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‘Gehenna: Where Death Lives’ – Indie Horror Movie is a Practical Effects Masterpiece

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You have got to see this! As I was killing time doing my weekly scroll of Kickstarter (KS) my eyes immediately halted at a project called GEHENNA: Where Death Lives. Maybe it was the eerie image of a decrepit humanoid creature, or the wording used in the opening statements that grabbed my interest, I’m not sure. What was obvious to me from the get-go, is that this is not your ordinary KS project.

Here at the iHorror.com offices, the gang will discuss new crowd-funded projects at length on a daily basis. Mainly due to the fact that horror is a prominent genre within these circles and after all they give us movies like The Babadook. Unfortunately, there are a lot of duds on said communities that never come to fruition. But I believe GEHENNA: Where Death Lives is going to make its mark in the horror world.  The mainstream industry giants who have never before worried about the little man should pay attention to this up-and-coming ensemble of movie makers.

Hiroshi Katagiri with one of his creations

The brains behind it all is Hiroshi Katagiri (image above) and he is a legend in the practical effects world; combining sculpting, makeup, and classic on-screen effects to get a “realer than real” result. Katagiri, having worked as the special effects guy on movies such as The Hunger Games and Cabin in the woods (see image above), and rubbing elbows with legends like Steven Spielberg,  clearly feels it is his time to take to the seat and show his peers how it is done. Check out his IMDb here.

Reading further on into the project info on KS, I was delighted with another little gem. Clearly GEHENNA: Where Death Lives is a horror movie with great practical effects – which means creatures of some sort, and who better to embody the characteristics of such a creature? None other than Doug Jones!  I am a huge fan of Doug’s work and if you don’t know who I am referring to, shame on you, as you sure as hell would have seen a creature he has played. He’s in Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Fantastic Four, Men in Black 2, and the list goes on.

Doug Jones in makeup

(Image above is Mike Elizalde, owner of Spectral Motion, working on Jones as The Creepy Old Man, as Hiroshi looks on. Mike and Spectral Motion are both fully on board with the film.)

Finally, the plot for this film sounds original, not a spin on something we have already seen.  If you look at Hiroshi’s bio pages, he really has a grip on what makes a good movie and just as importantly what makes it scary.  And he is clear on the point that you do NOT need excess gore and vulgarity to scare people, instead, you immerse your audience in the story with uses of traditional techniques; the scares will come from his ability to bring his creatures to life with practical effects, not computer ones.

Personally, after reading the info on the Kickstarter page I am excited to see what is made of this project. With a few hundred backers already I have no doubt it will reach its goal.  If you would like to be part of Hiroshi and the team’s creation, get your ass over to the KS page and back the project.  You might even get a sculpture of your own head done personally by Hiroshi himself.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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