It’s been a crazy week, in more ways than one, but as the wintry chill sets in even further, I’ve got some chilling horror news to keep your bloody appetites sated for another week. This week’s edition has trailers for the new Pinocchio, an awesome Macedonian witchy tale coming out of Sundance, a fresh new poster for Texas Chainsaw, and a whole lot more!
Between The House and The Wolf House, there’s been some pretty great stop-motion projects, especially of the horror variety, coming down the pipe lately. I don’t know if Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is horror exactly, but all of GDT’s projects have an element of horror to them and I think his adaptation of the classic puppet tale will follow that pattern. But don’t take my word for it, check out the brand new trailer for Pinocchio, which is headed to Netflix almost a year from now in December 2022!
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio stars Ewan McGregor as Cricket, David Bradley as Geppetto, and Gregory Mann as Pinocchio. The film will also co-star Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman, Christoph Waltz, and Tilda Swinton.
Richard E. Bates’ King Knight has been burning up the festival circuit and, unexpectedly for a movie about a coven of witches, was one of the sweetest movies I saw last year. The film follows Thorn (Mathew Gray Gubler) as the head of a coven and is struggling with his identity, and has an outstanding supporting cast that includes Angela Sarafyan. Andy Milonakis, Kate Comer, Johnny Pemberton, Josh Fadem, Nelson Franklin, Emily Chang, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Swati Kapila, Shane Brady, AnnaLynne McCord, Alice Glass, Barbara Crampton, and Ray Wise. You’ll finally get your chance to get your eyes on King Knight when it comes to limited theatres, VOD, and digital on February 17, 2022.
I’ve been on a little bit of a found-footage kick lately, and the talk of my horror group chats has been an independent project from a young filmmaker who goes by the moniker ‘Kane Pixels’. His film (or, perhaps a series of films) called The Backrooms is based on a series of creepypastas, and takes place in the eponymous Backrooms:
“If you’re not careful and no-clip out of reality in wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, and endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you…”
Check out The Backrooms here, and keep an eye on the channel for any new releases! This is definitely a filmmaker to watch.
The underrated Arrow horror streaming service grabbed the rights to The Righteous, the debut feature from Mark O’Brien, according to Variety. The Righteous is a lo-fi horror about “a burdened man [who] feels the wrath of a vengeful God after he and his wife are visited by a mysterious stranger.” The project was shot in Newfoundland and stars O’Brien, Henry Czerny, and Mimi Kuzyk. Expect a release on the streaming service later this year, as well as collector’s edition Blu-Rays from Arrow.
One of the more unique projects coming out this year is Will Arnett’s improvised detective murder mystery, Murderville. In the show, there’s a murder to solve every week and a rotating cast of celebrity detectives are assigned to the case in each episode. The detectives aren’t given any clues or a script to follow, and the trailer looks hilarious.
The improvised comedy-thriller hits Netflix this week, on February 4, and stars Conan O’ Brien, Sharon Stone, Ken Jeong, and others alongside Arnett himself.
It’s always nice to see an indie film and filmmaker get recognition, and Jill Gevargizian’s The Stylist was one of the most deserving of any horror project last year. The film, which is currently available on limited edition Blu-Ray, is currently nominated for a Fangoria First Feature award. Voting is currently open at this link, so make your voices heard!
Twitter brought us the first photos from the set of the much-anticipated Halloween Ends this week, ahead of the film’s release later this year. Jamie Lee Curtis and Jason Blum sent out these snapshots to whet our appetites for David Gordon Green’s final film in his Halloween trilogy. Check them out ahead of the film’s release on October 14, 2022!
As the seminal buttrock band Staind said, “it’s been awhillllle” [since I reported on a Stephen King adaptation in this space]. Well, Stephen King’s novel Later is the next up to be turned into a limited series, according to Deadline. Creator Raelle Tucker (True Blood) brings the novel to life with star Lucy Liu and with the backing of Blumhouse Television. In Later, “the son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine – as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.” Keep an eye out for this one!
The horror offerings from this year’s Sundance Film Festival that I reported on last week are getting great reviews and are making me jealous of my American pals that are getting to check it all out from the comfort of their homes as the festival moves online this year. Among the standouts are Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s Something in the Dirt, and Riley Stearns’ Dual, which stars Aaron Paul and Karen Gillan. Dual was picked up for US distribution by RLJE Films, according to Deadline and centres on “a woman (Karen Gillan) who, upon receiving a terminal diagnosis, opts for a cloning procedure to ease her loss on her friends and family. When she makes a sudden and miraculous recovery, her attempts to have her clone decommissioned fail and lead to a court-mandated duel to the death.”
Another Sundance pick provided my favourite trailer for this week, and it’s the witchy folk horror of You Won’t Be Alone, starring Noomi Rapace. The film is directed by Goran Stolevski and will have a theater release on April 1.
In You Won’t Be Alone, “in an isolated Macedonian mountain village in the 19th century, a woman goes about her daily chores until she discovers an old witch (Annamaria Marinca) standing over her baby. After pleading and a blood exchange, a bargain is struck, though the woman soon after attempts to hide the baby until she’ s sixteen. The witch eventually returns to claim the sheltered teen Nevena (Sara Klimoska), transforming then abandoning her. The feral girl soon finds herself borrowing the skins of others, assuming their lives, and observing human behavior.”
Check out the beautiful and mesmerizing trailer for You Won’t Be Alone!
Finally, we got a couple of delicious bites of news from David Blue Garcia’s Texas Chainsaw movie that hits Netflix on February 18. Firstly, Variety reported that the iconic (and uncredited) narration from a young John Larroquette in the original 1974 film will see an update from Larroquette himself in the new version. While I’m not without my doubts about the new Chainsaw, I’m very glad to see that it’s paying homage to it’s roots. If you haven’t seen the original intro, here it is!
We also got a sweet new poster for Texas Chainsaw, which reveals the ghastly visage of Old Man Leatherface for the first time. We should be getting a much better look at him soon, though, with a new trailer ready to drop any day now. Stay tuned!
