There was a time, not so long ago, when winsome Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar was hotter than a rampaging fire demon, carving for herself a cozy little horror niche with remakes The Grudge, The Grudge 2, and The Return. There were even rumors of a Buffy feature (which never happened). Of the upcoming Gellar- and Joss Whedon-less reboot, the less said, the better. As for Possession, AWOL since 2008, it's slinking onto DVD with less fanfare than the average Asylum mock-buster.

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Remember that vaguely creepy kiddie song in which "the cat came back the very next day"? The Stephen King movie about that cat is back: the long-rumored Pet Sematary remake is happening. Need a summary of how we got here? Here goes: back in 2003 -- almost fifteen years after the original Pet Sematary and more than ten years after Pet Sematary II -- BloodyDisgusting leaked word that Paramount was developing Pet Sematary III, from a script written in 1993, and that they were talking to Mary Lambert, who helmed both of the earlier movies. BloodyDisgusting reader RabidFulci's response sums up the general reaction: "I mean enough is enough, two Cemetery films by far were a waste of money....I hope these rumors ARE 'only' rumor...nothing more, nothing else."

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Web Stalker remembers a time, not so very long ago, when a decent, law-abiding horror fan could go months without being pawed by a rotting cannibal zombie. These days, they're everywhere, shambling or sprinting, moaning or chowing down on the vastly outnumbered living. It's only fair that George Romero, whose Night of the Living Dead single-handedly transformed the zombie from folk figure to go-to metaphor, should keep his hand in the game. If Romero's polarizing Day of the Dead was a radical attempt to reimagine Night of the Living Dead for a 24/7, plugged-in generation, its sequel, Survival of the Dead, has the zombie-lovin' world in a lather: is it a step forward or sad evidence that the 70-year-old filmmaker should leave the creatures to younger filmmakers, like Danny Boyle (28 Days Later) and Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland)?

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Last Halloween, Paranormal Activity, the low-budget horror movie of 2009, kicked the ass of big, bad Saw VI. What about act two? Or, more to the point: what about Paranormal Activity 2, the as-yet-unmade sequel? Having abandoned the original plan to remake Paranormal Activity as a studio feature, Paramount isn't about to write off a project with a cost-to-profit ratio that's the stuff of Hollywood dreams.

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It's been said (by, er, us) that 2010 is the year of the werewolf. Though The Wolfman didn't exactly dominate the box office this past weekend, all signs indicate that those pesky monsters are still on the minds of Hollywood execs. Case in point: Underworld 4.

If you gave up on the Underworld franchise after the first installment (and, let's face it, some of us did), it bears remembering that, after Underworld and its 2006 sequel, Underworld: Evolution, proved that Kate Beckinsale could put butts in seats, directors Len Wiseman and Patrick Tatopoulos made the odd decision to film a prequel, sans Beckinsale, dubbed Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, starring Rhona Mitra. How did the fledgling franchise's fans react to the Beckinsale-free flick? I'm sure you can guess.

Continue reading "Web Stalker - Kate Beckinsale Returns to Underworld, But How Much of Her Will Fans See?" »

UPDATE: The following piece was revised by the writer, to clarify and correct some of her speculations.

Here's a lesson in how a savvy movie studio can take years' worth of bad buzz and use good, old-fashioned (okay, in this case, sort of newfangled) marketing to get naysayers to do a 180.

It wasn't that long ago when the upcoming thriller Repo Men -- which stars Jude Law and Forest Whitaker as long arms of the law in a future where body parts are sold on credit and yanked back by force if the buyer misses a payment -- seemed unlikely to make much of a dent at the box office. Now it's got serious juice. Universal first announced the project, based on Eric Garcia's novel The Repossession Mambo, back in 2003. The news would probably have inspired the usual love-hate commentary, had it not been for the fact that there was already another movie based on the same idea.

"Every so often, two films come down the pipeline with the same basic plot and smash into each other," reported io9. "In one corner, you have [Saw] director Darren Lynn Bousman's independent effort with Lionsgate, Repo! The Genetic Opera. Weighing in on the studio side is Repossession Mambo, from Universal." Same basic plot, two very, very different movies. Interesting coincidence, no?

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Our beloved little genre is on everyone's lips this week, thanks to the Spanish indie flick Buried. It took Sundance by storm and set off a minor bidding war that found Lions Gate ponying up a reported $3 million. The premise? In the grand tradition of movies like Oxygen and Buried Alive, a civilian contractor (Ryan Reynolds) working in Iraq wakes up trapped underground with only a knife, a lighter, and a cell phone. He spends the rest of the movie trying to escape. At some point, he's visited by a big snake.

Doesn't sound too promising, does it? The reviews from Sundance are rolling in. They may surprise you.

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I'm going to make the wild assumption that if you're a regular reader of this column, you're something of a horror fanatic. So there should be no need for me to expound upon the splendor of Tomas Alfredson's 2004 vampire gem Let the Right One In. Smart, lyrical and moving, the coming-of-age tale thrilled both audiences and critics alike -- as evidenced by its whopping, near-unprecedented 97 percent approval rating on that arbiter of big-screen taste, Rotten Tomatoes.

Can you see what's coming next? Of course you can! Hollywood went and decided to do a remake... in fact, the entertainment industry powers-that-be made the decision even before the original opened in American theaters. Shortly thereafter, they announced that Cloverfield director Matt Reeves would be the man behind the camera. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next...

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Remakes are so de rigeur in today's Hollywood that it almost feels as though every movie you love will redone if you only give it enough time. So it's hardly a surprise that John Carpenter's essential, overwhelmingly beloved monster flick The Thing is next in line. The question is whether that makes the news any easier to stomach.

Back in 2006, when the project was announced, fans were irate. Irate! Here's just a sampling of the comments that flooded Bloody-Disgusting when the blog posted the news: "For the love of all that is horror holy....WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?" "How can you remake a perfect film?" "A remake of a remake. This is just sad." "All hope is lost..."

For the people in the back, that means they were none too happy about it. So, now that looks as though The Thing is about to start shooting, have attitudes? Glad you asked!

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Don't worry - Web Stalker hasn't gone all LOTR fanboy on you just yet. Sure, the forthcoming Clash of the Titans remake isn't horror, strictly speaking. But have you checked out that trailer!? Eyeless witches, winged demons, and massive crab-like monsters, oh my! There's also the not inconsequential matter of the Kraken, which may or may not be "the monster from Cloverfield." And since Web Stalker's ever-straining ears have been picking up no small amount of chatter coming from the great beyond (aka horror blogosphere), it seems like the perfect time to make the movie the subject of this week's column.

Those of you for whom Nightmare on Elm Street is a bigger childhood reference point than, say, The Exorcist, may not even remember the original, which was a massive hit when it was released in 1981. It starred Laurence Olivier! And Harry Hamlin! And it was produced by cultishly adored producer/special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, who rendered the myth of Perseus in endearing stop-motion that many remember with delight. Of course, the movie hasn't aged particularly well, so it's rife for a remake, right? Or, wait, is it?

Continue reading "Web Stalker - Getting Over Any Possible Clash That Comes With Reviving Those Titans" »