If horror history had a sitting king, it would be the indomitable Christopher Lee, whose visage graced so many movies produced by Hammer Films, the British studio that made lavish productions like Blood of Dracula and Horror of Frankenstein while operating on the shoestringiest of budgets. (The fact that Lee was recently knighted only lends additional gravitas.) And now, thanks to the recent news that the revered studio is getting back into the horror game -- so helpfully chronicled by AMC's own Scott Sigler -- Internet obsessives have been monitoring the studio's renaissance with a sense of guarded optimism. Guarded because, well, Hammer hasn't really done anything yet.

But this could be the week that everything changes! Thanks to the batch of photos the studio released for its first new feature, The Resident, both Hammer and Lee have been lighting up the blogosphere (and the world at large) in a major way...

Continue reading "Web Stalker - Sneak Peeks of The Resident Have Fans Hailing Hammer Horror's Return" »

Time to break out the grease paint and electrical tape! This week's back-from-the-dead movie franchise? That's right: The Crow. And in case the overwhelmingly placid attitude movie bloggers have adopted in recent weeks had you worried that they'd lost their edge, rest assured: This crow definitely doesn't fly. (Sorry!)

When Variety broke the news back in December 2008 that Relativity Media was looking to revamp the Crow series with a reboot by League of Extraordinary Gentlemen director Stephen Norrington, movie fans were livid. Livid! "After the glistening turd that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," sang Chud, "I'm sure a lot of you would be happy never to hear from director Stephen Norrington again. But let's see if this deal actually goes through...and then who is cast. Brandon Lee's shadow is long, for obvious reasons, but maybe we'll get a new goth star out of the deal." But fans weren't buying it. Some of them even made a petition! And it didn't end there...

Continue reading "Web Stalker - The Crow Reboot Flies in the Faces of Brandon Lee Fans" »

Another week, another 3D movie -- but this time around, people are actually OK with it. Imagine that! Turns out the horror community can get behind a project, so long as the names attached are appropriately horror-tastic. Say, the inimitable Sam Raimi and The Descent's Neil Marshall. A winning combination, if the contented musings emanating from the blogosphere are any indication...

But first, a little about Burst, since this one's definitely worth pondering. If the talent attached weren't enough to prick up your ears, how about the premise? Namely that, as ShockTilYouDrop broke back in 2008, "a group of people convene at a cabin in the woods only to start spontaneously combusting. Despite that (promising? preposterous?) conceit, when news of the project first hit the Internet last year it went down, as our UK cousins say, like a lead zeppelin. The problem? The director: Spanish filmmaker Daniel Calparsoro. No disrespect intended, but his international resume is a bit thin, so it's no big surprise that horror fans reserved their "OMFG!!!"s for more titillating news. But that's all changed now that Marshall is in the director's seat.

Continue reading "Web Stalker - The Promise of Splatter Has 3D Fans Freaking Over Neil Marshall's Burst 3D" »

For once the big news of the week has nothing to do with a remake, a reboot or anything in the milking-a-dead-cash-cow vein. Oh, happy day! This week the buzz is about the possibility that a sequel to madcap horror comedy-that-could Zombieland might be in the works already. And to think, sequels used to be the bad news. In any event, the Woody Harrelson picture has an impressive 88 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, along with a glowing consensus that it's "[w]ickedly funny and featuring plenty of gore, proof that the zombie subgenre is far from dead." Its success (along with the slow-burn rise of the freakily scary Paranormal Activity) has already made October a good month for horror fans (remember when distributors didn't open scary movies until Halloween week?), so it should come as no surprise that the rumor of more adventures in Zombieland has bloggers taking to their laptops.

Back in early August, Web Stalker reported that Comic-Con fans were digging "Zombieland's Menu of Flesh, Twinkies and Bill Murray." The movie's buzz only intensified from there, and by the time the movie hit theaters last Friday it had garnered enough momentum to make bloody mulch of the competition with a first weekend box office take of $25 million. Nut or shut up indeed! Of course, sequel rumors had already started circulating before the cash was tallied...

Continue reading "Web Stalker - Zombieland 2 Defies Odds, Causes Joy in the Sequel-Resistant" »

Those poor Weinstein brothers! Once the golden boys of the indie movie scene, they just can't seem to catch a break these days. First rumors start circulating that Summit Entertainment -- aka Twilight Inc. -- might be swooping in to save their beleaguered movie shingle. Then they announce that they're putting plans for their forthcoming Halloween 3D on hold, which, despite their very reasonable-sounding explanation, only serves to make them look sort of pathetic. But who really loses here? That would be horror fans, since the Halloween threequel they were anticipating (some with more enthusiasm than others) now seems like a very shaky proposition.

Continue reading "Web Stalker - We Hardly Knew Ya, Halloween 3D" »

Paging David Cronenberg! The movie-loving world would very much like to know why you've decided to remake your remake of The Fly. Horror obsessives are scratching their collective head over the news and coming up mostly empty in the motive department, so please send any and all announcements, rebuttals, or retractions directly to Web Stalker, c/o the Internet, so we can all get some rest.

To recap: Last week, the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business blog broke the news that Cronenberg was in discussion with 20th Century Fox to write and possibly direct a remake-slash-reboot-slash-reimagining of his surprise 1986 hit -- itself a remake of Kurt Neumann's 1958 cult favorite -- with an eye to taking advantage of new special effects technologies. The column points out that the news marks a startling about face for Cronenberg, who has long proclaimed his distaste for similar projects. So just what do we think is going on here?

Continue reading "Web Stalker - Shoo Fly... Cronenberg's (Second) Remake Builds Bad Buzz" »

Just when it seemed there was nothing left to say about Hollywood's creatively bankrupt love affair with remakes, they've added a new (as in "everything old is new again") variable to the equation: 3D. Apparently there's no movie that can't be improved upon by the addition of that most googly-moogly of special effects. A moment, please, for a collective melodramatic sigh. OK: With that out of our systems, let's proceed.

Simon West Productions' announcement this week that they'd be giving George Romero's 1968 masterpiece Night of the Living Dead the X-Men: Origins treatment -- in 3D, no less -- was hardly the stuff of which horror-fan buzz frenzies are made. Still, the degree of vitriol the chattering masses have hurled at the flick has been particularly impressive! Horror fans, it appears, are united against the cause.

Continue reading "Web Stalker - Horror Fans Sink Their Teeth Into a 3D Night of the Living Dead Resurrection" »

Hoo boy, this is exciting. The movie that many a hard-hearted critic has called the most terrifying movie ever made is coming to theaters! And it's happening in just a couple of weeks. That's right: Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity is getting its official release on September 25. You're not gonna want to miss it. Trust me.

A little background, for the uninitiated: Back in 2006, Peli shot his mock-doc dream project -- a chronicle of the nocturnal goings-on in a haunted house occupied by one increasingly terrified couple -- on a shoestring budget of $11,000, with a cast of no-name actors. In 2008, he managed to get the movie into Slamdance and Screamfest, at which point all hell broke loose... in the best possible way. Here's a sampling of the frenzied response: "The entire auditorium was freaked out of their minds...people were actually physically shaking" (Dread Central); "Paranormal Activity managed to do something that almost no other haunted house movie in the past 25 years has managed to do: Actually be scary" (Bloody Disgusting); "It sufficiently freaked out those of us who watched [it].... that I ended up asking a coworker to crash in my room for the night because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get to sleep alone (Cinematical); "Believe the hype!" (Ain't It Cool). You get the idea: Hardened professionals were reduced to quivering wrecks.

Continue reading "Web Stalker - The Scariest Movie Ever Made Finally Finds an Audience" »

Remember The Hand That Rocked the Cradle? Anyone who wasn't bloody terrified by that movie has Web Stalker's undying respect. Rebecca De Mornay's crazed nanny eyes, that imperiled bouncing baby, those creepy breast-feeding scenes... shudder. And now, after a decade or so of steady, but uninspiring work, De Mornay is headed back where she belongs, claiming her rightful spot at the tip-top of the cast of Darren Lynn Bousman's remake of the Troma gorefest Mother's Day -- and not a moment too soon!

ShockTilYouDrop first broke the remake news in August 2008, when early rumors had much-reviled movie-killer Brett Ratner signing on as producer and Saw veteran Bousman circling to direct. The site wondered, "Is this a redo horror fans will embrace or is Kaufman's original cult classic too sacred to touch?"

Continue reading " Web Stalker - Rebecca De Mornay Playing One Bad Mother in Mother's Day Remake" »

Pardon the salacious headline. But if the past week is anything by which to judge, merely floating the possibility that two of Hollywood's hottest young starlets will get sapphic onscreen guarantees that every red-blooded male in web world will spring to attention. Even if they're doing it in a weird supernatural flick about the psychological turmoil of dueling ballerinas.

What a difference from the reaction two years ago, when word got out that Darren Aronofsky was in talks to direct Black Swan! The blogosphere went mad then, too, but with panic -- what did this mean for his much-anticipated reboot of the Robocop franchise? CinemaSpy fretted "Darren Aronofsky's next project could be the supernatural thriller Black Swan. If so, it might as well be named 'Requiem for a Robocop', at least as far as the director is concerned." Slashfilm went so far as to declare, "without Aronofsky behind the camera, I'm not sure I really care to see a new Robocop movie." Oh, for a more innocent time when fanboy fantasies focused on a futuristic cyborg who jetpacks his way to justice.

Continue reading "Web Stalker - Who'd Classify Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis Going Girl-Girl as Horror?" »