Kevin Smith is teasing that a sequel to his 2011 dabble into horror, Red State, might be going ahead. Lionsgate, the distributor with whom Smith worked on Clerks 3 is apparently bullish on the project. Smith told /Film, “They were like, if we do this, would you do it again? And I was like, yeah, in a heartbeat. […] I mean, obviously, Michael Parks is gone. But it’s just a story of crazy people with guns and shit like that. As long as I could use John Goodman again. I could make a hundred fucking Red States. And I’m like, let’s do it. So we’re gonna make one.”
The original Red State was a big departure for Smith, and features a great performance by the late Michael Parks (as if anything else could be possible) alongside John Goodman, Melissa Leo, and Kevin Pollak. For the uninitiated, Red State‘s story goes like this:
“Three teenage boys are lured to the town of Cooper’s Dell with the promise of a party. But instead of enjoying the night of their dreams, the teens are plunged into the nightmarish world of Pastor Abin Cooper and the Five Points Trinity, a fundamentalist group with a stockpile of weaponry and a deadly moral agenda. When word of the teens’ disappearance reaches the authorities, a military task force is mobilized. With Cooper’s Dell teetering between salvation and damnation, the ATF braces for furious gun battle with Cooper and his heavily armed followers.”
Phil Tippett’s Mad God is coming home this week, and the Blu-Ray and DVD are packed with special features for those that share my love for the stop-motion masterpiece. You can preorder either edition over at Beacons here.
Included in the release are:
- Commentary featuring Tippett and Guillermo del Toro
- A ‘Making of Mad God’ feature by Maya Tippett
- A ‘Worse Than the Demon’ feature by Maya Tippett
- Behind the Scenes footage and stills
Get your preorders in for the release on December 6!
Speaking of Tippett, he’s apparently been in talks with Guillermo del Toro about adapting H.P Lovecraft’s ‘At The Mountains of Madness’ as a stop-motion feature. Del Toro’s been trying to get a feature adaptation of the classic horror story off the ground for at least twenty years, but studios (Universal in particular) have reportedly balked at the cost of the production. A stop-motion project, especially with the might of Tippett’s craftsmanship behind it, would certainly be more palatable to risk-averse producers, and del Toro and Tippett have a fair bit more pull in those circles these days.
Talking to Indiewire about the project, del Toro says “I said it would be ideal to do ‘Mountains of Madness’ as stop-motion. You watch the animation in a more rapturous way than live action. It’s almost a hypnotic act, and the relationship to the story becomes more intimate in that way.”
Next up for Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions is a new vampire thriller by Spike Lee Fellowship Award recipient and Assistant Professor of Film & Video at George Mason University, Nikyatu Jusu, who also directed the acclaimed horror Nanny, which comes to Amazon Prime on the 16th. The film is called Suicide By Sunlight and is an adaptation of one of Jusu’s shorts “about day-walking Black vampires who are protected from the sun by their melanin.” Deadline reports that Jusu will be writing alongside Fredrica Bailey (See You Yesterday) and the film will be released by Universal.
If you haven’t seen Luca Guadagnino’s haunting cannibal romance Bones and All, starring Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell, what are you waiting for? It’s one of my favourite movies of the year (which is high praise in a year like 2022 that’s so filled with bangers) and part of that is the appropriately stark and intense score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The whole soundtrack, including ‘(You Made It Feel LIke) Home’ is available now, and makes for a perfect accompaniment for chowing down on some good old long pig. Check out a snippet here!
Finally, we have a trailer for Annabelle director John R. Leonetti’s new one, Lullaby, which comes to theatres and On Demand on December 16. The horror is about a young mother who finds a creepy lullaby in an ancient book, and becomes enchanted by it before realizing that it’s a summoning spell for a demon named Lilith. The film stars Oona Chaplin, Ramon Rodriguez, Liane Balaban, and Kira Guloien. The script was penned by Alex Greenfield and Ben Powell.
Check out the trailer for Lullaby here ahead of the film’s release on the 16th!
