Same Time Next Year I Guess.

Oh great. This day again. Time to once again call on Mr. David Firth.

This guy gets it. It had actually been a while since I'd looked in on this crazy duck. It's good to see he's still super busy. Here's the nightmarish video he created for experimentalist Flying Lotus.

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Holy balls, there was huge news in the Toronto horror scene this week.

The New Regime.

TIFF shocked the horror scene this week by announcing that, after a twenty year run, Colin Geddes, the long-time head of their iconic Midnight Madness programme, will be stepping down. Having been attending since 2000, Midnight Madness has become a highlight of my horror calendar. Geddes introduced me to some of my favourite modern horrors like High Tension, Ju-on, Inside, You're Next and It Follows. 

TIFF programmer Colin Geddes

Fortunately, Geddes will still be overseeing the curation of Toronto's Royal Cinema and the online streaming service Shudder. Taking over the reigns of MM is the highly capable Peter Kuplowsky. He has been programming genre events for the better part of a decade, so he knows his shit, trust me. I'm extremely excited to see his brand of Madness in the years to come.

Geddes with protégé Peter Kuplowsky. Photo courtesy Ian Goring.

On the print horror side of things, the Toronto based mag Rue Morgue announced that long-time collaborator Andrea Subissati will be taking over as Executive editor. 

Former editor Dave Alexander will be focusing on special projects “involving new partnerships in publishing, merchandising, events and visual media.” Subissati is a fixture in the Toronto horror scene with her involvement in The Black Museum lecture series being of the most interest to me.

Now, onto the sad news that just broke while I was writing this. As of now, it appears that the iconic horror magazine Fangoria has shut its doors. Last night, current editor-in-chief Ken W. Hanley took to Twitter and point blank announced;

“For those wondering: there will likely never be another issue of FANGORIA, especially in print, unless there's new ownership.”

That's a fucking bummer. Hopefully, someone out there recognizes that the Fangoria name has too much brand recognition and history and resurrects it somehow.

Times they are a changing.

Horrors In Hyperspace.

This week, we announced our second Little Terrors anthology collection Galaxy of Horrors. 

Focusing on science fiction horror, Galaxy features nine stories, including a wraparound segment directed by Justin McConnell. Check out the trailer below.

Galaxy of Horrors will hit VOD on March 7th, and Blu-ray/DVD on May 2nd. The first collection, Minutes Past Midnight is now available.

Remake Revolving Door.

You know, just when I was breathing a sigh of relief that Paramount's reboot of Friday the 13th had been buried, I heard the most recent news about the new Halloween. David Gordon Green and Danny McBride? Seriously? At least I had some interest when Mike Flanagan was involved. 

While it is cool that John Carpenter plans on contributing music, instead of just letting a cheque fall into his hand as per usual, I think I'll be sitting out this Pumpkin Express.

Rabbit Season.

In celebration of Women In Horror Month, I took the opportunity (thanks to Shudder) to watch Ann Turner's 1989 film Celia.

A young girl named Celia (Rebecca Smart) tries to cope with the chaotic world around her after the death of her grandmother.

This was a title I'd been meaning to see for some time after reading about in Kid Power! Fortunately, I remembered very little about it other than it was Australian and featured a little girl who may or may not be a psychopath.

I was a little blown away by this movie to be honest. Even though its label as a horror film is not really accurate– it's actually more of a coming-of-age drama – there are indeed parts of this movie that are like waking nightmares. Celia may seem mild at the onset, but I guarantee there were kids in Oz that saw this in eighty-nine and were scarred for life.

Happier times.

As you know, I gravitate to stuff where the child's perspective blurs the line between fantasy and reality. It's the crux of Guillermo del Toro's best work and another of my faves, Bernard Rose's Paperhouse. I'm also always interested in movies that portray places and periods I have little knowledge of. Nineteen-fifties Melbourne, with its equal intolerance of communism and the rabbit infestation, is as poignant then as it is now. It's funny how prejudice and persecution never seem to go out of style.

The performances are solid top to bottom, but most of the praise needs to be heaped on the young lead, Rebecca Smart. There is a tendency in films about off-kilter children to play the role with a cold and/or sharp malevolence (Patty McCormack in 1956's The Bad Seed and Isabelle Fuhrmann in 2009's Orphan are two good examples), but Smart plays it completely straight. Apart from being understandably withdrawn after the death of her grandmother, she is pretty normal and even incapable of lying in the first half of the movie. It seems to me that her darker actions toward the end were almost reactionary, rather than malicious.

I feel you, kid.

Director Ann Turner's confident direction is exceptional and her characters well written with equal importance given to both genders, even in a time when that wasn't the case. I was incredibly impressed with this movie and the more tragic sequences hit me like a ton of bricks. Celia may not be a horror film, but it affected me more than most straight up genre flicks made these days.

Midnight in Blu

Today, the Little Terrors anthology Minutes Past Midnight gets released on Blu-ray. 

In addition to the nine short films included in the collection, this Blu-ray includes several more, my first short film Orange among them! Check out the Red Band trailer below.

Click here to order your very own copy!

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Hey all. Today is the big day if you're a sports fan. For myself, it's just another reason to sit on the couch and drink beer. Before that though, here's some stuff to chew on.

Funko Peaks.

In Funko's bid for world domination, they recently announced a line of Twin Peaks Pops for release in time for the new season in May.

I myself am trying to quietly rationalize that I just pre-ordered cute toys based on a show about the brutal murder of a teen girl. If you share the same moral flexibility, you can check out the whole line here.

Super Spots.

With the Super Bowl comes big movie trailers. In addition to Ghost In The Shell and another one of those Michael Bay movies, we've also got a new look at the upcoming space thriller Life.

I have to chuckle about all the fan backlash of this being another “Alien rip-off”. First of all, this looks way more palatable than the actual Alien movie we're getting this year and secondly, these naysayers are off base. I've read the script and it's actually much closer to being The Blob in space. Does that not sound like something you would want to watch? Because for me it does. Life actually has some decent set pieces and it looks like they spent the money to properly realize them. But what can you do, right? Haters gonna hate.

That Girl.

Ahead of its upcoming release (Feb 16th on DirecTV and Mar 31st in theatres) The Blackcoat's Daughter has a new trailer.

I like this trailer a lot. It captures the atmospheric tone of the piece, but is cut in such a way that you don't really know what it's about. It has been almost a year-and-a-half since I watched this at TIFF and I'm very much looking forward to seeing it again.

Hellroller vs Judge Wapner

I happened to watch Gary J. Levinson's 1992 flick Hellroller earlier this week. It was an atrocious piece of shit, but it was later involved in a court case that was ultimately settled on The People's Court.

I love everything about this. The fact that the producers thought that explaining the plot of the movie to Judge Wapner would somehow help their case made me laugh out loud. God bless VHShitfest for uploading this wonderful piece of horror history to YouTube.

Welcome To The Family, Son!

Last week, Capcom released the newest incarnation of its flagship franchise, Resident Evil.

Ethan travels deep into the Bayou to track down his missing wife, Mia who disappeared three years earlier. It is not long before he runs afoul of the Baker family.

After its marquee fourth title, Resident Evil had seen diminishing returns so it was very proactive of Capcom to shift the gameplay to a first-person perspective. This change was immediately immersive and made for a more visceral experience. In previous iterations, I felt like I was hanging with Jill or Leon, but here it definitely felt more like it was me that was on the wrong end of a chainsaw. I can only imagine how much exponentially more terrifying this game is in VR.

I was struck right away by the obvious influence of Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it was over an hour before the game settled into something that resembled Resident Evil. Capcom's efforts to emulate American horror classics have made the subject matter a tad more familiar, as the whacked out and weirdo characters of Resident Evil 4 have been replaced by denizens closer to home. That being said, the environments were terrific and meshed really well with the excellent sound design.

At first I found the combat a little frustrating, but then realized it had just been a while since I'd played a RE title. Constantly killing the same boss multiple times is par for the course in this universe, but I guess it was easier to swallow when it was a Tyrant or Nemesis rather than some old hick. I got into it eventually because it did open up a bit more as the story went along. I do have to say that the defense mechanic still seems a bit ridiculous to me. I can block anything with my bare hands?

Hands up, baby hands up!

I applaud Capcom's decision to bring the emphasis back to horror. While the game isn't as revolutionary as Resident Evil 4 was – RE7 definitely shares some DNA with previous titles like Dead Space, F.E.A.R and Alien: Isolation – it's still, at its core, a welcome return to the origins of the franchise.

Resident Evil 7 was a highly entertaining carnival of horrors made even more affecting by its new format. Let's see where they take it from here. To check out a cool mini-doc about the evolution of the franchise, click here.