Hatchet 3 is coming out. The trailer is fantastic, (if a little too gruesome for anyone who doesn't like exploding heads), and it proves that the series continues to raise the bar when it comes to shock and gore. This time around, Adam Green isn't going to direct, handing over shooting duties to one of the camera operators from the previous two, BJ McDonnell.
The makers of Carrie certainly don't want us forgetting about its ever-closer release, we are treated to yet more bloody images from the film. Now that Evil Dead is out the way, Carrie is next in Hollywood's line of horror films that are receiving a retelling.
Remake culture continues to thrive, and it comes as no surprise to find that our treasured favourites, cult hits and everything bar Casablanca and Citizen Kane seem to be up for grabs. Often cunningly disguised as ‘reboots’, ‘re-imaginings’ and other such marketing brainwaves, it has become evident that, while the films often suffer from the weight of expectation, there is money to be made in recycling movies.
They say hate is a strong word. This is true for the occasions when talking about a fellow human, or a flavour of ice-cream, or some other innocuous irritant. However, the word hate isn't even close to being strong enough when concerning Rob Zombie's latest cinematic raspberry, The Lords of Salem.
The trailer for You're Next depicts an idyllic family reunion descending into violent terror. Lionsgate are apparently confident they have the next big thing in horror on their hands and have turned their brilliant marketing hand to put You're Next in the most unlikely of places. Namely, idyllic Lionsgate-produced rom-coms and Tyler Perry movies.
Take 26 directors with variable degrees of notoriety, give them each $5,000, a letter of the alphabet, and one method of death and give them the creative independence to draw from their background in horror to make a short that perfectly encapsulates their wildly different ideas. What you get as a result is a film with so many diverse motifs, and with such distinct lack of restraint, that you are left feeling as though you have just been subjected to the foulest spelling lesson you will ever experience. The ambition is set to dizzying heights before the letter A has even begun.
Dudley Moore once wrote a piece of music consisting entirely of endings. That's sort of what we've got here – 26 bloody goodbyes, with only the briefest of preliminary hellos.
The very concept of Freddy Krueger is now carved deep into the pop culture psyche, just like the notion of a slasher killer brings to mind an instant association with hockey masks and machetes (or the occasional chainsaw), the name Freddy will stir up images of fedoras, tattered sweaters, facial disfigurement and rusty claws. And maybe a few awful jokes.
Covered extensively over the course of this last week, the Nightmare on Elm Street series steadily and unwaveringly began to transform into a gigantic joke, even Wes Craven's valiant efforts with New Nightmare could not successfully steer the series back on course. By then the damage was done and Freddy was just not scary anymore.
A winning mix of supernatural chiller, conspiracy thriller and police procedural, Ultraviolet ran for six episodes on Channel 4 back in 1997. Even 15 years on, it remains one of the best TV vampire shows ever: there's just some fang about it.
Bradley Scott Sullivan's debut feature starts strongly and messily, with a bloody corpse on the road, a confused and scared cop uncertain what to do, and a blinded girl wandering the woods, one of her eyeballs left behind on the end of a branch like a pickled onion on a cocktail stick. It's quite an opening, and it's all shot with a twitchy, grainy, grindhousey 70 feel.
