling with her own demons as she tries to stay alive, which now includes trying to make Shaw feel better about his recent hearing loss. Mark Strong is good but underused, while Mekhi Phifer spends more time as a mustache-twirling bad guy who runs around doing nothing, so it feels like they could have cast anyone in the role and saved a paycheck. The film never uses the talent at its disposal to deliver action that rises above shooting around corners or the tension of maybe someone hearing someone else walking around. It comes across as repetitive and just boring.
It is a shame since director Brad Anderson has made several films I have loved, including Session 9, The Machinist, and Trans-Siberian. His last decade of work has been hit or miss, with Beirut starring Jon Hamm a bright spot amongst multiple forgettable genre offerings. Anderson has always had an eye for atmospheric and moody productions, but the Canadian-filmed The Silent Hour has nothing distinctive about it. Based on a script by Dan Hall, I think Anderson tried to salvage some sort of entertainment value from this mess of a story but is left with a plug-and-play template used dozens of times every year with weaker actors in the cast. With Kinnaman and Strong, I had thought this movie could have been at least a casual watch, if not a great one, but it barely registers anything above mediocre at its best moments.
The Silent Hour is neither good enough to consider for a hate-watch nor is it bad enough to be awfully good. Despite a great filmmaker and two capable leading actors, the only worthwhile takeaway from The Silent Hour is the talented Sandra Mae Frank, who should be considered for bigger and better roles in the future. There is no action to speak of in this action movie, leaving it as a drama-less dramatic film. I would say there is an audience for this movie out there somewhere, but that would have to be categorized as Kinnaman or Strong completists who need to check off their Letterboxd viewing requirement as having seen all of the films by either actor.
