Paramount Pictures released today a first trailer for its second full-length sequel to its horrifying 2002 blockbuster The Ring. The new film is titled Rings and is directed by Spanish filmmaker F. Javier Gutierrez (Before the Fall).
Rings shares the title of the 2005 Jonathan Liebesman (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) short film bridging The Ring and The Ring 2, both starring Naomi Watts. In the short, cults called Rings have emerged and challenge each other to watching the cursed videotape.
Gutierrez’s Rings stars Italian actress Matilda Lutz as a woman desperately trying to save her boyfriend after he gets caught up in “a dark subculture surrounding a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after he has viewed it.”
If Rings draws inspiration from the short, we could have something really fun here. Regardless, it’s exciting to see Samara again! She comes for you Oct. 28.
As Warner Bros. hits rough waters with the departure of Fan Bingbing (X-Men: Days of Future Past) from its shark thriller Meg, Li Bingbing (Resident Evil: Retribution) provides the production with a lifeline, coming on board to star alongside Jason Statham and Jessica McNamee (Loved Ones).
Based on the 1997 Steve Alten novel “Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror,” the film follows a former Navy captain and deep sea diver (Statham) attempting to rescue scientists trapped deep in the Pacific’s Mariana Trench with a prehistoric 70-foot Megalodon shark.
Li Bingbing is coming off The Nest, the biggest budgeted Chinese and Australian co-production ever. She’s best known for playing Ada Wong in Resident Evil: Retribution and Transformers factory CEO and martial artist Su Yueming in Michael Bay’sTransformers: Age of Extinction.
“Ash vs Evil Dead” is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. The Starz original series serves as a love letter for fans of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films and as an introduction for newcomers to one of horror’s most beloved and buffoonish icons: Ashley J. Williams, the onetime Michigan State University student turned unlikely demon slayer, played with brilliant and enthused bravado by Bruce Campbell.
Picking up 30 years after Ash last defeated the Deadites, the show opens with the aging lothario wrestling a girdle around his belly, prepping to pick up barflies at the local watering hole. Aside from packing on the extra pounds, Ash remains the same cock-sure, non-repentant frat-boy he’s always been. The kind of guy that would read from the Book of the Dead to impress a potential conquest.
During a marijuana enhanced make-out session with a trailer park poet, he recites a passage from the Necronomicon and unleashes a new plague of demonic forces upon humanity. Ash has fought and survived demonic possession, self-mutilation, time travel, all kinds of ugly and unholy beasts, and the dismemberment of his girlfriend at his own hands, but he just can’t conquer common sense.
Thankfully, he’s got some help to save the world this go-around, namely his ValueShop department store co-workers, Pablo Simon Bolivar and Kelly Maxwell, and disgraced Michigan State Trooper Amanda Fisher. Pablo, endearingly played by Ray Santiago, is Ash’s loyal sidekick, a courageous and big-hearted soul who believes Ash is “El Jefe,” the man his shaman uncle prophesied would save humanity from evil.
Kelly, played with sass and heart by Dana DeLorenzo, doesn’t hold Ash in such high regard. Dismembering her estranged mother during a family reunion doesn’t help matters either (she was a Deadite). But, it’s Ash and Pablo who not only rescue her from the mind demon, Eligos, but help her overcome the much more personal demons that have plagued her young life.
One of the joys of “Ash vs. Evil Dead” is watching Ash show some heart. Sure, he remains selfish and crass, but he’s got friends he genuinely cares about and a unexpected love interest in Amanda, who initially believed Ash was responsible for the inexplicable event that forced her to kill her partner (yup, Deadite) in a frightening scene in the pilot episode hinting at the gory good times to come. Their relationship is fun, tumultuous, and in the end, regrettably, tragic.
Together, this group of misfits head back to the cabin where Ash first faced off against the Evil Dead three decades ago for an outrageous and violent showdown that unbelievably tops the gang’s gleefully gruesome journey to get there. It’s impossible to watch this series and not smile. Thoughtfully crafted, each episode presents tributes to the original films while expanding the story of the world’s most reluctant hero.
“Ash vs. Evil Dead” is available as a two-disc set on Blu-ray and DVD and includes the featurettes “Inside the World of Ash,” “How to kill a Deadite,” and “Best of Ash.” All three present insightful looks at the making of the show, but are on the short side – a huge bummer for a show so extraordinarily produced. However, there is one bonus that saves the day: audio commentaries for all episodes, revealing some awesome insight from creators/producers Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell and more.
Playboy Playmate Amanda Cerny stars in author Bret Easton Ellis’ (“American Psycho”) upcoming directorial debut series “The Deleted.” Set to premiere later this year on streaming service Fullscreen, the show centers on a group of escaped cult victims troubled by a sudden string of abductions in Los Angeles.
Cerny plays an active cult member on a mission to track down and bring back those who have fled her community. Ellis, who in addition to “American Psycho” wrote the acclaimed page-turners “Rules of Attraction,” “Less Than Zero,” and “The Informers,” is also handling writing duties for the show.
We have no idea what Fullscreen is and are a little bummed “The Deleted” isn’t on a bigger and more popular platform, but something tells us Cerny will be fun to watch and, of course, one can always count on Ellis to deliver some seriously enjoyable fucked up shit no matter how he chooses to do so.
Tickets are now on sale for Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. The hellish haunt features horror’s most terrifying monsters and sadistic killers in attractions designed by the genre’s most gruesome minds. It all comes alive Sept. 16 and runs selected nights through Nov. 5.
Halloween Horror Nights at Hollywood, CA gives rise to seven new mazes this year, including a head-spinning visit with The Exorcist, a not-so-jolly winterland stroll with Krampus – the real bad Santa – and a descent into madness with American Horror Story, featuring themes from its Murder House, Freakshow, and Hotel seasons.
The Walking Dead has always been frightening and intricate and this year’s promises to be its most intense yet as it is now a custom built year-round attraction designed with the input of the show’s creative team, including executive producer, director, and makeup effects guru Greg Nicotero. The maze draws inspiration from all seasons of The Walking Dead, providing memorable landscapes, props, and scares.
Get your tickets at the Halloween Horror Nights website (which also includes info on the Florida, Singapore, and Japan events) and check out our previous reviews here and here.
Paramount Pictures has released a full-length trailer for Arrival, a sci-fi drama helmed by acclaimed director Denis Villeneuve (Sicario, Prisoners) and starring Amy Adams (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), Jeremy Renner (The Avengers), and Forest Whitaker (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story).
Adams plays an expert linguist recruited by the U.S. government to communicate with an alien species that has arrived on earth in 12 giant, pebble-looking ships dubbed “Shells.” Her goal is to figure out what they want before governments around the world leaders decide to take military action.
The trailer looks sick and the story engaging. Let’s just keep fingers crossed it isn’t a yappy, preachfest. The Arrival touches down on theaters Nov. 11.
Stunner Alice Eve is set to co-star alongside Keanu Reeves in Replicas, a sci-fi thriller about a neuroscientist who defies government regulations, authorities, and science in his balls-out attempt to bring his wife back from the dead through cloning.
Reeves plays the neuroscientist and Eve his dead wife, who perishes after an automobile accident. The film is directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff (Traitor) and written by Chad St. John (London Has Fallen). Cameras roll on the project this summer.
Eve made her horror movie debut in 2010’s Sex and the City 2… kidding! The gorgeous Brit dove into horror in 2012 with roles in Buried screenwriter Chris Sparling’sATM and Relativity Media’s Edgar Allan Poe-inspired thriller The Raven. She also starred in Men In Black 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness.
Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor event is no pleasure cruise. It’s designed to terrify those brave enough to come aboard one of Halloween’s most unique and fun haunts. Opening Sept. 29 and running through Oct. 31, Dark Harbor unleashes more than 200 horrific monsters and six nerve-racking mazes.
This year’s evils brings the new maze Intrepid and its overseer the Iron Master, a cursed 1930’s shipbuilder and original iron forger for the R.M.S. Queen Mary and now its most fierce protector. Half monster, half machine, the Iron Master rides the seas of madness to rid the harbor of those who threaten his beloved vessel.
Back to do harm at this year’s Dark Harbor event are the Ringmaster in Circus: Big Top Terror maze and young Scary Mary in the newly enhanced Lullaby: Hush Hush Don’t Cry maze. Graceful Gale returns in search of true love in the gruesome and revamped maze, Soulmate: Till Death Do Us Part.
Still out to get you this go around are the Captain and Samuel the Savage in re-imagined Deadrise: Depths of Darkness and B340: Descent Into Insanity mazes, respectively. A Sideshow of circus psychos and roaming phantoms and ghouls are also on deck to terrorize victims visitors.
Tickets are available now and can be purchased at the Dark Harbor website. Check out our reviews for Dark Harbor here and here.
Freestyle Media has set an Oct. 8 U.S. release date for Friend Request, a social media themed frightener starring “Fear the Walking Dead’s” Alycia Debnam-Carey. Helmed by Simon Verhoeven, the film follows the supernatural ass-kicking a popular college student brings upon herself when she unfriends an emotionally unstable misfit on social media.
Best known for her role as frustratingly naive and boy-crazy dumb-ass Alicia Clark on AMC’s okay “Walking Dead” spinoff “Fear the Walking Dead,” Debnam-Carey has also starred in The CW’s sci-fi series “The 100” and notable thrillers The Devil’s Hand and Into the Storm, a taut disaster flick co-starring “Walking Dead’s” Sarah Wayne Callies.
A second trailer for Disney’s first standalone Star Wars feature Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has gone online. The eagerly anticipated film is directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) and tells the story of the Rebellion team tasked with stealing the plans to the Empire’s Death Star battle station.
As to be expected, the new footage is jaw-dropping. Tie Fighters, AT-ATs, Imperial Star Destroyers, the Death Star, and Darth “Oh, my God, it’s really him” Vader … the Empire is in full effect in this trailer. It’s absolutely enthralling!
