IFC is rapidly becoming one of my favorite film distributors on the planet. Seems like not a week goes by without news of them scoring the distribution rights to some cool horror film and promising to give it a limited theatrical run and show it on their VOD service at the same time. That’s like the greatest thing ever for someone like me, who moved from a major metropolitan area to the sticks.
Anyway, Variety is reporting the company’s latest acquisition is The Killer Inside Me, the somewhat controversial Michael Winterbottom film that just played Sundance.
Based on a Jim Thompson novel, the film stars Casey Affleck, who plays a small town sheriff with a psychopathic streak. Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Simon Baker, Bill Pullman, Ned Beatty and Elias Koteas also star.
The film’s debut sparked some controversy over its depictions of violence toward women. I haven’t seen the film so I can’t comment definitively on whether or not this is a justified criticism, but the fact that The Killer Inside Me is a film about a murderous cop makes me feel like the violence is probably at least somewhat justified. Of course, I’m the asshole who sticks up for Fulci’s full-on misogyny in New York Ripper–so maybe I’m not the guy to ask about this issue…
IFC hasn’t penciled in an official release date for The Killer Inside Me, but it should be out sometime this summer.
Just a quick note here. If you’ve been waiting to check out the French horror film Mutants, IFC has good news for you.
The film, directed by David Morlet, will make it’s IFC Direct On Demand debut on February 10th. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’ve heard enough to have my curiosity piqued.
Here’s the plot blurb:
“In a world devastated by a pandemic virus that turns human beings into primitive and bloodthirsty creatures, Marco and Sonia set off to find a secret base to escape from the ‘mutants’. When the latter attack them, Marco is infected. Little by little, he undergoes the same changes. Sonia, who is expecting a baby, is then forced to fight her worst enemy, the man she loves.”
IFC is really serious about this whole horror thing, apparently, because every time I turn around they’ve added more new movies to their VOD schedule. The two latest aren’t quite as exciting as some of the earlier releases (which isn’t a comment on their quality, but more an observation on their “buzz factor), but Coffin Rock and Paintball still look interesting.
Fangoria broke posted the news earlier this week and gave the following plot breakdowns for each film.
Coffin Rock, written and directed by Rupert Glasson, is about a young married woman (Lisa Chappell) who drunkenly sleeps with a stranger; when she becomes pregnant, the one-night stand begins a psychopathic campaign to prove the baby is his.
Paintball, directed by Daniel Benmayor from a Mario Schoendorff script, a group of contestants (led by Brendan Mackey and Jennifer Matter) in the titular contest deep in the woods discover that some unexpected players have joined the game—using real weapons.
Paintball makes its On Demand debut on January 29th. Coffin Rock will be available February 3rd, and don’t forget that the French cops vs. gangsters and zombies flick The Horde will also viewable in February as well.
Check out the trailer for Coffin Rock below, and then hit the “read the rest of this entry” link to have a gander at Paintball.
I was really looking forward to Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher’s French zombie film, The Horde, but everyone who’s seen it comes away very disappointed. Thankfully, we’ll all get a chance to see it for ourselves and make up our own minds, because Screen Daily says IFC has acquired the domestic distribution rights to the film.
The movie, which was produced by Xavier Gens (Frontier(s)) follows four crooked cops trapped in a building overrun by zombies. I’m not really sure how you can fuck up something so awesome sounding, but if early buzz is to be believed, that’s exactly what’s happened. If this turns out to be the case, it would be one time where Hollywood would actually be justified in taking a foreign film and remaking it. So, you know that will never happen…
No word on when The Horde might turn up here, but my guess is it will appear on IFC On Demand and then eventually DVD. I’ll keep you posted as more details come to light.
IFC has been doing a fantastic job of bringing foreign and niche horror flicks to American audiences over the past few months. Movies like I Sell the Dead, Dead Snow, Hush and countless others have been offered through their Video On Demand service. Now, they’ve announced a new title–the South Korean horror flick Death Bell.
Dread Central has an official trailer for the film up, and I thought it looked really great–until what looks like a pissed off girl ghost shows up in the latter half. If that’s what this chick is, and I hope it’s not, I have to wonder why they’d bother forcing that tired genre cliche in what looked like a really cool film that didn’t need it in the first place. Does Death Bell still look cool? Yeah, but it would have been a lot cooler without the freaky looking long haired ghostly looking Asian chick in it.
Anyway, here’s the official synopsis and the trailer. You’ll be able to catch Death Bell through IFC’s VOD service starting on October 14th.
On a Saturday, 170 days before college entrance exam, a special class for 20 top students is held at school. The 20 intelligent students include the loyal high school girl Inah, the bad-boy hunk Kang-Hyun, Ina’s best friend Myung-Hyo, the top-of-school paranoiac Hye-Young, the hallucination schizophrenic Jo-Beom, the second top insomniac Dong-Hyuk, the timid third top student Jae-Wook, and the over-sensitive sixth top student Su-Jin. The only other people left in school together with the 20 students are: the popular teacher Chang-wook, the new English teacher So-young, and the student manager Chi-young. But in the middle of class “For Elise” rings from the speaker and the TV in classroom shows the top student Hye-young trapped in the water rising tank, screaming and struggling to breathe. And an unidentified voice asks the answer to a mid-term exam question that will cost Hye-young’s life. Nowhere to run, and only 20 students and 3 teachers are in school. The bloody exams start once again for them.
Director Glenn McQuaid’s horror comedy I Sell the Dead is set to hit limited theaters on August 7th and then take to the airwaves courtesy of IFC’s Video-On-Demand service on the 12th. In preparation for that, they’ve released a new trailer for the film (starring Dominic Monaghan, Larry Fessenden, Angus Scrimm, and Ron Perlman). Check it out below.
If you’ve not heard of I Sell the Dead prior to now, here’s the official synopsis. I think the film looks and sounds incredibly cool–hopefully it lives up the potential hinted at in the preview.
In I SELL THE DEAD, 19th century justice has finally caught up with two of the craftiest grave robbers in town. With only a few hours to go before his date with the guillotine, body-snatcher Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan / LORD OF THE RINGS, Lost) tells his life story to the peculiar Father Francis Duffy (Ron Perlman / HELLBOY, THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN). Before long, Arthur spills the beans on how he got started in the grim corpse peddling usiness with seasoned ghoul Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden / WENDIGO THE LAST WINTER, HABIT). As the whisky flows Arthur’s tales get stranger and stranger. From their graveyard discoveries of vampires and zombies to tales of vicious gang rivalries with the infamous House of Murphy, Arthur’s confessions are the stuff of legend! Whether pillaging in fog drenched grave yards or plotting on blood soaked coast lines, Grimes and Blake leave no graves unturned. Their colorful and peculiar history is one filled with adventure, horror, and mayhem that threaten to drag all involved down into the very graves they’re trying to pilfer.
I’ve mentioned several times over the years that the hardest films to review aren’t the really good ones or the really bad ones, but the ones that exist in the middle ground area. A three star flick is more of a challenge to write about than a one star or a five star. Extremes tend to provoke reactions-while the middle ground often inspires indifference. That should highlight how difficult the whole reviewing gig can be-by definition, most movies are going to hover somewhere around average. That means writing a lot of reviews about things that make me feel largely indifferent on a number of levels.
Indifferent is a good way to describe my feelings about Pablo Proenza’s Dark Mirror, a horror film now available through IFC’s Video-On-Demand service and coming to DVD in the near future. The story is incredibly recognizable, the genre trappings traditional to a fault, and the situations and resolutions about as familiar as the faces of our own family members. This isn’t to say that Dark Mirror is a bad film, but it’s not a great one either. This is the kind of movie that you pop in on a lazy Saturday afternoon, watch, then almost immediately forget. It’s neither good enough or bad enough to be truly memorable.
I think, after watching Derek Son’s Cadaver, we can say that the Pissed Off Asian Girl Ghost film has finally run out of steam as a genre. If this film does indeed turn out to be the epitaph for a cinematic subgenre that came out of nowhere, burned white-hot for the better part of a decade, then imploded it’s probably a better one than the field deserved. While Cadaver is more than content to walk the well-worn path first blazed by films like Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, at least Son takes us out with bang, throwing in every conceivable twist and rug-pull fans of Asian horror cinema have ever seen…and then some.
Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist has been generating a lot of buzz at Cannes (some of it negative…) and IFC is now set to capitalize after having secured the rights to distribute the film here in the US.
The film stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg and has drawn the ire of some for its gory sexual imagery.
IFC plans to release the film as part of its Day and Date platform according to Variety, which means the film will hit Video-On-Demand and theaters on the same day.
No date has been announced yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as it is.
Road thrillers are seemingly a dime-a-dozen at this point. From Duel to Joyride, we’ve all seen horror on the highways and extreme road-rage firsthand on theater screens. What sets Mark Tonderai’s film Hush apart from the pack (albeit ever so slightly) is that it moves the action from the backroads and highways of America and transplants it to England. This act of moving the locale is just enough to make the film play as something different than what has come before it. The road movie seems to be a distinctly American construct-but seeing it refracted through British sensibilities is enough to make up for the project’s overall level of familiarity.
I think, after watching Derek Son’s Cadaver, we can say that the Pissed Off Asian Girl Ghost film has finally run out of steam as a genre. If this film does indeed turn out to be the epitaph for a cinematic subgenre that came out of nowhere, burned white-hot for the better part of a decade, then imploded it’s probably a better one than the field deserved. While Cadaver is more than content to walk the well-worn path first blazed by films like Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, at least Son takes us out with bang, throwing in every conceivable twist and rug-pull fans of Asian horror cinema have ever seen…and then some.
Road thrillers are seemingly a dime-a-dozen at this point. From Duel to Joyride, we’ve all seen horror on the highways and extreme road-rage firsthand on theater screens. What sets Mark Tonderai’s film Hush apart from the pack (albeit ever so slightly) is that it moves the action from the backroads and highways of America and transplants it to England. This act of moving the locale is just enough to make the film play as something different than what has come before it. The road movie seems to be a distinctly American construct-but seeing it refracted through British sensibilities is enough to make up for the project’s overall level of familiarity.
