Comedy + genre (Fantasy, Horror, and Science-fiction)

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/27017297

Here’s another draining bout of horror opportunism, spawned in this instance by the copyright expiring on Disney’s Steamboat Willie, the 1928 landmark animation that launched Mickey Mouse into the world. Scurrying on to screens months behind the similarly motivated The Mouse Trap, Steven LaMorte’s bloody pastiche opens with a quote coyly ascribed to “Walt D” before plodding mirthlessly in the pawprints of those recent Winnie-the-Pooh carve-ups, demonstrating no greater brio, invention or wit. Its mock Mickey is a genetically modified super-violent pipsqueak (played by Terrifier breakout star David Howard Thornton, in mangy rodent costume), let loose from the sewers by blundering engineers; rather than the jaunty steamboat his predecessor commandeered, he wreaks murderous havoc on a grimy approximation of the Staten Island ferry, whistling while he works.

...

Arterial spray fans won’t feel short-changed, but many of the kill scenes are torpedoed by poor lighting, clumsy-to-inept camera coverage and cutting, and effects that only erratically match the action. Amid a number of Sharknado-level performances, and accidentally serving the public by muffling dialogue that wasn’t exactly sparkling to begin with, Thornton gives his Mickey a certain bouncy malevolence – but we get the idea after only a few minutes of watching the actor tap dance on a pop culture grave. These tacky novelty films have been unlucky to land at a moment when mainstream horror has seriously raised its game, but something as cut-price, retrograde and reactionary as this really does deserve the damning label of Mickey Mouse fare.

Trailer

In the sleepy town of Clover Falls, popular teens are butchered with regularity by a disfigured masked killer in the Freddy/Jason/Michael mode, named Roger Bladecut (Billy Burke). Their deaths are (somehow, invisibly) filmed and sold as horror movies at the local video store, run by Roger Bladecut. This maniac’s daughter, Abbie (Sari Arambulo), is for some reason keen to follow in her father’s footsteps, but when she starts hanging out with other teens realises that maybe murdering your fellow humans isn’t all its cracked up to be.

Even a cursory outline of the premise is probably enough to set alarm bells ringing for anyone with even a passing interest in plausible world-building. For those willing to suspend their disbelief, Bloody Axe Wound features some charismatic performances (from Sam Crane and Eddie Leavy in particular), a banging soundtrack crammed with riot grrrl riffs, and some nice juicy practical gore effects.

Trailer

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26722585

Brian Cox, Edie Falco, Dean Norris and Lisa Kudrow play “wacky” parents trapped in a haunted mansion in a minimal Max original

The first reactions are in for new horror movie Clown in a Cornfield after its premiere at SXSW – and viewers are full of praise for the slasher comedy with a twist.

Directed by Tucker & Dale vs. Evil helmer Eli Craig, the movie is based on the novel of the same name by Adam Cesare and made by the same production company behind the Smile franchise. The film follows teenager Quinn (Katie Douglas), who moves to a small town in Missouri after the death of her mother. Their fresh start is disrupted, however, when the town's mascot Frendo the Clown begins to wreak bloody havoc on its residents.

"#ClownInACornfield was fucking spectacular!" tweeted one viewer. "Paving the way for a new generation of slashers! A new era and I’m here for it. A gruesome, wild and chaotic bloodbath! Amazing cast and a premise that will shock people! A huge win for horror fans! Folks are gonna lose their minds!"

Trailer

Picture, if you will, a version of the esoteric sci-fi masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey” made after a cartoon anvil has landed on Stanley Kubrick’s head, causing animated canaries to circle overhead. The resulting film would probably look a lot like “L’Empire” (or “The Empire”), Berlin’s Silver Bear-winning French-language farce by filmmaker Bruno Dumont, who refracts the traditional space opera through a strange deconstructive prism.

As warring empires and prophecies descend upon an unassuming fishing town, aliens in human form prepare for an existential battle whose moral dimensions initially seem abstract and absurd. Rather than sleek, futuristic vessels, its spaceships take the form of gothic church spires and baroque palaces, Earth-bound designs that offer a clear-eyed view of the religious and political power that drives the warring factions up above.

Dumont, whose last film “France” satirized the French news media landscape, tips over the edge of madness with “L’Empire.” A send-up of the popular sci-fi tradition — beginning with “a galaxy far, far away” — it takes potshots at genre storytelling that draw from the real world while also eschewing it.

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/39769265

This is from the same RocketJump of Freddie Wong YouTube fame and will be having apparently a very limited (as of now) one day running theaters on March 7th.

I think it looks so interesting. I love me some indie sci-fi films.

Feb 22, 2025

The Best Horror Podcasts from millions of podcasts available on the Goodpods platform and ranked by listens, ratings, comments, subscriptions and shares.

This amusingly overwrought mystery-horror-thriller is both a new release and a reissue all at once. Originally made in 2004, and shown at a few genre-specific film festivals, it never secured distribution. Still, it found a way to get seen on alternative platforms like YouTube and homemade DVDs. Frustrated with the lack of appreciation for his work, director Eugenio Mira started sending copies of the film to directors he admired like Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro among others, exactly the right kind of guys who like to champion neglected cult classics. Meanwhile, lead actor Corey Feldman (once a child star in the likes of Stand By Me and The Goonies back in the 1980s) was conducting his own under-the-radar campaign on the film’s behalf. After it ended up getting shown via a scratchy master print at a screening hosted by director Jordan Peele (Get Out, Nope) and praised to the heavens, funds suddenly became available for a 4K restoration and a limited worldwide release. Now we can all see what the fuss is about.

Was it worth the wait? Yes and no.

I wouldn't go much further as they do say " It’s best to know as little as possible going in" and then proceed to drop hints, which is naughty.

A24 is getting set to unleash their fantastical nightmare Death of a Unicorn in theaters on March 28, 2025, and the film has received its official rating from the MPA this week.

Death of a Unicorn is rated “R” for “strong violent content, gore, language and some drug use.”

...

Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd lead the cast of A24’s dark comedy.

In Death of a Unicorn, “A father (Rudd) and daughter (Ortega) accidentally hit and kill a unicorn while en route to a weekend retreat, where his billionaire boss (Richard Grant) seeks to exploit the creature’s miraculous curative properties.”

Trailer

On Avenue Mews in the leafy North London suburb of Muswell Hill, long-term friends Ruth (Ruth Syratt) and Megan (Megan Stevenson) run Cha Cha Cha together from rented premises. There they sell vintage goods – “anything we can get our hands on that’s from the past”, as Ruth puts it. They do not, however, sell the old dodgem car – with flashing lights and lo-fi control boards attached – which they find abandoned by the bins outside their shop, but instead, upon discovering that it is a time machine, use it to gather genuine antiques from different places and eras.

Six years later, business is booming, but strange meteorological phenomena suggest that something is amiss in the space-time continuum. A secret club of local eccentric inventors known as the Technology Engineering Scientific Thought and Innovation Society, or ’T.E.S.T.I.S’ (it will later be renamed B.R.E.S.T.S., in part to reflect the shifting gender balance of its membership), realises what is happening, and recruits the two women to their group.

...

Narrated by Stephen Fry, Time Travel Is Dangerous is a very English kind of sci-fi comedy, with very little actual science, but plenty of absurdist emphasis on the schlubbish, amateurish, no-budget side of invention – and indeed of inventive filmmaking. It is an endearing, surreal and funny portrait of friendship lasting across time.

Trailer

Corporal Joe Bauers, a decidedly average American, is selected for a top-secret hibernation program but is forgotten and left to awaken to a future so incredibly moronic that he's easily the most intelligent person alive.

IMDb

cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/21132778

cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/21132777

Cineverse has announced that “The Toxic Avenger,” a darkly comedic reimagining of Troma Entertainment’s 1984 cult classic of the same name, is headed to theaters in 2025.

Directed by Macon Blair (“I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore”) and starring Peter Dinklage, “The Toxic Avenger” reboot will premiere as an unrated wide release later this year.

...

In this new chapter of the franchise created by Lloyd Kaufman and Troma Entertainment, Dinklage stars as downtrodden janitor Winston Gooze, who, after a freak accident, transforms into a mutant vigilante known as Toxie. “Armed with his signature mop, the unlikely hero battles freaks, gangsters and corrupt CEOs while trying to save his relationship with his son. The story channels the subversive gonzo energy of the original ‘Toxic Avenger’ while delivering a fresh, contemporary twist,” reads the official synopsis.

Along with Dinklage, the film stars Kevin Bacon, Elijah Wood, Jacob Tremblay, Julia Davis and Taylour Paige.

It's a little light on the genre aspect (though there's a lot of blood a couple of times) but it's a funny, delightful and occasionally touching movie about a new Finnish band that plays "symphonic post-apocalyptic reindeer-grinding Christ-abusing extreme war pagan Fennoscandian metal."

PLUS there is a sequel coming out sometime. Usually I don't like them but an indie movie this good deserves one.

The trouble with Nick Frost’s knowingly cartoonish and silly comedy paying homage to folk horrors such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar is that Frost has done this kind of movie before, and better. His hugely enjoyable collaborations with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, had a perfect command of comedy horror. The tone here feels less good natured, more self-congratulatory, the comedy not quite so light on its feet. Though it comes into its own with a cheerfully gruesome gorefest in the last half-hour.

Frost writes and stars alongside Aisling Bea (who really does deserve a better horror film). They play Richard and Susan Smith, an ordinary-seeming middle-aged couple with the irritating habit of calling each other “mummy” and “daddy”. The Smiths have dragged their bickering grownup kids Sam (Sebastian Croft) and Jessie (Maisie Ayres) on holiday to a fictional Swedish island to watch the Karantän festival. Every year locals stage an eight-hour re-enactment celebrating a grisly episode of early 19th-century history when their ancestors turned cannibalistic and chomped four British soldiers who’d starved the island.

Of course, in folk horror tradition, the Smiths are hapless outsiders blundering like lambs to a freaky ritualistic slaughter.

Trailer

With Sebastian Stan attracting awards buzz for The Apprentice and A Different Man, it feels like an appropriate time to revisit Fresh, which for my money is one of the most warped and interesting horror comedies of recent years. However, this is a movie that’s hard to discuss without giving something crucial away, so before reading any further – and if you’ll pardon the pun – you may first prefer to go and experience it fresh.

...

While Fresh was rightfully acclaimed on release, it would be a shame if it were forgotten in the constant deluge of new streaming content, because horror comedy is a tricky thing to balance. But Fresh stands out because it approaches its horrors of modern dating with a morbid sense of humour and an appetite for the unpredictable.

Lots of spoilers in the article.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/19066860

For a good scare with a local twist, look no further than Haunted Ulster Live — a new Belfast-based spookfest that is streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. When interviewed last year by this newspaper about the comedy-horror film, director Dominic O’Neill had described it as being a bit like “UTV meets The Blair Witch Project”.

Now he has referenced it as also being a love letter to Northern Ireland in the “90s, and local community television”.

A synopsis for the movie says: “On Halloween night 1998, Northern Ireland TV veteran Gerry Burns teams up with popular new children’s presenter Michelle Kelly to investigate poltergeist activity in a reputedly haunted house in Belfast. Light entertainment turns to horror when an unseen terror reveals itself.

“Combining found footage horror, folklore and a nostalgia for regional television, Haunted Ulster Live recreates a familiar world of 90s light entertainment which, much like Belfast itself during the Northern Ireland Troubles, is haunted by something unseen and sinister.”

Haunted Ulster Live premiered at FrightFest 2023, with a local premiere at the Belfast Film Festival.

...

Having been released on streaming services on October 14, Dominic said the film has had “a really good reception and great print reviews”, including glowing reports from The Guardian, and movie/fantasy magazines such as Total Film, SFX and Filmhounds.

...

​Viewers can buy/stream Haunted Ulster Live now on Prime Video, Apple TV or Google Play

Previously:

• 'Haunted Ulster Live' Exclusive Clip: A Strange Case of Sleepwalking
• 'Haunted Ulster Live' Trailer- Chilling Mockumentary Compared to 'Ghostwatch' and 'Late Night With the Devil'

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/19042886

Members Club may be the rarest type of comedy horror movie. The plot follows a group of middle aged men who work together in a strip group known as Wet Dreams. Business is not as strong as it once and their manager soon announces he will be selling the company. Just when things are at their worst, the friends are offered a lucrative gig. They soon learn they are part of a bloody scheme to resurrect a centuries old witch.

Folk horror can be difficult to define. It is not as in your face as a slasher or as obvious as a haunted house story. Since it is based in folklore, this makes the definition very broad. It is one of those cases of “I know it when I see it.” However, most people will agree there are not many folk horror comedy movies. (Unless you count ghost stories as folk horror, in which case there are a large number of films that mix folk horror and comedy.)

There are no ghosts in Members Club, but there are witches, books of magic, rituals, sacrifices, and a number of mystical symbols. The creature design is great with the witch being of the old hag variety. She looks suitably disgusting. There are also some great special effects involving missing eyes, body parts being removed, and some gruesome deaths...

It’s possible that no one wants to see a Happy Death Day 3 more than director Christopher Landon, with the filmmaker recently confirming he has written a treatment for the project, though hasn’t committed to writing a full script as the project hasn’t yet been confirmed. Fans have been asking Landon about the third entry, which was teased with a post-credits scene in Happy Death Day 2U, ever since 2019, and another promising tease is that Landon doesn’t get sick of all the love fans show him and even encourages audiences to keep showing their support. Despite fan enthusiasm for the series, the last entry wasn’t a major financial earner, which has prevented momentum from developing on a trilogy closer.

“I could say that I wrote a treatment. I didn’t write the script, because I wouldn’t write a script unless it was a sure thing,” Landon confirmed to ComicBook at New York Comic Con when asked about the status of the third entry. “Here’s the cool thing: It is a bigger movie, and it is not set on the same day as the previous two films. That’s the biggest spoiler I’ve put out there.”

As far as whether fans should stop pestering Landon about it, the filmmaker teased, “I don’t hate it at all. I love it, I’m all for it. I want people to keep asking because I feel like if people keep asking, we all might actually get it.”

...

Not only is Landon hoping that the sequel will move forward, but star Rothe is just as excited, as she shared earlier this year how passionate she is about reviving Tree.

“Well, I can say [writer/director] Chris Landon has the whole thing figured out,” Rothe confirmed to Screen Geek. “We just need to wait for Blumhouse and Universal to get their ducks in a row. But my fingers are so crossed. I think Tree [Gelbman] deserves her third and final chapter to bring that incredible character and franchise to a close or a new beginning.”

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18926791

Liquid Slam's ad campaign for their "Big Game" line of snacks and sugary beverages was pulled almost immediately.

IMDb

Sean Astin may not be getting the Goonies sequel he’s hoping for, but he does have a role in an upcoming movie that has a shot at achieving cult classic status: a horror comedy called The Invisible Raptor, which will be receiving a theatrical and digital release (courtesy of Well Go USA) on December 6th. The film had its world premiere at the 2023 Sitges Film Festival and currently, with seven reviews, has a 100% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Directed by Mike Hermosa from a screenplay by Mike Capes and Johnny Wickham, The Invisible Raptor has the following synopsis: After a top-secret experiment goes wrong, a hyper-intelligent invisible raptor escapes the lab and begins wreaking havoc in the surrounding neighborhood. When the creature’s identity is uncovered, it soon becomes clear that a disgraced paleontologist—alongside his ex-girlfriend, an unhinged amusement park security guard, and a local celebrity chicken farmer—is the town’s only hope for surviving the raptor’s ravenous rampage.

...

The positive reviews of The Invisible Raptor have described it as “the smart version of a stupid movie,” “hilariously dumb,” “downright batshit,” “joyously silly,” and “inventive throughout,” and it’s said to have “likeable characters” and some “genuinely entertaining gore.” That sounds like a good time to me, so hopefully a trailer will be dropping online soon.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18439721

A teaser trailer has been released for a Scottish horror comedy film about mutant killer midges.

Fort William-based author and screenwriter Barry Hutchison posted his idea for the movie on social media last summer as a joke.

The response to the post has led to Midgies going into a pre-production phase with cast and locations being considered ahead of a plan to film next year.

Glasgow-based film-maker Alessio Avezzano shot the short teaser this summer, with some of the filming done in Balloch Country Park, West Dunbartonshire.

...

The teaser features two walkers coming across a frightened scientist, and a laboratory under attack from an unseen menace.

Scottish companies including Motif Studios, which worked on visual effects for a Mad Max film, and digital entertainment firm Blazing Griffin were involved in making the three minute-long short film.

...

He said the new teaser would form part of a package of materials which will be pitched at film production companies and potential funders.

"We were hoping to be a little further on," said Hutchison.

"Writer and actor strikes in the US ground film production globally to a halt in many ways. As a result of that we lost our US producer."

Hutchison said the focus was now on making the film as much of a Scottish production as possible.

...

Hutchison added: "We are looking to shoot next year in the summer, although we will be plagued by actual midges which could be problematic."

Teaser trailer

IMDb

Workaholic yuppie Conor is in an existential rut until one night he catches a bizarre ad for a party hotline hosted by a strange dancing goblin: Frankie Freako. Could this be just the recipe to spice up his boring life?

IMDb