Penny Dreadful
SFX's high priestess of horror
Frightfest picks, the horror of Comic-Con and a brand-new Slayer on the way...
Five in the eyes
It’s that time again. Five joyful days in a dark cinema over the August bank holiday weekend bingeing on some of the horror films that’ll define the year ahead. As ever, FrightFest is going to be packed with surprises, but here are a handful of titles I’m most looking forward to shivering over. 1. Terrified – an Argentinian supernatural chiller about a haunting, and which I’m reliably informed is genuinely scary. 2. Anna And The Apocalypse – zombie musical comedy Christmas film, need I say more? 3. Summer Of ’84 – nostalgic Stranger Things-style romp from the guys who made Turbo Kid 4. Possum – weirdsounding two hander from Garth Marenghi creator Matt Holness about a puppeteer and his uncle. 5. The Dark – sweet-sounding Austrian horror about a vengeful female ghost who spares a blind boy in the forest she haunts. It looks like it’s shaping up to be another great year for horror.
scare Diego
You know horror is in great shape when a whole raft of it pops up at San Diego Comic-Con. A heap of news and clips were revealed including new footage from The Nun, It: Chapter Two, Halloween and Glass, which had crowds buzzing, a first trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which looks like kaiju madness, while the obligatory Walking Dead noise was around villains for the next season (the Whisperers) and Rick’s departure. Also announced was the title for season eight of American Horror Story. Apocalypse will be a crossover between Murder House and Coven, with the title probably referring to the suggestion from Sarah Paulson’s character in Murder House that “a child born of human and spirit will usher in the end of times’. Does not bode well, though I can’t wait.
More exciting news was the announcement of The Curse Of La Llorona, to be produced by James Wan. Originally thought to be a film set in the Conjuring universe (it’s not), instead it’s based around the Mexican myth of The Weeping Woman. In the legend the Weeping Woman is a mother who drowns her two children and then herself in a state of grief when her husband betrays her, and is now said to haunt rivers and lakes looking for children to replace her own. It’s the first feature film from director Michael Chaves. For another take on La Llorona check out Mexican movie KM 31 from 2006 – it wears its J-Horror influences on its sleeve but has several good scares.
in every generation...
Twenty-one years after the first episode aired and now Buffy The Vampire Slayer is getting a reboot. Monica Owusu-Breen, best known for her work on Alias, Lost and Midnight, Texas is working on the script and will be the showrunner with Joss Whedon exec producing. My first reaction was NO! – there’s a natural instinct to baulk at reboots of shows that were important to us. But now I think it’s a good thing. The focus for this redo will apparently be inclusivity, with the vampire slayer to be played by a young black actress. Buffy was a groundbreaking show, but not very intersectional. Now for a female of colour to be the writer and showrunner, updating a show that empowered young women, so it can trailblaze once again, is surely a great thing. I say bring it on!
young guns
Movie of the month goes to Netflix original Calibre, a low-budget Irish thriller which mixes in elements of folk horror with an unbearably tense story of two young men hunting in the Scottish Highlands who are involved in a horrible accident. It’s an extremely impressive feature debut from Matt Palmer, and though it’s a genre mashup, the constant twists and creeping dread that escalate throughout mean horror fans should love it. Think a super-brutal Shallow Grave with a bit of The Wicker Man thrown in for kicks. Intense.