Anne Hathaway Catwoman

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If once upon a time I knew that the director of the first Paranormal Activity movie was making a television program called The River that'd be starring Thomas Krestchmann and Joe Anderson, then my brains have completely abandoned me because I have forgotten it, and to forget such a thing is to commit the darkest of sins. I just randomly clicked on this report about the show at ComiCon from BD and noticed those two in the pictures and was all, WHA??? What pictures, you ask? These pictures!

So what is The River?

And I just did some research and I totally posted about this show's existence before. That's it! Close up shop! My brain's done for.

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I was a big fan of the first Paranormal Activity movie (my review). I know it wasn't everybody's cuppa but I loved the slow build and the way it forced you to just stare and stare at a static image until you thought your brain would snap from the tension. In the way that The Blair Witch Project mastered its teeny tiny budget through an electrifyingly creative manipulation of its sound-design so I felt that PA pulled a similar trick with its rigid visuals, turning a limitation to their favor.

Unfortunately the second film mucked it all up (my review). There were too many cameras around the house that they kept editing between, slicing any mounting tension up into ineffectual ribbons.

Plus the characters went way too far above and beyond the call of unbearable douchiness. Micah and Katie were deeply flawed characters in the first film - some might call them, and many did, monstrously annoying - but the movie was smart about it, I thought, and seemed to have built their less-than-savory aspects inextricably into the tale they were telling. Their passive-aggressive relationship became a game of one-upmanship and the final frame brought the game, and the camera and the home, crashing down. The awful people in the second movie were just ciphers with no interaction between who they were and what was happening to them. The film never found a purpose, and ended up treading stale steps in the first film's much more successful wake.

Point! We now have a teaser trailer for the third film.

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(via) So it's a prequel way back to the 1980s with the two sisters as little girls who've got access to what would have been at the time super-expensive crystal clear video technology. Mkay. What makes me most sad about this is we won't get to see any more of Micah.


Bye Micah! You were a sexy asshole. The most curious thing here is the fact that this is coming from Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the directors that made last year's buzzy curiosity Catfish (my review), the questionable documentary of a slightly adorable dorky New York douche getting caught up in a sad lady's Facebook espionage. I was pro-Catfish for the most part but didn't really keep up with it once it came out and people began picking it apart.


Anyway I am curious to see what these chaps might bring to the Paranormal table. Catfish was sold as a horror movie but really didn't end up being that at all. But it still managed to wring a lot of tension from that curiosity before you knew what was coming. I vividly remember being freaked out when Nev & Co. get to that horse-farm late at night and are peering through the darkened windows of the barn. So they can maybe handle suspense? I guess we'll see. PA3 is out on October 21st...


... which is a date that's making my brain question a question: What horror movies are we getting for Halloween this year? The Saw franchise is blessedly over and blessedly done with its nearly-decade-long campaign of ruining the holiday, and I thought we were getting Cabin in the Woods but as we found out this morning it turns out that's not coming out until April.

So as long as this is on our brain, let's take a look-see at all the major horror movies coming out between now and All Hallows. (There will probably be smaller films that will get scheduled between now and then that we're unawares of just yet.)


-- The only horror movie out before July is over - if you don't count The Smurfs - is the "teenage British thugs vs. aliens" movie Attack the Block on July 29th, which I reviewed right here. I had a fairly complicated reaction to the film and I'm still sort of plagued by it. Fantastic monster design and some wonderfully staged action scenes though, even if I'm not sure they didn't ruin everything with an erratic tone and possibly irredeemable main characters.


-- In August we get Final Destination 5 on the 12th and the Fright Night remake on the 19th. I've stopped writing about the latest FD movie because I can't look at any more trailers or pictures, I don't want to spoil anymore of the deaths than I already did with the first trailer, but I wanna see this like crazy, like I do with every installment. I hump this series to death. I think Fright Night looks generally terrible but Toni Collette and Sexy Vampire Colin Farrell might get me there anyway.


-- The Guillermo Del Toro produced remake of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark starring the soulless Katie Holmes and the asstastic Guy Pearce is out on August 26th.

-- Shark Night 3D - from the director of two Final Destination movies, including my favorite the second one! - is out on September 2nd. The trailer for this movie is just absolutely awful, but my FD-loving brain keeps arguing with me about it. Whole conversations have been had inside of my head! Crazy ones!


-- Also on September 2nd comes Apollo 18, which is "Blair Witch on the Moon." Space horror isn't done often enough if you ask me - it don't get much more isolated than that! I hope there's a shot of someone being killed reaching towards Earth in the sky for help. That'd be neat-o.

-- September 9th brings us Contagion, Steven Soderbergh's global pandemic movie with an impressively starry and serious cast. Winslet, Paltrow, Law, Damon, Cotillard, and wait what's this John Hawkes! Love him.

-- The closest thing to horror on September 16th is the Straw Dogs remake but that might just be terrifying us because of the basic fact that they remade Straw Dogs. It does have lots of violence and rape though so close enough. But it also has Alexander Skarsgard and Jimmy Marsden swanning around half-naked and there's nothing scary about that. Stimulating, yes. Intimidating, definitely. But certainly not anything even approaching scary.


-- Dream House, which we just saw the shirtless-Daniel-Craig-ified trailer for yesterday, is out on September 30th.

-- As is Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, the supposedly pretty funny horror-comedy starring Alan Tudyk and Reaper's Tyler Labine as two innocent hillbillies caught up in bloody shenanigans. I think the idea is that they get mistaken for serial killers by a bunch of stupid vacationing college kids who then try to kill them as if they're in a horror movie fighting off Jason Voorhees. And it's a really fun idea.


-- The Thing remake is out on October 14th. We just saw the first trailer for that last week. Love the cast and want it to be good but it has been sitting around gathering dust for a little while now. That could just be due to factors other than its worth though - I think, like Cabin in the Woods, it got held up due to studio problems.

-- Also out that same day, at least in limited release, is The Skin I Live In. It's Pedro Almodovar's newest movie. It reunites him with 80s man-muse Antonio Banderas, and it's apparently very dark and very creepy. The teaser trailer scared me. All of these things are making me want it something insane.


-- On October 21st, the same day as PA3 is out, Kevin Smith's Red State finally gets a proper release after Smith toured the country earlier this year with it. But from what I hear it's not really the horror movie it's been sold to be either?


-- Same day, another indie weirdo cult movie (as in a movie about a cult) that got talk at Sundance - Martha Marcy May Marlene also isn't really a horror movie in the oogie-boogie slobbery monster sense but it's supposedly pitch-black and horrifying in its own way. Plus it has John Hawkes again and I will mention him whenever I can. Hi again John Hawkes!

As of right now there's apparently nothing scary scheduled for October 28th, which seems bonkers. Expect something to pick up the slack, I imagine. After Halloween we're into Oscar season so there's not as much spooky scheduled - I refuse to categorize the Twilight movies as horror (except for what they say about our culture); Piranha 3DD is supposedly out on November 23rd - perfect for taking Grandma to over Thanksgiving holiday!; David Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie will presumably be pretty horrific a la Straw Dogs with the violence (a lot specifically of a sexual nature) and the throbbing NIN techno; The Darkest Hour has Emile Hirsch fighting killer aliens.   

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--- Here & Back Again - EW has our first look at The Hobbit, y'all! Three pictures, including Tim I mean Martin Freeman as Young Bilbo. I wish some friendly lady hobbit down the way was being played by Lucy Davis, I must say. Tim and Dawn forever!

--- And speaking of Office-flavored things, as well as small-sized folk, the teaser trailer for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's new BBC2 series called Life's Too Short - about the "life" of Warwick Davis, famed little person - can be seen over at Twitch! The show's only begun filming and won't air til next year, but this tide us over til then I suppose.

--- Roll In The Hay - I just want to take this opportunity to thank Entertainment Weekly with all my "heart" for using this week's trilogy of covers to gift me with the fantasy of Joe Manganiello as a rugged, dumb farmhand wearing nothing but loose overalls. This will come in handy several times in the future, of this I have no doubt.

--- Crazy States - Glenn's review of Ken Russell's Altered States over at Stale Popcorn is quite possibly the most spot-on, "Yup, that about sums it all up!" review of Altered States ever written. God I love that movie.

--- Bush Whackers - BD has a few more details on the third flick from Oren Peli, director of Paranormal Activity, which is about Nature getting its revenge in the wake of a radioactive disaster. Or something. Sounds kind Long Weekend-y to me?

--- The Owls Are Not What They Seem - If you heard about that JK Rowling website Pottermore the other day and are curious still what the hell it is, watch this video at PopWrap where Rowling comes clean. Sounds fun, says the nerd!

--- New Statham Joint - A trailer for a Jason Statham movie without a shot of a shirtless Jason Statham in it is like a unicorn with its legs sawed off bleating for the bullet to end its pathetic life. Just sad! That said, in the trailer for his latest movie called Killer Elite (so 1994 straight-to-video) that murky underwater shot seen there to the left could be Jason, I suppose, the trailer implies it to be him, so we'll give it a pass until we inevitably watch the movie while folding laundry one future Saturday afternoon and find out if so. But what we will never forgive is the fact that Statham and Clive Owen are in a movie together and it's not a love story full of sweaty torrid liaisons.

--- Stone's Pride - Rumors abound that Emma Stone might be taking the lead in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which for a long while was a role that lay in Natalie Portman's delicate fingertips. I like it, but then I like the idea of Emma Stone taking any part. Every part! (Well except Mrs. Andrew Garfield. Lay off, lady! He's mine!)

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--- Poof There He Is - STYD has got a look at David Tennant in his role of the Vegas-ish magician in the Fright Night remake. Dare I say it's sort of... sexy? In a really weird way? Oh I am ashamed. I just get blinded by chest fur every time. Anyway Colin and Toni aside this movie is gonna be awful, I think.

--- Natural Selection - Paranormal Activity director Oren Peli's follow-up film, the alien-themed Area 51, hasn't even come out yet but he's lining up what he'll do next. It is "the tale of friends who discover they are not alone after they become stranded in a ghost town overrun by nature." Whatever the eff that means.

--- How Many Makers - I love this listicle at The Film Experience on the working habits of the many directors we love. Would that nearly every single name on the list work more. I don't care. I want it all!

--- Multi-Fassy-ed - io9 dissects a new TV bite-sized trailer for X-Men Muppet Babies that's got a bunch of new moments in it, including a suspicious one involving Michael Fassbenders. That "s" is meant to be there.

--- People Pets - I apparently spaced on posting this news earlier this week so here it is briefly, which doesn't mesh with how epic the news is but whatever, it's been two days and the world's moved on already! Darren Aronofsky and George Clooney are perhaps probably maybe teaming up for a sci-fi movie about a man who wakes up from his cryogenic slumber to find that the human race has been turned into pets for another species. Seems like people are actually tackling harder-edged old-fashioned sci-fi themes these days, doesn't it? I like it.

--- And speaking of Clooney, here's the first clip of him in Alexander Payne's much-waited-for new movie The Descendants. (via) I haven't watched it yet so y'all tell me what's up.

--- Sally Boy - James Franco has cast his Sal Mineo for that biopic he's apparently making - his name's Val Lauren, and he's mostly done TV work so far, although his IMDb bio says he's done a lot of "play originals" with Scott Caan. Mmhmm. I've heard that about Scott. Anyway that's him to the left there and I guess he could look the part, with some effort. If we're looking at later-years Sal, that is.

--- Queen of the Knight - Marion Cotillard says that her part in The Dark Knight Rises is very small and non-challenging for a lady who will be tremendously pregnant when it comes time for her to film.

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