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Genre-Bending “Pet” is a Twisted Two Player Puzzle

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Carles Torrens (Apartment 143, ABC’s of Death “M”) has put together an effective little psychological thriller with his movie Pet now available on demand.

The film doesn’t hold back with its twists and bloody turns.

The surprises simmer at first, but suddenly boil over into shocking revelations.

The director seems to be playing with his audience as much as the characters play against each other in this cat-and-dead-mouse game of untempered psychosis.

In Pet we meet mild-mannered Seth (Dominic Monaghan).

He’s shy, timid, asocial and tends to latch on to things of his infatuation even if they don’t want him to. One in particular, Holly (Ksenia Solo), a beautiful waitress who Seth meets on a city bus.

It’s a meet-cute with sinister intentions.

From there the movie shifts into a bizarre recipe of stalking and eventually captivity. It’s one-part vigilante, two-parts sick sex game.

Monaghan plays Seth with no more ego than a newborn, placing what self-esteem he does have into a faulty God complex.

His nobles oblige will soon end up in a cage (no spoiler, the gist is on the cover art) beneath the Los Angeles Department of Animal Care and Control where he works cleaning kennels, feeding dogs and helping the veterinarian when it comes time to put them down.

It’s a hard job, especially when one of his favorite animal friends doesn’t meet the deadline for adoption and must be euthanized.

Our waitress Holly receives roses from Seth one day after their transit meeting, and she immediately thinks they are from her ex-boyfriend, but when she finds out they were sent to her by Seth after a confrontation, she knows she has a potential problem.

Holly is such a beautiful girl, seemingly well-adjusted and just trying to find the love of her life. She has plenty of acquaintances, but they never seem to work out. Beautiful girls like this shouldn’t be single in real life unless they are doing it wrong.

These two characters aren’t exactly society’s finest, but they’re clean-cut, can afford their own living arrangements and go about their routines under low clouds.

I wish I could tell you more, but that would take away the mystery of this film. A fine entry into the serial killer genre with tastes of torture and yes, love.

You may miss Pet if you’re a speed-scroller. You see it as a suggested title when you click another in the genre, but the cover art, albeit intriguing, has been borrowed.

Even the font looks familiar.

But that may be the genius of this project. What initially appears well-trodden is surprising new territory.

Pet can only be judged by the whole of its parts, some taken from sub-genres, some original; it’s an alloy that holds up even after the shaky ending.

The soundtrack is superb. The score by Zacarías M. de la Riva mixes ambient noise with music in a seamless arrangement.

At one point during the opening you hear birds chirping in the morning, but wait…is that really Seth’s alarm clock?

Pet won’t render you stupid if you can’t unravel its Gordian Knot half-way through, but the steps are there to figure out this intriguing puzzle once you examine it from both bloody ends.

And like the anatomy of a knot, Pet never makes clear which character is the working or the standing end.

It’s a special noose you’ll have to see for yourself.

Pet is now available on Video on Demand.

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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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