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Boaz Yakin Takes Us Inside ‘Boarding School’

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In the grand scheme of things, Boaz Yakin is hardly new to the horror game. Once upon a time, he was partners with Eli Roth and Scott Spiegel at Raw Nerve Productions.

The company was responsible for the birth of the Hostel franchise, and had a hand in bringing the Robert Englund and Lin Shaye led remake of 2001 Maniacs.

“The company went away but I always felt like doing a horror movie on my own was something I really needed and wanted to do,” Yakin told iHorror in a recent interview. “I had this idea that embracing the things about yourself that you might be ashamed of and owning them is important. That’s where the idea for Boarding School came from, really.”

The writer and director mined that theme for everything it was worth in bringing the film to life blending genres and creating something rooted in genre archetypes yet somehow greater than its parts.

In the film, twelve year old Jacob (Luke Prael) becomes obsessed with the image of his deceased grandmother. Much to the dismay of his mother and stepfather, he revels in her music, tries on her clothes, and sees the story of her life play out in his head over and over again.

Before long, he finds himself shipped off to a super secretive boarding school with seriously sinister motives, and he has to find that strength within himself to protect himself and his classmates.

“For me, I’ve struggled for a big part of my life with the fact that I have a very strong feminine side,” Yakin explained. “In film, most hero journeys involve finding your father’s sword. I wanted to turn that convention on its head. Jacob doesn’t find power that way. It’s not his father’s sword, but instead his grandmother’s dress that empowers him.”

That’s exactly what he did.

But he was doubly lucky when it came time to cast the film, however, in finding Luke Prael to embody the role of young Jacob, however. The actor was only 12 years old when filming began but he brought a maturity to the role far beyond his years, and Yakin could not have been more impressed with the young man’s performance.

“This was his first movie and he was really raw, but he has this incredibly strong light about him,” the director pointed out. “He also has this very internalized strength. He keeps what he’s feeling very close to him. I like those kinds of performances.”

The director didn’t only find himself lucky in casting Prael, however. He hit a veritable gold mine in securing Tammy Blanchard (Into the Woods) and Will Patton (The Puppet Masters) as the Shermans, the couple running the school.

“When you read the script, there wasn’t much for Tammy’s character to do, but then she showed up on set and suddenly everything she does, every movement, suddenly had this weight to it,” Yakin said. “And then Will, man, one of my favorite things about the film is his performance. He was amazing.”

There was a final piece to the film’s puzzle, however. The sets for the school had to be perfect, but Yakin and the producers were already facing budget constraints. While scouting for locations, the director found exactly what he was looking for only 45 minutes from his home in Manhattan.

The woman who owned the property agreed to filming and soon, Yakin, Prael, and the rest of the cast were ensconced in what Yakin described as something out of a Kubrick film. It also allowed him to pay homage to one of his filmmaking idols.

“With that amazing location, we were able, with a limited lighting kit, to reproduce the look of some of Mario Bava’s classic films,” he enthused. “The reds and blues could be more extreme and impressionistic and it would help raise the tension level of the entire project.”

Yakin’s vision came to startling life in the finished product. It is both terrifying and moving, a rare combination in the genre but one that is most refreshing.

You can see Boarding School in its limited theater release and on VOD right now! Check out the trailer below!

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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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Trailer for ‘The Exorcism’ Has Russell Crowe Possessed

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The latest exorcism movie is about to drop this summer. It’s aptly titled The Exorcism and it stars Academy Award winner turned B-movie savant Russell Crowe. The trailer dropped today and by the looks of it, we are getting a possession movie that takes place on a movie set.

Just like this year’s recent demon-in-media-space film Late Night With the Devil, The Exorcism happens during a production. Although the former takes place on a live network talk show, the latter is on an active sound stage. Hopefully, it won’t be entirely serious and we’ll get some meta chuckles out of it.

The film will open in theaters on June 7, but since Shudder also acquired it, it probably won’t be long after that until it finds a home on the streaming service.

Crowe plays, “Anthony Miller, a troubled actor who begins to unravel while shooting a supernatural horror film. His estranged daughter, Lee (Ryan Simpkins), wonders if he’s slipping back into his past addictions or if there’s something more sinister at play. The film also stars Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg and David Hyde Pierce.”

Crowe did see some success in last year’s The Pope’s Exorcist mostly because his character was so over-the-top and infused with such comical hubris it bordered on parody. We will see if that is the route actor-turned-director Joshua John Miller takes with The Exorcism.

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